Oscar’s and my final day proved to be an excellent one.

We got to the site early and even though it was Sunday, work is well under way. The crew had managed to round up a generator and a drill and by the time we arrived, they were already on the roof with the steel girders prepped. As we walked the site it quickly became obvious that teachers had been prepping classrooms for Monday am students. They are expecting 200 students on Monday up from 12 on Friday – not bad for a weekend.

In addition, men were repairing the roof of the comfort room (toilet). In typical Filipino style, they made careful choices recycling old roofing for the toilet so they could maximize the use of the good new roofing for the classrooms.

Barry went with Rudy, the lead carpenter, to survey the rooms one at a time and develop a budget and I gave them space to do so and develop a bond. I went to the nearest junk pile and pulled all the usable wood from the pile for re-use – the sun was really hot.

Oscar wanted to develop a project he could do with the kids. He chose to repaint the comfort room and despite complaints from the principal that it was embarrassing to her to have us do that KIND of work, off he went with a line of kids trailing behind him.

In no time, his shirt was off and he had it on his head like a bandanna. As we each did our own thing you could not help but chuckle at the wailing laughter coming from his project. As soon as I came near the project, the kids grabbed me and said – you are tall and put me to work painting the walls near the ceiling. It was funny, three 7th grade girlfriends quickly took the lead and from that point on they ran the show. The boys mostly watched from the sidelines. If you handed them a brush, they looked for the first person they could hand if off to, they did so and went to the sidelines to watch.

In all, everyone had a really great time and when the kids put paint on their hands and started making hand prints you could really start to see Oscars vision paying dividends.

At about this point the weekly truck arrived from Doctors without Borders to refill the fresh water bladder that had been placed at the school to provide clean drinking water to the community. Shortly thereafter a team from department of health arrived to test the “clean” water only to find that it was at the borderline and needed additives to make it safe.

We had invited Joel, the head of the Tacloban Rotary club to visit and he brought his treasurer who has a background in engineering. We toured the facility and made a list of items we needed which he agreed to try to get for us through the rotary or the local government. He is very sweet but looks like a Filipino Fred Flintstone – very nice but it is hard to imagine he will come through on the commitments he has made.

As we completed the tour, Joel went to his car to bring the relief supplies he had brought. This amounted to about 8 small plastic bags with some goods inside.

As we sat talking about our collaboration, the Barangay Captain arrived carrying a Lechon for Sunday brunch. It was still steaming. It had been slaughtered that morning and she had been cooking it on the spit all day. While I know Lechon on Sunday is common and while it was unsaid, I cannot help but think it was a celebration because it was Oscar’s and my last day.

Lunch was shared with everyone on the site from our driver to the workmen to the children (and even the stray dogs took scraps).

After lunch we went to check on how Oscar and the children were doing in the bathroom and yes, unsupervised they had painted the toilet itself and yes they had painted themselves but they had fun and while it was not totally finished, it was a very good job. In this, like everything else, all was utilized. Even the empty plastic paint cans were considered a prize. They were cleaned and brought home to help in household chores.

The girls were especially curious and slowly they started asking questions about America, me, my family and why I had come.

They wanted to share their stories of first the earthquake in October, then as one girl put it, she left Cebu to Tacloban and Yolanda, the typhoon welcomed her in November. They asked to see pictures of my family and when I showed them I was literally swarmed because everyone wanted to see.

As we talked more they expressed hopelessness in comments like they “would never see America” because they have nothing and the future looks so bleak. Fighting the tears I reminded them of what they had just overcome and how lucky they were to have come through it with their families. That I had many Filipino friends in America and that it would take some time to get over the crisis but there was no reason to think it could not happen one day.

They are so lovely, trying so hard to leave the tragedy behind them, ready only to move forward to the next step and not looking back. Their smiles and laughter could fill the biggest room.

We spent some more time at the school getting everything buttoned up and just after dark we took Barry down the road so we could see the principals brothers house where he would be staying. It was dark because he had loaned his generator to the school for the drills and it had not come back yet.

The house is simple but adequate. They gave Barry a choice of a bedroom on the first or second floor and told him they usually run the generator until about 10pm.

As we walked downstairs, a truck arrived with 15 pigs which had come to be slaughtered. (The principal) Adelina’s Brother slaughters them and preps them for sale.

As we head back to Tacloban for our last night there are minimal new signs of life – a few more lights on in communities and an extra strand of Christmas lights can be seen.

As Oscar sleeps, Barry and I go through the budget and finances for the upcoming week, pay our staff and meet with the nun who has been our host during our time in Tacloban and Dagami.

Finally just after midnight I get to bed to get a few hours sleep before our 4am departure.

12/16
We wake and pack in the dark. As our van pulls out of the Hospital parking lot we note that the streets are full of people at 4am. It takes us a moment to realize they are on their way to dawn mass, the start of the Christmas celebrations.

When we arrive at the airport it is dark and quiet. Eventually, a line forms and we proceed very slowly in the dark to a make shift counter of folding tables on a platform made of shipping pallets. The airport is just destroyed and there is no obvious reason it should be so bad. Even the chairs are broken- you have a choice of sitting on a chair facing way too far forward or so far back you are lying down with your legs in the air dependent on whether the front or rear legs of the chair set you are on has the front or rear legs snapped off.

We say goodbye to our driver and guard – our constant companions for the prior 9 days and wish Barry well for the next week he will spend watching over our baby.

In an archaic boarding process we eventually make our way to one of the two planes on the tarmac – each has arrived 30 minutes late.

As we arrive in Manila, the watchband that Barry repaired with some borrowed glue when we were last here snaps again and I can see we have come full circle.

