Well, let's just say it's been an eventful couple of days.
The good news is that I have excellent friends. I asked for people to come help me clean up here, and people did. I had one friend stay for the weekend, and another two come up on Sunday to help out as well. They assisted with several projects that needed to get done, and now have been. They were also a huge boost in morale, particularly mine. I am so thankful that I have friends who are so selfless and kind and will work so hard simply because they know there is work to do.
There is still a massive amount of mess and disorganization in the shelter. Honestly, no matter how much we clean, it always feels and looks like we did very little. That's the scope of this disaster, though. Every level of upkeep has been neglected, and so we have to clean and reorganize down to nearly the very foundations.
Fortunately, I am no longer the only person who recognizes that.
The details of the last twenty-four hours are long and convoluted and not for public distribution. But suffice to say, our situation is now being taken seriously. A volunteer from the Kyoto program was sent up to Inawashiro on an overnight bus, and within an hour she could see the utter lack of organization or cleanliness in the house. She comes from a place that is very organized and structured, and it is a huge relief to have her on-site to give advice about how to set up a work schedule for volunteers both present and future. It's also a huge relief to have someone on-site from within the JCN program who agrees whole-heartedly that this shelter is in distress and needs a lot of help. For the last week, I've felt like everyone in upper management has been blissfully unaware of the situation, and has dismissed reports of excessive mess as the exaggerations of young people far away from home who can't deal with living on their own.
Unfortunately, young people who are far from home and can't deal with living on their own have been exactly what lead us here. Because people who are far away from home and have never lived on their own do not understand the sheer magnitude of constant work that it takes to keep oneself alive and one's own surroundings clean. This unending cycle of daily tasks is added to the work necessary to care for animals. When you try to put young people with no innate sense of responsibility and no experience in being responsible in a position where they have to take constant initiative to be responsible, the situation like what we have here is what happens. Moreoever, if young people who will not take initiative are left unsupervised by management, then you get a catastrophe.
The house is still a mess. But now, finally, I am not the only person saying it. People outside JCN are talking about it. People within JCN are aware of it, whether they like it or not. And now, finally, action is being taken by JCN to assist with what will undoubtedly be the slow and painstaking process of cleaning up and organizing this gigantic mess.
At the end of this, I hope, will be a much healthier environment for the animals. Which is all I want. I have not been very friendly, patient, quiet, or understanding these last few days. My patience ran out on my first day. I stopped caring whether anyone liked me, whether anyone respected me, whether I ended this endeavor with friends or with people talking behind my back and calling me an obnoxious bitch. All I have cared about, for the last week, is getting people to see what I see, to listen, and to actually take some kind of action to fix things. And nobody was ever going to listen to a calm petition for extra support. We are past that. We are at the point where unless someone plants their feet and says, "No, we are going to fix this NOW," and leads the charge, nothing is going to get done.
(I have planted my feet so hard that I genuinely cannot walk around on one for very long without it starting to throb. I've taken to wearing slippers around the house. I also basically sat down all of today.)
I don't usually cause commotion about things. I don't like rocking boats. It's dangerous and can end with big consequences if you're wrong or you're up against people with more power than you. But when it comes to the happiness and health of animals, all bets are off. Because a shelter should not just be a place that's a little more comfortable than the outdoors. It should be a place of healing and refuge. It should be warm and kind. A living room that's too cluttered for the dogs to stretch out comfortably and a bunch of rooms that are layered with old litter and matted fur and that smell like cat pee are neither warm or kind. They are simply a better option than being out in the cold.
I want these animals to be happy.
They will be.
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