Hands don't have nationalities!
救援物資はもう迷惑になるから必要ないと思っていませんか？
皆さんのご家庭はもうすでに衣替えをすませたはず。避難所にも夏は近づいてきているのです。津波が美しい東北の海辺の街を襲ったのは雪振る冬でした。被災者の方は何も持たずに体１つで避難所に逃げ込みました。現在も所持品は何もないのです。
今回は皆さんの寄付のお陰でリクエストのあった３００枚のタオルケットを届けることができました。
本当にありがとうございました。
皆さんのお気持ち、Nadiaが責任もって被災者の方にお届けします。これからもサポートをお願い申し上げます。
ゴールデンウィーク中、テレビなどでボランティアの数が多すぎて被災地に行っても仕事がない、なんて事を耳にした事がある方は多いのではないでしょうか？そして、ボランティアに行きたい、と思っていながらも十分人手が足りていて逆に押し掛けて迷惑になりたくない、と思っていくのを躊躇している人は多いのではないでしょうか？
実際に毎週被災地に行っている私たちからすると、どうしてそういう噂が出るんだろう？と不思議な程です。私たちTeam-Nadiaでは被災者の方からの要望は沢山あり、すぐにでも伺いたいのに人手が足りなくてもどかしい思いをする事すらあります。
ゴールデンウィークの最終日８日は大きな倉庫とオフィス、そして家庭の床下のヘドロ出しのリクエストを受けていましたが、人手が足りなく朝一番から１２人ワンチームで全てをこなさなければなりませんでした。幸い経験の多い人ばかりで、どうやったら効率的に短時間ですべき事を全て完了する事ができるか、一人一人が考えて行動し、皆の呼吸もぴったりあって全ての作業をその日のうちに終わらせる事が出来ました。でも、決して十分な数のボランティアがいた訳ではありません。人手はノドから手が出る位必要です。
ボランティアしたいけれど本当に必要とされているのか迷っているあなた。Nadiaに是非連絡下さい。私たちはあなたのその手を待っています。
２か月前のお昼時、誰が今の石巻の現状を想像することができたでしょうか。震災直後私たちは現実に衝撃を受けすぐに行動に移さなくては、と決意しました。
そして２か月が経ち、テレビでは通常のバラエティ番組などが目立つようになり、震災の報道は徐々に少なくなって来ています。でもこれは決して被災地の状況が良くなっているからではありません。２か月経った今もまだ家の中にすら入れない手つかずの家が沢山あります。避難所にはまだ沢山の人が暮らしています。
石巻市のありとあらゆる時計は全て午後３時５０分を指しています。恐らく津波が石巻市を襲った時刻でしょう。NADIAは被災者の方が、その時計が指す時間から前に進もうという気持ちになれるよう出来るだけの事をして行くつもりです。失った命や家思い出の品など、もう取り戻せない物は沢山あります。でも、被災者の方が希望や夢を少しずつでも持ち続けていく事ができるよう私たちは全力を尽くして行くつもりです。
２か月経ったこの日、あなたの１０分間を被災者の方の為に自分は何が出来るか考える事に費やして下さい。そして出来ればそれを行動に移して下さい。
まだまだ私たちに出来る事は沢山あります。
Please click here if the video below doesn’t show.
NADIAは毎週末に石巻市の湊小学校近辺に活動する予定です。今日から５月２１日２２日のボランティア活動の申し込み期間が始まります！詳細はこちらをご覧下さい。申し込みの締め切りは５月１７日になります！
ISHINOMAKI, Japan (AFP) – It oozes and reeks and sometimes it shimmers in oily rainbow colours. Millions of tonnes of putrid mud now fill every nook and cranny of Japan’s tsunami disaster zone.
Volunteers who have spent weekends shovelling it out of survivors’ half-wrecked homes have developed an intimate relationship with the muck that soils their overalls, gloves and workboots.
“It looks like layered chocolate cake, but it smells like a mix of saltwater and oil,” said Masato Arima, 35, a Tokyo project manager with a financial services firm, wearing a yellow hardhat and industrial facemask.
Joji Hiratsuka, another volunteer working in the devastated port town of Ishinomaki with aid group Nadia, has a different take on the stuff.
“It’s like rancid Jell-O. It’s black. You can’t describe the smell — oil, dead fish, everything. There’s petroleum from cars, boats and oil tanks. It’s not organic. It’s like the ocean, but in a bad way.”
Ishinomaki is littered with dramatic evidence of the March 11 quake and the monster wave it spawned that erased entire neighbourhoods here and left almost 25,000 people dead or missing along the shattered Pacific coast.
Cars now stick out at odd angles from a graveyard, watched over silently by stone Buddhas. Fishing boats lie scattered amid broken houses. And a Statue of Liberty figure towers oddly over a debris-strewn river island.