I cannot help but feel that the scale of the emergency is not understood here. Many of the comments that made their way to us at the eye of the storm are just so far off – there is no way they fully comprehend what is going on at their southern shores. And if its not understood here, the international community can have no sense that there is no way the country will fully recover for 5 years or more. (It takes 7 years to grow a mature coconut tree and that industry – one of their biggest – has been destroyed as well).

In an archaic boarding process we eventually make our way to one of the two planes on the tarmac – each has arrived 30 minutes late. As the plane taxied in we noted about 12 stray dogs on the tarmac and the large jet had to avoid them as they ran next to and barked at the tires the way they might do with a car.

I realized that I left out one item last night.

When we were in San Jose Barangay we were stopped by a woman who clearly wanted to talk on camera.

She lives in Germany but keeps a country house here. She makes a big deal of herself comparing her humanitarian efforts to those of Immelda Marcos, but “she did it first”. She talked about art and culture and tells us she was the first person to put a house on the shore of the water as if that too was her idea.

When talking about the arts, her feeling was “give typewriters to the monkeys and eventually you will find Shakespeare”. Clearly she is a complex woman.

There are a lot of questions about the Tacloban looting of non-essential items like TVs etc. The military told us that people just got caught up in the momentum. She said it is not in the nature of the Taclobani people to be looters so obviously the people from Samar – another Island reached by a bridge – THEY came to Tacloban and looted the stores and brought it back to Samar with them. Interestingly these materials are on sale on the streets of Tacloban and not Samar…

My favorite of her comments was when she told us that clearly the typhoon was the first test of a man made weather machine designed to devastate a community as an act of war. She could understand that, but she did not understand why it was used here when there are so many really awful places it could have done some good.

Clearly she is a bit off, but she also comes from a life of privilege. Even as she sits in her destroyed house and talks of all the art and possessions she lost, she starts to cry as she directs the cleaning of her house by the staff she has left and drops vague hints to us of the overwhelming need and also of her specific needs to restore HER home and HER art. She is not living at her house. She is staying with friends whose home fared better and where there is a maid.

All this sounds very negative and it is a good depiction of the struggles of the lower upper class – here a woman who had a lot, whose husband had passed before the storm and who was making it work just barely who is now totally crushed.

And yet, as you look across the simple home, like everything around it, he home and the life she had there is just gone and you cannot help to feel for her as she manages her own struggle – although different from others – her struggle is no less devastating.

Our day began trying to get internet so we could print out a legal agreement to limit our liability with the school but Wi-Fi had become such a challenge we had to wait until we could go to a local cafe to get a signal. The whole process of getting up and running and reviewing and editing that document ate up our morning. Next we went to the warehouse to get more supplies and finally we departed for the airport.

As you may remember, Barry will be staying on to Shepherd the project through until Christmas. To ensure he has no trouble getting his flight out, we decided to go to the airport and put a physical ticket in his hand. The trip there is in a direction we had not been and both because this is the route all NGOs and military took to the city and also because the barangay of San Jose is large and very hard hit (it has water on both sides so they got hit from both), the route to the airport looks more like a relief zone than anywhere else we have seen.

There are large areas of army tents, IDP camps (for displaced persons) and lots of relief tents and camps in general. The airport claims to be open but just barely – traffic until very recently was only served using military C130s on which you can get free seats on by booking them through the UN, but they are totally unreliable. Commercial service has just been restored and is preformed from makeshift terminal areas. As soon as we arrived we were informed that they don’t sell any kind of tickets and they only deal with same day passengers so the trip was useless and totally wasted. Nonetheless, on the way back we made the best of the trip and did some very interesting interviews with Philippine military personnel and at the camps in the area.

By the time we got to the school it was after noon. As soon as we arrived we saw that the principal had been cracking her whip. In only one day since we delivered the new roofing materials, the roof of the entire library and guidance building had been removed and replaced, there were two full crews of workers hard at work on two other rooftops and additional collecting and stacking was also evident.

Despite the fact that we had made a last minute visit to the warehouse for supplies so we would have them before the warehouse closed for Sunday, as soon as we arrived the principal asked us if we could get tex screws to attach the roof to the buildings that had steel trusses. We wished she had just called one of our cell phones to tell us earlier, since we had just left the warehouse and could have easily purchased them. We initially made the decision to delay the steel trusses to the end since they require power and power tools but the principal tells us she can get access to a generator and a drill with the right bit – this surprised us all.

Anyway, just as Lunch is being served, we begin discussing the problem – fully aware that it might be considered an offense to keep the lunch they made for us waiting, we make the call that getting the trip to Tacloban in place early enough that it can be done, takes the highest priority. We considered every way to get the materials from Tacloban to us without wasting a trip in the van which wastes too much fuel. We thought we had a solution using a motorcycle with a sidecar, but the discussions of how to do it were taking up so much time that Oscar decided to take our driver and go himself while Barry and I stayed to do a survey of the buildings and their needs.

The project is moving forward very well and we are all very excited to see the development of the roofing. As a result of our efforts, they are making plans to have 200 students in class on Monday – this is only 1/6 of the school, but more than 10x the number that came to school on the Friday when we started. Barry and I took on the principals office as well – the primary deterrent there is fallen sheetrock so we make an effort to remove all the pieces that are hanging down to make it more usable.

