Chapter 688 - Just Do With It.
The deal was for the president to exchange each one of Morales and his team’s family members and even friends with a generous amount of guns, ammunition, food items, and medical supplies from our stashes aside from our regular import of new specimens, information, and other supplies. However, the president still somewhat reneged on that.
Rod did send us their family members and friends but the ones who were soldiers and able-bodied to do hard labor or be conscripted were left behind.
I would already find it uncomfortable ‘buying’ people to add into my fold, but getting the basket of fruits that had been cherry-picked made me lose good faith with the president by a bit.
Granted he’d given us the bigger slice of the cake from our first few deals, but if this was his way of telling us he wanted the bigger slice now, he should’ve just been upfront about it. I would’ve been able to understand and realize where he was coming from but this thing plus the first set of problems he sent me by sending prisoners to get executed by his own men were deals in bad faith.
It was because he sent us just a rabble of men and women, elderly, and a bunch of kids, and some of them needed certain types of medicine and treatment for their conditions, unable to perform normal tasks due to age, and some were just a pain in the ass to talk to and work with.
Furthermore, some of them weren’t even related to Morales and his men yet they were treated as ‘bonuses’.
Sure, there was a handful of people that were ‘normal’ or even slightly above ‘normal’, but as bad as this would sound, it was like spending a fortune on several gacha draws and only getting a couple of blue-rarity items and a few green-rarity items with the remaining bunch just an overwhelming white-rarity and trash items.
It would really have been understandable if he was upfront about what he was about to do but doing this was just screwing us over.
One of the reasons that we had a deal like this was to remove the shackles the president had on Morales and his men by taking in all of their family and friends in this island group, but since he still kept a number of them in Mindanao, this arrangement almost had been for naught.
In any case, this was the hand that we’ve been dealt with, and crying about it wasn’t gonna make it better.
The influx of new people we received would be another challenge in itself but I got another trustworthy group to help me with that.
But before we assign them their permanent homes, we still needed to process them.
I assigned Rin to bring a group of people to create new records for them and if they brought identifying documents, they would be added to the file we would create for them. A simple name wasn’t enough because we at least need to know a bit of their background and history, and since everyone was required to contribute even a little bit, we needed to know what they were good at.
“M-Marlon Santiago?” 𝐧𝗈𝓥𝓮𝑙𝗇𝑒xt.𝑐𝑶𝕞
“Yes, that’s me…”
“How old are you?”
“T-Twenty… Twenty-nine…”
“You wrote on this paper that you used to work as a part-time dishwasher and a part-time cook in your old school.”
“Yes…”
“Oh? Can you tell me a few dishes you’re great at cooking?”
“U-Umm… I dunno if great is the right word but I make decent rice porridge and I can bake some bread… S-Simple things… really…”
“I see, that’s great! And when this thing started, you retained your old job and been doing the same thing ever since in your encampment?”
“Yes…”
“I see. We’d love to have another hand at our kitchen in this DDR Camp but are there other things you are also good at?”
“N-Not really… Well… I never b-burn our f-food and I could also make something o-out of leftovers… It should be a given but…”
“Marlon.”
“Y-Yes?”
“How many people are you feeding every single day?”
“A f-few hundred?”
“Then that’s amazing already. If you stay with us, you’d be one of our cooks, alright?”
“Y-Yes, thank you…”
“Okay, then. Next is…”
It was kinda funny to see Rin struggle with keeping her reactions in check but I’d have to let her do this job so she’d serve as a great example to others.
After this step, they’d be processed by either our medical staff to give them examinations to create their medical records or be given a psych eval by Marisha with the assistance of Kaley.
A nurse walked out carrying a clipboard, “Excuse me~ Please follow this line of chairs and please let our elderly be the first in line. We have four lines in total and if you want to get your psych evals done first, it’s the other line behind that jeep. If we keep things orderly, we’d be done in a bit, okay?”
“Okay…”
“Sure.”
“Yes, sir…”
“Great! Let’s start with Melinda Ramirez? Melinda?”
It almost took the whole day to process all 300+ of our new residents and since we can’t just make them bunk in any of our places because of their number, we opened up the barangay of Coloong as their temporary or permanent place they’d lay their heads on. It was because only a third of them would remain in our city because they’d be split up between me, Morales, and Iskoh.
In regards to the elderly, they were given rooms either in our DDR Camp or extremely close to avoid unnecessary problems. Even if they had a soldier or two for family, some of them were still living alone. However, if they had neighbors who wanted to take them in because it was their arrangement before, I wouldn’t object to that.
With that said, the security we had in our place extended over Coloong and a few volunteers decided it would be better if they also moved to that place so they wouldn’t drive around just to be in their shifts.
Furthermore, the main roadblock we placed over there would soon be reinforced like our other checkpoints to ensure the safety of everyone living in that area. I was afraid to spread our forces too thin but just a barangay’s worth plus a couple of checkpoints would be just fine.
Well, this happening prompted a few homeowners who were living with other families to once again ask for permission to live in their old homes, and this time, I allowed it if they had a house in that area.
With that said, I even allowed a few that wanted to relocate in the same area because not only it would help decongest the houses they were in, it would be on them to form a great relationship with their new neighbors.
It was a given that our compound, Woodlands, and our DDR Camp would extend their hands but sometimes, it was better to not overwhelm others too much.
In any case, most of what they did on the first day were the examinations they had to go through but when the sun went down, I organized the meeting to be held in our DDR Camp to officially welcome them and give them a brief orientation about the place we’re running.
I gave them our meal times, rules at night, things to do when submitting a request, class schedules, our different radio channels, how we take care of wastes, light protocols, emergency protocols, and etc.
“Wait, we got electricity at all times?”
“If we don’t abuse it, yes.”
“And even clean water?”
“Each house has their own water tank to take care of and you could either boil them or run them through one of our DIY filters so you’d be sure. But yeah, we got clean water running through our pipes with the help of another military camp protecting the dams.”
“Is the food you gave us good for a month?”
“What? No. That’s for emergencies. We’re never short on food because we try our best to be self-sustaining. You can start tomorrow or any other day to start growing food in your backyard but we still share everything…”
“…”
“Any more questions?”
“N-No…”
It was safe to say they were surprised at how we run things differently and even if they had to start from scratch once again, they’d be doing it with a safer and more forgiving environment with their close friends and family, except for the ones still in Mindanao.
They weren’t given any tasks yet but we’d slowly integrate them the moment their test results came back.
All they did on the second day was to mingle or observe our working force and non-working force, and they were free to offer help or ask about things they might be able to give a hand with. However, since they were kinda the ‘B’ team or even the ‘C’ team, the best they could do for now was offer an extra hand while still needing to be given supervision.
Almost half of them were out of their element but I believe that all they need was more time.
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