A Different Kind of Therapy

I have learned several years ago that serving others is the best way to forget about your own troubles and start being thankful for what you have. We, the dental spouses, have been complaining enough in the past two weeks about how we are unable to truly go and volunteer with the Red Cross during the day because we have kids at home and our husbands are stuck at work not helping the community either. Our very thoughtful dental commander's wife offered to watch our kids who are home during the day, so that we could go with a group of volunteers and clean up whatever location they they needed help with.

Today was the day. Early in the morning, I packed up my lunch, triple layers of clothes, work gloves, a shovel and a bucket, dropped off Mark at J.'s house and joined a group of about 50 people who signed up to volunteer. Half of the group was civilian, like us, and the other half were active duty personnel who were allowed to take part in the clean up as well.

On the way from where the bus was parked to the beach, this is what we saw.

You can see how high the wave came up.

Emily and I uncovering one of the huge tarps.

It was much more pleasant to be working alongside such great friends (Anna is missing in this picture!).

We were happy to have the help of heavy machinery. They could pull on dozens of nets, ropes, and tarps tangled together and get them out for us to sort through.

Americans and Japanese working side by side.

Emily pulling some nets out. Emily is looking over how much progress we’d made.

We were told to pick up anything metal and throw it into a gigantic pile, which would be moved by special machines later. We were also told that the dead pigs had been cleaned up already.

As we were trying to pull out pipes, bolts, wires from the piles and piles of debris, one of the women found a small pig buried underneath. After that, I couldn't get over the sight of the pig. That made me be very nervous that I would find one. I decided that my best bet was picking up piles of wood/paper stuff and helping the Japanese ladies load them up onto their carts. ...Three more huge pigs were found minutes later....

(Emily was not phased by the dead pigs. I know it looks as if she and I are the only volunteers there—not so).

Emily, Janeen and I, after an hour of sorting through the debri.

As we were leaving the farm, we couldn't help but think how overwhelming this must feel to the farmer and his family. I felt like what we did was merely a drop in the ocean. What we did might have seemed so small but it meant so much to those Japanese people.

The damage I have seen today is not comparable to the devastation that people 100 miles south of us experienced. We are so-so lucky. I keep thinking about it...

When I got home I was exhausted, smelled like smoke and pig farm.

I felt like I was part of the community. Not once did I think about the "hardships" that we are experiencing on base.

Lyana

After lunch on the beach with a million dollar view, we headed to a pig farm. The pig farm was also in Misawa. It originally was a home to 2000 pigs. But after the tsunami, only 400 survived. It was day 3 of major clean up efforts on that farm by our American volunteers. When we arrived, I couldn't imagine what it all looked like on the first day...