It's been roughly 4 months since I first got involved with the Agusuhin Village projects of the NHS. Agusuhin Village is a community that was relocated by the HanJin Corporation when they moved here a couple years back. They were badly affected by typhoons last year, and the people are very poor. They have a small school, made of wood, for elementary students. Each classroom is about half the size of ours at school, but crowded by more than 40 students in each room. It was clear that they needed help.
I visited them once, and played all sorts of games with them, distributed toothbrushes and toothpastes to the children, and gave out food to the people around the village. They've also visited Brent Subic once as well, when we played basketball and soccer with different kids from different grade levels for a whole morning, then fed them lunch at the cafeteria. I've grown to like these kids, and enjoy their company as they the more I see them, the more they recognize me and call me "Kuya" or "Kuya Armand."
Initially my individual project for NHS this year was to build a basketball court for the POCCH, however, I've turned my eyes to the kids at the Agusuhin Village, as the NHS is planning to adopt this village and to continue our support for them.
Planning
First, I needed money. Since the beginning of the year, the NHS has been doing bakesales, and we raised quite a lot of money. So with all of the NHS' members efforts, switching shifts daily, we sold enough to earn 10,000 pesos for my project. However, after gathering estimates from various sources, it was not enough. I needed roughly P15,000 more. I quickly wrote up proposal letters asking for money and distributed them to the PTA and some other parents. Eventually, I raised the money. I ordered all the materials and made arrangements to get the hardware to deliver it there, pitched some money in for buying the ring and the net, asked the maintenance for help in constructing the backboard, and may 20, 3 days before the day of the trip back to Agusuhin (for Yunnie and Ramona's project as well: to distribute school supplies to the students), I was all set. I was also able to invite a few volunteers specifically for my project, but sadly, only 3 showed up. (Jimmy, Izzy, and Lorenzo)
Initiation
We left school at around 8 am, picked up supplies at Ramona's house and got to Agusuhin around an hour later. When we got there, the trucks of supplies were not there yet, so we helped out with Ramona and Yunnie's project first. There was a contest, wherein we had to teach around 10-15 kids, how to sing basic nursery rhymes. For our group, it was B-I-N-G-O. It was fun, and we eventually got the students to follow. An hour later, the supplies arrived with the maintenance people and we quickly got to work. First, we measured out the area, put the planks of wood on the ground, and Kuya Julius and them nailed them in. Lorenzo, Jimmy and I had to first take out the roots of small trees out from the ground with a shovel and a piece of huge metal. After that, we started transferring buckets of sand from the huge mountain of sand, to where the cementing was gonna take place. After a while, it was getting hot, and it was nearing noon, and the maintenance people were working hard, so we went out to the city to get some food, there was no room inside the truck because of all the bags, so we just stayed at the trunk. It was super hot! and I knew it was a bad idea to stay there, but we had no choice, and we were getting burned. We arrived at Andoks, bought 5 whole chickens, and 30 pieces of rice for the maintenance and for ourselves. When we got back, the maintenance didn't want to eat yet, and they told us to go ahead, and so we did. After eating, we rested for about 20 minutes, then Izzy, Lorenzo, Jimmy, and I started transferring sand and gravel. It was HARD work. After about 20 trips back and forth, I could barely lift anything. So we took shifts in carrying, and loading the buckets. While we were doing this, the maintenance people were cleaning out the area, and nailing the wooden planks on the ground, getting it ready for pouring. At around 1 pm, Kuya Javier and us started mixing the cement. At first we watched because he didn't trust us with it yet, but after forcing them to let us try, we started mixing the cement ourselves, while Lorenzo and Jimmy were carrying the buckets and pouring it on the ground. Izzy was leveling the cement with a wooden plank (I don't know what the tool is called.) We did this for about an hour and a half or so, until the first batch of cement ran out. We all took a rest, and the maintenance ate their lunch. After getting back to work and mixing a whole new batch of sand, we heard some thunderstorms coming. So we quickly got the basketball court, placed it in the hole on the ground and got it ready for cementing, before it started raining. From then on, we started working fast, Izzy and I took turns in pouring the cement and leveling it, Lorenzo and Jimmy were carrying loaded buckets to us, while Kuya Javier and some other guys were mixing the cement. After a while, it started raining and everybody ran to the school for cover. We waited for about 30 minutes, until Lorenzo, Jimmy, Izzy and I just didn't care about the rain anymore and started working again, mixing the cement, pouring it, everything. The maintenance didn't join us at this time, and they were laughing at us, because we weren't really pro at it, but after a while Kuya Javier joined us and started helping us despite the rain, and later on the other maintenance as well. At around 4.30 am, we finished the second batch of cement, and everyone was getting pretty tired. The court was up, and 1/3 of the area was cemented. Lorenzo, Jimmy, Izzy, and I were already really, really filthy, with cement, dirt, and sweat and we needed to rinse off, so Kuya Julius told us to rinse of at the sea, so we quickly ran off to the beach and rinsed off and skipped some stones for a while. Then we went back, everyone was packed, we cleared the place out, and we were set to go back home. However, on the way back, the van couldn't make it up the hill because it was really muddy from the rain. We were stuck for a good 30 minutes, and got help from the local community in pushing the van, shoveling sand and placing it on top of the muddy road for traction, and we even deflated the tires. After a while, we got passed the obstacle only to face another hill which we could not pass through, the same thing happened again, but this time it took faster to get through. On the way back, we all passed out in the van as we were all EXHAUSTED. Now I finally knew how hard it is to be a construction worker. I got home, looked at myself in the mirror and I was happy from the outcome of the day, but we weren't done yet. We have to come back probably 2 more times to get the job done, and lastly, I was sunburned.
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