YONG MIN VILLAGE, China – Today we celebrate, for tomorrow there will be water.

Mr. Xu worked in Yong Min to establish how long a water pipe we would need to get water to the camp. So, this morning we went to the hardware market to purchase all the necessary components for the water system in Yong Min. The system requires 700 meters of piping and two large metal water tanks as well as all sorts of fittings and valves.

We crammed all the parts in our two vehicles and headed up into the mountains to deliver the system to the village. The people were ecstatic when we arrived; the chief came and personally shook our hands.

As we unloaded the cars, the villagers gathered around and began expressing their glee, because tomorrow they will have water in the camp.

First things first: a team was set to work digging trenches for the water pipe. The project is quite simple to implement but will have a huge impact on the community.

We visited another village with a population of almost 2,000 people, like the village we visited yesterday. They need a shower facility. These villages are all willing to put in the hard work of construction if we help them with some of the materials needed such as piping and cement.

The village was in bad shape; 95 percent of the homes had been destroyed and 7 people were killed by the quake. As we walked around, it was really noticeable how different the recovery progress was in this village compared to Yao Jin. There are so many villages in need and simply not enough help to go around. It has been several weeks since the quake hit and I noticed grass had started to grow out of the rubble in one place.

In Yao Jin there is very little chance of grass growing since our excavator was hard at work digging a colossal hole. We are preparing to do a huge landfill with the useless debris. The rubble will then be recovered with dirt and the land used for crops.

The topography of the village is changing so fast that it is almost confusing arriving there each day. One day there will be a telegraph pole in one spot and the next will be gone. Or there will be a pig sty or pile of rubble and then it will suddenly disappear as the machines plough through. In just a few days the village will be eerily empty, a blank canvas.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Asia, China Disaster, David Darg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.