The good nature of the workers and smiles and games the children in the neighborhood and from the school play keeps everyone invigorated. There is no end to the upbeat attitude and the happiness is infectious. As we are wrapping up and paying the workers for their long day – 400 pesos ($9) for a lead carpenter and 200 (4.50) for a days work, I compliment the principal on having saved so many books from her library. She tells me they are in the office of the guidance counselor for the school. He is the only staffmember who lost his life in the storm (remember the school is not near the coast). When he left, the last time she saw him, she warned him not to go to his house near the shore, she told him there was no protection and he told her it would be OK. When the first wave hit, the falling lumber knocked him out and he was found amount the dead along with other members of his family. It is clear that they were close and as she begins to cry, we quickly change the subject and move to something else.

We are hoping we have a handle on lumber we will need for the project and will try and source that our tomorrow when everyone returns from Church.

After a long day we raced back to Tacloban winding through the dark dark communities which are lit only by the occasional fire of a burning pile of debris or family cooking dinner over the fire. A highlight of the trip home was when we spotted a tricycle (basically a motorcycle with a sidecar) driving home and in the sidecar was a huge pig probably on its way to slaughter.

Another high note on the trip back was I saw my first and only strand of Christmas lights – a lonely white strand on an otherwise blacked out backdrop. In the car ride home we realize that despite all our efforts to get the Tex screws so they can begin putting the roof back on the 4 classrooms in these 2 buildings, due to a miscommunication we did not get flat washers which will help to ensure the roof stays on in the next big storm. That store is now closed and we are stuck until we can get more on Monday.

Next, Barry and I spent the evening budgeting and discussing our plans for the coming week. Despite the fact that some boys from Manila had shown up, promised to help with funding, promised to provide labor and relief to the school, and then after only one day they are no where to be found and the entire scope of their charity was their having paid less than $100 in wages and taking some pictures to make themselves feel good. We resign ourselves to making up payroll from our own budget – this had been our original plan anyway but it would have been nice to redirect those funds to materials if the other offer were genuine.

We end the day as it started, trying to get Barry’s ticket home – first from our room using the wifi from a cell tower and when that fails we go to an internet cafe/Filipino restaurant just before closing. Despite a much stronger signal we cannot get the site to work and finally give up after almost 2 hours of trying. Luckily when we get back to our room, we must have caught a low volume moment and we were actually able to get his ticket purchased by just before 11pm.

The school is progressing well and we have confirmation that a full crew of workers is coming tomorrow, Sunday – which is by no means a guarantee in this country. We know we are pushing them, perhaps too hard, but we need to be aggressive to get the kids back in school and they all understand our motivation comes from a good place.

First let me apologize for last night’s blog. The days are very long and last night in particular it was very late when I started writing and literally fell asleep while typing 4 times – what I did not know was that in this situation, my hands keep typing, sometimes a sentence or more and the content can be really bizarre. Fortunately my proofing caught the really big errors but I was not at my best…

After I finished writing last night, we ran into the Sister Elisa who has been our benefactor and host at the Divine Word Hospital. It was late at night and although she runs ancillary services here, she was on our floor to finish setting up a room for an incoming guest. We were glad to see her because for all our time here we had been trying to get her some medicine, especially anesthesia that she needs, her typical vendors cannot currently provide it and since hers is a private Hospital, she cannot go to the department of Health.

Sadly, we have been unsuccessful at getting her what she needs because it is tricky to acquire these meds in a country whose basic systems are still very much in place. It is a sign of the health of the country that it is not possible to just end run the system and get what you want. Our impromptu meeting was to inform her that we had failed and to discuss what else we could do to help her as she had helped us. Her only idea is for us to repair a roof that runs the length of the large hospital and that is beyond our capabilities so we will need to be creative.

This morning, with only 3 hours of sleep under my belt, we started our day meeting with Ricky Yeo and his counterparts from Tram Trade, an Engineering, Architecture and Contracting company based near Manila. When we left the school on Thursday night, we were frustrated at the limited resources they had to assist with engineering decisions. They have strong carpenters on the ground but no one to do the real design that is necessary in a number of the buildings – especially the ones that are only a year old – were put in by the government and were literally destroyed in the storm.

We truly stumbled upon Ricky and his friends because we were seated at adjoining tables at Dinner – they just looked like Engineers, we asked them if they were and after a really short conversation they agreed to join us in a trip to the school this next morning – just as a favor and to help out.

At 7am this morning we all met for coffee. We at HELP had a few errands to do in Tacloban before heading out and our new friends were incredibly gracious in helping us and giving us the time to complete them. They joined us at the lumber yard where we paid for our roofing materials, waited for me to get an incoming wire of donor funds and then drove us to the site to allow Oscar to take delivery of the building materials – all of it took much longer than anticipated and by the time Barry and I stuffed into their small car to leave the van behind for Oscar, it was already almost 11:30am.

One of our delays was related to a money order we collected – the bank returned the money in small bills so we are carrying around a true sack of $.

Ricky took his time reviewing each structure and gave us notes, suggestions and drawings where necessary to describe his suggestions for the renovations and he and his friends left with just enough time for them to get to the airport for their flights home. After Ricky left, we had a quick lunch, the truck with the sheets arrived and began delivery and we left in search of lumber to rebuild trusses and purlins lost in the storm.

When we were done we needed to return to Tacloban as ABS news had called and asked for an interview so at 3pm we were back at our hospital home doing the interview which we hope is now running on Filipino TV.

With the blessing of all of the investors we started our day with a meeting with the Rotarian who brought us the project, the head of the Dagami school and one of its teachers. We asked them a lot of questions and they had all the right answers. The principal assured us this is her project and she will steer it forward aggressively, she told us she would have day laborers start immediately and assured us that she would have a crew at work by the time we go to her school. She was confident she could get the skilled labor she needs and would have them lined up and sure enough, when we arrived at the school later in the day, this was all true. There was a large group of assembled worker and big piles of removed debris, fires burning all over campus to get rid of debris which had no value. As requested, she had the town engineer there to meet us, she had her carpenter handyman there to answer questions and her security guard there to ensure the safe placement of our supplies.

