‘Like a calling’– An American Filipino eager to help shows up in Tacloban
As I write, Kayak tells me you can go to Cebu from SFO for about $1900-$2400 roundtrip, depending on the number of stops and whether you want to patronize PAL.
It’s coach class, but comfort is relative. At least you’ll be dry. Not like it was in Tacloban.
Weeks after the typhoon, the pathways have opened up and a C-130 isn’t needed to get into the region. Filipinos everywhere are satisfying their urge to help.
While some were able to connect with the Red Cross here in the U.S. prior to going, one of my relatives wasn’t bothering.
“Too much red tape,” Judy, the wife of my late cousin said. “I’m going now. They can’t stop me.”
My family is from Ilocos, with most still around Laoag. For them, Yolanda/Haiyan was just a bullying rain storm. It wasn’t a nightmarish monster of a typhoon.
Judy’s side of the family is from that central region where they speak Waray. She has visited a number of times and her mother just came back from a visit in October.
Judy just couldn’t wait for paperwork or training. She was ready to go now.
“I feel like it’s a calling,” she told me.
I didn’t try to talk her out of it. She had the time off from work, and had the blessing from the family.
Her relatives in the region were also calling saying they needed food and water.
Most people since the storm hit have been telling people to do the smart thing. Stay away. In other words, stay put. Don’t go. Contact people, or wait for their call. Send money, not goods. It’s just too hard and expensive to get stuff from the US to the region. Easier to send money, and then buy and distribute aid right there in the RP.
So I’ve given money, and urged people to do the same. But Judy wanted to go on her own.
“I’ve got my backpack,” she said. “I figure it will be like camping.”
It was several days before I heard back from her. On Facebook, she told her family she had landed in Cebu. She was greeted by her mom’s relatives and had a car.
Another message came just last night.
“Electricity s sporadic and no internet is available,” she wrote via Facebook. “I was able to work with the Philippine Red Cross and deliver relief efforts. The devastation is totally unbelievable. A cemetery and crypts were moved with its contents. The sight of human remains will be embedded with me forever.”
It’s the kind of thing we saw on TV when the typhoon first hit. But in the last few weeks between Mandela, and school shootings, and health care fiascos, who has time to show more devastation?
Anderson Cooper, CNN, and the world have moved on.
For those of us stateside, the first images of Tacloban will have to last a lifetime.
But for Judy and the other volunteers helping, the sight of death, the smell of Tacloban, it’s all still fresh and new. And they’re living in the middle of it all.
“Yes I’m safe, “ Judy wrote assuring concerns here in the U.S. “So many foreigners here providing assistance on rebuilding … People are stubborn to listen to foreigners who are assisting in rebuilding … They need to build homes and schools on higher ground not by the beach where it would be damaged again (during another storm).
That’s the impact of global warming. It used to be the First World expels, the Third World gets dumped on. Now it’s all shifted. China is the biggest polluter, and the First World tastes of emerging countries, have their impact on their own backyard. In this case, the Philippines.
But people are taking some responsibility. They aren’t waiting for help. They are resourceful and doing what they need to do. Some people don’t need or want a parachute jumper coming in for help.
One question that lingers is why the Philippine government didn’t do more before the storm.
Just before it hit, the government did evacuate more than a million people. But how do you explain a village like Balankayan in Eastern Samar reporting zero casualties and missing people, while others contributed to the horrifying toll of missing and dead?
The death toll is now more than 6,000
It all comes down to communication.
Without any prompting, Judy messaged me: “A lot of people did not understand the news broadcast of ‘storm surge’… If it was conveyed differently people would have evacuated to higher ground.”
People know “tsunami.” They know that word.
But “Storm surge”?
Is that some boy band?
It’s actually like some bureaucratic gobbley-de-gook- euphemism. Is a garbage man really a “sanitary engineer” ?
Poor communication meant people got walloped.
Calling a spade a spade might have saved lives. In an archipelago of 7,200 islands, with practically a dialect an island, working toward clearer communication might have helped. And who do you blame that on? Not just Malacanang. Some local governments failed to do what was done in Balnkayan, and now residents are paying the price.
Communications seems like a small thing. But even now, to communicate with the region, I’m relying on the same methods, internet and Facebook, to get information from victims and those helping them.
Judy’s last message: “People were not aware because they didn’t understand (the term) storm surge. If they were told differently about its impact they would have evacuated.”
“People have strength,” she continued. “They are rebuilding while foreigners are here to help rebuild…Have to turn off roaming for now.”
I knew she wasn’t done yet.
But when the high tech fails, one looks higher to that old Filipino stand-by–prayer.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning Filipino American journalist and commentator. Like him at www.facebook.com/emilguillermo.media ; twitter@emilamok
