Category: The Philippines

Stories of Hope

These pastors, three.

I sat in a community centre somewhere in Eastern Samar, a one roomed building looking out to sea. The heat beamed through the bamboo walls, light flickered around the room, children’s pictures and the alphabet filled the walls.  Even now if I close my eyes I am transported back there. I can feel the heat of the sun, the gentle breeze of the fan hitting off my skin, the bright light of the sun coming through the open doorway and the unsure expectation of what was about to unfold.

 
Pastors 2Three men sat opposite us, all three had a story to tell, all three had shared an experience I could only imagine. The kind of story that shows up both in dreams and nightmares. A strange mingling of terror and the miraculous. Each were pastors and each had lived through the typhoon and the accompanying tsunami. Each had lost friends, neighbours and members of their congregations but each had an amazing story to tell.

The first pastor began, he looked younger than me and when he smiled you could feel his kind spirit fill the room. He told us that he was in his home with his family when the typhoon started and as the waters began to rise he realised they needed to evacuate. He gathered up what he could of their possessions and prepared his family to leave but when he came to his grandad, his grandad said no. He told this young pastor, his grandson, to take his wife and to run, to leave him behind. That he was too slow and too old, that he would only slow them down. There wasn’t time to save them all. As I listened I thought of my dad at home in Ireland, I imagined him telling me to leave him behind, to run and save myself. Imagined him pushing me away, yelling at me to go and not to look back, his unconditional love overtaking. I looked at this pastor before me, his tears freely falling as he told us of his impossible choice. He knew time was running out for them but he also knew he wasn’t going anywhere without his grandfather. So he carried him on his back, through the storm and the howling wind, the beating rain and the rising waters and he saved his life and the lives of the rest of his family. He made what was at the same time an impossible choice and yet the easiest choice. To leave no one behind, to fight for survival, to fight for the people he loved and miraculously they all survived. They lost everything that night but as the next day dawned and a different struggle began they knew they had each other and that nothing could break the bonds of family and of love.

As this story sank in, the next pastor spoke, he told us that when he heard the typhoon was coming the first thing he did was go to his church and check on the people in his congregation. But he got caught in the storm and had nowhere to go. The tsunami had hit and as he swam to try and find safety he saw two children struggling in the water, separated from their parents, struggling to survive. He grabbed them, and carrying one on his back and another under his arm he swam them to a tree and the three of them clung for their lives to the top. They were battered by the wind, the gusts of this typhoon reaching over 200kph, but they survived, he saved their lives. In our world today we talk about superheroes, we watch movies about Captain America and Ironman and yet we sit in the presence of heroes everyday and don’t even notice. People like this man who put his life on the line for others. Who risked his own safety to put his church and his community first and who without a seconds thought saved the lives of two children with no thought for his own. This man who sat humbly between his friends, confused at the expressions of amazement that he met in our eyes.

The third pastor finally spoke, he had said very little while we were there and his expression had remained steady throughout. He looked at us from behind dark glasses, a towering figure at the end of the table. But as his story spilled out so too did his heart. He told us about his little girl, born just two months before the typhoon. He told us how during the typhoon the only place they had to go was the roof of their house.  He told us that his precious little girl survived the typhoon, she survived the cold and the rain, the wind and the chaos. She survived the three week wait for rescuers to reach their village. Her mother eating airdropped supplies of biscuits and packaged coffee to keep her own strength up so she could feed her baby until help arrived. He told us with beaming pride that today she is two and full of mischief and delights. A miracle baby who is blissfully unaware that she survived the worst typhoon in recorded history.

Each of these men struggled in the aftermath of the typhoon, with all they faced, the rebuilding of their churches and communities both physically and spiritually. The losses their villages had experienced, the trauma they had all faced. But they found strength in each other and in God. They meet each week and support each other, each understanding the pain they all feel and sharing in the trauma of what they had encountered. They were strangers before this typhoon but today they sat together as brothers, united by a bond that goes beyond friendship and kinship but to something much deeper and stronger.

And for a little while they invited us into that, they allowed us into their world. And what a beautiful world it is. A world where ordinary men became heroes and where those who have lost so much are the most grateful I have ever met.

I will never forget these pastors three, the hope they radiated, the thankfulness of their hearts and the humility in the heroics of their actions.

The legacy of Typhoon Haiyan

cropped-boats.jpgIt has been over two years since Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest typhoons in recorded history, devastated parts of the Philippines but even as I write this sentence I don’t think it can ever really capture what truly happened in the Philippines on November 8th 2013 or what has happened since and happens still every day.

In September 2015 I spent 10 days travelling around Eastern Samar; one of the poorest regions in the Philippines and the area most affected by Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda. Myself and my colleagues met with our partners who introduced us to the people they have been serving in the aftermath of this typhoon.

I learned many things during this trip, I learned about how our partner NGOs provide child friendly spaces for children. I learned that they are helping people to rebuild their livelihoods and send their children to school, that they are rebuilding homes and providing shelter. That they are advocating for child protection, for evacuation centres and stronger houses.