It was a very rainy afternoon but we spent the time unloading the nails we donated to the school and storing them in the locked computer room, we cleared a second room for lockable building supplies, Barry started working with the crew that was assembled and I walked the site with the engineer to discuss the requirements (she will present a report to us by Wednesday). Finally, two more westernized Filipinos met us there to say they were a motorcycle club who had raised money for the emergency and were there to contribute to the project. They offered to pay the day laborers from their pocket and also suggested they had a mobile lumber factory to help us cut lumber from downed coconut trees. In all the day at the school was very productive and the enthusiasm was exciting.

I pitched the project to Manny Dizon who said we should steer clear of schools but it is a big priority for us. His point was the school system is very good, has funding and will get to there issues quickly. His point was to do what it takes to get a real roof on and let the school dry out. Once dry he feels we should rely on the government and school system to provide for their own needs and he feels it is forthcoming – not to be pessimistic, I think it is still coming but very close. As always it was very useful information and suggests that maybe we should scale back the project to make it about the roofs alone

Before we went to the school, we went with Gilbert to meet the head of a local hardware store – although once we got inside we could see the owner was quite smart and has sufficient inventory, you would never know it from the street where his store is effectively boarded up.

Remarkably, he even has some GI Sheets – the local name for corrugated metal in Tacloban. He was willing to sell us 500 of the 800 we have been told we need and while his price is higher than Cebu, we can start working with the Tacloban materials tomorrow and to get them from Cebu is a big, complicated and expensive process so it is worth a small premium to get them here.

It is important to get an engineer of sorts to reflect on the project as there is only one chance to do what is needed. Funny enough, gregarious Oscar saw a guy at a table near ours in the local restaurant. He just sat down and said who is an engineer and the conversation and our story got the guy to agree to come with us to the school and give us some free consulting.

Tomorrow will be a very busy day at the new development – we have lined up skilled staff unskilled staff and will be on site early to coordinate with the man from the engineering firm. We are simultaneously working on camp lights since town power is still down and our Generator cannot carry the load.

We started our day back in Tolosa with the Marcos group. We had coordinated a medical mission to join us there to see patients and we spent our morning looking over the work we initiated the prior day to close the roof of one of the schoolhouses so it could be used as a medical clinic for the day. Next we set up the clinic and pharmacy and several waiting areas to help cue up the 150 patients that would be seen that day.

Once that was all in order we attended to the children of the community. This entailed some reading to the young class, some singing and as we did so it became obvious that one boy was keeping to himself – not smiling, not even participating. Oscar noticed it first and took the time to engage him one on one by drawing pictures with him. It was obvious he was traumatized but all we could do was to give him more individualized attention and it just was not enough – it was obvious he will need much more help…

When it became clear the Muslim charity’s, relief teacher was ready for a break, Oscar proposed an outside game that the kids will remember for years. Half gym teacher, half clown, he lined them up across a field, boys on one side and girls the other – he had them count off – 19 per side and started the simplest game where a handkerchief is held in the center and when your number is called, you run to the center and grab it before your opponent can and run to your side without getting tapped out. A simple enough game but one which had the children wailing in laughter due to the game itself and Oscar’s hysterical antics.

At a point the cranky doctors insisted that we stop the game because all the laughter was making it difficult for them to speak to their patients – totally missing the point that the smiling kids was a cure of its own and was freeing up the parents to be seen.

After lunch we had agreed to move south to see a community and a school project proposed by a member of the Rotary club who we had met earlier in the week.

On our way, Oscar stepped out of the van to have a smoke and met this incredible family who had created a “storefront” at the edge of the street while living out of a neighbors house after their house washed away entirely. Edith, Joel, Joelma and 7 year old ? now live at the side of the road with their pig in a borrowed space and no idea what the future will bring for them, and yet – like everyone we meet here – they are nothing but smiles, they invite us in to show us their “home”, their pig and where there house once was. They are as interested in our lives as we are in theirs and ask for nothing, but they let us give them our PB&J sandwich, take a mosquito net for the children, who have none and they let us overpay for cigarettes and beer while throwing in a free energy drink because they are guilty for the overpayment.

Gilbert, the Rotarian met us in the town of Degami which is south of both Tolosa and 1 hour South of Tacloban. Degami is a primarily agricultural based community (rice, corn, coconut, and banana) with over 35,000 people and an average family size of 5. Nearly 40% of the population are children, 56% are in the active workforce and with over 50% of the community living under the poverty level, the average annual family income is only $1,045. Over 70% of the schools in the southern Philippines are said to have been badly damaged – this number came from a contact with no backup but it does match our experience – I have not yet seen a single school without serious needs. Dagami supports its nearly 8,000 students in 33 elementary schools and 4 high schools.

Gilbert brought us to the St. Mesa National High School which is the largest in the municipality with over 1,300 students in 26 classrooms and a student to teacher ratio of 1:48 which slightly exceeds the 1:40 recommendation but St. Mesa also has the most teachers in the region. The storm has rendered 21 of the 26 classrooms unusable because they have no roof or the walls, windows and doors have been damaged.

The school itself is really pretty incredible – maybe its because it is such a large facility, In addition to the typical classrooms, it has a computer lab, a music room an outdoor assembly area and even a canteen and a caged area where they keep and store butterflies.

Gilbert’s connection to the facility is that his father donated the land and was responsible for the original construction of the facility when his Dad was Mayor more than two decades ago. Gilbert feels a serious commitment to bringing the school back to its former condition. He describes himself as a farmer, Rotarian and even a contractor. He has committed himself to overseeing the project from start to finish.

