Activity of "The Second Group of Volunteer Students for the Disaster Area" Reported in Iwate Nippo (11/11/16)
Date.
11/11/16
The contents of the article:
"Making Dried Persimmons in Collaboration with Volunteers"
Kesen-cho, Rikuzentakada City
The people living in Kamihasebe District, Kesen-cho, Rikuzentakada City are now making dried persimmons in collaboration with volunteers. They usually make dried persimmons at home individually every year, but this year they don't have enough places to dry the persimmons because of the tsunami, so they get together to do it.
The people living in this district and volunteers, 30 in total, collected persimmons, peeled and hung them from the ceiling.
The volunteer students were embarrassed of the unaccustomed work at first, but they got much advice from the people living there and then enjoyed working and interacting with the people.
Mr. Koki Negishi, the senior student of Osaka International University said, "The people here are more cheerful than I expected. I have never collected persimmons, so it was a very important experience for me."
Iwate Nippo November 4th, 2011
This article and photo are reprinted with permission from Iwate Nippo.
【The impressions of the students】
- "I am very glad that an old woman told me that she would send dried persimmons to our university when they become delicious and this will be one of our chances to interact with them in future."
- "I hope our activities will make the old women smile, just as bitter persimmons change into sweet ones."
- "Through not only heavy work but also quiet activities like peeling persimmons, connecting them with a string, and hanging them, we could converse with them and as a result of it we could understand the disaster area more closely."
- "When I listened to an old man's story of damage, I could not find any word to respond and the only thing I could do was to listen to him."
- "I hope the activities like making dried persimmons will be a good opportunity for the people living there to get out of their temporary houses ."
The students' activities are reported in the web site of "Tono Magokoro Net" as follows:
They made dried persimmons: http://tonomagokoro.net/archives/8747
