‘Ruby’ in Tacloban

It was a happy time when we arrived in Tacloban on Monday, Dec. 1: Christmas was coming, Pope Francis was coming, the weather had been good, and most of the people we talked with, including poor people, said things were a little better. There were some more jobs and some families had solved their housing problem, even if only temporarily.

Christmas carols blared night and day in this city that must be one of the noisiest in the whole country. But sometimes, briefly, the noise softened and a few notes of “Silent Night” or “Adeste Fideles” sounded, picked out on a piano or guitar, and we were struck again by the power of Christmas: It will not be trivialized, it is more powerful than typhoons, it is beautiful beyond compare and just what we need at this time, after all the suffering, effort and contention of the past year.

The next day we visited Barangay 56-A where 165 families, with the help of Christian Aid and Urban Poor Associates (UPA), had repaired their houses damaged by Typhoon “Yolanda.” The families were given P7,500 on average to use on their houses as they wanted under the direction of an architect and an engineer. Some families added roofing, or strengthened their walls and flooring; some applied a fresh coat of paint.

Mary Jane Barbasa, 47, mother of two and grandmother of two, stood in front of her house which was one of five that shared a common motif of flowers, vines, vegetable gardens, and green paint. Mary Jane and her neighbors were very proud of their work. Another woman, Lilie Adorna, came over, and I asked her what she would do if the government ordered her out. She said: “We know our housing rights. We will only move if the relocation offered meets the law’s standards—that is, provides decent houses, all the basic services and access to jobs.”

On Thursday, Dec. 4, families began to evacuate their homes, having taken to heart the lessons of Yolanda when hundreds of poor people were killed in the seaside barangays. A few refused to move. We visited the Redemptorist Church as the families arrived. By week’s end there would be 280 families, or 1,400 men, women and children, sleeping in the church. When the first families arrived there was a coffin in the center aisle and grieving relatives on the pews on either side. Death in the center aisle was an unfortunate omen of what might happen.

The people spread their mats all over the church floor. Babies and some old people slept. Children played in the green grass outside (there is no grass in their home areas). The people brought nearly everything they could carry for security’s sake and piled these up beside their mats and along the pews. You wonder how women and children could carry so much, including their pet dogs. The men stayed back in the neighborhoods to guard the houses.

I found that girls aged seven to nine are often very afraid. “What are you afraid of?” I asked a seven-year-old. “I’m afraid I will die. The water will get stronger,” she said.

I asked a seven-year-old boy, Ronel, if he was afraid. “No, I know how to swim,” he said. Perhaps he saw himself paddling away atop a seven-meter-high storm surge. In another evacuation center, boys and girls were afraid of being arrested in a curfew. We couldn’t clarify why they thought like that.

We met the baby girl who was born in November 2013 in this church, when her mother evacuated from Yolanda. She is a serious-looking little girl who seems used to people staring at her. The child, Marie Alphonse, was baptized last month. Was she named after the Redemptorist founder, Alphonsus Ligouri, that stern, no-nonsense moralist? Is that why she looks so serious?

That night there was an almost complete full moon. It sailed serenely in the cloudless night sky. A full moon raises the tides and increases the danger of flooding, but it is also one of nature’s most beautiful appearances. It promised well, I thought.

Saturday, Dec. 6. In the early afternoon the wind and rain ratcheted up toward storm levels. Memories of Yolanda and sheer existential dread deepened in the people’s hearts. The storm was like a truculent, bad-tempered animal rising from sleep. It was moody and violent.

At 11 p.m. the truly destructive winds of “Ruby” came. They beat like turbines in the

engine room of a great ship, so that our hotel seemed to tremble. We were eight people crowded in our room. Large objects began falling outside, maybe roofing crashing to the ground.

The mind imagines creatures that can be compared to humans riding these violent winds, driving them against buildings and whipping up the sea and smashing the people’s tents and shanties. The winds shriek like lost souls condemned to an eternity of suffering. They cry out like children scalded with hot water. They cry out in a crazed, demonic anger, and all the while the rains lash the city, blow after blow, as “Hagupit,” the international name of the storm, suggests. We cower before the storm’s might until after three hours or so, when it moves on.

We were spared in Tacloban, as we found out the next morning. We visited Barangay 56-A once more. Many houses suffered minor damage that could easily be repaired. The five families along the “green lane” were almost untouched. There were flaws in the way the people built second floors, but these were outside the range of the UPA-Christian Aid repair program. The 30 transitional houses (built to last two-three years) were untouched by the storm.

The people of Tacloban appreciate how lucky they were. After another day the sun was out and the sea was perfectly calm once again.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates ([email protected]).