I have also asked Gilbert to see if the Rotary club will match our donations and while I think I can get them to contribute some materials, I do not think I will get more than that and it will not be of great value.

I am getting tighter numbers on the materials costs and I have already warned Gilbert that I need his commitment to oversee the project. With respect to US oversight of the project, Oscar will be back in Italy and I have commitments in the States including a potential job starting at the end of this month, but Barry Frishman (one of our team members) is willing to stay in country until the 22nd to oversee and move the project forward. He then has tickets to go home for the holidays but I have asked him if he would be willing to come back after New Years to see the project through to completion. In addition, I am willing to return in January to ensure the timely completion of the project.

With respect to Gilbert, I cannot say that I have a strong relationship and he is a simple man, but I was referred to him by strong contacts at the Rotary club which is heavily respected here, his Dad was a former Mayor, when we went into town hall to meet the current Mayor, a number of people including police put their hands on his head and bowed slightly as he passed as a sign of great respect, and when we arrived at the Mayor’s office unannounced, he was welcomed in and we were given strong attention.

If you ask why this project and why this school, my answer is not that I have any special connection to this one and it is true that many many schools need this kind of help but we need to start somewhere. This is a meaningful place in a small community that is far enough off the beaten track that no one else will help if we don’t, having a Rotarian at the helm, access to families of 1,300 students to help in the cleanup and labor of construction, hopefully Barry Frishman will be willing to spend up to 8 weeks overseeing the project and my willingness to participate from afar and fly in as the project nears completion, I think this is a winning approach and would allow us to make a meaningful difference in the life of this community.

If I cannot raise the additional funds or if the logistics of the larger project prove to be too onerous, my plan will be to use our remaining time for the distribution of the materials we still have in our van to individual people in need, we will make a donation to the hospital which has been our home for our time here and which is looking for $ for needed meds and I will fund a much smaller project already underway with another Rotarian in the city of Ormoc. The difference would be that in that circumstance we would be one of several donors and we would not control the project as we would in Dagami.

On our way home from the school, we passed a church we have passed several times before but never had time to stop. It is notable because of the number of new graves in front. We stopped, went in to see the mass and took a moment to look at the graves – many were children and next to the burning candles were favorite toys, notes and other remembrances. It was dusk, there were candles at most of the gravesites and as we stood there reflecting, it became too much for seasoned disaster veteran Barry who broke into tears. It can be overwhelming when you look into the smiling faces and consider their pain, they have lost homes, loved ones, in some cases all their possessions and when you look around – there is no hope in sight – you can only plan in baby steps because it is truly impossible to imagine a solution here that is not a decade or more from now.

In the morning we visited the Astrodome where people initially fled the storm waters of the surge and where many people died in the early days of the storm. Much has changed and while the stadium is still surrounded by a virtual tent city made up of wood scraps and tarps of any kind, the center itself mostly empty, very few people are living there and one might even call it clean.

We entered one of these makeshift tents to talk with its owner. As usual, the matriarch runs the family and this old woman told us that she had a house up the coast and when it was destroyed, the government moved her to her spot near the Dome where her family built the tented space where we met. Despite having a ceiling that is only 3′ high, her home is reasonably well put together and contains, a couple bags of rice and all of the possessions of all 8 of the inhabitants of this tiny space. She told us that while she does not like being at the Dome, it is better than living in the war zone of her prior home and now she and her grandchildren receive acceptable rations of food which is distributed by the government and her grand children are reasonably healthy and have access to medical care.

We distributed some nails to the more active residents of the dome area who were tying to rebuild and after a couple of failed meeting attempts, we ended up at the RTR hospital later than we had planned. Our timing was interesting though because it coincided with Imee Marcos’ departure from a visit at the same hospital – Imee is the first child of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos and prior Governor of Llocos Northe. It has been over one month since the disaster and none of the Marcos family have visited this area which is the site of their family home. The people had been asking where they were as their friends and neighbors were suffering – the only answer up to now was that Imelda was unable to come for health reasons and Imee was on her way to visit her old employees in Tolosa.

Imee arrived with her Singapore boyfriend Mark Chua. They arrived in Tacloban with 8-10 boxes of supplies, hammers, saws and tarps and promises to deliver thousands of sheets of plywood to help residents close their homes to the weather. Oscar got us invited to come along on her mission and an hour later we were part of her convoy.

Before our departure we shared Lunch at one of the Marcos homes, this one in Tacloban – fortunately it was completely untouched by the storm and is being used as Imee’s base of operations. Lunch was mostly social, but at one point Imee became especially animated in expressing her views about Aquino’s handling of the situation. She feels very strongly that the Aquino party is letting the southern areas (who are more loyal to Marcos) suffer on political grounds. In any case she had much to say about the incompetent handling of the disaster, identification of the dead, and provision of emergency services. She says that while the local governments know what needs to be done, all the resources are being held back by the national government.

There is a community (Barangy Olot) there where live the staff that supported the Marcos family two decades ago.

At the school, no different than the dozens of other nearby communities we have seen the devastation is terribly terribly sad. Of their 4 classroom buildings, only one has any part of its roof left and most of the classroom equipment is stacked high in a corner of what was once a classroom itself – all of it clearly unusable (and nearly unrecognizable as classroom furniture). Throughout our visit, members of the community are maintaining a burn pit which sends terrible smoke into the air which overtakes the entire community.

