We have done many feeding programs in the past on behalf of marketmanila.com, its readers, and for Zubuchon. But oddly, we had never done them right in our own backyard… the barangay in which we have our offices and commissary. So this year, we decided to focus on providing meals to the three day care centers in Barangay Capitol Site, Cebu. A total of 300 kids are enrolled in these day care centers, out of a Barangay population of roughly 15,000+ residents. We normally do feeding programs that run for months, if not the entire school year, but this particular event was an assembled Christmas treat for 300 kids all at once outside the local barangay hall.

The trick was how to feed 300 quickly and in an orderly fashion in less than 30 minutes. The answer is to pre-pack the lunches (their request), have packaged juices and desserts and mobilize 30 volunteer Zubuchon employees to do the logistics and distribution. Honestly, everyone was so ON IT that we were done in 20 minutes or so.

I regret that we used styrofoam containers at this event. I know it was cheaper and convenient, but usually we use paper plates or re-usable melamine for programs with repeated feedings at one location. And you will cringe when you hear what the food was — home-cooked fried chicken, spaghetti and rice. We asked the kids in advance what they wanted and that’s what they got. No nutritionally balanced food this time around. But then again, it’s the holidays, and it was supposed to be a treat!

Three hundred kids sitting at tables waiting for food seems like a recipe for disaster, but I must say they were extremely well-behaved. We managed to get the food out with lightning speed and everyone seemed to wolf down most of their lunch quickly… I think it helped that they were told to eat before Santa would distribute more goodies…

Meanwhile, Santa up top had to change in an alley nearby. Dario, one of our Branch Managers was the volunteer Santa for the day. Egads, that costume is very, very HOT in the midday heat and humidity! :)

Santa gave out some modest loot bags with toys and candy and the kids were on their way, just 30 minutes after we started. It seemed a bit less personal than other smaller feeding programs we have run, but there was still that same joy in sharing… And when you are cleaning up and a 4 or 5 year boy insists on coming up on his own, tugging on your pants to get your attention and when you look at him, he smiles and just says “thank you” with that complete air of genuineness, for a brief moment your heart melts, and you know the holidays are well and truly here…

In addition to the feeding program, we will be donating children’s books to the local day care centers and reading center in 2017, and perhaps participate in reading programs for the kids.

The post A Neighborhood Holiday Treat for 300 Kids! appeared first on Market Manila.

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The smiles and sentiments of the kids in this photo — priceless. Within a week after Typhoon Yolanda devastated the Visayas, generous donors of marketmanila.com, those who contributed to The Teen’s indiegogo website, family corporations, strangers, family and friends raised over PHP2 million for folks affected the storm in Northern Cebu and elsewhere. Entrusted with this money, it was our goal to distribute food and water quickly and to many affected parts of Northern Cebu. Last week was our final trip up North (1 of 11 sorties, plus one to Culion, Palawan), and we all agreed we should bring a special dose of holiday cheer to folks who needed it most. So clear yourself of distraction for a couple of minutes, and read through the next two posts… and the extended Marketman family wishes all of you a very special, meaningful, peaceful and totally Merry Christmas!

Our final journey started from Cebu City at 6am or so. Our convoy included a large construction dump truck, filled with boxes and sacks — a veritable modern day “Santa sleigh” — and we were headed to just two barangays in Medellin with approximately 1,000 families! Can you imagine what Santa’s fleet of C-130’s must look like on Christmas Eve?! We also had two vans filled with family and colleagues from work, a pick-up truck and our vehicle.

We even brought “Santa” who took time from his busy Pre-Christmas rush (chicharon cook) and 20+ elves all dressed in red… and we all miraculously managed to avoid heatstroke in 95F weather and the searing sun beating down on us all day…

The trip was planned from the week before, and the barangays had sent us a list of every family unit, child and infant in their jurisdiction. Once we got to our first barangay, we decided to start by distributing our loot bags for kids. The loot bags, with 21 items within, were brought down from the dump truck in sacks. Parents and kids were all lined up and crushed under several tents to keep a bit cooler… and despite please for order and lines, and assurances we had enough for everyone, a bit of pandemonium took hold. But we managed to distribute the bags, and honestly, I am amazed Santa and elves didn’t faint. I had the excuse that I needed to snap these photos for the blog… :)

BAsed on the reactions we got from kids once they opened their bags, they seemed pretty darned excited about the goodies. The initial rush now turned into a deluge as everyone wanted to make sure they got their loot bag too.

