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.

As has been my custom in past, I will keep my journal in email and share it to keep others in the loop. If you don’t appreciate a real time brain dump, please write back and I will take you off the list.

Arrived in manila with three volunteers and donor funds to put to productive use.

We visited the US consulate where we met Mohammed Khan, Disaster Assistance and Reconstruction Manager for USAID. He updated us on where things are at. The described the disaster as the worst ever – says there has really never been anything like it – they had NO warning. 15 million affected people, 4 million people displaced (204,000 are still living in 1000 shelters), 1.2 million damaged houses, over 5,600 reported dead, 26,000 injured, 1,761 missing and 70% of school are damaged, 1.2 million homes. Some basic services have been restored at least locally and the NGOs are starting to move on to prep for the next disaster, but he describes this as some of the most crucial time because their departure would leave the needy people in a dire straights.

He says we may find a place to stay but should plan on bringing all our rations because food is literally that scarce. He did not give us a straight answer on whether we needed a guard. He can become Mohammed.

We met with his Boss, Alan Dwyer, the DART lead for the country.

Next we did some logistical stuff to cash some money and get ourselves some Filipino cell phones which took way too much time and we met Manny Dizon for Dinner at his house.

Manny and his wife Ina were great hosts and over Dinner her told us all the stories he has heard in the last weeks. He points out that while Tacloban was hard hit, there are many smaller communities that were hit harder but are not being focused on and he thinks there may be opportunity to work with a single smaller area (which had been our plan) rather than a larger community where our small donations could get lost. In fact he has gotten us lodging in a hospital ward in Tacloban and the sisters of that facility which has stayed open throughout the emergency while not charging any patients. The Benedictine sisters who run the hospital are running out of meds and since they are not charging they have no money to pay for new meds and this seemed like a very good mission – we can pick up needed meds in Cebu and transport them to Tacloban.

After a breakfast meeting with the Disaster Area Director of USAID tomorrow we will head for the plane to Cebu where we will meet Manny’s brother and get the perspective from Cebu. We will arrange the car we have hired and our security to take us there and then will have a full night on the train to rest. Security is costing us $60 per day plus food and lodging. Manny is adamant we need it but others we spoke to say it may be overkill. After a flight at noon, we will spend the afternoon getting an update from the Cebu perspective since Cebu was much closer to the eye of the storm. I will also meet with an old friend from when I was here 30 years ago who still lives in the area, we will also get our own food and water rations since we need to be self sufficient when we arrive. Finally we will go to a hospital supply shop and get medicines requested by the Ormoc Hospital so we can hand deliver the meds they need so badly. Much of the day on the 7th will be spent on a ferry getting to Ormoc.

In Ormoc we will meet with the Assistant District Governor who will show us around and introduce us to the most productive charities. Ormoc is one of the more concerning areas – primarily agricultural, they don’t know how they will re-employ their people. For example thousands of coconut trees were snapped in half and these trees take 7 years to re-grow – the industry that depends on them becomes unemployed with no prospects for rehire.

Finally we will go by car to Tacloban and the cities nearby that were hardest hit by the storm. Here we will stay in the hospital and deliver the medicine, but there is also enough despair and misery to go way around.

I apologize if there are typos but I have not slept much since midnight Tuesday and I have fallen asleep a few times drafting this.