Tacloban group’s London exhibit thanks UK for disaster aid

LONDON – One Tacloban, a civic group, was immediately established out of sheer necessity following the devastation wrought by super typhoon Haiyan in November 2013.

Group founder, TV broadcaster and Tacloban native Julian “Jeff” Manibay recalls One Tacloban’s singular focus following the immense trauma that Haiyan: Bring the city back together.

“We concentrated on civic campaigns designed to hold the city together when the community was beginning to collapse,” Manibay recalls. “People were scared, hungry, grieving, children were crying. They weren’t rational. I cannot even begin to describe how it feels to be at the receiving end of aid.” When you stand in that line, dignity is the first to go. These things remain with you forever.”

Led by Manibay, who lost his parents and family home during the disaster, the One Tacloban arranged a number of civic events within a matter of mere days.

These events included the record-breaking 12-kilometer 40^th Day Yolanda Candlelight Memorial, the 12-kilometer Keep The Love Alive Valentine Memorial, and the 24-Kilometer Yolanda Candlelight Memorial, the latter of which denoted the first year since Haiyan left its tragic mark on the islands.

Now, One Tacloban is extending its outreach abroad. Two years on from the Super Typhoon, One Tacloban is now in the UK, along with documentary filmmakers Renalie Realino and Mary Fe Florendo.

Invited to London by Ian Mayes Q.C., Committee Chairman of the Temple Church and Lilibeth Solajes, the group organized a 100-frame art exhibit by 64-year-old Haiyan survivor and artist, Eduardo “Ed” Echavez Rompal.

Rompal, who was raised in a Tacloban as it was being rebuilt from the ravages of World War II, teaches art lessons to children in the post-Haiyan city.

“Ed has to teach in different places,” explains Manibay. “In canteens, carenderias, restaurants. He’s looking to establish a modest but permanent venue where he can continue teaching art to Tacloban’s youth. Ed wants to spend his remaining days training children so there will be more of him when he’s gone.”

In disaster areas such as Tacloban, training is not typically given to artists. Locals are trained predominantly for sanitation, carpentry and other necessary survival skills.

“There’s no such program for artists,” says Manibay, highlighting the importance of building a local art center. “If you’re a tailor, say, they’ll teach you to put together a tent using recyclable materials, but they don’t train you for other [creative] endeavors.”

As such, all profits from the Answered Prayers exhibition will be used to build a permanent art workshop for Tacloban’s youth community.

Rompal’s sketches depict scenes of Tacloban resilient locals among the debris. An exhibition brochure acknowledges the international milestone for the Waray-Waray art community: “Artist-survivor Ed Rompal becomes the first home grown visual artist to hold a one-man-100-frame art exhibition in London, UK.”

The art exhibition, hosted by invitation at the 12^th Century Triforium of London’s Temple Church, advocates One Tacloban’s “harnessed capacity” campaign aimed at promoting Tacloban’s immense talents, skill and potential to the rest of the world.

Entitled “Answered Prayers (Tacloban pays tribute to the generosity of the British people),” the exhibition took place from November 2 to 15. The formal launch, attended by almost 200 people, coincided with Remembrance Sunday commemorations in the UK, held annually in honor of the British and allied soldiers who served in both World Wars.

On Sunday, November 8, a prayer ceremony was held during the Temple Church Remembrance Sunday services in honor of the Haiyan victims and survivors. British opera singer Gareth John sang a moving solo rendition of the classic Waray-Waray song, “An Iroy Nga Tuna” (The Motherland), to mark the occasion.

Keeping faith

“After meeting with those very few who were left in the city, I took on the task of organizing civic events to hold the community together,” says Manibay.

“We’re known as a fierce people. We’re the Pintados. I was worried that trait [of ours] would turn violent, so I went out there at the memorial to remind people that though we suffered personal losses, it was a collective tragedy, and that we were in it together.”

Manibay recalls that they gathered along a 12-kilometer stretch of highway and connected 12,000 candles: “Imagine, we had no electricity, all you could see were the candles. Before the memorial there was mass exodus. The city was half empty, but so many were there. Turns out, people from nearby towns came to pay their respects to the dead. Most were relatives, friends. People were holding onto each other, crying together.”

“That’s when I realized, may pag-asa pa (there is still hope). We can do this, together. I said, ‘If there is a time for us to be matapang, it’s now. We get two choices. We either give up the city, or we make a stand. After the memorial, people decided to make a stand. We stand, we hold as one.’”

“Several months in, I realized that because of the collective tragedy, our trait of being matapang was transformed into what they now call resilience.”

Manibay adds: “I’m just glad it ended up that way.”

Public response

Following the exhibition’s launch, Manibay expressed delight at seeing how strongly Rompal’s art connected to people across the oceans, given the magnitude of the natural disaster.

“It’s fitting that such a collection as the one we brought here is made by a survivor himself,” observes Manibay. “It makes a big difference when the artist is creating images from the inside, rather than the outside. There’s a lot of emotion in his frames. The collection is a lasting memoir of this part of human history, given that this is the first time the world has decided to confront the rising effects of global warming.”

Manibay says that he did not expect the emotional reaction from the British general public, who related to the pictures on display and warmed up easily to the exhibition’s environment. The majority of UK citizens who attended donated, and most were in fact parents of British volunteers who had been to Tacloban and brought their parents to attend.