A few of the recipients checking out the contents of their loot bags.

I asked several children what they thought of the Christmas present… and let’s just say I got nothing short of “ecstatic” as a reaction. So many kids came up to us unprompted to say a simple but heartfelt “thank you” during the day… it was very humbling. And those thank you’s are really meant for you, you and you, the reader and generous donors.

At the peak of loot bag distribution, I was concerned that our crew would be smothered and crushed, and that kids and adults might get caught in the crush, so I set up across the street beside our dump truck with a few special boxes and tried to get mothers with infants and babies to transfer over to my side of the road…

…I had the most fantastic baby clothes and wonderful baby blankets that were the generous gift of a donor, who has a garment company. But I was quickly swarmed, and several hundred garments and blankets were gone in minutes.

Many, many thanks to the “B” family, who dropped off these disarmingly compact bales of baby clothes and blankets at our home… these weighed perhaps 40 kilos each and contained hundreds of garments/blankets. They were GREATLY APPRECIATED by the folks in Northern Cebu and also in a Palawan distribution we arranged.

Once the loot bags for kids and the garments for infants were distributed, we headed to a basketball court nearby where the adults were lined up for their Christmas spaghetti boxes… along with a few more canned goods as well. These set packages were meant for their Christmas Eve celebration, though I suspect many would have enjoyed them sooner… and each family was given enough for say 10-15 spaghetti meals.

Logistics was the key to success or failure in the first few weeks after the storm hit. DO NOT underestimate that observation. Aid distribution is back-breaking work. And we ALWAYS thought we had enough hands on deck and we didn’t. This trip, with 25+ people in our party, the heavy work fell on less than 10 guys, unloading thousands of pounds of goods from a very high truck bed, and opening, assembling and distributing the packages. All of this done in oven like temperatures and the searing sun (we all came back three shades tanner, and I am pretty dark to begin with!)…

The lines for the adults and elderly were extremely well-organized, and we had four stations to distribute, so we managed to get roughly 500 sets out in less than an hour’s time.

And please, no comments about the umbrellas, it was REALLY HOT. At least I am carrying my own umbrella. :) And here you should all know, that many of the folks who we greeted a “Merry Christmas!” that day, really want to say a huge thank you to the souls that made this all possible… who donated money and time and effort, and who they didn’t know and would probably never meet. They were thankful, cheerful, hopeful, grateful and positive. I found that amazing in the midst of homes barely cobbled back together, and many with reduced or no incomes post storm…

The Marketman family distributing goods at one station…

…Zubuchon crew manning two more stations…

…and while I was prone to heat exhaustion, the Teen stayed at her line the whole time,here assisted by our Chief of Stuff.

A second and similar scene on another basketball court would follow an hour later, as another 500 families or so lined up for their holiday spread. The second barangay was a few kilometers away from the first, and we were told that this was only the SECOND time they had been visited by outsiders in 5 weeks. The first time was a food distribution by RAFI (The Aboitiz Foundation) and ours. There was a palpable urgency in this barangay, and folks seemed just a bit more aggressive than we had experienced elsewhere…

…the children’s loot bag distribution went well, and our crew worked hard to keep things in order and moving quickly.

I ended up on the Senior Citizens line, which was nice and calm, but it’s hard to hand a 85 year old lady 2 or 3 spaghetti packages (some 8-10 kilos in weight) while they manage with their cane! The elderly were also claiming the goods for some of their children, who were working the fields or out fishing during the day. Marketman trivia, can you spot the link to James Bond in this photo?

The agony…

…and the ecstasy.

We also had some other goods to distribute at this barangay, and dozens and dozens of rubber slippers were in huge demand. So much so our Zubuchon GM and folks from Mrs. MM’s office were literally surrounded and crushed in the rush to claim them. Our GM had to throw the slippers out beyond the crowd to prevent a melee.

A wonderful anonymous and generous donor dropped off boxes filled with goods at our Zubuchon Mactan branch and the boxes contained slippers, panties and men’s briefs. I cannot tell you how useful and sought after these were. Salamat to the quiet donor.

