Carnaza, 21/01

Most of the time, we have breakfast on the front of the boat and after a short briefing of the day, we start again organizing an equal separation and repartition of the goods...

Another village is on our list, Bantao, where 63 families need some help.
While distributing the bags, we can feel some jealousy among the people that are not on our list. How can we explain to those people that are themselves quite poor that there is nothing for them amongst the goods that we brought. We repeat that we don’t have enough goods for every person on the island, but there is still deception. Anyway, there are no agressions, no violence, only their envy which is completely understandable.

This afternoon we are bringing help to the people of Linaw, it is a small village on the other side of the island, 7 houses have been totally damaged and the other 25 had smaller damage. We are lucky that the local people of the island give us a hand with the transportation. Two local boats are waiting for us to load the goods and to bring us to the other side.

As we arrive, we can feel the atmosphere in the village is very peaceful, people are looking quietly at us while unpacking the bags. After the whole village mingled together, we are starting with a small speech. We have only 7 hammers for the people that have been most affected by the typhoon. We tell them, that those hammers should serve the whole community, and could be borrowed from each other. The people in the village seem all to understand and agree. While distributing, everyone is patient, waiting his turn without being greedy. We have a really good feeling with those simple and very grateful people.

On our way back to the boat, we make an unexpected discovery. We see a few small houses at the cemetery, the seventh village on the island that nobody wanted to talk about. We are turning around to go and visit this small community. Only 5 families are living here, but they are probably the poorest on the island. Their houses are a combination of tarpaulin, wood, and nipper leaves. A lot of children are around us and while we are leaving the place we have all the feeling that we want to do something for those special people.