Yesterday we volunteered to help pack donated goods for the victims of calamities in the Philippines. I’m touched that the Mercy Relief organization, though based in Singapore, would help my home country. It’s still the same volunteer org that we worked for last time.
We headed to a warehouse in Toa Payoh (after getting lost), and I was a bit stunned to see the mountains of clothes, beddings and toys inside, even more so when I actually started stuffing them into sacks and realized that most of them were brand new, with the price and size tags still attached to them. Still, it was pretty dusty and I found myself sneezing a lot. I tried putting on a mask but its sterilized scent smelled worse. After we had packed everything, we proceeded to sew the sacks shut with string. Since there were only two “needles,” the rest of us improvised by using scissors or pencils to punch holes in the sacks and thread the string through. At around 9pm, we took a break to eat chicken, bihon and bananas for dinner, and the head of the group explained that these donations were being coursed through ABS CBN, which made me feel better, because the ones coursed through our government has a tendency not to get to the people who actually need them.