But I must close this “PART I” with a bit of humor… a photo of the men’s briefs we distributed that day… “BINCH BODY” — I think they meant “BENCH BODY” — a local underwear brand with a copycat runway show patterned after Victoria’s Secret’s annual extravaganza. You have to be Cebuano to get the accent joke… Part II next. And why I wished I was wearing a pair of BINCH BODY briefs. :)

The post A Very, Very Special Christmas Celebration in Medellin, Northern Cebu… (PART I) appeared first on Market Manila.

The night before our final trip to distribute aid in Northern Cebu, we did our final computations and realized we had roughly PHP20,000 more pesos to “spend”. Instead of buying more rice or canned goods, we had a late afternoon, slightly harebrained idea to bring sports equipment to the baranggays we were visiting the next day. The rationale was that we wanted to distract the kids, to get them out on the courts, to do something physical. So we hit a local close-out warehouse, and ended up purchasing 20 regulation-sized basketballs, 40 mini-basketballs, 4 hoops/nets, 40 badminton racquets and 60 shuttlecocks, and a couple of soccer balls. After we had distributed the food packs and the children’s loot bags, the slippers, clothes, underwear and blankets, we took out a sack of balls and started shooting some hoops…

The adults and kids quickly gathered back around the basketball court and it was “game on”… Older kids and young adults were asked to line up at one end of the court, and they got one shot from the free-throw line — if they made the shot, they won the basketball, if not, they returned to the end of the line and tried again. The spectators started to gather, the encouragement and the jeering was growing and the fun was truly beginning. To get people in the mood, our Santa took a few shots (he missed)…

…while our diminutive in-house songwriter and singer (with current top hit playing in the Visayas) proved her mettle by sinking her first shot to the cheers of the growing crowd.

I stepped in to make it more challenging by blocking folks… though I have to admit I left a lot of room for the kids to take their shots…

…but the Teen has a really competitive streak…

…and at her height, she was at par if not taller than most men attempting to win their basketball.

Notice her shadow in the photo above, doesn’t it look like a Nike ad or logo? :)

Even senior citizens had a go and The Teen didn’t let up on defense… but we all cheered when this man WON a basketball! But the most amusing comment of the day was overheard by one of our crew… When the Teen got tired from all the jumping, I took her place for a few minutes, and one of the guys on the line said, in Cebuano “asa tung tomboy na gwapa, daku’g lawas man ani…” which loosely translated is “so where’s the tomboyish pretty girl, this guy is tall and chunky”… If I weren’t on an “aid mission” I would have taken offense at that — hahahaha. And the Teen raised her eyebrows at the “tomboy” reference… :)

The other end of the basketball court was for the younger kids vying to win a mini-basketball. They were having a bit of a challenge from the free-throw line so we moved them closer to the basket. Within say 15-20 minutes, we had away the basketballs set aside for each of the two barangays… and asked winners to make sure the balls would be shared and that pick-up games would take place in the days and weeks ahead. Folks continued to play even after we left, despite it being high noon in the first barangay we visited.

I realize this is the most frivolous aspect of our trip up North, but it was the most enjoyable. Each time a kid smiled, laughed or cheered I knew that if only for a moment, we had distracted them. There was a palpable lightness in the air, a real fiesta feel. And adults and kids were both in a cheery mood.

This will be the first and only photo you will ever see of me messing around with a soccer ball. I haven’t played soccer in nearly 40 years! But surprisingly, a LOT of kids also joined in and the soccer balls were also a big hit.

It was a tad chaotic, but shooting basketballs while others are kicking a soccer ball and still others were playing badminton on the same court was a scene from a cartoon or funny movie. Yes there was amusement. But there was also hope in the air, a feeling that things were on the mend, homes were starting to get repaired, some farm crops salvaged, debris cleared and trees starting to grow new leaves, funds for some repairs were being sent home by relatives abroad, jobs starting to return to their areas… yes, the storm was bad. But the Filipino spirit is better and shall overcome even the most trying of challenges.