Imee has arrived with a few samples of the tools she has brought for the larger community, a docrtor who we provided, a team of her personal engineers and a several bodyguards. They have arranged in advance to hire a group of day laborers and while she and her group meet the town leaders, Barry and I go to the school where the engineers are measuring and the day laborers are already up on the roofs pulling back the damaged tin and securing those pieces that are still holding firm. Within minutes, Barry is in charge of the group and we start to erect a tarped waiting area for the medical clinic we are setting up for the next day. As we set up the center beam, I jump on a broken chair to hammer the post into the ground as my coworkers tell me I cannot get high enough to do so – since I have a good 24″ of height above them, they have misjudged and I do just what I say.

As we continue working we discover that the supplies Imee has brought are too small to protect the roof they are trying to secure. With a quick cross check between the partners we agree to contribute the roll of tarp materials we have been carrying from Cebu City and donate it to the newly established medical center. Dodging the rain which comes on and off in spurts of huge downpours, in only a few minutes, we have our tarp in place and the carpenters are well on their way to securing the structure that only a few minutes before seemed hopeless.

With the process well in hand we rejoin our convoy to go to our next stop which we assume is a second school – our plan is to return to collect the unused tarp material for donation to others and to ensure the momentum we have created, continues to the completion of the project.

We drive out of the main gates and are confused by the route of the vehicles we are following. They drive out the gate and go directly across the street and through another gate. It turns out that this is the entrance to the Marcos family compound where Imee grew up. It is clear the compound must have really been something when Ferdinand was in power but now it is just a huge field on the ocean and literally everything there as been completely destroyed. The main building was a stone structure which still stands, but literally everything else is totally gone and spread out over a few acre span of broken coconut trees and other debris.

The property is directly on the water bracketed on 2 sides by small mountains. The 8 -10 buildings of their lavish home were bracketed in between the two hills – one of which has a large statue of Jesus at the top (and the local residents remark was unscathed by the high winds and they credit the statue and their ability to hide in its shadow as the reason their lives were spared).

Imee and Mark tell us of their plan to use the property (which has been confiscated from the Marcos’ anyway) and use it (and her team of engineers) to develop the space for use as a community center or to store building supplies or something.

Imee leaves her engineers to visit additional area schools and ensure the momentum we started continues as we follow her back to Tacloban to meet with a baker about a large scale project to provide bread and home study materials to students. With only an occasional reference to what it is costing her, she explains that if the children can bring home food each day, it encourages them to go to school, gets them out of the house and gives parents the flexibility to rebuild and repair without distraction – in addition the home study materials provide options to those who have no school buildings available to them.

In the van ride back to the hotel we debrief with the doctor we have brought along from Medical Teams International and begin planning their establishment of a day clinic in the space we have created to attend to the medical needs of the community we served today. After a short meeting with their team at the RTL Hospital it is agreed that we will set up operations beginning on the morning of Dec 11 until all members of that community can be seen and served.

Next stop, dinner with the Marcos team. We have arranged to meet them for dinner and we have a very nice, totally social dinner with the group which has now expanded to include the Mayor of Tacloban. If this is not complicated enough, he has just come from a meeting where he has been asked to resign due to his “incompetent” handling of the disaster and that hearing was caught on hidden video and the very inappropriate tactics of the governing party have been exposed on youtube.

Since their Dinner had already been prepared at home before we made our plans, the Marcos group has brought their own food and even their own wait staff to the restaurant to supplement our meal there. Over Dinner, the mayor also describes his personal escape from the rising surge waters where he literally almost died a few times – it is really emotional and very personal.

Writing in the blind on Monday the 9th. Not sure when I will find any Wi-Fi so I will send when I can.

We started by packing out the van in front of our hotel in Cebu to organize our food and water for the next 10 days. We needed to fit all the construction supplies as well as our own supplies and still remain comfortable enough to sit for many long drives.

As we set to depart we got a call that the security guard we had contracted, backed out. Apparently he was scared off but our description that we did not have a hotel lined up and did not know where we would stay.

In order to get a van to the Island that Tacloban is on you go to a ferry terminal and for the 10pm departure especially with the emergency chaos does not come close to describing the scene. They have 8 or 9 boats all leaving and all needing to be loaded at once. There is only one road for the cars vans motorcycles and trucks to get in and it seems as if there is no organization at all. They are loading a combination of vehicles and loads of just pallets of supplies loaded with forklifts that are flying around in and out with no regard to the people milling about. Our van forgot to pay a tax so we ended up flying all around at the last min to get it done and board these overloaded shuttles back to the boat while our van and driver got on line. At this point it was 2 hours to departure and he was 40 to 50 trucks back on a line of trucks that was not moving at all and where everyone from trucks to motorcycles were jockeying for position leaving only centimeters to spare. Remarkably with some effort from our team in shifting vehicles to make room we backed our truck on the ferry and boarded ourselves. Now only minutes before departure we got notice that the agency had found a replacement guard who was arriving. Throughout the planning we have not been sure whether we need a guard but for $70 per day we made the decision to take one anyway.

We all boarded the boat. Overcrowded does not describe it. There are people everywhere. Three classes of service and each has a combination of chairs and cots. On the upstairs deck, in addition to cots packed densely and 3 high economy passengers have brought every fashion of hammocks and they are tied to everything that does not move for the 6 hour trip. Below decks we make our way to tourist class where we have rented bunks in the similarly equipped rooms below

It is a massive slumber party – everyone is smiling and helpful – they make fun of my size and say I won’t fit in the short bunks – they are right. (There is also a business class which has more AC and is a little more private). In general the boat is stuffed with bags and supplies everywhere you turn and porters making cents for each heavy load they carry on their backs and they are just piling it all wherever they can find a spot, higher and higher.

