Boats for Tacloban Fishermen

Urban Poor Associates (UPA) together with Holy Spirit Sisters (SSPS) turned-over 40 boats to fishermen on February 13 at Barangay 90 Payapay, San Jose, Tacloban City.

Fishermen together with their wives and children gathered by the shore as Bishop John Du and Fr. Hector Villamil blessed the boats. The fishermen asked the Lord to drive away unfavorable wind from their boats and to always calm the sea. They prayed for fervent protection against typhoon like Yolanda.

The boats are painted blue with length of 20 feet and width of 18 inches. It has motor engine, paddle, nets and as part of disaster preparedness, a life-jacket.

Rene Labucay, beneficiary of the boat and resident of Barangay 90 said, “I know that this boat will bring us luck because the boat united all the fishermen. We worked hard in making the boats and that what made it different from all the gifts we have received after typhoon Yolanda.”

“We are very grateful that the Holy Spirit Sisters chose our barangay to distribute the boats. We are also thankful that the sisters brought UPA and the local organizers to help our community be organized. We are very happy and felt loved by many people who helped us,” Labucay added.

Sr. Marie Claire Manding, SSPS said, “The livelihood project in Tacloban is a collaboration of the South and North Holy Spirit Sisters (SSPS) provincials. We are planning to increase the number of beneficiaries by providing 125 boats or more. This signifies the 125^th year of foundation of SSPS congregation in the whole world. We would also like to extend our gratitude to all the donors who believed in the project. This entire activity is a celebration of life.”

UPA partnership with SSPS resulted after UPA held a forum last December 17, 2013 entitled “Build Back Better” that aimed to ensure that the people of Tacloban will be consulted in all aspects of national reconstruction, including land, houses, health, jobs, administration, and hygiene kits.

Alicia Murphy, UPA Field Director said, “UPA helped in organizing Barangays 89 and 90 two areas hard-hit by Typhoon Yolanda, where the beneficiaries of the boats live. We aim that the organizing of 2,000 families will not only be for the livelihood program but eventually decent and resilient permanent housing.”

“We are thankful with DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman who gave us tents and generator for the construction of boats,” Murphy added.

The fishermen put up peoples organizations called Yolanda Survivor Fishermen Associations to help them have a dialogue with the government agencies who can help in providing solutions to their needs. The women are also creating an organization that will focus on the needs of women and children.

The group earlier distributed 14 pedicabs. The drivers are now earning 100 a day. It also helped them transport all their belongings every time there is call for evacuation. The Holy Spirit Sisters and UPA are also doing a Saturday feeding program that aims to give 165 children in Payapay a nutritious meal.

Murphy concluded, “We are doing this to make sure that the government acknowledges the best practices in reconstruction. We want worldwide acknowledged best practices to ensure that the majority of Yolanda survivors be served with integrity and that all their needs will be given priority.”

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Listen to fishermen’s wives

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

We stood, with a dozen or so women, wives of Tacloban fishermen, looking out to sea for signs of a new typhoon. They had heard rumors of such a typhoon (Dec. 15) and had sent their children to the rescue centers. The women told us they were terribly afraid that the monstrous power that had crushed their homes and killed hundreds of their immediate neighbors would return, and they would hear again the shrieking winds. Given a reasonable recourse, they wouldn’t want to live near the sea—if only for the sake of their children.

Immediately before us were the pulverized concrete remains of Barangay (village) 90. No one lives there now. The survivors still tell of the many adults’ and children’s bodies pulled from under the debris after the typhoon, so the area now carries about it the air of horror of an open grave.

We walked with Holy Spirit Sisters Nory Gabito and Pearl Probadora through Barangay 89 and met Barangay Chair Melba Villalina. She was meeting with workers of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. She looked exhausted. She said the government doesn’t have a detailed plan of what it wants to do with the 1,010 families of her barangay.