After the soccer balls, out came the badminton sets, another huge hit. Several pairs of girls and boys had a go and we left them with ten pairs of rackets per baranggay and 30 shuttlecocks. But I have a a final smile-inducing story related to the badminton rackets… which links back to the Binch Body briefs in the first post of this two-post series. At the second barangay we visited, when I took out the badminton rackets, I literally got swarmed by some 40-50 kids who all wanted to grab the rackets for themselves. It started out okay, I am 6 feet tall after all, so I could hold the rackets up in the air out of their reach. But fun turned a bit desperate, and the crowd turned a bit unruly, and I have scratches to show for it, but worse, in the middle of the commotion, I could feel my shorts around my knees, and realized they were all pulling and tugging around me and I was being inadvertently disrobed! I was a bit worried about my cell phone and wallet in my shorts pockets so I had to throw the rackets away and quickly reach down to grab my shorts while the kids scampered away. Some of our crew saw this and burst out laughing… at least I didn’t have my colorful Christmas themed boxer shorts on yet… but perhaps, just perhaps, it would have been safer if I had been wearing some Binch Body briefs instead! :)

This last trip up North ends our relief efforts in Northern Cebu. We have spent all of the donated funds and will be posting a more detailed account of how they were used in the weeks ahead. I will also post about trips to other parts of the North, and a distribution in Culion, Palawan — I didn’t get around to writing all of them in chronological order during the mad rush of the holidays. We wish to THANK YOU ALL PROFUSELY and to relay the incredible gratitude of the people of Northern Cebu to everyone who sent cash donations, gifts in kind, volunteered your time or said a prayer or two. From our home to yours, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Marketman, Mrs. Marketman & The Teen

The post A Very, Very Special Christmas Celebration in Medellin, Northern Cebu… (PART II) appeared first on Market Manila.

We did a “Christmas” themed final trip to Northern Cebu on the 17th of December… But before I get to that holiday post, I wanted to show you what we prepared the day before we left for Medellin. Anyone with reasonable observation skills would notice that local groceries are groaning with two particular items around Christmastime… spaghetti and fruit cocktail. Gone are the days when folks had a roast (lechon, ham or even chicken)… with the country’s huge population and the vast majority of citizens living just above or below the supposed (ridiculously set) “poverty line” — a special meal at Christmas now means a hearty platter of spaghetti — it’s the new “festive” and it’s easy, economical and feeds a crowd. Italians would probably cringe at our sweet version of their national dish, but Pinoy spaghetti is here to stay. The same is probably true for canned fruit salads. So when we were deciding what to distribute for our last and holiday themed trip to Northern Cebu, we decided on these rather snazzy spaghetti filled plastic buckets. The makings of a large spaghetti and a free re-usable container to boot. We hit every supermarket until we assembled 1,000 of these packages, they cost PHP249 each.

Figuring we had saved hundreds of manhours of repacking by selecting the spaghetti, we turned our attention to the kids loot bags. We prepared nearly 1,000 loot bags to make sure that the kids had a memorable present after the discombobulation wrought by the recent storm. The budget for the loot bags was pegged at roughly PHP100. You might think it would be hard to fill a bag for that amount, but this selection in the photo above brought an incredible amount of glee to nearly 1,000 kids… 21 items in total, the loot bag had coloring books, crayons, lots of candy and sweets, jackstones, sipa, plastic balloons, etc. Some stuff would probably not pass “Red Cross criteria” for acceptable items, but bear with us, it was a tight budget and the loot seemed well suited to the target audience.

Thinking we had it under control, we quickly realized that packing 21 items for 1,000 kids would be extremely time-consuming… but had you been with us for the distribution, the effort was inconsequential and totally worth it…

Colorful hard shell coated candies… (please oh please let that be done with acceptable food dye)…

…hard candy…

…packs of marshmallows…

…nagaraya peanuts…

…packs of Milo…

…colorful jackstones!!!…

…stickers, pads and pens…

…more candy with sponge bob packaging(?)…

…those chemical smelling plastic balloons you have to blow up with a small straw. Trust me, we worried about giving this to kids below five, and warned their parents so… But honestly, I LOVED these balloons as a kid, and I was thrilled to see the crew had purchased and included them.

But the most nostalgic item were these (rather flimsily) crafted sipa… and of course I tried one, and managed to keep it in the air longer than you think! I didn’t even think they made this anymore! But the weight of the sipa wasn’t what I recall, and they needed to be a bit more substantial. But can you imagine a thousand kids in two barangays all futzing with their sipa at the same time?!