But while bulldozers and cranes will eventually remove the large-scale wreckage of Japan’s epic catastrophe, clearing the mud from thousands of homes is a job that must be done by hand, one scoop at a time.
“Someone has to do it,” said Christine Lavoie-Gagnon, whose volunteer group Nadia (a name that means “Hope”) took more than 100 people by bus to the town in the just-ended “Golden Week” of public holidays.
“People here have had the shock of their lives, something that only happens once every 1,000 years,” she said. “They’re left with their sorrow and fatigue — and lots of mud in their houses.
“Money is good, but they also need hands. Three of us came in the beginning, and now there are lots of us. We have people from Asia, Europe and the Americas. Hands don’t have nationalities.
“We come back so people don’t feel alone with their mud. We do whatever they ask us to do.”
The gritty labour has made the volunteers appreciate their day jobs — many of them are traders, brokers and staff at major global financial institutions. Yet most of them have kept coming back for more.
“The insides of these houses look like they went through a mixer,” said Hiratsuka, 49, a Canadian derivatives trader and ice hockey player dubbed “the human bulldozer” by his team-mates.
“We come and help people clean out their houses. They may not even be able to live there again, but it gives them breathing space. An elderly couple can’t dig through a tonne of dirt. They need help.”
There are better and worse days.
“One day we found about 20 kilograms (45 pounds) of chicken buried in the mud. It had been there for about three weeks, it was fermented and slimy,” Hiratsuka said, clearly not relishing the memory.
The more rewarding finds are families’ mementos and keepsakes — photographs, religious icons, urns with relatives’ ashes — that volunteers sometimes find in the mud, clean up and return to the families.
The job is not just about muscle power, but also emotional support.
Mother-of-two Yukako Ishikawa was so moved by the group’s help in her half-destroyed childhood home that she likened the motley crew of workers in outdoor wear and hazmat suits to a flock of deities.
“When I was alone here, I felt so much fear,” said Ishikawa, 36, who survived the tsunami when she took her young children and elderly parents to a nearby elementary school building with only minutes to spare.
Her family shuddered for days in the darkness and cold, waiting for help. Desperate for food, Ishikawa waded back through waist-deep water to salvage drink bottles, cans and plastic-sealed food from the flooded kitchen.
As the muddy waters receded, she returned to the two-storey house, the detritus of their former lives now a jumbled and soggy mess, wondering if and when she could start to reclaim her life.
“I was alone here in a house full of mud,” she said, as volunteers around her filled wheelbarrows and sandbags with black earth, cleaned hand-carved window frames and restored a small Japanese garden.
“They helped me through the hard time. Now I feel I can move forward.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110509/wl_asia_afp/japandisasteraccidentnuclearaidmud
全ては震災直後報道の仕事で東北地方から戻ったクリスティンからの３月２０日の一通のメールで始まりました。彼女は友人何人かにメールを送り、被災地の惨状を語りました。
「テレビの前で嘆いているだけでは何の役にも立たない。避難所の人たちは物資も足りず、家の状況はとても自分たちの手に負えるものではない。東京にいて募 金に励むのももちろん大切な支援だが、被災地では手と足が圧倒的に足りない。自分たちの食料と滞在を確保してすぐに支援に行こう！」
すぐに手を挙げた友人と３人で３月２４日、東京を出発し仙台から１５キロ程の多賀城市で活動を始める事となりました。震災からまだ１０日程、余震も続きガ スなどのインフラは仙台市内でも戻っていず、ホテルなどの営業も再開していない状態でした。唯一状況を理解し私たちを受け入れてくれたのは、いわゆるラブ ホテル、そのホテルの心遣いにより我々のボランティア活動が可能になったのでした。
１部屋に女性３人、被災地に迷惑をかけないよう食料や飲料水は全て自宅から持参しましたが、何より助かったのはホテルに電子レンジがあった事。ガスが復旧していないため作業後にシャワーを浴びれない不自由さはありましたがそれは被災者の方も同じ事、Hotel Bonitaにはどれだけ感謝してもしきれません。
多賀城市でのボランティア活動は救援物資の仕分け、市役所内の案内、被災者の方の家の掃除、家具の運び出しなど多岐に渡り、そこで被災地ではどのような支援が必要かがよく分かりました。
週末になると、さらに３人の友人が仕事を終えて合流し、計６人で多賀城市でのボランティアにあたりました。夜になるとHotel Bonitaで持ち寄った食料とワインと共に今後の活動のプランについて語り合ったものでした。
そして、さらに大きな規模で活動を続ける為一度東京へと戻りましたが、その後すぐにまた被災地に戻り、それからは週末ごとに毎週宮城県に行くことになったのです。
活動していくうちにさらに被害のひどい地域が沢山ある事を実感し、大きな被害を受け未だ復旧の目処が立っていなかった石巻市で活動することになりました。
震災直後は東京から必要なもの、支援物資は東京から運んでいましたが、震災後２週間もすると被害の少なかった地区が徐々にスーパーやレストランなどの営業 を再開し始めました。お店に十分品が並ぶようになると、地元の経済を活性化する事も支援の１つだ、と考えるようになり、避難所の必要としている物を聞き、 それを東京から持っていくのではなく、地元のお店で購入し調達するようにしました。食料もお弁当を地元でオーダーして宅配していただいています。
宿泊についても同様、まだ状況が安定しているとはいえない為観光客の足が遠のいている現状のもと、野営するのではなく出来るだけ地元の旅館などにお世話になるようにしています。こういった、小さな事が経済を活性化させ、雇用の安定にも繋がっていくとNadiaは考えています。
全ては惨状を目にした１人のメールから始まりました。自然の威力を前に自分の無力を感じている方がいたら、１度Nadiaの活動に参加してみて下さい。そして、あなたがその目で見た事を周りの方に伝えて下さい。
あなたもきっと世界を動かす事ができるはず。。。
ゴールデンウィーク中のボランティア活動参加の受け付けは締め切りました。
In Japan, instead of Easter holiday, we are in the middle of holiday season, called “Golden Week”, which started from 29th/April.
