By Cora Sayre | Project Leader
Entered into the news today in the link, http://ph.news.yahoo.com/philippine-typhoon-survivors-turn-cave-dwellers-181430964.html.
The first paragraph of the news says, “Victims who survived the Philippines' super typhoon by huddling in a cave as a tsunami-like wave obliterated their community have now made it their home -- reduced to Stone Age conditions with nowhere else to go.”
Surely this type of news will break your heart. And so much so that aid is coming in trickles due to frenzy, chaos, impassable roads and just sheer desperation because of what happened. Now we are continuing with pre-fabrication of the toilets while a small team is now in the site assessing the situation and establishing where we can camp and continue with pre-fabrication and installation of the toilets.
We are a small, very passionate team, we don’t stay in fancy hotels but close to the ground, where the people are, eat and sleep with them. We are locals, have no problem with cultural understanding and security. The uniqueness of our approach is that we custom-built the toilets, using cheap but durable materials thereby stretching the numbers we can build. The sanitation alternative by international aid is the “portalet” which is very expensive at 4,000 USD and difficult to maintain as it requires de-sludging everyday at 50 USD per de-sludge. One use and you can see your feces floating and in this hot, tropics, the smell inside the imported protalets, maybe useful only in icy climate is subjecting the survivors to another Haiyan many times over.
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