Cookies…

…cookies…

…and more cookies.

Coloring books with stories in English and Filipino. The crew divided these into boys and girls packages (though the Teen thought that sexist and wondered what if Juan wanted a Barbie and Maria wanted a Power Ranger… :)

Crayons, a HUGE HIT.

Lollipops… and there were a few other items I think.

The spaghetti and candy and other donated items filled yet another ginormous dump truck and took several hours to load starting at 3 am and get out of the city before that BLASTED TRUCK BAN kicked in at 6am or so. Now you know what was in the truck, soon a post on the actual distribution. It was just as good, if not better, than watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” late on Christmas Eve… :)

The post You Think Santa is Hiring Apprentices? appeared first on Market Manila.

How to feed a thousand IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons) with just 3 hours notice? That was the challenge when the call came one Friday afternoon, shortly after Typhoon Yolanda struck the Visayas, and the first batch of evacuees from Leyte arrived in Cebu. We immediately said yes, we could do it! But when we put the phone down, a mild panic set in. Could we really cook up 1200-1500 cups of rice and a viand and vegetable for 1,000 people in 180 minutes? We serve far less people than that number in our restaurants in a single sitting, so this was certainly a challenge.

But logistics is really just about planning and the efficient use of resources, so here’s how we did it. All branches within 15 minutes of head office, (that’s three of them) were immediately called and told to cook as much rice as they could manage with all rice cookers on hand. As soon as the rice was cooked, it was removed and another batch of rice was placed in the cookers. From our walk-in chiller at the commissary, we took out nearly 70 kilos of lechon sisig and that was portioned by branch and sent out on motorcycles to the branches so that 4 kitchens (including head office) could cook simultaneously on up to 20 burners total. Our buyer jumped into a van, sprinted to the nearest market, and bought vegetables for a chopsuey good for 1,000 — the veggies were washed, sliced and cooked also in less than an hour total. Packing started about 30 minutes before we were scheduled to leave the office and it was ALL HANDS ON DECK!

As the cooks did their thing, nearly every one else with hands was assembling little foil lined Chinese take out boxes with a red carrying handle. We had several hundred of these left over from various store promotions, and unfortunately, the rest of the meals had to go into styrofoam containers for economy and speed. Dozens of folks from cooks, to accountants, HR people and myself put on plastic gloves and portioned food like there was no tomorrow. It was a frantic scene… and the thousand meals were sent off to evacuation centers shortly thereafter.

It’s an amazing experience to be part of some stressed out, little-advance-notice, but important request such as this one. People you work with build more interesting relationships when they are all thrust into situations such as this… the outcome, I think, could only be positive. Everyone was EXHAUSTED by late afternoon and cooks at branches still had to make it through the evening service, but it worked out rather nicely. At a second feeding a few days later, we served chicken adobo and a vegetable dish as well. A couple of folks snickered when they saw what we were sending out… lechon pa daw. But at Zubuchon, even rush feeding program requests get handled OUR WAY. And that means food we would be proud to eat, any day of the week. :)

The post How to Prepare 1,000 Meals in a Hurry! :) appeared first on Market Manila.

Our next adventure to deliver thousands of aid packages was targeted at the remote mountain barangays of Tabuelan and San Remigio. Who knew so many families made this part of Cebu their home? Obviously, it’s an area I have never seen before. I was not on this trip, but our Operations Manager and some of our HR and lechonan staff, joined the folks from GMA Foundation who provided a huge ten-wheeler and six-wheeler covered truck to load our goods (food and plastic basins). The crew ventured off main roads onto winding uphill dirt roads — and while they were deserted, progress was slow…

…the damage to modest and often made of light material homes was pretty devastating. More than a week after the storm, examples of home flattened were around every twist and turn in the road. It almost seemed as though some homes had been temporarily abandoned and the hills seemed rather quiet…

…and our crew were beginning to wonder if bringing 2,500 food packs was too much.

Some cement utilities posts were still down across roads, but cars and trucks were able to work their way around them for the most part. A few kids roadside signaled a settlement or barangay was close by…

…and on arrival at Kantubaon in Tabuelan, a long line of folks was waiting for us. GMA Foundation had called ahead and local barangay officials had organized the locals.

