volunteering and nosebleeding

a few days ago in balay expo, the scene was this

you enter the establishment along edsa. its cold inside. there's a pc by the door with a note 'post your pics, blog your story, 5 mins only'. once youre in, you will be entertained by someone at the registration area. you have to write your name, address and contact number. after that, you will be given a name tag.

in that same room, there were more or less 10 round tables with chairs around them. there were bulletin boards where data on relief goods and areas of relief operations were posted. at the far end of the room, there were dispensers for softdrinks, brewed coffee dispenser and water. excess meals for lunch in styro packs were on one table at the side. large boxes of krispy kreme were on one table near the drink dispensers. trash bags were hung nearby.

when you want to donate something, you have to go to another room. when you give your donation, someone will say "who's donating?". when you answer, he'll say, "ahmm, you have to fill out this form". after filling out one, he'll say, 'ahm, there's like, another one here, and here". and you'll just smile and ask, what you are doing there. and you start to lose a lot of blood. nosebleed!

when you enter the packing room, you could see a long line of table, with just a few people packing things. you ask someone and she'll say "actually, we ran out of plastic bags". somebody butts in and say "we ran out of plastic bags but theyre buying now". if you want, you could stay at the pantry first, have some food and we'll call you when the plastic bags arrive". and you say ok and proceed to the pantry. now youre losing more blood.

at the pantry, the very first room you went into, you go and get water. your mom grabs a piece of donut and a cup of coffee. and you smile again and think that this is so different from your first relief volunteering experience. you go to one table and sit on a chair beside a young girl eating. she says she's having her lunch (its 4pm). she says there were at the relief center since sunday and you went there on a saturday so that makes them volunteers for almost a week already. while talking to the little girl, you lose a few drops of blood, again. youre suffering from mild nosebleed.

when you get back to the packing area, people are back on their feet. theyre busy packing. there's a lot of plastic bags already. theyre have their own rhythm when working. and you join the group. and you begin to cope with the rhythm.

work is specialized. its an assemblyline one specializes on tearing plastic bags, one on putting rice, one on putting water, one on putting canned goods, and so on and so forth. since you were near the start of the line, you specialized in plastic bag tearing.

and then some more goods arrive. and one shouted "hey guys, we have to vacate this table cause they will put rice here. we have to transfer these goods to the other table so that they can put the rice here". and your nosebleed worsens.

after 3 hours of packing, and rotating functions, your group runs out of rice. so you go back to plastic tearing. and you see someone who looks like kaye abad, sweeping the floor and you wonder if its her. and you see her name tag and it says kaye, and you say, ah its her.

after a few more minutes, you feel tired already. there's no rice to pack. and so the group head shouts "hey guys, maybe we should have dinner first so that when the rice comes (theyre expecting 200 sacks of rice), we'll all have the energy to pack!"

and so the group goes to the pantry for dinner. dinner is boneless grilled chicken with a cup of rice. and you eat fast because youre only given 5 minutes to finish your meal.

and after 4 minutes, someone shouts "hey guys, thank you for coming. we know everyone is tired and hungry so we decided to suspend the operations. we'll resume tomorrow at 9 and hope to see you again". and then everyone begins clapping. and you clap too.

and you tell yourself, good job. you just did a very good job. but more importantly, you still have enough blood and didnt lose that much because of nosebleeding.