In less than 20 hours after the whatsapp calling for volunteers, we left for Gua Musang at 6am, 31st December 2014.
Bye bye 2014. Gua Musang, here we come. What (an exciting) New Year! We turned into McGyvers (for those older, you know who he is) bringing all sorts of gadgets to survive Gua Musang e.g. wet wipes, muesli bars, wellington boots, gloves, face masks, phone to call for help (alas connection was unstable!).
Scenes of collapsed bridges, high levels of water, ruined houses in the newspaper had become ‘normal’ to us. We had seen worse on newspapers, TV and especially cinema.
Joy, laughter and jokes abound as we drove there; but as we entered Gua Musang Old Village, we looked at each other – are we ready for this? NO!! EVERYTHING IS TOPSY TURVY. Flood or tsunami?? Tables and chairs stacked on each other, refrigerators tumbled, thick mud everywhere, textbooks soaked in mud! How do we clean this?! Where do we even start?!What equipment do we use?! I held a shovel for the first time in my life.
The only way to start is to start working. We have not done this before. Take out the mud soaked debris and topsy turvy furniture one by one out of the classroom into the grass area. After 3-4 hours, with 5-6 volunteers (!), the next phase of mud shovelling begins. Scoop by scoop, 1 foot by 1 foot, the mud goes into the wheel barrow. At 5pm, work stopped as there was no electricity and water. Tired and dirty, we wet wiped ourselves and ‘showered’ with 3-4 small scoops of water. No soaping in case water runs out. Then it was dinner at the central kitchen in the village. We walked there and smiled at the villagers. They smiled back with appreciation.
The village restaurant cooked for everyone FOC because everyone was busy cleaning their homes and they probably lost their utensils in the flood. Villagers piled together their vegetables, food and rice. Wow! The meal was hot and so delicious! Sardines and pickled cucumber never tasted so good.
Bedtime was at 8pm, after dinner. What else to do without electricity & wifi? Bedroom was in a classroom on sleeping bags. Cement was cold and hard! The next day, we slept on the children’s desks! Ahh..much better. We went to the toilet using torch lights. It was pitch black. Ring…..the operations leader called. Be prepared to wake up when the lorry with the supplies arrive. We need you guys to unload stuff for distribution. It could be 2AM.. The phone always works when there is work to be done 🙂
Fast forward to Day 3. What a great satisfaction to see the kindergarten looking a bit more normal again after the hard work. We hope it will be ready for the kids when school re-opens in a weeks time. What a great time we had with other churches, working as a team to help the villagers return to normal life as soon as possible. Much more needs to be done but being there and saying we care with shovel in hand was a good start.
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