We set up near the small health center, and opened up sacks of goods stored in our six-wheeler truck (the ten-wheeler couldn’t get up this far)…

…and distributed goods to 470 households in this barangay! That’s close to 2,500 people in what was described to me as sparsely populated, remote hilltops.

The crew would move onto Barangay Kanagahan where they would distribute relief goods for 425 households…

…pass more storm caused destruction and marvel at the power of nature — hundreds of coconut trees were snapped like matchsticks… and hit Barangay Tabongon in San Remigio which had 720 households waiting for relief goods! Gosh, can I mention the urgent need for birth control again?!?

The group passed by a barangay where OXFAM had just distributed goods and I believe they ran into the Red Cross at one of the barangays as well. But nowhere had any of us seen a truck filled with DSWD goods. Just saying for the record, we DIDN’T see any on our sorties, but ran into several from the Aboitiz Foundation, Oxfam, Red Cross, private Cebu City donors, etc.

There was one hilltop from where you could see both the East coast AND the West coast of the island of Cebu and some of the roads on the way down were better cement roads than those on the way up.

The team headed towards San Remigio to distribute the remaining packs…

…There were THRONGS of people waiting at the gates of the San Remigio Beach Club, and we parked inside the gates for a bit of crowd management.

These simple plastic basins were the absolute “hit” of the distributed goods. We have purchased and distributed 5,000 of these by now, and I feel like every single one of the folks in lines we witnessed would have liked to have one… They have become the “icon” of our efforts, as whenever GMA does short televised clips on relief efforts in Northern Cebu, you don’t notice our people, we wore no t-shirts with logos, our bags were plain white with no writing, our trucks had no tarps screaming the donor’s name, but you clearly catch glimpses of the basins, and you just KNOW where those came from… :)

The lines were daunting at the tail end of the trip, and we distributed aid to roughly 600 households in Barangay Looc and another 600 households in Barangay Mano, both in San Remigio.

The crew worked into the night, until the lines ran out and we finished every single one of the relief packs we brought from the city. Staff got home near midnight… but thrilled to have completed the fourth sortie up North. As always, I am grateful to our Zubuchon crew who seem tireless in their desire to volunteer and help, on top of whatever regular duties they have to perform. Thank you to the crew and again, thanks to the donors who make this possible!

Note: All photos by RD and crew.

The post Our Fourth Trip Up North, to the Hilltop Barangays of Tabuelan and San Remigio, Cebu… appeared first on Market Manila.

Nearly PHP1,125,000 in total donations through BDO as of noon Tuesday…

Here is a list of what was received so far as of 26 November 2013:

1. 10,000.88
2. 99,999.00
3. 2,348.85
4. 4,443.75
5. 3,542.40
6. 8,088.05
7. 4,282.45
8. 1,003.00
9. 13,130.00
10. 116,500.00
11. 1,345.00
12. 4,444.20
13. 8,268.15
14. 3,943.25
15. 1,100.00
16. 1,898.93
17. 1,000.00
18. 15,000.00

19. 7,692.30
20. 20,888.00
21. 3,355.09
22. 4,765.00
23. 5,709.05
24. 20,000.00
25. 997.80
26. 4,118.12
27. 50,000.55
28. 3,220.00
29. 2020.00
30. 2,000.00
31. 4,900.00
32. 20,008.00
33. 21,907.90
34. 550.00

35. 42,638.00
36. 4,270.00
37. 4,483.60
38. 10,059.74
39. 12,000.00
40. 7,077.77
41. 20,000.00
42. 50,350.00
43. 2,501.00
44. 3,951.00
45. 3,000.00

46. 5,000.00
47. 2,150.00
48. 4,917.21
49. 4,050.00
50. 10,318.61
51. 23,520.09

52. 1,888.00
53. 1,200.00
54. 95,133.00
55. 9,898.99
56. 1,027.00
57. 12,307.46
58. 2,013.00
59. 2,000.00

60. 120,818.20
61. 9,237.55
62. 1,088.88
63. 120.00

64. 4,259.00
65. 5,005.50
66. 8,225.32
67. 5,000.00

68. 21,725.00
69. 2,999.00
70. 1,029.00
71. 45,376.10

72. 3,999.95
73. 8,000.00
74. 2,502.00
75. 2,000.00

76. 30,000.00
77. 6,999.00

Total Funds Received So Far : PHP 1,124,416.69

Thanks to M and friends for their PHP30,000 gift directed to logistics costs, the prickliest part of this aid operation. Thanks to the generous donor from Bali, the gifts collected by a high school classmate based in Maryland, and others who have given big and small, anonymously. Another high school classmate sent a hugely generous gift from Hong Kong and from family members around the globe.

