I have returned from the Philippines. It was an amazing experience and I am still processing the tsunami of information floating around in my head.
The IDF sent 234 people, including 150 doctors, nurses, medical technicians. We set up a field hospital, found a lot of survivors, found even more dead people, built schools, created entire water systems. The doctors treated 2686 patients, including 848 children, and delivered 36 babies. Two of the children were brought back to Tel Aviv for cleft palate surgery that could be better performed at an actual hospital.
My team spent a great deal of time flying over islands and being endlessly impressed with how powerful a typhoon can be. The mayor of one of the smaller cities said it looked like a war zone. Some areas looked like pictures of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. There would be a lone tree trying to stay up surrounded by debris as far as the eye could see. One of the big differences was that most of the dead in Hiroshima were incinerated. In the Philippines there were dead bodies everywhere.
On an ironic note, the Japanese delegation in the Philippines landed next to a monument dedicated to the people of the Philippines who died in the Japanese invasion.
I will have much more to say about this later. By this I mean the typhoon and our relief mission, not the Japanese.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good for you. Bravo.
We redskins have a different take on Thanksgiving. Celebrations are postponed until the folks from Europe go back home.
Perhaps one day the Yanks will ap0logize to the Phillipines for their invasion and atrocities committed when they took over from Spain. And perhaps Spain might as well...
At this point I do not believe the people of the Philippines are looking for American apologies. They are currently rather grateful.
Post a Comment