“They told their parents, ‘Go to the exhibition and find our friends Jeff, Mary and Renalie. These parents were touched. They bought frames to surprise their children with, so they can come home and see the artworks hanging in their room. They are forever connected now to family, Filipino community, without realizing it.,” Manibay says.

“Some of the British people who were at the service joined the community at the Triforium. We were able to exchange stories about how it affected them and how their contributions made a lot of difference in Tacloban. The Filipino community here in particular was pleased to know that their contributions actually reached us.”

Being in the UK, One Tacloban also discovered a prevailing perception that public contributions went nowhere in Tacloban. According to Manibay, it is imperative to differentiate from the source of each contribution.

“In Tacloban, there are plenty of problems, but they’re mostly in government-led programs. The achievement of the private sector weighs equally with the government programs, given the number of private sector initiatives in our region. If [foreigners] hear something bad about what’s happening, they can’t differentiate between private and government.”

Harnessing Tacloban’s capacity

One Tacloban is dedicated to promoting the abundance of potential in the Eastern Visayas; a potential that, according to Manibay, has remained relatively intact owing to the city’s distance from the national capital (Manila).

“The region has capacity in abundance, but the government and the community doesn’t know what to do with it,” says Manibay. “We thought doing this campaign would allow people with remarkable skills to come up and be counted. We need talented people and highly skilled people to accelerate our recovery.”

Rompal is the One Tacloban’s first case of harnessed capacity. They organized the largest-ever art exhibit featuring his works at the Robinson’s Place mall in Tacloban. They attracted close to 7,000 people within only three days.

“Ed exemplifies the message that we’re trying to deliver,” Manibay emphasizes. “He is skilled, talented and [stuck in a rut] in the city. He is representative of harnessed capacity. We have to learn how to maximize Tacloban’s talent, which, hopefully will allow us to transcend regional and even national barriers.”

UK relations with Tacloban

When asked about the UK’s participation particularly following the typhoon, Manibay has only words of praise. “To sum it all up, the British outnumbered everybody in Tacloban.”

“We’re used to hosting American visitors every year, though their number has since dwindled. This is the first time we’ve seen that many British in our lives. The footprint of the British mission in Tacloban is so huge that there is now, as far as we are concerned, a lasting relationship established between our city and the people of the United Kingdom.

“We’re looking for ways wherein we can return the favor – not in monetary terms, obviously – but in products, services and outsourced labor,” clarifies Manibay. “We’re trying to establish some sort of engagement between our city and the countries who participated in the help mission in Tacloban.”

“We find this opportunity to come to London as very timely for our campaign, because coming here gives us an opportunity to meet a lot of people. This is really a giant step for us.”

One Tacloban’s primary objective is to discover new and non-traditional opportunities for their region, and to ensure that the support they’ve received from all over the world does not go to waste.

Manibay expresses his hope that, in two to five years, Tacloban will end up stronger than it was before, given the group’s head start on harnessing resources and the contacts they have established in different countries – particularly, across the UK.

“The government doesn’t know what to do with us. We have to harness this potential, be it human resources, natural resources. We have to harness our capacity, and to do that, you need a market.”

“The UK can offer us a market for all our skills, our capacity, our potential. We want to form links between our city Tacloban and the United Kingdom that can help us flourish internationally.”

Looking towards Tacloban’s future, Manibay remains unerringly optimistic.

“There are children in Tacloban who will live a life with a perspective totally different from mine,” he says. “They are living witnesses to humanity’s finest hour, and that will shape the kind of future they get to live out.”

Giving thanks

The European Network of Filipino Diaspora (ENFiD) and its corresponding UK branch have formed an initiative to support the work that the One Tacloban delegation has carried out in London.

Gene Alcantara, ENFiD Regional Chairman, reiterated that Rompal’s art exhibition was ultimately a “’thank you’ to the British-Filipino community and the wider British and European public for their incredible support which enabled [Tacloban] to recover after two years.”

Aimee Alado, Chairman of ENFiD (UK), further spoke of her admiration towards the efforts of One Tacloban towards restoring normalcy to their city: “I can well relate to the process [the group] have been through when you went back and organized the different projects towards communal healing and rehabilitation. Albeit mine was not [on] the scale you have been through.”

Thus, ENFiD has arranged a thanksgiving ceremony for the Philippine-British community at large, and a general celebration of Tacloban’s rapid progress. The event, entitled “Handog sa Kababayan: Tagumpay sa Haiyan,” will take place on Sunday, November 22 at Escape Sports Bar near London’s King’s Cross station.

The afternoon will be spent celebrating with friends and supporters, and a film screening will feature short narratives from various Haiyan-affected regions.

The One Tacloban group will also share inspiring testimonies regarding the astonishing progress of each post-typhoon rehabilitation project in Tacloban.

The entry fee will be £5, and all proceeds will be contributed towards the establishment of a modest but permanent art workshop in Tacloban.

Rompal’s sketches are still available for purchase, both in the UK and worldwide. Prices range from £100, £125 and £150.

Frames can be purchased either in person at the Alcantara Consultancy Services office in Kilburn, online at the One Tacloban eBay account, or during the thanksgiving event “Handog sa Kababayan: Tagumpay sa Haiyan” this Sunday 22 November in London.  –@melissalegarda

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