Pumps

Emma Williams - a former volunteer in Dumangas - did some fundraising back home in her native England prior to arriving in the Philippines.  She decided to use the money to install some water pumps around the district.

Vincent and I jumped  on a motorbike to see how the pumps were surviving. 

Here are all the pumps we found.  All but one of the pumps were working. 

All too often, some greedy official finds some way of charging the locals for using the pump, but I am happy to report that the use of the pump remains free of charge.

It was great to see all the pumps actually being used as well.

The only problem that the locals reported was that the wells were running a little dry at the moment due to local rain.

Excellent project Emma.  Good work! 

New Roof

The barangay (village) of Ermita is one of the poorest in Dumangas.  It is seriously underdeveloped.

Three years ago, its local primary school only had half a roof.  The students had to crowd into a corner whenever the rains came.

Dan and Shane - from the States and Australia respectfully - set about repairing the roof.

The new roof at the Ermita school is just great.  Very solid.

Nice work Dan and Shane.

Matt and Lydia also painted the hall at Ermita.

A whole heap of projects were done in the barangay of Managuit.

A wall was painted and a CR (Comfort Room) installed by the aforementioned Shane and Vincent.  The wall was still solid and the CR was - um - flowing nicely.  The only down said was that some vandal had wrote his name in the concrete.

A playhouse was also built.  It has - unfortunately -  became little more than a storage shed.

Mangroves and vans

Unfortunately, not all the projects were a success.

I visited the old mangrove project in Nalu-Oyan and it was like visiting a graveyard.  There were broken signs, collapsed structures and dead mangrove seedlings.

I think there were several reasons why the project died: the nearby oil spill couldn't have helped; typhoon Frank surely wrought same damage; the change of mayor from the competent Mayor Distura to the incompetent/corrupt Mayor Onal Golez and the local captain was - well - useless.

The school children in Nalu-Oyan used to have to walk along a hot tarmac just to get to school.  Another former volunteer - Glen Wilcher - donated a van to be used as a free school bus.  Great idea, but the aforementioned useless barangay captain decided that the van would be much better used as a personal vehicle for him.  The van is in the captain's name so nobody can do a damn thing about it. 

Great to be Back

It was great to be back and check out the old projects.  Some of them were superb - like the pumps - and some of them were just dreadful - like the mangroves.

There were far more positive projects though - which was good to see.