But what I really learned was how this happens and how behind each of these words or initiatives are people. People who work day and night to ensure that others have somewhere safe to live, who have left their own homes and families to move to a different part of the country so they can help communities rebuild their lives. People who keep going regardless of how tired they are, and who can still smile, in the face of coping with such tragedy. I met the people who benefit from this work, many who were already living in poverty before the typhoon struck. Often we speak of those affected by disasters but with so much going on in the world today, sometimes it is easy to forget that they are people; people with hopes and dreams who laugh and cry, who want their children to go to school and to have a home that is safe.

But standing on what is known as Ground Zero of the typhoon, looking out to the sea that now looked so calm and yet had ravaged so many communities and took so many lives I realised once again that people are at the heart of everything. And that I was in the company of extraordinary people.

PhilippinesI stood on the spot where 2000 people lost their lives, I visited a mass grave and walked by areas of beach where people had to be buried where they lay. And every time, without fail I was amazed by the resilience I saw in the midst of such sadness. The faith of pastors who as they told their stories cried whilst giving thanks to God for all they had. Even though they had lost everything. The farmer who had his whole livelihood wiped out but started again with nothing but a salvaged solar battery, and who now shares his farm with the community and teaches farming skills. The hope in a mothers eyes that her child will go to school even though the odds seem stacked against her.

But this is the legacy of Typhoon Haiyan; that people who have lost so much are still going, are rebuilding their lives, are preparing for future disasters and are still, in the midst of everything thankful and turning their eyes upon God.

The following stories belong to the people of Eastern Samar, the unsung heroes of disaster; the social workers, the pastors and shepherds of every faith, the community workers, the anti-trafficking volunteers, the leaders of NGOs and the men, women and children who refuse to give up.

First published for Tearfund Ireland, in Teartimes, Autumn 2015 Edition

Extra ‘ordinary’ People

DandinEvery now and then you meet people who change your life, not dramatically or forcefully but just meeting them changes you. Changes how you see the world, how you see yourself.

I met many people like this in the Philippines. So many there isn’t time to write about them all. But they all shared one thing in common and this was selflessness. They all shared a deep desire to change the world around them, to respond to disaster not with fear and apathy but with hope and honour. And they did this in the everyday ordinary of life. But in that everyday, they made sacrifices. Some left their own families and children behind to move to a completely different part of the Philippines, to help those in need. They left everything that was safe and known to enter into the chaos and uncertainty of disaster relief. They took on another person’s burdens and laid their own to the side.

I stood in the middle of a mass grave speaking to one of these extraordinary people as he explained to me that when he first came to Eastern Samar he was horrified by the devastation that the typhoon had left behind. The pain and the grief of the people he met was inescapable. He had nightmares every night but he continued on, none the less. I asked him how he kept going, in those first few months when things were so difficult and he simply told me ‘it is my job, I am here to be strong’. And that was that. No other explanation was provided. He stood looking out to sea, the untold stories of so many buried around us, people who had lost their lives far too early and I understood. His needs were secondary, his priority were the people he served.

And he served them by getting up every morning to be in the field by 8am where he would meet with families struggling to survive, he worked all day until 6 and then by night wrote up his case notes of the day’s activities. He had 100 names of children on his list and he impacted the life of every single one of them and that of their families. He helped them to restart their lives through small businesses, he found homes for orphans, he showed parents how to keep their children safe from the ever present risk of trafficking, and how to protect themselves in future disasters.

But above all else, he gave them hope, hope that they could have a different future, that they are not resigned to poverty and destitution. And he showed them love. In a world where they are invisible and forgotten, where their own society shuns them and their government ignores them he showed them that they are important, they are special, they are loved. They are worth fighting for, they are worth the nightmares and the long hours. They are not a statistic on a long list of names, they are unique and they are eternally loved.

I think of the Philippines often as I look out from my office into the dark, grey skies of Dublin, wondering if anything I do makes a difference and his story reminds me that everything I do makes a difference. What that difference is, is my decision to make.

A Miracle

A young girl runs,
Out the door,
Away from the dark.
Can they see her,
She does not know.

She keeps running,
Never looking back.
She makes it to a telephone,
She doesn’t know what number to dial.
Where is she?
Everything around her is loud, car horns screech, people shout.

She picks up the receiver. She presses numbers, any numbers.
It rings, a woman answers.
Help me I am lost, they took me, they locked me up. I don’t know where I am. I want to go home.

Tell me what you see the lady says.
I see lights and men and buildings. It’s loud, I am afraid. They hurt me. I want to go home.

We will find you, don’t you worry. What is your name, where are you from?
Kindness speaks at the other end of the line.

The young girl tells her all she knows, her name, her parents, where she lived.
Kindness brightens up, I know you. I know your mother. We will find you, don’t you worry, you will be safe.

Kindness does not lie.

The young girl wakes, turns over, sees her mother’s tear filled eyes. She is safe, she is home, she is free.

Kindness did not lie.

 

A true story of a young girl rescued from a brothel in Manila. The lady who answered her call was a pastora from her village. They came, rescued her and brought her home. Today she is free.