Sarah is a lady worth mentioning.
She lives in "21 Jump Street", so named because there are 21 yards in the Jump Street area. Each yard has between 2 and 10 families living in it. This is also where The Salvation Army Port Vila outpost is.
Sarah lost her husband, a retired geologist, to cancer in November. Then she lost her home completely when Cyclone Pam struck in early March.
Her resilience is amazing. We sat with her on Tuesday afternoon and discussed what had happened. She is staying in another home with a neighbour in her yard. She is reliant on her neighbours for support as there is no-one to earn income and her small garden is only just re-establishing, obviously yielding no vegetables yet.
She has a great friendship with Lilyrose Sari, the congregation leader of The Salvation Army Port Vila outpost. It was so nice to watch Lilyrose just chat with her and put her arm around her. While the practical support that The Salvation Army has been able to provide her, post "Pam", has so far been minimal (it's coming), the pastoral support offered by Lilyrose is second-to-none. These are the wonderful people that make up The Salvation Army around the world.
We did complete our first, small distribution in this area yesterday. We supported 120 households with hygiene kits to help, and a small amount (inadequate amount) of water. We have completed our assessment of the general needs in the neighbourhood now and hope to do some more comprehensive work that will re-establish the community gardens, get the kids back to school, support the women who go to markets and help people to repair their own houses.
We also got the roof back on to The Salvation Army church. Strange to say that this is usually not an emergency activity, but we needed a place to do the distributions, and it is a key community asset in that neighbourhood.
We do still have a team on Tanna Island as well. Today they took delivery of the 4.8km of pipe that we despatched on Tuesday and are moving it to our villages so that the water supply is restored.
Today I'm catching up on admin. For every project we undertake we need to submit a proposal to IHQ and our sponsor territory, develop comprehensive budgets and provide a weekly report. We also need to write reports for significant individual donors, and submit the 3W report (Who does What and Where) to the coordination clusters so that all the agencies know who is doing what, and where (sounds obvious).
Tomorrow I have the great privilege of sharing the Good Friday message at the Port Vila outpost. Looking forward to it!
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