Order of Malta brightens ‘no-Christmas land’

MANILA, Philippines–It is the day after Christmas, but nowhere is it visible on the highway from the Tacloban airport to Basey in Samar province, an hour’s ride away. Neither is it on the folks’ faces, nor are Christmas carols heard.

There is nary a Christmas lantern anywhere. We travel through a wasteland.

“Lupaypay,” the driver of the Order of Malta van muttered, reacting in Waray to the ruins. Its Tagalog equivalent is lupasay, describing a down-and-out boxer hopelessly leaning on the ropes, for example.

(Our dialects compress in a word what it takes many more to describe in English.)

Here and there stand skeletal remains of two-story frames that were once wooden houses. Interspersed between them lie lean-tos of various shades of found GI sheeting, four on each side in lieu of walls, some new, some old, a few colored, also roofing the roadside hovels.

Large concrete buildings are even eerier, their unglassed windows like empty eye sockets. Most outstanding of these is the large concrete coliseum where, driver Efren Longasa said, hundreds had fled for refuge, only to all drown in Supertyphoon “Yolanda’s” storm surge. Once painted all white, it is pockmarked with brown blobs—the storm surge’s mud souvenirs.

Couldn’t Imelda have parted with a bauble or two to help her province mates? “The true, the good, and the beautiful” is sham, after all.

Desolation in Samar

Lovely San Juanico Bridge relieves the anguish. Linking Leyte to Samar, it meanders majestically for 2 kilometers over San Juanico Strait which feeds into San Pedro Bay, and further into Leyte Gulf, where a major air and sea battle was fought in World War II.

Desolation once more in the Samar town of Santa Rita. Four new, green-roofed school buildings in Basey’s Can-abay barrio are thanks to overseas Filipino workers’ (OFW) contributions.

Coastal Basey’s two adjoining barrios, San Antonio and Amandayehan, were heavily devastated by Yolanda’s storm surge on Nov. 8, 2013, and mercilessly pummeled again by Typhoon “Ruby’s” howling wind and torrential 20-hour rain on Dec. 7 this year.

Signs of life and hope

Wrack and ruin are everywhere in both barangays (villages). But there are signs of life, and of hope, thanks largely to international aid agencies—Plan International is there (caring for deprived children), as are Christian Aid Mission and a Norwegian group building toilets for random homes.

International Red Cross has built a number of sawali (woven bamboo) houses.

Most prominent are the bright red GI sheet-roofed, progressive core shelters built by Order of Malta Philippines in cooperation with Malteser International, Malta’s worldwide relief corps, and funded by Aktion Deutschland Hilft (Germany’s Relief Coalition).

They are of cement flooring, hollow blocks piled four-high over, which are laid Hardiflex walls, with two windows each on all sides. Homeowners can extend the 20-square-meter homes.

They have latrines consonant with Malta’s WASH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene) project. Each home costs P98,000 to build, including materials and contractors’ fees. A cash-for-work program pays carpenters and masons’ wages to build their and others’ homes.

The order’s Hospitaller, Dame Mina Carag-Harada, laughs on recalling how a 70-year-old beneficiary’s first act on moving into his new home was to build a matrimonial bed. He said this was the most important piece of furniture.

3-phased assistance

“Having a roof over their heads is a jump-start to move on with their lives because a home signifies security, out of tents and protected from the elements,” Carag-Harada said.

The three phases of Malta’s assistance start with disaster emergency relief. Malteser keeps 2 tons of relief at the ready in Malta’s Manila headquarters. Volunteers pack noodles and food items to last a month together with jerrycans in which to store water, kitchen utensils, plates and cutlery for six, underwear, hygiene kits and mosquito nets. Temporary schools and daycare centers are given tents.

To assist in early recovery, the next phase deals with livelihood programs such as “pinakbet farms” assistance with garden tools and vegetable seeds for communal farming.

