Chronicles of the Sleepyhead: Sendong Victims Relief Operations

I had the chance to join the DYWC (local radio station) team do their 3rd leg of relief operations to the Sendong victims yesterday. They have been all around the affected areas the past few weeks and this time, their next destination was Valencia. Now infrastructure-and-property-wise, the said town had the largest damage in the whole of Negros Oriental. You will see why in my next pictures (I hope they do justice though)

At the DYWC station getting all the goods to the truck

On our way

So I made this very amateur map (thanks to Google Map btw) just to let everyone check out our route. The pink one is the original road you take going to Palinpinon to Caidiocan to Malaunay and so on and so forth. Since typhoon Sendong hit the area, the roads aren't passable until now and that's why we needed to take the alternate road via San Antonio, Sibulan (the one in blue). It's not very accurate though, but you get the idea right? It's a whole different route from another side of the map.

It was my first time to see how it looked like a month after the horrible typhoon so I was a little bit excited (and a little bit worried too) to see how the place is now.

And so we arrived to Brgy. Caidiocan...

Caidiocan Brgy Hall

This is where some of the affected families are staying.

This was supposedly some sort of a covered court. This is what was left.

Still full of soil piled up from the heavy rain. They were still getting some of it out when we arrived.

Continue Reading...

Totally damaged house at the back of the Brgy hall

More houses at the back.

Giving of goods

Next destination was Brgy Malaunay which was approximately 8 mins from Caidiocan. The original cemented road was totally disfigured and wrecked that they had to start building another one from scratch.

The long, winding AND dusty road to Brgy Malaunay

I was in the company of local celebrities so imagine the look on their faces when they found out that Kuya Yong and Ms Ai were right in front of them!

Their 'kilig' look at the sight of the radio hosts

What's inside the bags? Food. Milk. Bottles of water. Clothes.

We found out that the places we visited hasn't gotten their electricity back since December 17 of last year. Whoah. That's more than a month ago! It'll probably take a lot of time to reconstruct all those lines (which is btw 100 times harder because the roads are still quashed. Imagine a life without electricity. I'd probably die of boredom on the third day!

We stopped by this shady place at the side of the river to feast over our Bam-i.

Time to eat!

I thought I was invincible at first. Then I started to scratch my neck. Dirt everywhere!

Habhab!

The whole time, everyone was teasing me because of my outfit. Apparently, I looked like going to Robinsons. In my defense, I came from school okay? :-p

Moses-ish.

Fresh drinking water

We saw this family gathering their freshly cut lumber at the side of the river. During the typhoon, their house got all washed-out.

Ironically, these people were trying to build another one on the same area! I got all speechless when I saw this! Just look at how close the house is to the river.