Floods relief, Chaah, Johor!

Yayasan Suria JB (YSJB) – Floods relief, Chaah, Johor! It has since been a month ago when Johor was hit by the big floods, literally covering all the big towns and now the flood evacuees are starting to rebuild their lives from scratch. Over the past month or so, YSJB have been super busy coordinating the floods arrangements with NGOs/NGIs, with all of them taking “ready-to-eat” from our office cum store in Taman Johor Jaya, some even coming at the wee hours of the night to bring food to the floods victims and we obliged them by opening our store due to the urgency at that time. Volunteers manned the store in shifts to accommodate the “unusual” requests. It has been a hectic time coordinating, buying lots of goodies, receiving also goodies from well wishes, we were running around supermarkets, shopping for the best buys and ordering them from wholesalers for good discounts. Personally, I have not been to any of the floods affected areas, my YSJB’s volunteers and other NGOs/NGIs have been working tirelessly and I have been stuck at the store coordinating this massive operation. It was on 7th Apr that a quick and impromptu decision was made to visit Chaah, an NGI(Wanita) was tasked through Ihsan Johor, our trusted synergy partner, to collect data from 181 families, big rush to buy/pack so many “goodies”(food banks, milk powder, coffee powder, biscuits, chlorox/detergens, soap, etc). Also porridge(bubur lambuk) was ordered, some from JB and some from Chaah. I have to go on a Sunday as this was the only day I am available and so is Ihsan Johor. Off we went on 9th Apr morning, leaving JB at 8.30 am in a convoy of 2 Toyota Hiluxs, fully packed with “goodies” with 3 volunteers each from Ihsan Johor and YSJB. Traffic was heavy all along the way, the journey took us 2.5 hours, with stopover in Yong Peng to withdraw money from ATM as we were giving the 181 families RM20 each as “Duit Raya”(Hari Raya love offerings). With empty Duit Raya packets at hand, we realized that ATMs only churned out RM50 notes. Quick thinking and a small prayer – miracles happen. We went to Magnum 4D shop in Yong Peng, flashed my name card saying we were doing charity and going to Chaah to do floods relief, Magnum 4D changed RM500, went to TOTO shop nearby and got another RM800, then went to 2 other provision shops and got the balance changed to all RM20 notes. All banks were closed on a Sunday. A total of RM20 x 181 families were done(RM3, 620.00)! 1st stop was at Kampong Kamisam – 31 families. 2nd stop at Temu Jodoh & Taman Rakyat – 48 families. 3rd stop at Sungei Lenyek & Kampung Gajah – 102 families. Most families came to the designated areas like surau/community hall to collect but some 45 families didn’t have the means to come and we delivered to them going from house to house, with the latter part of the afternoon in pouring rain – it was work as usual for volunteers as the job must all be done before we depart back to JB! We listen to their stories how they dealt with the floods, some areas reaching the roof, with water rising 2ft every hour, some areas with flood water receding the next day and when the villagers shifting their things into their houses, the floods came again and it was all back to square one. This was life for some of them but life has to go on! Such were their stories, we listened emphatically, they felt good as someone cared, the little we could do to, at least, ease their sorrows/pains, a temporary relief of a sort for them. Puan Farrah of Ihsan Johor who has just returned from the earthquake in Turkey shared this with all the villagers we met, trying to tell them how “lucky” they were just to be affected by the floods compared to the earthquake victims: “In the floods, you still have a house to go back to, a family to go back to and a job to go back to.” In an earthquake, you don’t have a house to go back to, a family to go back to (all have perished) and no job to go back to as business has all gone.” Volunteers like us do motivate and encourage our clients, trying to help them to restart life again and to be resilient to face all sorts of natural disasters. We give them hope to go on living! Thanks Farrah for making this analogy of floods/earthquakes so that the villagers can easily understand and equate with their present plights of being flood victims. With porridge for Buka Puasa(breaking of fast) soon and with all the “goodies”, we left the villagers with a heavy heart, from the short encounter with them, they were so warm when they welcomed us into their houses, with many houses still covered with traces of mud and in a state of being under repaired. Journey back to JB was heavy, with occasional rains along the way. It has been a 12-hour non-stop work, reaching home at about 8.30 pm, all tired out but happy knowing that we have made some 1,000 people happier, all because, volunteers like ourselves, go out of our comfort zones, on a rest day like today, Sunday serving our sisters and brothers out there with Lve & Humility!