Some incredible footage of Tacloban a few days after the typhoon, and then 6 weeks later.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/then-and-now-two-months-after-yolanda
Really shows you the unbelievable clean-up efforts going on in this town, and even the markets springing up again!
See? What did I say?
Ok, shutting up about markets now….
🙂
This gallery contains 47 photos.
Some photos from my work in Leyte Province, in Tacloban, Tanauan, Palo, Dulag, Julita, Mayorga and MacArthur. Flying out on the UNHAS plane (United Nations Humanitarian Air Services) LOTS of felled coconut trees, as viewed from the air coming in … Continue reading
On a more serious note, my first weeks in Tacloban and around Leyte (in Palo and Tanauan), have been an incredibly intense experience.
It’s literally mind-blowing, to look around and see such complete and total destruction, when you think about how it happened. I mean, I can understand an earthquake. The ground shakes, and things fall down – makes sense to me.
But wind is just air, moving really fast. And I know it has force, and pressure, especially when moving at 300 kph, but it’s still just air. How can something with no substance at all topple brick walls, and reduce massive stadiums to rubble? How can wind leave so many enormous steel girders in twisted heaps amongst all the wreckage? It quite literally blows my mind, the sheer power and force of it all. People here have told me the noise was monumental – one woman told me it sounded like an airplane engine inside their house. Continue reading
Ok, so I was trying very hard to draft some posts in vaguely chronological order, but haven’t had time to post anything much at all, and so much keeps happening every day that it’s hard to keep track, so my apologies if everything seems a bit haphazard and all out of order…
Thought I’d just give you a little taster of life over here. It feels like I’ve been here for months, mainly because when you’re working 18-hour days, so much happens between 6am and 10pm that it feels like 2 or 3 days have gone by! When I first arrived in Tacloban on a Wednesday morning, I went to a meeting with the Department of Agriculture in the morning, and then the next three days were so busy and hectic, that by the time I met with someone on Friday, I was convinced the DA meeting had been a week ago!
It’s also incredibly damp here – very humid and sticky, still raining a lot, so lots of mosquitos and pretty bad smells. The hotel we’re staying in, which also houses our office, was not too badly damaged by the typhoon, although the swimming pool was filled with manky green sludgy floodwater that appears to be breeding mosquitos and frogs at a frightening pace. It’s been mostly drained and cleaned out, but still has a sludgy greenish puddle at the bottom. Continue reading
As I have struggled to write coherent blog posts in any semblance of order, and so much is happening it’s all starting to sound a bit disjointed and confusing. Have just looked back through some facebook posts and realised it’s easier to be funny in short random posts.
So, here is a taster of my first few weeks in the Philippines, as seen through my facebook status updates:
20th November:
Another long, hectic, but fascinating day… Off to bed now, but getting up again in 4 1/2 hours to go to a distribution… My current checklist of things not to forget at 3.30am includes “Big truck, little truck, van full of cardboard boxes…”  🙂
I’ll be adding to this list over the next few months, so feel free to check back in, but here are some reasons why I love the Philippines so far:
#1 – The incredibly welcoming, smiley, upbeat, optimistic, helpful, friendly, immensely resilient people.
#2 – The fact that they don’t really seem to have a word for “hello”. The closest they have is “Have you eaten yet?” (Kama-in Kannaa?). A people after my own heart.
#3 – The fact that they eat 5 or 6 times a day and take snacktime very seriously.
#4 – The fact that when I jokingly complained about missing snacktime during a 4-hour car journey, I was informed (in a very serious tone) “Well actually Maya, it’s dinner time now, not snacktime. But you can have two desserts because you missed your snack.”
#5 – Sea crabs cooked in sprite.
#6 – The fact that somewhere in Cebu City there is apparently a reggae-themed seafood restaurant called Bob Marlin. My new mission in life is to find it….
#7 – This headline: 
Continue reading
Wow, there’s so much to say! I’ve actually been here now for about 6 or 7 weeks, but am only just finding the time to write stuff down….
My first few days in Cebu were a bit crazy, working really long hours, and getting up so early every day – my first night in Cebu after I got off the plane I had to get up at 4am to travel straight out to the north to Daan Bantayan to do some livelihoods assessments, and then I only came back to Cebu for 2 nights before I headed back up there for a hygiene kit distribution and more market assessments.
I was getting up so early the first few days (well, in the middle of the night really), that it took me about a week before I noticed that my hotel room didn’t have any windows!
One Wednesday night (20th November) I had worked a really long day, and my colleague P and I only just climbed into bed knackered at 11.45pm, knowing that I had to get up again at 3.15am to go and load the trucks ready to leave for the distribution. We had just turned out the light, and I was so tired, I felt the bed vibrating slightly. I thought it was rather relaxing, until P’s voice from the other bed said
“Erm, by the way Maya, you do realise that’s an earthquake right?”.
This gallery contains 27 photos.
Some pics of my second trip up to Daan Bantayan, distributing hygiene & water kits to the community there 21st-22nd November 2013 Some early bird beneficiaries… Showing them what’s in the hygiene kits… Lovely Jenny, our first beneficiary, gets her … Continue reading
This gallery contains 27 photos.
My first assessment trip up to Daan Bantayan in Northern Cebu, 18th & 19th November, 10 days after Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan. Quick Market assessment – plenty of food available for sale in the markets And a lovely sunset over the sea…. … Continue reading
While conducting our initial livelihoods assessment in Daan Bantayan municipality (in Northern Cebu), I met this lovely couple, Amelito and Mary-Ann Bantilan, who live in PayPay Barangay (PayPay village). I was really struck by their story, and by their incredible resilience and optimism in the face of such a catastrophe, so I thought I would share it with you.
Amelito is 42 and a fisherman who lives in PayPay village. He has a small paddle boat and a net, both of which were damaged in the storm, though he is still able to use them to fish (his boat has a small hole in it, so he can’t go out too far). His net has some holes in but is still just about usable. He normally fishes in the morning and evening, and catches around 4kgs of fish per day. He keeps back a small amount of fish to feed his family  (he has a wife, Mary-Ann, and 7 children, 3 boys and 4 girls) and sells the rest of his catch.
Amelito Bantilan, 42, Fisherman in PayPay, Daan Bantayan
His wife usually sells the fish on their street, going door to door selling fish to their neighbours and small local shops (called Sira Sira shops) that are run out of people’s houses. Continue reading
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Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Had we but world enough and time... 