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Volunteering in Kameoka

September 26, 2013 By Michael Lambe 3 Comments

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Last weekend I joined Rob Mangold and his IDRO crew on a relief trip to Kameoka, which was hit hard by the last typhoon to sweep through Kansai. After linking up with some regular volunteers at Kameoka’s Volunteer Center, we drove out into golden fields where a landslide caused by heavy rain had filled up the drainage ditches. Our job was to dig them out. Here are some pictures from the day: a mix of standard shots and 360 spherical images from the Ricoh Theta. If you click on the spheres you can view the images in a perfectly immersive 360 degrees.

Here we are in the morning: ready for action in our nice clean orange bibs!

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And here’s one of the two ditches that we had to dig out. It looks like a path but actually water should be flowing through there for the rice paddy.

Undug ditch
This picture from Rob Mangold

The work begins:

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Teamwork:

Teamwork
Job done!

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Our gang at the end of the day: tired, muddy but happy.

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And a standard group shot.

Our gang standard
This picture from Rob Mangold

Kameoka is very beautiful this time of year with the beautiful red Higanbana (Cluster Amaryllis) lining the sides of the rice fields. Apparently the bulbs of this flower give off a toxin that deters mice and other pests from entering the fields, which is why the farmers use them on the borders.

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There was a lot of wildlife  in evidence about the ditch though: frogs were leaping all over, and there were butterflies, dragon flies and even a snake (not a mamushi this time) I saw swimming through the freshly freed waterway. Though it was a hot day, hard work and we were all sore and covered in mud at the end, it was still a great way to spend the day. Many thanks to Rob Mangold  and the Kameoka volunteer center for getting things organized. If you would like to know more about IDRO Japan’s disaster relief activities please check the links below.

See also:
http://www.idrojapan.org/
IDRO Japan on Facebook
Flood Relief in Arashiyama

Filed Under: IDRO Japan, Volunteering, World Saving Tagged With: Richo Theta, theta360

Comments

  1. Jean says

    September 28, 2013 at 2:49 am

    What a great group of people! Great photos; cluster amaryllis are stunning!

  2. Michael Lambe says

    October 4, 2013 at 3:50 pm

    Thank you Jean!

Trackbacks

  1. straightchain » Back to volunteering! says:
    October 2, 2013 at 4:39 pm

    […] 2,5 weeks ago I got a chance to do some volunteer clean-up in Kameoka City near Kyoto with IDRO Japan. We were helping to get rid of the endless amounts of debris that the recent Typhoon had washed down from the mountains. Our group focused one a drainage area for rice fields somewhere in the country-side of Kameoka. It’s been a beautiful day, Higan flowers「彼岸花」were blooming and our motivation was pretty high! There’s some more photos of the whole thing, showing actually how much rubble we moved with (wo)manpower and shovels within a few hours, at DeepKyoto. […]

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