Beyond aid, understanding storm victims’ beliefs is key

SAN PEDRO, Laguna—In an island community in Biri, Northern Samar, some residents refused to evacuate despite a typhoon warning because of a superstition that leaving their homes empty would drive good spirits away.

One woman also refused to leave her house, where the wake for her mother is being held, because of a superstition that bringing the dead out of the house and returning it would bring bad luck.

Understanding these things, according to a University of the Philippines professor, is as important as examining the physical, economical, political and mental conditions of people suffering from the effects of disaster.

“It’s not as simple as people acting on (orders to evacuate),” said Lenore Polotan dela Cruz, professor at the College of Social Work and Community Development (CSWCD) in UP Diliman.

“I’m not saying (their beliefs) are right, but if there are such, how do we find a workable solution?” she said.

Dela Cruz was with a group of 16 UP students and four other faculty members that left Manila on Nov. 25 for a 22-hour trip to areas ravaged by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in the Visayas.

Six of the students headed for towns in Northern and Eastern Samar, while the rest went to the cities of Tacloban and Ormoc in Leyte for a six-month exposure trip. The trip is an academic requirement for senior students of Dela Cruz’s course.

Students taking up the course are usually sent to urban poor communities in Manila or southern Luzon, but Dela Cruz said Yolanda is such an “unprecedented event” that course professors decided to redirect fieldwork to the Visayas.

“Given our course, we could not just stop at repacking relief goods,” said graduating student Roy Germar, 23, in a phone interview from Lawaan, Eastern Samar.

He said houses simply were blown off and coconut trees are strewn like matchstick on the ground. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

In partnership with the nongovernment Center for Empowerment and Resource Development, the students helped in distributing relief goods to victims.