Given the government’s 40-meter-wide zone measured from the water, where housing is forbidden, a solution acceptable to both the people and government is difficult to find. Many families, she said, would accept relocation if their fishermen-husbands could remain near the sea to continue their work. Some 400 residents of the barangay died during “Yolanda.”

We walked a little further and talked to Belinda Guinoohan, 43, who lives in one of the tents donated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Her living situation could be worse—as it is in many other parts of the country at all times—and, to be sure, it is far from comfortable. As we talked, a wet wind blew through the tent. The women joked that they slept on a waterbed, only the bed was all, real water.

They said the UN people who gave the tents told the people the government would tell them what to do. So far the government hasn’t done so. In retrospect, it is good the UN gave the tents, since that enabled them to stay together—at the site—while a solution has yet to be reached.

Belinda told me that no one from the UN, government or international NGOs has asked her or her neighbors what solution they would prefer. Consultation between the local government and the people affected by the disaster is the number one priority recommendation of the UN and of many others who have suggested some guidelines for the postdisaster reconstruction work. Belinda repeated the gist of what the barangay chair told us about a “double form of relocation”: the families inland, the fishermen to a “fishermen’s area.” This solution separates families, so it is far from perfect. However, on this matter, there are only bad solutions to be had at this time.

“Do you have a people’s group of some sort?” we asked Belinda.

“No, we don’t,” she answered.

She said a few of them individually and separately have gone to authorities to complain, but no one listened to them. It seemed to us, sisters and people’s organizers who were listening, that some sort of people’s organization was needed—the only realistic way those in authority can consult with thousands of poor people. When the idea of such a people’s group was mentioned, the women we talked with agreed: It was a good and useful thing to have.

The floor of the tent was wet sand. When it rained the water collected in puddles inside the tent. Women told us their children would cry and refuse to go to school whenever it rained.

We had to admire the gritty decorum of the women who, even in very difficult circumstances, wash the clothes and try to get them dry, even as they struggle to find food for their respective families, nurse the very young and comfort all the children—day after day with patience and grace. Has any government ever had better people to work with? I don’t think so. Maybe good, but no one better.

Our last stop on our last day was at the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Palo, a 10-15 minute drive from Tacloban. We went there straight from the fishermen’s area and found what could be called an instance of divine democracy: There was great damage done there too. This relatively new and beautiful church was damaged much like the fishermen’s huts. Huge sections of the roof had been torn away by Yolanda. You could sit in the dry part of the church and listen to raindrops falling on the altar area. What is the message? Is it that the church must share the life of the poor? Behind the cathedral nearly 1,100 bodies of people are buried under a simple green field—people from all socioeconomic classes, we were told.

There are, according to media reports, tens of thousands of poor families along the shorelines of Samar, Leyte and other islands. They are in much the same bad situation as the fishermen’s wives in Tacloban we talked with. How the government “re-houses” them and helps to put the wage earners among them back to work may be the heart and soul of the whole reconstruction effort. My feeling is we need much more open, transparent discussions—and more ideas and alternatives—to find the right answer(s).

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Wounded people

By Denis Murphy

12:59 am | Monday, December 16th, 2013

The people of Tacloban and the other areas savaged by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” are a wounded people.

The smell of death is still in their nostrils; nearly every family has suffered a death. Families have lost all they own: the fishing boat and nets they saved up for over the years; the small businesses, tool kits, tricycles, and other assets they depended on for their livelihood; and the small homes carefully pieced together as a little more money came in.

They have seen death up close in the worst destruction witnessed in the country since the Liberation of Manila in 1944. Some of them must find it truly difficult to begin all over again. Some may despair. Many still hear the wind shrieking.

The people do not need bosses or taskmasters. It may be only their faith that still tethers them to their ordinary lives. The dire situation calls for people who can talk kindly to them, find out what they want to do, and help them do that, if it is at all possible and feasible.

For the reconstruction in the Visayas we need free, creative and imaginative people at all levels of work, but especially at the very top, among mayors and national leaders, and among the poor who will be 90 percent of the people involved in the effort. We need informed agreement, not grudging assent, among the poor; we need their enthusiasm. We need a healthy, but not slavish, respect for law and custom.