We end up at the makeshift bar and trade stories with locals who say its not as bad as all the stories you hear and read. We discuss the merits of stories we hear asking why people in Ormoc watched open broken factories full of supplies and prayed for owners or helped, where prisoners held in a barbed wire shack in Ormac came out and got on the roof of their cages to fix it after the storm but those in Tacloban began looting stealing or worse. Discussions between the dialects of why these people have morals and those don’t. What makes they different. The beginning signs of race and class disputes are evident but thoughtful all at the same time.

After we get the best info we can so we can plan we go back to the slumber party where most are already down for the count and crash as the boat pulls out only 1 hour late.

We arrive in Tacloban at 4am and there is a similar unload process to the one we just finished but eventually we are in the car. The damage is considerable and can be seen in the shadows as the sun starts to creep up.

Our host in Tacloban is the head of the rotary club here – her name is Twinkle.

Despite our protests that it is only 5am Twinkle insists that we come to her house for breakfast despite the hour. She sends a car to meet us and show us the way and when we arrive it is obvious they are barely awake but staff have already set up a breakfast of eggs, corned beef hash and rice and we discuss the situation with us in our NGO outfits (apparently I look like a fireman because throughout my time here all the wonderful sweet children keep asking me where is my hose) and them in their pajamas.

After a bucket shower of cold water (their house is in OK repair after a bunch of work replacing blown out windows and much of their tile roof has come off but the sheathing below is mostly intact so only 1/3 of the interior has been replaced with new sheetrock).

With everyone cleaned up we pack into our overloaded van so she can give us a tour of the town of Ormoc. While Tacloban has gotten all the attention Ormoc is still devastated and we sit there wondering how the USAID guy could have told us the emergency is over. It is true that no one is dead in the streets as had been the case only 2 weeks before but there are no trees, buildings have no windows, roofs everywhere are peeled up ominously into the sky and even the concrete churches and stadiums are pure wreckage – everywhere you look.

Twinkle takes us first to a wealthy gated community so we can see that no one was spared, that even with money and resources there are shells of homes and of lives everywhere. Houses where entire sides are open to the elements and everything is a huge mess. As you look through the wreckage invariably you see a Virgin Mary or baby Jesus just barely hanging on in the walls of the decimated structures.

Now we go to a school – the first of 3 we saw – it is Sunday so there are no classes but school is back in session 6 days a week – the school has 2 of its 12 classrooms intact so they load the already 50 student classes and double up so elementary kids go 3 days and older ones take the next 3 so they can share the available space.

The destroyed classrooms sit there missing a wall or more and most open to the sky. Everywhere are books sitting in the sun desperately trying to dry.

Everywhere we go we are mobbed by kids. Yes there is some begging but Oscar does a magic trick or two, we make a connection or eye contact or talk to them and immediately they forget their begging and smile smile smile. They are so incredibly sweet and innocent. Despite all they have been through, as you pass people in the streets – all it takes is a smile from you and you get one back and they are ready to talk, to ask our story and tell us theirs. No one is asking for anything just happy for the attention and the help it might bring to shine a light on it.

From the school we come to an enormous church. The entire structure is destroyed and next to it the congregation has pulled out all the concrete pews and moved the to a field nearby where they fashioned an altar capped by statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary saved from the skeleton of the church nearby. Above is a bamboo structure and all was created immediately following the storm by the congregation. Mass has just ended and hordes of parishioners are heading home after the morning prayer. We interview the pastor who tells us in the month that has passed, we are the only westerners who have even stopped to ask him a question.

We have arranged Sunday lunch with Manny’s cousin Rosie who has a farm nearby. Her farm is near the coast where you can see the only remaining warship off coast. The Australians are still here with their engineers rebuilding and visible. All other forces have pulled back and the report is that while the Americans were the dominant force, they are referred to as ghosts. Loads and loads of relief supplies dropped by helicopters all over the region but no troops on the ground and no direct services.

It is a simple place and in her yard Rosie has set up an assembly line for 100 relief pack for her farmer staff of 80 – sardines, rice, school books pencils canned goods mosquito nets. She has been making such packs every week in the month since the disaster. She gets the supplies in Cebu, loads trucks with these supplies and building products and tools and brings them over to distribute each week.

Our crew of 8 are the last minute guests for her fantastic Sunday dinner consisting of Lechon (a large roast pig done over a pit like only a Filipino knows how to do with crunchy crunch skin), fried chicken, rice and sandwiches of chicken and asparagus.

After Lunch we are forced to get on the road because it is imperative that we arrive in Tacloban before dark and especially before curfew.

Not surprisingly on the long almost 3 hour trip gets progressively worse, but the roads are mostly clear. We stop here and there when we see an especially frustrating scene but for the most part we continue till we reach the town of Palo where the eye of the storm hit. Everything is flattened and their church and municipal buildings are enormous structures but their roofs are entirely gone. This is the first sign we have seen of ANY NGO presence. Palo lost 1,000 people alone and everyone is on their way to the shelled out chapel for a remembrance service commemorating the 1 month anniversary. There must be 500 people crammed into the chapel.

As we walk the streets there are people trying desperately to recapture their lives, using anything they can find to cover a hole and stop a leak. We pass a truck labeled – “do not touch this is my home” crudely painted in black spray paint on the red van. Across the way we meet men working on their fighting cock – a four year champion – sharpening its talons for a fight that evening.

As we return to the van we see a large group approaching with lots of umbrellas – a funeral procession following a van down the road.

On our way once again, we finally arrive in Tacloban – a much larger city and the signs of devastation are everywhere. From concrete structures on down there is damage on every street and entire swatches of the city are just missing. Once again we hear the words of USAID telling us the emergency is over and we see it could not be further from the truth.

