Miyako

Miyako, the city that grabbed my heart back in August. I finally got the chance to spend a week there, just before returning to the States.

Miyako now contains what used to be the town of Taro, which once boasted the “world’s greatest seawall,” a double wall ten meters (30 feet) high. Part of that seawall is still there, but it was no match for the giant wave. The devastation is extreme.

There is a long-term worker there, backed by a network of churches that have pledged long-term support of the people of Taro. Sure, sometimes that support looks a bit non-traditional. You may not think it includes celebrating a quirky inventor’s 63rd birthday. But it does. The inventor lost everything and found a place to live in the undestroyed part of town, but he can’t really start on renovations or make solid plans for the future until the city decides whether it’s going to mandate raising the ground level in his neighborhood by several feet. That would mean tearing down his current house. Behind his humor lurks some deep fatigue and a lot of uncertainty. This year, of all years, is the right time to go make some hot-pot stew at his house and gather around the blanketed winter table to celebrate reaching his 63rd. We like having him around. I think we got that across, somewhere in between the jokes and songs and conversations and birthday cake.

The local beautician has a second chair, but nowhere to put it in her tiny temporary shop. This week’s volunteer team has carpentry skills. Eh, who needs that much space to take off shoes anyway? A frame and some concrete and a little sliver of flooring and there you go. Enjoy your extended floor. The shoes can stand being crowded together. Let’s get some more customers in here.

Word came in from the long-term workers working in Yamada, the next town over. There’s a temporary housing unit they haven’t visited yet, and they need people to help with hosting a coffee time. We pitched in. Yarn and knitting needles and crochet hooks went along too. So did boxes of winter clothes.

The café method has worked wonders over the last few months. And relief goods distribution has been necessary. They’re starving for things to do, so the knitting and crocheting went over very well. But pesky problems are popping up, in the form of people swarming the boxes of goodies a little too eagerly, and heading home without really connecting much. They have no way of knowing that these volunteers are different from the others, and aren’t just going to swoop in, do something nice, and disappear forever.

I feel half-an-inch tall to be in this area for only a week, and to have to disappear because of visa regulations. But the long-term volunteers will be here. They’re asking the right questions: Only relatively cheerful people show up to the café time. How do we reach the people who don’t come? The goods distribution is becoming a mixture of need and greed. When is the right time to cut off the relief goods and focus on heart care? They are starving for activities. Do we need people who can teach the activities, or just facilitators? Do we need to look for volunteers with specific skills? Beauticians? Carpenters? Do we dare to enter the realm of starting cottage industries, or do we connect the people to already existing business initiatives? What’s next? How? When?

Then there are the kids. Ah, kids. I got to spend Saturday at an after-school daycare program in Miyako. Other than not being able to say “see you later” at the end, it was a perfect day. Balloons, jump rope, tie-up-the-adult, kick-the-can, playing ball, puzzles, you name it we did it.

On the surface they looked like any other group of kids. But one second-grader, while scrambling up a slide to go fetch her balloon, told me about how her granny died in the tsunami at the factory by the sea. The other workers had gone to higher ground, but granny and the company president stayed behind. They found granny’s body, but not the president’s. Her house is OK. It was just barely high enough. There’s another little girl in this daycare who lost her granny too.

We talked about granny a while. Wish I could have met her.

And on the surface the teachers looked like any other teachers. But while I knitted a sample for one teacher to use with the knitting kids on Monday, she told me she’s 76. She does know what retirement is. She just ignores it. Besides, her house got washed away and she got away with only her life. She lives in an apartment close to this school now. She did think of quitting her teaching job, but they transferred her from classroom duty to this after-school daycare program, and she’s going to keep working for a few more years. She gets extra gumption from the kids each day, she says.

I hate getting just the beginning of stories without seeing them through to the end. But there are good solid long-termers here who will take it from here. Keep praying for the long-termers. For the ones already here, it’s been a long, long ten months. They’re absolutely exhausted. Some are getting much-needed rest. Some are not. For the ones just arriving, unless they’re extremely careful, they will get exhausted too. There are short-termers and mid-termers to recruit, corral and direct. There are local relationships to build. Givers often forget to check their own pulse.

My time in Iwate is over for now. I only got a snapshot of what is happening here. But there are faces and places to pray for. That much I can do from wherever I am.

Hurry up, train. I can’t take this goodbye much longer.