Help replace our Typhoon destroyed home in PH.
Go Fund Me Narrative
We are asking for your help in replacing our simple house and helping our neighbors after suffering a direct, Signal 5 hit by the Super Typhoon Rai/ Odette, with a massive storm surge that resembled a tsunami in Negros Oriental, Philippines last December 17, 2021.
BACKGROUND
I am a retired American expat from Alaska who moved to this island paradise after meeting the love of my life over 7 years ago. Her dream was to have her own small farm to sustain her family and help provide a college education for her 2 teen age kids. We were planning to live only on my Social Security, so that was a challenge.
We spent a few months in a small, humble rental making plans for where we wanted to live. Then a miracle happened. I received a totally unexpected inheritance from a distant relative i had never even heard of. Talk about a Godsend!
After extensive searching for the right location for both a farm and the beach I always dreamed of, another miracle happened. A friend told us about a lot on the beach, in Jennys hometown that wasn’t even on the market yet! It was perfect! We spent the entire inheritance on the land, building the dream house neither of ever had, and creating protection from the ocean.
Fast forward: a week before Christmas 5 years later, we were living on a 1/3 acre property with the 200 feet of beachfront protected by a strong 6 foot high sea wall and a 40 foot, newly reinforced wave-breaker pier, in a “native styled 850SF two story house, with a gazebo, a workshop filled with my lifetime collection of tools, a 6 stall pig house with 4 sows and 10 newborn piglets, 17 ducks, 50+ hybrid native chickens. Around the buildings was a mini botanical garden with virtually every color and size of flowering Hibiscus bushes, exotic tropical plants including birds of paradise and endless dozens of every available decorative plant; Jennys pride snd joy! Add to that, 20 new coconut trees, dozens of banana trees, a dozen mango, and other tropical fruit trees, due to start bearing fruit this year, and a large plot of vegetation for animal food. All this was the result of 5 years hard work and constant small investment from my tiny SS pension.
SUDDENLY EVERYTHING CHANGED
When daylight finally arrived after spending a cold, wet night with 4 other families in a neighbors house December 17, it all looked like a desert wasteland, flooded by a foot of salt water, and devastated by 150+mph winds and rain for 8 hours. The massive 3 meter waves consumed 5-20 meters of beach, the entire seawall structure and 50 foot pier, including half way under our house. Everything in the first floor kitchen and master bedroom was washed away. The pigs, 7 newborn piglets, 7 chickens and 5 ducks survived, with no shelter. SHOCK doesn’t begin to describe the emotions!
Many layers of debris, including large trees uprooted and blown into our property and the crushed remains of our out buildings and animal shelters created a challenge. With no tools, power or money for new tools, we were left with knives, machetes, hammers and one handsaw, so progress was very slow.
For the first week there was no transportation, communication, power, and food and water were scarce. Searching for ways to recharge phones and power banks was almost a full-time job, as the scarce generators were overloaded with lines of people. We had no idea how bad the damage was and how extensive the area affected
CURRENT SITUATION, July 2020
It has now been 7 months. Most of the first 2 months was spent on constant cleanup, relocating into a neighbors half-built house, organizing and replacing essential items, preparing for life and communication without power or light, and unfortunately, a week long trip to the hospital to treat my leg wound reinfected by wading through filthy flood waters during the storm, which has also consumed most of the family donations first sent for recovery.
When we could finally get both a phone charged up and a reasonable Internet connection, most of the early relief efforts were already finished. There was no place to turn for long term or expensive help. It took 5months to get our electric hooked up and 6 months to get good Internet again. Even when I first reached out to Gofundme, the typhoon was a distant memory for most people, not some thing with any urgency. International help has been very limited. Government assistance also is extremely limited and slow, and both are mostly focused on large cities, so the rural areas get overlooked. The pandemic has also depleted most emergency funds That would normally be available. This was the largest typhoon ever recorded in the Philippines, but the response was nowhere near what was typical in other disasters. Those of us who still have major damage are pretty much on our own.
To date from all sources, and mostly personal donations from friends and family, we have raised around $8000. We have prepared house plans, secured a contractor, made the hollow blocks we will need, stockpiled massive amounts of sand and gravel, and purchased rot-proof, termite-proof hardwood lumber to build the roof structure. Both of our kids are working hard to raise enough money to buy the metal color roof that they want to contribute.
The rest of the funds have been used to help secure the foundation of the old house, rewire the upstairs so that we could move back into the old house temporarily, securing the farm animals and basic infrastructure needs, replacing household and cooking essentials, paying labor for much clean up and restoration work to the property, and even more medical bills.
We still need at least $15,000 to build the house so that it is at least enclosed and livable, even if it is not totally the way we would like. We are now focusing on getting a loan to cover the building expenses. The kind of mortgages and building loans available in America do not exist in the Philippines, so it is quite a challenge. And even when that is accomplished, we will need to pay back the loan, so any kind of even small donations will greatly assist us with that.
WHAT IS NEXT?.
With Gods grace we are all safe and healthy, and with your generous help WE WILL REBUILD!.
We have always tried to be a source of assistance to our friends and neighbors here, employing them as much as possible when we need help. We contributed to improving the half built house where we were staying before, and paid the utility bills, we funded most of the cost of a new roof for our dear friend, shaman healer and amazing massage therapists, when even the mayor (also her a good customer) would not even help her, provided temporary loans to facilitate the electrical infrastructure to our community, and to help with others’ short-term cash flow needs. At least we have a steady income to pay our living expenses, even if not enough to build a house again. We provided a small lot in the corner of our property to our favorite carpenter and great neighbors after they lost everything where they were living on somebody else’s property. They sold a cow for a down payment and the rest will be pay as you go and work it off as much as possible too. The whole family was involved in gathering and hauling sand and gravel for the construction site, as well as other repair projects around the property. When our construction project can start, that will provide essential employment also for many neighbors, so they have money to repair their homes as well. We’re all in this together.
Any funds you can send our way will be used to rebuild the house and to continue supporting our neighbors Who have all been very hard hit, and mostly have very limited incomes. When our fisherman neighbors have a good fishing day, we eagerly buy as much of their fish as we can afford and store it for later.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
One thing I have learned in this experience is that it doesn’t take a rich person or a huge donation to make a difference. $20, which barely covers a trip to McDonald’s, if that is multiplied 50 times in the Philippines, that equates to more or less 10 times the purchase power that it has in America. We used to feed our entire family for $40 a week, today it is $60 per week. So you can get an idea of what a huge help that can be!
I realize how challenging it can be to decide to donate, when things are so tough, and so many others need help too. In my working years, I never had a big income, and worse, I never knew how much money I was going to make in a week or a month. So I never felt like I could donate enough to help anybody really. I felt it would be embarrassing to only give $20. Boy was I wrong! For the past year, I have shifted my thinking and applied some prosperity principles to replace my poverty stinking thinking, and have begun donating $20 to fundraisers that are close to my heart. It’s a way of priming the prosperity pump. If I’m asking for help, the least I can do is give back a little help as well. I hope you can understand.
When I get this loan that is pending, I will be paying it off for the next three years. If a few of you can simply pledge a small amount once a month or as often as possible, that will make such a huge difference you can’t even imagine. So we always love getting a large donation, but personally I am so happy to get small donations because I know how difficult it is to even do that for many of us. I’m not aware that this platform has a way to structure a monthly contribution, but if you wish, I can set up a way to send a notification once a month as a reminder if that will be helpful. Thank you so much from our family to yours. God bless you greatly!