Jesus told us the law was made for man, not man for the law, and that the need to help one’s neighbor in times of trouble overrides all other laws. Mahatma Gandhi led the Indian people to violate British law several times on their way to independence.

Compare the view of Jesus and Gandhi with another understanding of the law that appeared recently in Tacloban.

Thousands of coconut trees have been felled by the typhoon. Some people wanted to cut the trees into lumber that they would use to rebuild their homes. They were told by officials that it was a violation of the law to do so, especially if done with a power saw. Thus, the children, the aged and the sick continued to sleep in the open.

Sometimes we must set aside laws and customs that are clearly not relevant, but those who do so must be ready to suffer the punishment established for such violations. Setting aside a law is no trivial matter, though it may sometimes be necessary.

In the reconstruction we have to give a special place to the poor people and to their organizations. We need the suggestions of the poor and their wholehearted support. The poor will be the final judges of the success or failure of the whole project in the way they will vote later and lead their lives. The poor people’s organizations are the best means of ensuring that we have the consent of the people and their free and “generous solidarity” (Pope Francis’ phrase).

All of us have to think outside the box and work with people who are outside our usual “box” of friends. We have to allow all levels of society a seat at the decision-making table. If we give the poor a chance to explain their points of view, we will be surprised by their wisdom. We must not demand freedom with regard to law and custom only, but also in regard to the orders that come from our officials. We must build on our democratic instincts. Leaders must come and argue their cases. The poor are not their indentured slaves. The poor are their “bosses.” This is a good time to part with the autocratic, bullying ways of the past.

We hope that in the process of reconstruction, a kind of people are formed who will continue after the reconstruction to build a democratic and prosperous society and rid themselves of inept politicians, homelessness, hunger and illiteracy. We need leaders who can bring joy into the reconstruction work and into the future.

The poor people of the Visayas need compassion and understanding. I realized part of this emotional reality when we took a taxi home from Makati last week.

We started talking to the taxi driver, who told us that he was from Tacloban and that his parents barely escaped death during the onslaught of Yolanda. As the wind grew stronger, the couple went outdoors and climbed up the sampaloc tree behind their house. The father, 79, and the mother, 65, held on to the tree for hours as the typhoon raged. They watched their house fly apart in the wind. They saw their other son hit on the head by a piece of debris and fall dead. The next day they buried him in front of their house.

The taxi driver began to shake. He took deep gasps for breath and the tears fell. “My brother, my brother,” he sighed repeatedly, “my poor brother.” We were silent for the next 45 minutes.

We say “wounded people,” but maybe it is better to say “challenged people” on their way to becoming the “joyful people” that Pope Francis talks about in his pastoral letter, “The Joy of the Gospel.”

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

A horrible half-year

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Now that the worst is over in Tacloban and some other typhoon-devastated areas, it may be time to look not only at the awful tragedy there but also at the last six months, which were marked by a series of manmade and natural disasters seldom seen together in such a short period. It may be good to look at them now because people are quick to forget, especially with Christmas just a month or so away.

Midyear, economists criticized the national economy for creating “growth without jobs,” which meant that the rich got richer and the poor remained mostly stuck in poverty. It wasn’t an accident; the economy was designed by our business leaders and policymakers to operate in that way. Such an economy, dividing the population even further into rich and poor conditions of living, is at war with notions of solidarity and compassion, which should be guiding norms. (Economist Cielito Habito wrote in this paper on Nov. 12 that it was not enough that we have growth: “It must be growth that produces jobs and livelihoods for as many Filipinos as possible.”)

Then came the disclosures on the pork barrel scam involving leading politicians. In an estimate, a government official claimed that the P10 billion allegedly stolen by Janet Napoles was a trivial matter compared to the P1 trillion (12 zeros) stolen from the government from 2001 to 2010.

