Thanks for the encouragement to share the story of this 7 week trip to NZ. I’m still very lucky to be on oral therapy… now capecitabine which I started just before I left on this trip in January. But enough about me when so many are really suffering…
The cyclone hit on Feb13th causing almost unfathomable damage.. Some of the Main highways and innumerable small roads have been washed away or blocked by slips in the hillside above. The largest “slip” was 15 acres of land that fell down and filled a valley. The silt that was carried by many over flowing rivers did much destruction to farms, vineyards and homes. I heard of one small stone church that filled with 2 feet of silt… volunteers shrivelled it out… some homes filled with twice that… imagine 4 fr of dirt in your house!?
I just had dinner with a close friend who flew into the area to find out IF her family was ok… and then stayed for past 10 days volunteering 12 hrs a day at a rescue CENTER set up at a camp ground feeding B, L, D to hundreds of people without power in the area plus making sandwiches by the hundreds for all the volunteers… all of the food donated. Local restaurants took turns sending in big tubs of dinners ( like Craggy Hill Vineyards which had a year wait to get a reservation) sent huge piles of chili con carne to feed 200 people who came in from farms at night for an evening meal since they had no electricity…
my friend told me if an egg farm that sent out 1000 cooked eggs… and she told me how exhausting it was for her band of volunteers to prep all this food starting at 7am for breakfast and continuing thru dinner… with no electricity! They used gas bottles on a BBQ and had a generator to heat water only for showers.. that meant they had to carry hot water back and forth to the campground kitchen from camp toilet block nearby. So much work!
This is New Zealand coming together at its finest! She told of people who arrived in just their knickers -all clothes having been washed away. One man walked out of his small community 50 km away and slogged to this campground rescue centre finally getting a lift after days…and he brought a scrap of paper that had all the names of 100 people in his small rural community so their family around the country would know they were safe. And then he couldn’t get back. Some of the major roads to many towns just can’t be fixed for many months. Cutting them off from getting to jobs etc. and so since they couldn’t work they just pitched into the volunteer efforts helping Neighbors dig out.. and so that was what my friend and her hubby did for past 2 weeks.. they fed the volunteer crews…what a legend! Thank you Lee and steve!
We are currently at a friends bach( summer cottage) where we can look out to the sea and view at least 6 large container ships spaced far out to sea just waiting to unload needed supplies at the largest port in the country. NZ suddenly has food insecurity issues due ti the cyclone…
Whole crops have been lost under the silt of so many rivers. Believe it or not, until recently the onion crop brought in more money than NZ wine. Now all gone with fruit trees and vineyard too. And they say the beautiful soil is all wrecked and may have decades of economic repercussions from this devastating storm. This picture of the road washed away is repeated all over New Zealand..
Well thanks for reading and caring.
I’ve seen the oncologist
Update about an update on Oncologist meeting 