Reconstruction and rehabilitation are the last phase. For the housing for the Yolanda victims, the months of April to June 2014 were spent finalizing the designs and logistics, including materials and transport to project areas and their warehousing at destinations.

On-site land has to be owned by beneficiaries. The 40-meter no-build zone from the shoreline must be followed. “We’re not just building homes, we’re building communities,” Carag-Harada said.

Oldest order of chivalry

The Roman Catholic lay religious order, Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, founded in 1050 to care for sick pilgrims, is the oldest surviving order of chivalry when knights first existed.

The order’s powerful fleet was among the Crusaders who defeated the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. First domiciled in Rhodes, then Malta, and finally settling in Rome, the order has reverted to its hospitaller function.

After Tropical Storm “Sendong,” the Malta-Malteser team constructed core shelters in Iligan. After Typhoon “Pepeng” and Tropical Storm “Ondoy,” it undertook other aid functions in Parañaque, Muntinlupa and San Pedro, Laguna province. They also worked to reconstruct boulder-filled farms in the Cordilleras. In Tagum, Malteser built 120 core shelters.

Today, they are actively building shelters in Basey and also on Bantayan Island in Cebu province, while offering aid in other areas. Significantly helping the Order of Malta Philippines and the Maltesers are Americares Foundation, with truckloads of medicine and healthcare requirements, and TOMS shoes, a US-based manufacturer that donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold. They have sent thousands of shoes over the years; another thousand in Basey will be given out in a few days.

The entire relief operation is overseen by Knight of Malta Dr. Leo Lazatin, a prominent surgeon who recently succeeded Ernest Rufino as president of the Order of Malta Philippines, and Carag-Harada. On the ground in Basey are Malteser’s project manager Floriano Arañez, and Malta Philippines’ community organizers Yolanda Toledo for Barangay San Antonio, population 1,800, and Michelle Chua for Amandayehan (pronounced Amandayhan), population 500.

Recalling ‘Yolanda’ horror

Scores of families, including Toledo, her husband Lester and 11 of 12 children, lived along San Antonio’s shore. “I wanted to leave our house the day before Yolanda hit, as we had been warned by my son in Manila of a storm surge,” Toledo said. But her husband refused to leave, saying “It will just be wind.”

Unable to sleep, she looked out the window at dawn. To her horror, “I saw the water along the shore suddenly recede, exposing stones and fish jumping in the mud. I grabbed my girl, 10, and my son, 5, and fled to my neighbor’s three-story house, but the waves chased me just as I got in the door, and knocked me down.”

In the cramped third floor were 50 or so refugees. “The house shook every time a huge wave beat on it. We were all praying, while the children cried.” In 30 minutes, all the houses up to 100 m inland had been wiped out. “I didn’t even know where my house stood,” Toledo said.

The owner of the house had only 6 kilograms of rice. It was boiled into soupy porridge to stretch out over two days. Eastern Samar Rep. Ben Evardone arrived on Day 3 with rice, bread and money. But for days, everyone in both barrios was grateful for the rice porridge.

The total number of dead in San Antonio after Yolanda: 54, and 11 missing. “But even after soldiers had buried our dead in mass graves, we couldn’t sleep in our tents for a month as the stench of [dead] bodies and pigs floating in from Tacloban was overpowering,” driver Longasa said.

Hill Amandayehan fared better, with few living along the shore. One died, and none are missing. All told, Basey town (population 50,000) reported 433 dead.

But strong winds tore down a good number of Amandayehan houses, including that of community organizer Chua, separated from her husband and a single parent with a daughter, Mariel, 9, and 86-year-old parents.

“When the winds started blowing really hard, I carried Mariel to a bigger house nearby, but the winds were so gusty, they knocked me down when I tried to rescue my parents,” Chua recalled. Fortunately, kind neighbors carried the old couple to safety. With only three sheets remaining on the roof, whenever it rained, the four could only sit under them. They have since had to move in with a core shelter recipient’s family.

