Friends,
I have arrived in Samoa. I spent Saturday and Sunday visiting devastated villages and meeting with my staff.
The scale of the destruction is extraordinary. Many villages, at least twenty, are simply gone. The death toll continues to rise and the search for bodies continues.
The Samoan Red Cross is doing a terrific job at leading the disaster relief effort. I am impressed with their dedication and their effort. They are getting critical food and water out to needy family’s everyday.
The villages are now somewhat eerily deserted since there is frequently nothing standing in the village. As a result many people are sleeping outside on hillsides, which is not particularly healthy since the hillsides are chock-full of mosquitoes. In the villages everywhere you look are slabs of concrete where a home or small business once stood. On some of these concrete slabs a few brave souls (almost always a group of young men) have set up tents or tarpaulins and are trying to make a go of it.
I’ve perused the local newspaper (the Samoa Observer) as well as the New Zealand Herald. For those from the US, it is worthwhile to check out the stories in either of these papers. They are filled with both stories of tragedy and extraordinary good fortune. As one might expect, most of the deceased are children, the elderly or women.
As one progresses through the tsunami zone, the stench begins to become overwhelming. The smell is getting worse. It is a horrible, awful smell that seems to permeate everything. I’d say it is the smell of death. The area is full of dead everything. I fear that it will get much worse prior to dissipating and that this could cause a full blown health issue. After getting out of the tsunami zone, all one wants to do is to shower.
This week is a big week for SPBD. Tomorrow (Mon) we will be out in force in each of the devastated villages trying to get detailed assessments of what each family truly needs. We will then prepare aid packages and start distributing them a day or two later. We plan on distributing packages that will last a family for a week or so. Included in these packages along with food, drink clothing, basic cooking supplies and other essentials will be cash. None of the other relief organizations are providing cash grants to the devastated families, but in the final analysis, it is often what people in a dire situation really need the most.
While many villages especially in the Aliepata area (SE Coast of Upolu, Samoa) have been wiped out, the roads are passable. It is an interesting phenomenon, that since Samoa is very mountainous, high-elevation areas and areas on the North Coast (opposite side of the island) were completely unaffected by the tsunami. If a family can catch a bus out of the area (hopefully there will be some very limited bus service in the region tomorrow) and a cash grant will help them to do so, then by all means I am in favor of empowering the families to get up and go.
Samoa has a long and difficult road ahead. There will be a mass funeral on Thursday. It will be an enormous national day of mourning. There will be health issues in the near future, I feel almost certain about that. And then there will need to be massive reconstruction of small businesses and homes. We hope to play the lead role in that activity. We will spread the word of hope tomorrow while we visit with these families. We will give them the hope that they can rebuild their homes and their livelihoods by demonstrating our very concrete commitments to help them to do so. But right now it is still far too early to launch a micro-business in the tsunami zone. And so at the same time as we give them hope we must also give them the proverbial “hand-out.” We have always believed in the “hand-up” and not a “hand-out” approach, but at this time and in these dire circumstances at for at least the short time immediately ahead, these families who have suffered such extraordinary misfortune, certainly deserve a hand-out and I will be most satisfied to give it to them.
Thanks once again to all who are supporting our efforts. I greatly appreciate it and it is making a big difference. As a reminder, donations on line can be made at: www.spbd.ws or www.microdreams.org
Greg
Greg Casagrande