Weeks after the worst of Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” report the volunteer community organizers of Likhaan, a health NGO that works with urban poor communities in Manila, Caloocan and Eastern Samar, folks in the province still had a phobia of dark clouds and threatening rain.
Sent to create “women-friendly spaces” in three towns in Eastern Samar by organizing women into self-help organizations, the Likhaan volunteers found survivors still reeling from terrible memories of the typhoon’s onslaught. Writes Likhaan executive director Junice Demetrio Melgar in a report on the project (undertaken with Oxfam): “Some (of the survivors) sought shelter in their bathrooms and shivered there for hours as the wind tore the roofs and walls away. Many continued to be nervous and (were) unable to sleep. They said they were not sure they would survive until days after the storm.”
At the start, the volunteers conducted interactive learning sessions on the impact of disasters and disaster risk-reduction, with focus on women; maternal health, family planning and violence against women; and the rationale and methods of organizing women.
After the formal learning sessions, the teams improvised group stress-reduction exercises, using the chapter on mental health in the book “Kung Walang Duktor para sa Kababaihan” (When There is No Doctor for Women) which provides primary health information to community healers. This was the first time, reports Junice, that “people’s deep fears and terror from their experiences were affirmed, shared and associated with moving on.”
Also part of the learning sessions were talks and sharing on maternal health, family planning, gender-based violence and primary health. At the same time, the team members provided basic health check-ups, including for blood pressure, first aid, prenatal care, family planning counseling and provision of family planning supplies. In two instances, they even brought patients requiring emergency treatment to the nearest functioning hospitals.
In one municipality, the doctor at the rural health unit said she was down to her last three packets of contraceptive pills and was dividing the packets so that all those who needed pills could have a few pieces. The volunteers informed the Likhaan main office, and in a few days a whole year’s supply of pills arrived.
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But by far the most effective strategy to helping women “move on” and provide “women-friendly spaces” was the decision to create a “women’s garden” in selected villages. To that end, the volunteers from Manila came armed with packets of seeds for various vegetables.
In time, the women were joined by men and children, who found working on the gardens a welcome diversion and a means to faster recovery from their trauma. Dr. Sylvia “Guy” Estrada Claudio, who chairs the Likhaan board, writing in the website Rappler, notes that by the end of the volunteers’ two-week deployment, “the communal gardens were bright green spots amid the gray debris and blackened soil. People had been worried that when the relief ends, they would return to hunger. But they now tended these vegetable patches with renewed hope.”
Also helpful was the reopening of a local radio station, Radyo Bakdaw. The broadcasts provided the Eastern Samar women the first news since Yolanda hit. For some, it was also the first time they could know for sure what time of day it was; for many, writes Guy, “the first time to hear music again and, at the sound of music, to dance.”
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Junice says the local government executives in the towns of Guiuan, Mercedes and Salcedo were cooperative and supportive, “even making sure that town officials brought the team to the villages.” The barangay (village) chair of Salog in Guiuan even offered the barangay hall as a dorm for the volunteers.
Soon, adds Junice, Likhaan will be sending a team each to three other towns while following up the first three towns that had been served. “The goal is to link the women’s organizations formed in these towns with the women organized in the three (other) towns (Maydolong, Llorente and Sulat) on the basis of reproductive health, including tracking pregnant women and maintaining maternal waiting homes (where women could stay while waiting to deliver in lying-in centers). That way they can help each other and have a bigger voice in the community. The women are expected to help their communities recover and develop.”
Indeed, there are many ways to help the thousands of survivors of Yolanda. Daily relief items, shelter, healthcare, education, and livelihood are still needed. But just as important and urgent is the need to organize the women into resilient, self-reliant, optimistic communities, where after survival, there is also time for laughing, loving and dancing.
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It’s also time to pay homage to Tessie Azura, 47, a Likhaan community health worker in Maydolong, Eastern Samar, who died in the aftermath of Yolanda. Married with six children, Tessie has worked with Likhaan since 2006. The day after the typhoon, Tessie visited the members of the women’s health association of which she was president. But while visiting the home of one volunteer, she complained of a headache and then collapsed. Her family was advised to bring her to a hospital in Borongan, but it took them hours to arrange for the transfer. Upon arriving in Borongan, it was already dark and, without electricity, the family resorted to hand-pumping (by ambu bag) to keep her alive. Tessie died a day later.
In her memory, the mother’s waiting home in Maydolong will be named after her.
(Disclosure: I sit on the board of trustees of Likhaan, which accounts for my access to the reports generated by the Eastern Samar project.)