Malaysia east coast flood tragedy

Hello! I believe that if you're local, you must know about the tragedy that has happened in Malaysia during the end of year 2014. Malaysia is battling some of the worst floods in decades along its east coast, eastern states are often flooded during the monsoon season but this year heavy rain and winds have worsened the situation. More than 100,000 people have been forced from their homes. In some areas, entire towns have been submerged. The entire village was under water and there was no electricity running in some parts. Because there is no electricity there's no water either. Most shops have closed down and there has been a shortage of food. Here's a picture of the tragedy.

After I acknowledge how serious the flood was, I actually had a chance to go and help. Last Sunday, I joined a charity group ((Tzu Chi)) to went on a road trip to Kuala Krau, somewhere in Kuantan. We had to woke up at 5 in the morning and start our journey at 6.00 a.m. It's a 2 hour journey, we arrived at about 8.15. We were to help a Chinese primary school and an Indian primary school to clean up the mess.

The Chinese primary school was eventually quite small in size, but still a whole lot of mess to be cleaned. This is the school hall and where we gathered.

We gathered at the hall and everyone was paying attention to "what to do" and "how to do", then we were asked to help collect some donations from the volunteer helpers. The donations are strictly for flood victims in need.

 After that, we start of by sweeping the class floors which are full of dried dirt, thank god only the ground floor was flooded. It was a lot of job and required a lot of time and energy and a lot of people working together to clean the whole floor. We started our job on 9a.m. The hall shown above was in a lower level, therefore it was under flood. We had to clean the WHOLE HALL. It took all of my energy, all. Look at the clothing I wore, after cleaning it was like 

((NOT A PLEASANT LOOK)) 

Then after all the hard work, it was lunch time at 1.00 p.m.

Lunch was carrots and white rice, yum! Because we were very hungry.

Later on, it was back to work again. We cleaned the school hall, all the mud on the floor, the chairs and tables. It was all heavy work. Oh, did I mention we ran out of water and we had to ask for the fire fighters help for emergency water and water pipes. Long story but very good experience! 

((This was taken after the hall was almost cleaned.))

After a whole day of work, we left at 5.30 p.m. before the sun goes down, reached KL at 8.30 p.m. We were all so tired, had dinner when we reached KL. Then it's SHOWER AND SLEEP. Here are some pictures we took there.

I guess it ends here. For me, it was meaningful to sacrifice my own time to help others and a great opportunity for me to experience how it is like to clean up a flood mess. Pray that this tragedy will never happen again. 

-Sending lots of love to you from Giselle.