In their sanctuary, storm evacuees won’t mind not seeing sea

RITCHEL Ocampo (left) and Analyn Abia (right) and (from left) Ritchel’s son Rusty, Analyn’s nieces and nephew Alson Robienne, Jormel Robinson and Madison Kei. They survived “Yolanda” and have found sanctuary in a vastly different place. WILLIE LOMIBAO/CONTRIBUTOR

Gemmie Lyn Navarro and Baby June Cabacang have never felt any safer than in the past few days spent in the mountain resort city of Baguio, after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” flattened their homes and damaged their university in the Visayas a month ago.

The two girls, both students of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Tacloban City, survived Yolanda’s onslaught on Nov. 8 and are now enrolled in the state university’s Baguio campus.

The Tacloban campus had cut short its enrollment period for the second semester on the week the storm cut through the Visayas. But the fury of the seas roused by more than 300-kilometer winds caught Navarro, 20, who had gone home to her family in Tanauan town in Leyte province.

Navarro lost her older sister to the storm surge that swept through her community.

Cabacang, 18, managed to escape the Tacloban storm surge by a few hours, having caught the last van out of the city on her way back to Can-avid town in Eastern Samar province.

Both students found their way to UP Baguio many days after, seeking normalcy and security from the upland campus.

Not seeing the ocean again

“The mountain air was freezing and water [here] was ice-cold,” Navarro said, when she first arrived in Baguio on November 19. “But at least it’s far away from the sea.”

“I wouldn’t mind not seeing the ocean again if I could help it,” she said.

Like Navarro and Cabacang, several typhoon survivors have considered Baguio a safer place, believing that higher ground is preferable to an unforgiving sea, said Betty Fangasan, city social welfare and development officer.

The latest death count from the Yolanda calamity has gone past  6,000.

Fangasan said the city government needed time to plan for the period when coastal communities would be forced to relocate to upland areas should weather patterns continue to worsen.

“Baguio itself is overpopulated. We have employment problems, too. That is why we convinced three families from Tacloban, Guiuan [town in Eastern Samar] and Iloilo City that reconstruction back home would give them better opportunities,” she said.

The families agreed and were sent back to their hometowns with food and money, Fangasan said.

The social welfare office has no more record of families from typhoon-hit areas staying in Baguio, she said.

But Fangasan said social workers had been tracking down 11 families and individuals who might have arrived in the city and settled with friends and relatives.

It was an uncle who took Navarro to Baguio.

Nothing left

Professor Tala Salinas-Ramos, secretary of the UP Baguio College of Social Sciences, said Navarro showed up with nothing but the clothes on her back.

A psychology major in her senior year, Navarro said a younger sibling, her grandmother and an uncle had already moved in with a relative to Pampanga. Her mother, Irenea, returned to Leyte to process her sister’s burial documents and to continue her obligations as a newly elected barangay councilor in Tanauan.

Cabacang went to Baguio to join a cousin, who is also enrolled at the UP Baguio. A political science sophomore, Cabacang said she had decided to complete her course in Baguio.

Nancy Florendo, a political science professor, said the teachers had been careful about what they say in class.

“I asked [one of the students] to discuss something in class and she suddenly broke down. I did not know what triggered that,” she said.

Cabacang acknowledged that the move had been difficult for both of them. She said the Tacloban campus had been relatively conservative compared with Baguio’s more energetic student lifestyle.

“I was having a little problem too with the language (Ilocano and English are oft used languages in the city). I also have problems expressing myself in Filipino, but I am adjusting,” Cabacang said.

Pangasinan province is also a sanctuary of sorts for Yolanda survivors.

In Dagupan City, 9-year-old Alson Robienne Abia cried when she narrated to reporters on Wednesday that she and her 6-year-old brother, Jormel Robinson, had left their grandmother, Erlinda, in Tacloban.

Alson  and Jormel  arrived in Pangasinan on November 24 with their aunts, Analyn Abia and Ritchel Ocampo, and cousins, Madison Kei Ocampo and Rusty Ocampo, both 7.

On December 2, Analyn and Ritchel took the four children to West Central Elementary School II in Dagupan, where they were admitted.

The provincial social welfare and development office in Lingayen town documented 11 families, consisting of 45 people from Tacloban, who have relocated to three Pangasinan towns. The list did not include those who are in Dagupan.

“We traveled from Tacloban to Cebu City and then to Manila by plane,” said Ritchel, leaving behind the older Abia, her mother-in-law, and her siblings who stay in what was left of their two-story house.

“We [left home for Pangasinan] for the children. The devastation in our place was so massive and it will be difficult for the children to live there. The air there no longer smells good,” Ritchel said.

Analyn said they had wanted to leave Tacloban much earlier, but the typhoon “took everything away,” including their money.

Language barrier

They failed to take the C-130 flights from the Tacloban airport because of the long line of people seeking a way out of the devastated city, she said.

“Then the kids’ father arrived from the [United] States and took us to Pangasinan,” Analyn said.

“It’s been difficult for the [Waray-waray-speaking] children to adjust to their new school because of the language barrier,” said Ritchel.

Edith Caoile, a Grade 2 teacher who has Madison Kei in her class, said she translated lessons taught in Pangasinan language to Filipino. Under the K to 12 program, teaching of subjects from kindergarten to Grade 3 should be mother tongue-based.

“So, we are doubling our effort for her to understand our lessons,” Caoile said.

Now into her second week, Madison Kei has been silent in class but has begun to participate actively in school activities, Caoile said.

Cresilda Ferrer, the Grade 1 teacher of Rusty, said she had encouraged her pupils to socialize with Rusty.

“And so far, he had been playing with them and he’s beginning to participate in recitations,” Ferrer said.

Ritchel said the children were witnesses to Yolanda’s wrath.

“They saw the destruction. We were on our roof when the flood came,” she said.

On Nov. 29, Alson turned 9 years old and her birthday was celebrated for the first time away from her grandmother.

“We will also be celebrating our Christmas for the first time that we are away from home and without our relatives,” Ritchel said.