It is not immediately clear to me which amounts are deposited in pesos and which amounts are already converted from remittances abroad. Any amount modest or extremely generous is utterly appreciated, and I am so grateful, but I just have to express utter shock at the PHP99,999 deposit from Greenhills (we checked, and if I recall correctly there was a very generous gift years ago for the feeding programs from Greenhills as well :) and I want the lady (and MM lurker at that!) from Vienna, Austria who sent PHP116,500 (or Euro 2,000) that your donation will fill half a truck with relief goods that will head North on Thursday. I appreciate and am humbled by your trust in having me and the crew take your funds to benefit thousands of people up North. A huge thanks to every single one of the donors, I can’t say that enough. I will update this list as often as I can.

A huge thank you to folks who have dropped off donations in kind at our Zubuchon branches. Some 200+ bags of goods and other donations have been coursed through our branches in the past few days for re-distribution. Also, nearly 1,000 pieces of baby clothes and blankets have been coursed through us.

Also, in a true display of the power of the internet, visit the Teen’s indiegogo site to see she has collected OVER $16,000 (roughly PHP700,000) worth of donations and that effort is now completed! Thanks to MM readers who chose that easy route instead of the bank transfers. In total, this fund-raising effort has raised more than 1.8 MILLION PESOS so far, and added to what MM & Family + Zubuchon has provided, we will be able to provide roughly PHP2.2 million in relief to Northern Cebu — Borbon, Bogo, San Remigio, Medellin, Daan Bantayan, Bantayan Island and outer islands, with a total population of roughly 350,000-400,000 residents, who are eternally grateful for your rapid and generous assistance!

The post Donations Exceed PHP1.1 million as of noon Tuesday, 26 November… appeared first on Market Manila.

Stewing hens for PHP10 each anyone?! A week earlier, on November 10, 2013, less than 48 hours after Typhoon Yolanda hit Bantayan island, our Zubuchon GM riding with a GMA Foundation convoy, managed to reach the island aboard one of the first ferries from the mainland. They were one of the first, if not the first, food aid to arrive from the main island of Cebu. The landscape on Bantayan looked literally wiped out. And food was in short supply. And after that visit, which took hours in travel due to the bottleneck at the ferry, we KNEW WE WANTED TO GO BACK FOR A SECOND PASS TO BRING A LOT MORE aid packages. So a week later, we set off on another convoy, this time armed with a ten-wheeler truck donated by a kind soul, and packed in over 2500+ aid packages from marketmanila readers and other donors.

The convoy left Cebu City at 1am on Saturday, 16 November 2013, to avoid the idiotic truck bans and traffic in Liloan, Mandaue, etc. and got to the pier in Hagnaya in San Remigio before dawn. They would queue with dozens of other vehicles, many filled with aid, others private cars with concerned relatives, and the scene was a bit chaotic. No tickets for vehicles were being given out, no schedules for ferries firmed up, no indication of when the convoy might be able to make the crossing. They waited hours… breakfast passed… hours longer… lunch passed… previous and current government officials drove up and cut into the line (several with no aid in tow, as if their presence alone was enough), and finally, late afternoon, the convoy made it across, landing on the island at about 6pm (a nearly 17 hour trip that the week before was done is say half the time and that was two days after the storm!), after the sun had set and pitch darkness engulfed the island with the exception of an odd generator here and there.

