With the blessing of all of the investors we started our day with a meeting with the Rotarian who brought us the project, the head of the Dagami school and one of its teachers. We asked them a lot of questions and they had all the right answers. The principal assured us this is her project and she will steer it forward aggressively, she told us she would have day laborers start immediately and assured us that she would have a crew at work by the time we go to her school. She was confident she could get the skilled labor she needs and would have them lined up and sure enough, when we arrived at the school later in the day, this was all true. There was a large group of assembled worker and big piles of removed debris, fires burning all over campus to get rid of debris which had no value. As requested, she had the town engineer there to meet us, she had her carpenter handyman there to answer questions and her security guard there to ensure the safe placement of our supplies.

It was a very rainy afternoon but we spent the time unloading the nails we donated to the school and storing them in the locked computer room, we cleared a second room for lockable building supplies, Barry started working with the crew that was assembled and I walked the site with the engineer to discuss the requirements (she will present a report to us by Wednesday). Finally, two more westernized Filipinos met us there to say they were a motorcycle club who had raised money for the emergency and were there to contribute to the project. They offered to pay the day laborers from their pocket and also suggested they had a mobile lumber factory to help us cut lumber from downed coconut trees. In all the day at the school was very productive and the enthusiasm was exciting.

I pitched the project to Manny Dizon who said we should steer clear of schools but it is a big priority for us. His point was the school system is very good, has funding and will get to there issues quickly. His point was to do what it takes to get a real roof on and let the school dry out. Once dry he feels we should rely on the government and school system to provide for their own needs and he feels it is forthcoming – not to be pessimistic, I think it is still coming but very close. As always it was very useful information and suggests that maybe we should scale back the project to make it about the roofs alone

Before we went to the school, we went with Gilbert to meet the head of a local hardware store – although once we got inside we could see the owner was quite smart and has sufficient inventory, you would never know it from the street where his store is effectively boarded up.

Remarkably, he even has some GI Sheets – the local name for corrugated metal in Tacloban. He was willing to sell us 500 of the 800 we have been told we need and while his price is higher than Cebu, we can start working with the Tacloban materials tomorrow and to get them from Cebu is a big, complicated and expensive process so it is worth a small premium to get them here.

It is important to get an engineer of sorts to reflect on the project as there is only one chance to do what is needed. Funny enough, gregarious Oscar saw a guy at a table near ours in the local restaurant. He just sat down and said who is an engineer and the conversation and our story got the guy to agree to come with us to the school and give us some free consulting.

Tomorrow will be a very busy day at the new development – we have lined up skilled staff unskilled staff and will be on site early to coordinate with the man from the engineering firm. We are simultaneously working on camp lights since town power is still down and our Generator cannot carry the load.