Next came the battles in Zamboanga. People have wondered how a small ragtag militia could gear for war and march on that city without the Armed Forces being aware of it, especially since there is a heavy military presence there. People also wonder why the military can’t find criminals, such as former general Jovito Palparan, And even more important: Why can’t the military find missing activist Jonas Burgos?

And then there was the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that jarred Bohol, Cebu and other areas.

Then came “Yolanda.” Day after day, as people watched the news on TV, they saw sorrow and pain, how fiercely men and women can love their children and one another, and how perishable we all are.

We saw people half-crazed with thirst in Tacloban and bodies of beautiful children lying dead by the roads. We heard of looting, and of a new species of criminal, the looter-rapist. Who would have imagined Filipino men taking food and whatever they wanted from poor women in a time of calamity—while dead bodies lay all around—and then raping the women? Many people simply sat and waited for death. And where was our Church? Where were the priests to bury the dead and console those laid low in sorrow? Bodies lay everywhere as if they were the usual garbage.

Some may ask, as Jewish people asked at the time of the Holocaust: Where is God?  God was there in Tacloban, receiving the dying children, the young parents and the aged into His arms. He was wiping away all their tears, as we are told in the Book of Revelation, and bringing them to their true home where there “shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

If our economic elite, military, elected officials, and even the Church can disappoint us, to whom will the people look for leadership? To the same institutions—where else?—but these must recognize their weaknesses, and begin anew with the intention to reform. There is an old saying in the Church, older than the Reformation: “The Church must always be reformed.” The same need exists for all our institutions. If the Holy Church needs constant reform, surely our human institutions do, too. There are enough decent, hardworking people in government to do the job.

Reform should include the willingness to listen to all groups of citizens, including the poor. We should remember that in a democracy, policy is a matter of compromise. It is also said: “In a democracy, reform comes from the ballots of the poor.” To help shape the future, the poor must have better jobs and education than they have now.

At a meeting on Nov. 13 at the Ateneo de Manila, the urban poor of Metro Manila and fishermen from Laguna Lake began to play their role in this renewal. The participants covered three matters: 1) what to do when there is conflict between government and poor people’s plans; 2) what to ask of government, now that it is clear there is much more money available than they previously thought; and 3) what service will the poor offer society in the settlement of the pork barrel disarray.

The poor do not expect to become another Neda (National Economic and Development Authority), but they have the skills to analyze government plans and sort out what is good for themselves and the common good, and what is not. They limit their advice to those matters in which they have direct knowledge. The fishermen of Laguna Lake have begun to do this by rejecting the ring road dike around the lake that will require the relocation of 45,000 families, and the shorter Laguna Lake Expressway Dike that will affect about 10,000 families. They will examine alternatives and support those remedies for flooding on the lake that treat them fairly. They will oppose solutions that do not. The fishermen who were at the meeting are from the Calamba-Biñan area. They have fished in those waters for generations, or at least since the time of Jose Rizal, who wrote about how much he enjoyed the fish caught in that part of the lake.

The poor realize that government has much more money than they ever imagined, so instead of pork barrel they ask government to widen the benefits of PhilHealth to include medicines, lab tests, ambulances, and other out-of-hospital expenses at affordable rates. They ask government to please improve the schools in poor areas, and give poor groups funding to begin to upgrade their areas—for example, their drainage. They ask government to review its economic policies and direct the economy to creating jobs. Finally they ask the government to make food available at affordable prices.

In return, the poor will organize to vote out of office all politicians found guilty of involvement in the pork barrel scam. They will make citizen arrests of people they know are guilty. They will cooperate with other groups in these matters.

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For many years Nandy Pacheco and others have urged Filipinos to accept Christ’s peace in their hearts. This peace is the love, forgiveness, compassion and strength of Jesus. It is well described in St. John’s Gospel (Chapters 14 and 20). Christ’s peace takes away our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh. It takes away the sorrows of Tacloban and gives us Christ’s joy.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).