Japanese are well known as hard workers at office, and for us, GW is the time to relax and recharge our energy. Some spends time with family, some goes overseas, some goes in a mountain to enjoy fresh early summer air.
Here is a story of people who decided to spend their holiday with Naida, with people at Ishinomaki. Our trip schedule was rather hard, spending night in a bus after hardworking week.
28/April(Thu)
23:00 Shinjuku
Most of us worked until evening, went home, took quick shower, grabbed boots and helmet and masks, and hurried to the meeting point. We were a group of multi-nationality, but working in Japan, we are used to be punctual, all gathered on time!
Team-Nadia, here we go!
29/April(Fri)
8:30 Ishinomaki
Again, we arrived at Ishinomaki on time, unload our baggages, and changed to working out fit. A bit nervous and shocked to see the reality. Some lost his words, some tried to hide their upset.
After briefing, each group went to houses where they were assigned. Each group were well mixed with female/male, veterans/un-experienced, JPN speakers/ENG speakers. 50 days after Tsunami, many houses still remained untouched. Most of us couldn’t sleep well in a bus, but no one complained seeing how people enduring under this situation.
Sakura survived tsunami and welcomed us at their garden.
15:00~15:30 Finish work
Some group completed cleaning, and some promised to come back next day, depending on house condition.
When we met house owner in the morning, they were a little shy so as we were, but at the end of the day, all of us became like family, promised to keep helping as long as they needed, and promised to visit them when they really returned to their life in the future.
17:00 Matsushima
Matsushima is a group of islands near Ishinomaki. There are some 260 tiny islands (shima) covered in pines (matsu) – hence the name – and is ranked as one of the Three most beautiful views of japan .
Despite the proximity of Matsushima to the Tsunami, the area was protected by the islands and suffered little damage. They were damaged by earthquakes, but tried to be recovered before GW, and they just reopened their ryokan, we were the first guests after earthquakes!
Open air hot spring the best view in Japan on my back…
30/April(Sat)
7:30 Departure to Ishinomaki
8:30-15:00
Some continued work of previous day, some were assigned to new house. On 2nd day, no one needed to be told what to do, we all worked proactively, taking extra caution to avoid injury. There were broken glasses and nails and spikes everywhere.
One thing I noticed living in a metropolitan city like Tokyo where we often don’t know who’s living our next door is, here in Ishinomaki, we exchange greeting everyone, everyone show our sincere appreciation for their commitment both in words and in attitude.
1/May(Sun)
Some of us enjoyed after work beer too much the night before, I saw many were taking aspirin at breakfast table..
One more work before going back to Tokyo.
And as an important mission during GW, we delivered 1200 pairs of brand new shoes to Ishinomaki and Watari-cho. A generous company let us use a truck for free and volunteers delivered them driving for 30 hours going up and down.
12:00 Finish work
13:00 Departure to Tokyo
In exchange of our crew, 17 Nadia crew arrived from Tokyo, and 15 more coming next day. They took over our mission, and we left Ishinomaki.
Despite the fact that we had very tough days doing physical work, we are somehow refreshed, recharged our energy.
Having a break a few times on our way back to Tokyo, I bought a famous Miyagi prefc. sweets made with green beans.
20:00 Arrived at Shinjuku
72 hours ago, we were total strangers to each other, but after spending time together at Ishinomaki, we all became comrades. We hugged and promised to see each other at Ishinomaki soon.
This is how our GW became literally Golden….