Diary of three days in Tacloban, Part 1

It has been over 100 days since Supertyphoon Yolanda swept through the Visayas and wreaked havoc on the islands there. The worst hit was Tacloban in Leyte whose residents are still recovering from the extraordinary incident.

Historically, Tacloban has been known as a trading point between Leyte and Samar due to its strategic location. Under the Spaniards, Tacloban was a typical colonial community with residents either pure Iberian or a mix of Spanish and Chinese mestizos, foreign expatriates and native Leyteños. This Waray city, on June 12, 1952, was proclaimed a chartered city. Their dialect was Leyte-Samarnon.

The arrival of Colonel Murray in 1901 made him the first military governor of Leyte. He opened Tacloban port to world commerce with Tacloban as the commercial, educational, social and cultural center of the Province of Leyte. Copra and abaca were exported in large quantities. On May 25, 1942, the Japanese Forces landed in Tacloban, with the Japanese Imperial Navy making Tacloban a port of call and entry. The Japanese occupation of Leyte and the Philippines for three years was the darkest in the history of the entire nation.

Leyte was the first to be liberated by the Americans. General Douglas MacArthur’s assault troops landed in the Tacloban and Palo Beaches on Oct. 20, 1944, in fulfillment of his famous promise of â€œI shall return.”

Since then, Tacloban has grown by leaps and bounds to become the premier city in Eastern Visayas until that faithful day of Nov. 7, 2014 when a dangerous Category 8 Supertyphoon (international name Haiyan) Yolanda made history as the most powerful of all supertyphoons for 2013.

Once again, the Filipino mettle was being tested and we read and heard of how the residents woke up to find their homes being swept away and of how the world responded to their needs through food, medicine, building materials and most of all, compassion.

But who would care for the children, especially those whose schools had been submerged and had nowhere to go. A friend Wanlu, a puppeteer experienced in the instruction of kids through puppetry, had decided to team up the well-known UNESCO 2009 Hero Efren Peñaflorida. We joined them for three days we shall never forget.

Wanlu had gotten tickets on Cebu Pacific and we arrived early at the Tacloban airport. We were told that Efren had already arrived weeks before. We looked forward to this, having heard of him for the longest time and his storied Kariton Classroom. 

Upon approaching our destination, the worst hit area in Tacloban, we didn’t know what to expect. Personnel from Cebu Pacific met us and took care of our transpo to the location about an hour away. A tent had been set up for us fronting the roofless Department of Education, Culture and Sports. This was where we would sleep, which was fine with us having had a long experience of camping out for our children’s Snack Arts summer event.

Next stop was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Department of Education (DepEd), Leyte Normal University and Efren’s Kariton Classroom. It was a formal occasion which showed the lengths that Efren’s efforts had gone since 1997 when at age 16, he formed the Dynamic Teen Company, later renamed Kariton Classroom, to keep kids off the streets. The following days were spent with students in various schools with Wanlu, Efren and his assistants Emmanuel Bagwel and Mike Advincula.

The next days were just as busy as we got to know these volunteers better, discovered why they left the relative comforts of their homes. Meantime, back in Manila, we read from Ernie Maceda’s column in The STAR of Feb. 18, an update of Tacloban that “of 15,000 business establishments, only 600 have renewed their permits. Most of Tacloban City is still without power.”

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