There are many hands and hearts in the little town of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. Hands that wave with a friendly ‘hello’ and thousands of hearts inside these 18 square miles that beat with a love for this town and are full with compassion during times of struggle.

            We all watched earlier this month as Hurricane Dorian slowly churned in the Atlantic and hoped that the storm would no more than graze us as it moved northeast in our direction. We saw the destruction left in its wake as it battered the Bahamas and we were struck by the footage that accompanied the headlines in the storm’s aftermath. We clasped our hands in prayer and hoped with our hearts for a quick recovery.

            But then our attention turned toward another direction. Dorian swept itself out to sea and dissipated. The Bahamas disappeared from the headlines. Our hands became busy with other things and our hearts were again occupied with matters closer to home – but not for ‘all hands and hearts’ in Mattapoisett.

            You’ve probably driven past the nondescript office along Route 6 in Mattapoisett a hundred times, perhaps even during the week after Dorian devastated the Bahamas, and saw the sign “All Hands and Hearts” without realizing its significance. Regardless, situated in that small, inconspicuous plaza is a hub of international relief efforts that is mobilizing hands and hearts from all over the world to send to the Bahamas just as the rest of us have nearly stopped thinking about it.

            The non-profit organization All Hands and Hearts has its headquarters in Mattapoisett and is overseen by Mattapoisett resident and CEO Erik Dyson, Dyson and his team are the first-responders of sorts whenever disaster strikes somewhere on the globe. When a natural disaster devastates an area, Dyson and his team organize the deployment of some 50 to 60 volunteers every day to survey and assess the damage. Their disaster response is the critical first step after the storm for a place like the Abacos Islands, the region hit the hardest on the island chain nation of the Bahamas.

            Last week, the volunteers made their initial assessment of the islands to ascertain the areas that need the most help and how to begin to provide support. As Dyson put it, All Hands and hearts “arrive early and stay late,” sometimes even years after the impact. Disaster response happens in phases, said Dyson. Phase 1 is the “cleaning up, mucking and gutting, removing debris…

            “Which, of course, there’s lots of debris to be dealt with,” said Dyson.

            There’s tarping of roofs, schools, and medical posts, “And, really, just listening to the community on where the short-term goals are,” said Dyson. And it’s often done without clean running water or reliable electricity amidst relative chaos and shock. These volunteers’ hands do the dirty work, the cleanup.

            The initial team figures out where rescue planes can land when airports are badly damaged, and where they can set up a base of operations to welcome more volunteers – dozens that arrive every day from different countries, including the U.S. The team works with local NGOs to understand the areas of highest need.

            “Based upon the needs we hear, then we send an assessment team to do a detailed outline of the scope of work, the budget of the materials needed,” said Dyson. The cleanup phase alone can take months, sometimes three to four and, in the case of the Bahamas post-Dorian, four to five months, even.

            “It’s such an extreme impact level of damage,” said Dyson. “But then we’ll transition to long-term recovery beyond the ‘taking-apart’ phase – the phase of rebuilding.”

            The Abacos Islands will need schools, houses, medical posts, community centers, evacuation centers, all its community infrastructure rebuilt after Dorian. And there are still other devastated areas – Puerto Rico, the Florida panhandle, Mozambique, the Philippines, and Nepal, to name a few – where that rebuilding is still taking place years later.

            All Hands and Hearts will likely spend two years rebuilding in an area affected by a natural disaster. The goal in The Bahamas is to help at least 2,500 people by mobilizing a minimum of 1,000 volunteers. But to succeed, it will also need to raise around $5 million. It takes a lot of money to rebuild, and in the case of the Bahamas, an island nation, it’s already expensive to import building materials even without the added disruption of the supply chain.

            Mattapoisett is where it begins with the help of the local hands and hearts the organization employs at its headquarters, the people that perform the administrative duties, financial matters, human resources, and public outreach. Sometimes, though, it’s the local people who arrive at ground zero to assess, like one seasoned “logistics guy” from New Bedford that has assisted in many assignments, said Dyson. This one, however, was different. “He was struck by just the absolute destruction,” Dyson said.

            Right now, there are no operating gas stations, no baseline infrastructure, nothing.

