‘Bicol Express’ meals for Mayon evacuees

They need not wait for disaster to happen, so a team of volunteers is now on its way to Albay province to put up a community kitchen that would serve hot meals to thousands of families displaced by the anticipated eruption of Mayon Volcano.

Seasoned photographer Alex Baluyut, who started the Art Relief Mobile Kitchen (ARMK) in the aftermath of Super Typhoon “Yolanda” in November 2013, said the idea to feed the Mayon evacuees came, this time, from the younger members of the group.

ARMK is a loose group of volunteer artists and individuals that mobilized a community kitchen at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City as survivors from the provinces hit by Yolanda arrived. It also conducted a feeding program in Hernani town, Samar province, and Bantayan Island in Cebu province, both typhoon-hit areas, during Christmas time last year and on Valentine’s Day this year.

Asked how many people the group has served, Baluyut said: “I already stopped counting at 50,000 meals.”

The team, which left Manila Wednesday, is headed to San Jose Elementary School in Barangay (village) Calbayog, which currently shelters 2,463 people and is the biggest evacuation center in Malilipot town.

It targets to cook hot meals or snacks for the evacuees for at least five days or until their supplies last in a campaign aptly called “Bicol Express,” which is also the popular name of the commuter train service of the Philippine National Railways and a Bicolano dish with chili and coconut milk as main ingredients.

“You know, the inflow of donations seems to slack at this time. Maybe because we have this ‘reactionary’ (attitude toward disasters) that since there is no eruption yet, people think everything seems to be already in place,” Baluyut said in a phone interview on Tuesday.

“But we are looking at a long evacuation period here. We admire the actions of (Albay) Governor (Joey) Salceda and the LGUs (local government units), but their resources are also getting depleted. They’ll need all the help we can give,” he said.

The provincial government of Albay earlier said that more than 55,000 people had been evacuated since Sept. 15 after the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology raised Alert Level 3 for Mayon on Sept 15.

Baluyut, who resides in Los Baños town, Laguna, and is fond of cooking meals for a large number of guests, said the group’s menu involved basic dishes, “perhaps mongo beans, rice or dried fish.”

Why not distribute the usual relief packs of canned goods or noodles? “We want this to be an act of service to the community to raise human morale amid a typhoon, flood or earthquake,” Baluyut said.