Right beside the convoy was a truck laden with German medical kits and their own generator. They too were made to wait nearly half a day. So neither first come, first serve…nor medical and food aid…nor other obviously simple prioritization protocols were in place, and that was 8 days after the storm! Where was the logic and local government hand in this? I wish the crew had taken photos of the previous government officials filled with self-importance cutting line — I would have published the photos for everyone to see. And this scene would be repeated on several occasions on the ferries to Ormoc from Cebu as well…based on information from folks we know who also did that crossing. People don’t want us to criticize the government for idiotic examples of behavior such as these? THEN CUT IT OUT THE IDIOTIC AND EASILY RECTIFIED SITUATION TO BEGIN WITH. I can understand the current Governor or other aid officials cutting line, I really can, if they are headed to the island to do more important things… but PREVIOUS OFFICIALS with no current role in government riding in fancy SUV’s? Folks like that should be shot while we sit atop medical supplies and food for thousands of hungry people… SHAME on them.

The convoy arrived at Barangay Baigad, Bantayan Island in darkness, and were greeted by hundreds of locals waiting in line in pitch dark. When they realized it was a truck with food, they spontaneously broke into song… “Pasko na Naman…” A fascinating tongue-in-cheek and local humour filled way of making light of a difficult condition. But on the other hand, a truly grateful response for the help they were about to receive… It made the 17 hour road-trip worth it for many of our staff who were in the convoy.

We distributed food for 450 families in this barangay that evening, and the crew rested overnight before getting up at the crack of dawn to distribute some more…

This photo gives new meaning to “outdoor living spaces”…

We went to Barangay Tamiao, Bantayan and distribute relief goods for 550 families. We also managed to get goods to 20 families on the tiny Hilantangaan Island. We knew a resident of that tiny islet, who came to the main island of Bantayan to help bring the goods home along with other islanders. We also gave relief goods and nails to other bancas that were headed to other remote islands around Bantayan.

I should mention that all throughout the distribution of thousands of aid packages, the lines were orderly, folks were patient for the most part, smiled and gave thanks. There was little shoving or line cutting, and there was NO POLITICAL COLOR AT ALL. It has been reported and we have directly seen, several instances where aid was doled out by local officials and they apparently were giving either more aid to those that voted for them, or none at all to folks who didn’t vote for them. In our case, we specifically avoided contacting local officials in advance, and handed out aid IRRESPECTIVE OF POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS. Period.

The numbers of elderly and the very young were shocking. One wonders if everyone in the middle is off in the big cities or abroad working, but it looked like extremes in terms of age. On later forays we would bring lots of candy to hand out a couple of pieces at a time to kids, while their elders collected food packages. On many an occasion, our staff asked young looking girls carrying babies if they were the mothers and they said yes. The number of 15-17 years olds that were mothers was appalling. Honestly, I thought to include two condoms in every aid package but decided against it last minute… It would have been amusing to watch the face of the pharmacist when I tried to buy 36,000 condoms or so… :)

The convoy moved onto the Barangay of Sillon, and the lines here were kilometric. We distributed 1,060 food packages here and that wiped out our stocks.

I want to go back up North to bring kids like this a little toy or something for Christmas… it’s the internal Santa gene in me. :(

So to the chickens. Bantayan had dozens and dozens of poultries and thousands of egg-laying hens that supplied eggs to nearby provinces. The poultries were all destroyed, and chickens went scurrying all over the island. There were so many of them, locals started catching them and selling them for PHP10 a piece, providing some food for locals… but they described them as so old, hard and tough that you had to boil them for several hours to make them edible. They would make really good chicken stock, I imagine. It will take months for these food producers to recover, and we will be there to support them when they do. Zubuchon tries to buy as much of its ingredients locally as possible, and several of our long-time suppliers were devastated by the storm.

And yes, on the way home from Bantayan, the crew experienced another long wait for a ferry off the island (they got off a day later than planned) and in the late evening of Sunday, November 17th, they got stuck in a traffic jam back to Cebu as hundreds or thousands of vehicles which had come up to the North for the first time in 10 days to bring goods and people to Bantayan and other towns in the vicinity streamed back to the city at about the same time… But we would send out another sortie the next day to interior hills and Barangays of Tabuelan in another ten-wheeler truck. And the day after that, The Teen in another dump truck headed up to the furthest reaches north in Daanbantayan, which meant we got to every major municipality hit by the storm in Northern Cebu within 12 days (except Malapascua and other islands)… And we have NEVER done this before, so please don’t tell me it’s impossible to do. It wasn’t. And it shouldn’t have been that hard for organized government and aid agencies either…

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Graphic from U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and based on data as of 17 November 2013.

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