Guiuan women rise from rubble

HOT’ SHELTER A smile on a young girl’s face brightens this bunkhouse amid the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun that has forced boys to go shirtless in Sitio San Roque, Guiuan, Eastern Samar. Thanks to a newfound resolve—and the trials of a monster typhoon—women in Guiuan are trying to break free from years of destitution with a new tool of empowerment: microlending. RICHARD A. REYES

GUIUAN, Eastern Samar—While a nation freed itself from the dictatorship 28 years ago, women here remain largely impoverished.

But thanks to a newfound resolve—and the trials of a monster typhoon—they are trying to break free from years of destitution with a new tool of empowerment: microlending.

Trying to pull themselves up on their own, the women survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda in this coastal town are organizing themselves, creating little financial networks that make their largely poor communities humming with economic activity, like fish vending and shellcraft.

“We are not lazy! We just need a little bit of help to start our own small business,” said Gina Logatoc, 42, a housewife from Sulangan village 23 kilometers south of here.

A few weeks after Yolanda made its first landfall on Guiuan, Logatoc started a small sari-sari store financed by a P5,000 loan from a Manila-based microfinance company.

But the high interest rates are proving to be significant roadblocks as women and their families strive to attain decent living conditions in this province where 59 percent of the population are poor.

Without access to credit, Logatoc and her 46-year-old sister Gertrudes organized 30 local women to protect themselves from predatory lending. Still, the group has been forced to get small loans from the same company with interest rates ranging from 15 to 20 percent.

“We did not wait for relief. After Yolanda, we decided that we needed to do something to help ourselves,” Gertrudes said. “Now if we can get some loans with zero-interest, that would be a great help to us,” Gertrudes added.

Largely in the backwater of priority programs of the Aquino administration, people here have come to accept how the government has historically neglected them.

“We continue to get crumbs from the master’s table!” said a town councilor who requested anonymity.

‘He promised to help’

President Aquino had been scheduled to stop in Guiuan on his hopscotch visits to areas hit by a series of natural and manmade disasters to pay tribute to the resilience of the survivors and to celebrate with them the spirit of Edsa I, the four-day People Power Revolution that ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

When the President decided at the last minute to cancel his visit here on Tuesday, there were groans of disbelief from the Logatoc sisters, as well as a wide section of the population in the province considered to be the third-poorest in the country.

“He promised us that he would come back to help us. We are still waiting for him,” said Maria Dianzon, 69, the mother of the Logatoc sisters.

Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma said Wednesday night that bad weather had forced the cancellation of Aquino’s visit to Guiuan.

“As he did in Cateel, Loon, Bantayan Island and Tanauan, the President would have assured the Logatoc sisters and the people of Guiuan of the government’s continuing commitment to assist them so that they could ‘build back better’ communities and improve their economic status,” he said.

Coloma said the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was prepared “to extend micro-lending facilities as part of sustainable livelihood programs for calamity-affected communities.”

“We were ready with our list of priorities and the people of Guiuan were ready to talk,” Mayor Christopher Sheen Gonzales, 33, said of the aborted meeting with the President.

Anointed by Mr, Aquino during his first visit here last Nov. 17 as the first official hero of Yolanda for orchestrating the massive forced evacuation of most of Guiuan’s  47,000 residents, Gonzales had every reason to be excited.

“This is the President of the Philippines visiting, we should get to work,” Gonzales had told his employees whose efforts before and after Yolanda struck received positive reviews from aid donors. Guiuan accounted for 101 of Yolanda’s overall death toll of more than 6,200.

But when the visit was canceled, Aquino not only disappointed the youthful mayor, but also dampened the expectations of thousands of survivors waiting for good news or moral support from the President.

“We cannot depend on P-Noy all the time, and we are tired of being poor,” Gina Logatoc said, expressing a general sentiment.

At least, charities remain

Asked if they were familiar with the work of Muhammad Yunos, the women around the Logatoc store in Sulangan chorused “Muhammad who?”

They may not know Yunos, but the women here are practicing what the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate has successfully shared with women in Bangladesh.

Known as Banker to the Poor, Yunos has freed thousands of women in his home country from years of poverty by offering them small loans from his Grameen Bank to start meager businesses, such as basket-weaving and food-processing.

If there is a perception that the national government is largely absent, the same cannot be said about international agencies. The International Committee of the Red Cross, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) and the United Nations Children’s Fund are the most visible.

When pedicab driver Pedro Abud, his 6-month pregnant wife Nelida Serbito and their 11-month-old baby Amber were denied sanctuary at the Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Cathedral at the height of Yolanda’s fury last Nov. 8, they crossed the street and found refuge at the Knight of Columbus building.

Abud, 37, sustained a ghastly leg wound as Yolanda destroyed the roof of the K of C evacuation center. A week later, the wound worsened and turned gangrenous. He went to the St. Mary’s Academy nearby, where MSF doctors treated him.

“If not for MSF, my husband’s leg would have been amputated by now,” said his wife, Serbito, 36.

During a visit to the cathedral on Sunday, this reporter inquired about the Abud incident. Msgr. Lope Robredillo, the parish priest, was in no mood to talk about it. Yolanda had reduced the church to rubble.

The priest might not have been able to help Abud, but in Guiuan and elsewhere in the calamity zone, there were at least the charity groups around to lend a hand.

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