            “It’s still really slow getting started because it’s – there’s just nothing there,” said Dyson. “It’s not just shut down, it’s gone.”

            In disasters like this, about 80 percent of the funding to rebuild is raised during the first 60 days before interest fades. “It’s already happening,” Dyson lamented. “Initial interest is high… but now, a week later, it’s fallen off the news…This is something that will take five or more years for the community to get back to normal and we’re already in week two and we’re seeing a huge drop off in interest.”

            This goes not just for money, but for volunteers, too. There was a huge interest in volunteering, said Dyson, with around 5,000 signing up, but they will need about 1,000 steady volunteers a year in the Bahamas. “It’s always a challenge,” said Dyson, when that interest starts to wane months into the efforts.

            This is where the rest of the hands and hearts of Mattapoisett come in – the volunteers and people of the Abacos need your hands; they need your hearts.

            Please considering making a donation to All Hands and Hearts, or consider taking a chance on volunteering. No skills are required, the group will teach you everything. You can make a donation or apply to volunteer (it’s a rather quick process) by visiting their website www.allhandsandhearts.org.

            Although water, food, and clothing drives are often a response to an effort such as this, monetary donations or volunteering are the best ways to help. It’s expensive to ship material goods abroad and ineffective compared to the power of an express donation of money, of any amount.

            Dyson urges his neighbors to follow the organizations efforts by visiting the website or signing up for updates. “Also, please think about other places with impacts that aren’t obvious on the front pages, but are affected,” said Dyson. “Those people need our help.”

By Jean Perry

Most avid birdwatchers will always remember hearing the mysterious chant of the whip-poor-will’s summer evening song. It may seem to go on forever, as long as several hundred times, making it very easy to imitate the exact verbal sequence of sound. The intent is unusually vociferous because the repetitious message is first driven by seeking a mate and then by territorial obsessiveness.

            This whip-poor-will is more often heard than seen, sleeping by day, camouflaged upon a color emulating horizontal low-lying tree branches. It does not wake up until twilight, but then will flutter up into the air along the edge of woodland clearings to catch bugs. It nests on the ground and lays two eggs, cleverly inconspicuous on layers of deciduous leaves. If it feels the nest gas been discovered, like the ground nesting woodcock it will fly a short way with the eggs between its legs to a more secret location.

            After an incubation of about 21 days, the time of hatching is closely tied to the lunar cycle. It will amazingly coincide, happening just a few days before a full moon, as illustrated. This reflects a celestial orchestration with mortal survival on Earth, so parents will be able to catch enough bugs for their new offspring. Bugs are magnetically attracted and activated by the moon’s light, just like a bright streetlight on a dark night.

            Unfortunately, reproduction population is dwindling everywhere. Like all its species cousins including the night hawk, night jar, and chuck-will-widow, the whip-poor-will population has decreased annually by at least six percent for the past 50 years This decline is attributed to a vital loss of insects, moths, or beetles, caused by human’s consumption of the pitch pine and scrub oak habitat.

            Research to reverse the recent Audubon classification of “species of national concern” is underway at three nearby locations of Massachusetts Wildlife Management areas: Cape Cod, Bolton Flats, and Montague Plains. After netting and banding, a tiny microchip is attached to GPS track migratory routes and final destinations. This eventually showed a deviation from other bird migration along the traditional Atlantic Flyway. The whip-poor-will was somehow able to reach Central America by a strictly overland route. This is critical for survival during stopovers to rest; however, crucial questions and solutions are still pending and unanswered.

            The whip-poor-will’s ritualistic and mystical country echo every evening has left a lasting impression in the human mind, especially young children just before bedtime. It has inspired paintings by James Audubon, poetry by Robert Frost, and homespun country humor by Mark Twain.

            The Native American symbolic interpretations of birdcalls are meaningful. The reverberating wail of a loon across a lake forecasted rain. To the elderly, the hoot of an owl could seem to call out a person’s name when it was time for them to go. And across a peaceful summer setting at twilight, they heard the whip-poor-will as a soul snatcher, rising up from the Earth to rescue a dying human spirit before nightfall.

By George B. Emmons