Building from the ground up
by David Darg
YAO JIN VILLAGE, China - It was raining hard yesterday and the village pathways have turned to mud. I visited some of the villager’s shelters and the mud floors are terrible. They need houses soon and hopefully we are moving toward that goal!
I visited the Chen family who had saved for 40 years to build their house, but their story gets worse I’m afraid. Yesterday we learned that their only remaining pig was sick, so they had to kill it rather than continue to feed it and lose money.
Not only have they lost their income, but they are still paying off the home that was lost. All they have left are 4 chickens, 3 ducks and a beautiful granddaughter (who can be seen proudly pointing to the birds in the photo below).
It is becoming clear that life for the villagers of Yao Jin wasn’t easy even before the quake. Many family members are working far away from the village in other provinces as migrant workers.
The migrant workers from Yao Jin mostly work in factories. Some work in textiles, others in plastics, and one couple actually works in a chopstick factory. Since village children can only attend rural schools, many cannot live with their parents in the city and instead live in the village with either one parent or their grandparents, if both parents are away working. We asked the families “How often can a father who is away working in a factory come home?” The most common answer is “once a year.”
Most villagers work in the factories to pay for their child’s education or to pay off the debt from constructing their home. Imagine the pain at seeing your home, your pride and joy, fall to the ground after years of working away from your family in order to pay for it.
I asked what it was like for the migrant workers upon hearing the news of the quake. Most of the villagers in other provinces were working on factory floors when they heard the news. I have heard several villagers tell of their horror as they heard the unfolding news coverage. Yao Jin is only a few miles from the town of Beichuan, and the radio was broadcasting the news that Beichuan was completely flattened. After the quake there were no telephone communications in Yao Jin for many days, so for some workers, it was an agonizing time of not knowing whether or not their family was still alive. Today one woman told me how her husband had to take a train for 46 hours to reach Yao Jin. He arrived 4 days after the quake and when he saw his wife and child alive, the whole family broke down in tears.
Quite a few workers came back to the village in the first few weeks to be with family and check on their homes. A good number of workers have had to return to their jobs (or lose them). Quite a few have decided to stay in Yao Jin and work toward rebuilding the village. Almost every family in the village has someone working in a far off place in order for the family to prosper. Without that income, each family would live as subsistence farmers and find it very difficult to build homes, give their kids an education, etc.
Hearing about the plight of these migrant workers from Yao Jin made me realize that without any external help it would be impossible for them to rebuild their homes for years and years. There are no hidden “nest eggs” saved for a rainy day. These are some of the poorest people in the world whose years of hard work and investment has been wiped out in a minute. There is so much more work to do before Yao Jin is restored, but I am glad that OBI is here working with these villagers. Our presence is a true lifeline.
I came into the village a stranger, but after a month of working amongst the villagers almost everyday I feel like I’m getting to know them very well. We visited Yong Min and Hedao today where the water systems are functioning perfectly. Later this week we’ll continue discussions with the villagers of Yao Jin and the local government as we move forward with the reconstruction concept.
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