The GI sheets from Chua’s house were easily found on nearby trees. Having lost all of hers, Toledo said that when her Malteser core shelter was built, she would paint her name on every sheet.

Criteria for beneficiaries

The Order of Malta’s criteria for selection of core shelter beneficiaries are: single parents; persons with disabilities; families with more children; pregnant and lactating mothers; senior citizens; orphans; below minimum-level income; and land on which to build.

Village elders and barangay officers fill out the survey forms according to a vulnerability index, to include whether homes are partially or totally damaged. These are validated by Toledo and Chua.

Of 120 shelter houses for Amandayehan, 40 are finished; San Antonio has 94 completed, of a total 230—all 350 homes will be built by May 2015, barring more surprises. “Malta Paradise Village” so named by San Antonio denizens has 34 shelters on 100-sqm lots each paid for by the beneficiaries. Some join the cash-for-work program to earn enough to pay for their own lots. Project manager Arañez, a civil engineer, oversees all the work in Basey and reports to Malteser Matius Kristeya.

Two medical missions have been conducted since Ruby, each ending with psychosocial sessions; the first with grade school children who were asked to draw their Yolanda recollections, and those of Ruby’s. The second session asked teenagers to tell their stories. The third session will deal with adults.

The two barrios’ main source of income, pre-Yolanda, had been rice farming, and to a smaller degree, copra from coconut farming. A few had fishing boats.

Yolanda ruined their rice crops, but in early 2014, they planted rice and harvested it in May, and again in November.

Since Ruby in early December, however, it has rained heavily almost daily, severely flooding the rice paddies. Farmers are seriously considering planting corn, though it fetches a much lower price, should El Niño’s drought kick in in January, when it will be too late to plant rice.

As for the coconut trees still standing, like the ravaged homes, they are lupaypay, with their palm fronds drooping desperately.

Communal farming

For village folks’ sustenance, the Order of Malta has encouraged communal farming, called “pinakbet gardens,” giving out seeds for a wide range of vegetables after Yolanda, and also post-Ruby.

Here again, the communal farms—a huge number—as well as backyard plots, an even larger number, were just about decimated by Ruby. They had produced vegetables galore for sale and for home consumption until early December.

Christopher Demateo, who working on his backyard farm in San Antonio the day after Christmas, proudly pointed to sprouting seedlings of eggplant, squash, tomatoes, okra, pepper and ampalaya (bitter melon).

Pointing to his kamote patch, he said the yams underground should be ready in another month. The patola vine appeared healthy, as did the malunggay and papaya trees. Elsewhere, he said, he had another backyard plot that wasn’t doing too poorly either.

But other vegetable gardeners, especially those working large communal plots, are having to start from scratch, preparing the soil for planting yet again after their gardens were totally washed out. Still, strong rains continue, brought on by Tropical Storm “Seniang.”

Not a single carabao, cow, pig or chicken was spotted in that no-Christmas land. There won’t be rice and scant vegetables for months. It’s easy to see San Antonio and Amandayehan will have to depend on more aid organizations for their sustenance.

OFWs donating to rebuild their San Antonio church—10 percent of the barrio’s population work abroad—may have to shift to food sufficiency until the pinakbet farms produce their bounty again.

Focus on small communities

According to Lazatin, the Order of Malta is committed to the country’s full development. “We are also completing plans to study disaster risk reduction programs for the southeastern seaboard of the Visayas and Mindanao down to Compostela Valley province (one dead from Seniang) and Davao, all facing the Pacific Ocean,” he said.

“The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank both report a significant number of areas inaccessible by land. Government focus has been on larger cities, but smaller communities clustered around rivers and small coves abound,” he said.

The grand master of the Order of Malta, Matthew Festing, will arrive in February to visit the order’s many project areas.

The penury in Basey will surely grip his heart. Conversely, the people’s palpable gratitude will gladden his heart.

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