We are on our way to Sacred Heart school where Oscar has been told we can camp out for the night. We stop at a hotel and see our first relief workers of the trip – a couple of young girls surrounded by kids.

We inquire at a hotel and their next availability is a month out. We continue. On arrival at Sacred Heart we are handed 5 mosquito nets and shown to a sad looking classroom with nothing in the room and we are told the room can be ours. They tell us the bathrooms are dead but show us a hose we can use to get water for bucket showers. They think they can get us a few clean blankets and we can pull our van behind the steel fence for security.

We make our plans and decide to check out the hospital space Manny has arranged for the 5 of us. None of us are excited about the health prospects of living in the hospital but we proceed.

We met Sister Elisa who guides us up 4 flights of dark stairs. She tells us she has 30 beds of her 160 full but the good news is that town power has just returned (this is amazing based on what we have seen and the fact that the rest of the town is dark). As we reach the third floor she opens the door to a room and we discover it has 2 beds, a bathroom with running water and even AC. This room will be great for our driver JR and security guard Roly. then later in same paragraph, “on the 4th floor… “can hold the remaining 3 members of our team We continue to an “apartment” on the 4th that can hold the three members of our team with 2 beds, a bath and even limited AC.

It is shocking. We were planning on camping out on the floor with no light or power of any kind. Mosquitoes and even running water would have been a huge concern. We ended in a room where we can really make a base of Operations.

We get our stuff and even find a spot to set up our camping stove so we can cook but find an Italian restaurant is open across the street and we end up with a great dinner directly across from our Hospital and discover its the only working restaurant in the area.

So far so good. Today we are moving south to see the damage there so we can pick a region to focus on and get to work.

We spent the day in Cebu City trying to prep for the next leg of our trip. Even here in Cebu, construction supplies are in short supply. No plywood, no nails. We have been forced to buy tools.  After multiple stops taking most of the morning we spent nearly $1,000 for 70 hammers, 70 saws and 600 pounds of nails, which we will distribute to help people rebuild. Of course there is also a big need for roofing supplies and plywood but that requires a big truck and another ferry reservation and they too are out of stock.

We have learned it seems likely that if we use a foreign bank we can get funds in Tacloban in tranches of $1k per day.

We just finished repacking all our gear and supplies and the relief materials we bought and loaded our van. Our boat leaves at 10pm and arrives at 3am.

We will tour Ormoc and then depart for Tacloban by van.

Talk soon.

T

Today and tomorrow will continue to be mostly logistical, but by 5am on Sunday we should arrive in the disaster areas, frustrating but it’s a process…

We had a good meeting with with Al Dwyer. He told us that the Emergency phase is really over and most of the military has already pulled out as well as many NGOs. While this may seem like we missed the boat (excuse the pun), another argument can be made that all that means is we moved from the emergency phase where we would be moving dead bodies to the recovery phase where we can join in where others left.

He describes the Philippines emergency as being different than others where he had a shared experience with Oscar and Barry. He describes response to Yolanda as one of the most responsive EVER. He says the international community brought $680M to the area in only 3 weeks and the Philippines government which HAS money and HAS infrastructure and is more prepared to address these kinds of issues than many of their counterparts, is addressing it from within and they have also committed $1B to addressing the situation. They have also already established the new building standards that will be required and rules to follow. His example was that in only 3 weeks, the Philippines is in the position Haiti was at after 8-10 months and as a result recovery will be much faster than predicted.

The UN is about to publish their strategic response plan (12/9-10) and the Philippine government will follow with their own plan and when these are produced next week, the official emergency phase will be considered over.

What does this mean? It means certain communities have been saturated with aid, but he agreed there are many that are a bit more removed and were equally badly hit and there has been no real response. These people are unserved and desperate. There are real issues with agriculture and job retraining, big issues with children’s mental health and educational needs (but hard for us to help because if you do not do this work as a registered NGO you can be arrested – due to rules to protect the community against traffickers in children).

In all, he thinks there is big opportunity for assistance but he feels it is in picking a smaller fishbowl and dealing with that underserved area rather than getting into a pissing match with the big boys providing aid to the town names you hear about on TV. This could work very well because it is the model Oscar followed when he was in Sri Lanka.

After our good meeting we spent considerable time flying south to the City of Cebu. Cebu was not heavily affected in the North but there are a number of communities in the south that were hard hit. We arrived and spent the afternoon collecting supplies and trying to make arrangements to get a car, driver, security, a spot on the ferry for the van and tickets for all. This required a series of half a dozen meetings to arrange and negotiate prices so we don’t end up spending our nut on the process rather than the relief.

Unfortunately all the ferries are full so we cannot get out of Cebu until 10pm tomorrow night and we will sleep in the van on the overnight ferry arriving there at 5am on Sunday. We will use tomorrow to find doctors to prescribe the medications we have been asked to bring, get those meds, gather construction supplies and fill our bus with needed items. We meet tomorrow at 6pm with our driver and guard to start that process.

Not surprisingly, the costs of our project are considerable. We struggled with the costs of the guard for example because we have heard conflicting reports of safety as more and more systems are coming back on line. At a cost of less than $70 per day plus lodging, it seems foolish to not get a guard, but those numbers add up over 11 days and it is hard to commit so much of our funds to an item like that which we may have no need for. We have agreed to take the guard for 4 days and then reassess whether to send him home.

In addition to Manny’s brother, we were also able to see some old friends the Velesos who hosted me when I was last here in the late 80s and they are well, were not affected by the storm and it was great seeing them and catching up – they have not changed at all and we fell right into the same rhythm from when I left 25 years ago.