Business Fit Magazine October 2019 Issue 1 | Page 32

Travel
habits. There were 20 of us sleeping in the two
makeshift bedrooms, so we had to compromise
– which some managed better than others. And
of course there were personality clashes, not
everyone got on with everyone else.
All of these
children will
have already
learned the
meaning of loss
charities with more funding could come and
start rebuild projects; working with a building
company to create housing for the displaced
families and the soup kitchen, providing a hot
meal to the kids.
I worked mainly on school clearing. It was hot
and humid and labour-intensive. We had to wear
gloves, hats, safety glasses and steel cap boots.
Wield shovels, picks, wheelbarrows and ladders
to make safe areas for the kids to play. There
was debris everywhere, from rubbish, to rebar
to concrete and fallen trees to children’s sodden
schoolbooks, we collected it all in wheelbarrows.
Most of the school buildings where we were
working were unsafe and the kids are being
taught in tents provided by Unicef Whenever they
had a break from lessons, they came running out
to us.
“What your name?” “Where you from?” “How old
are you?”
They excitedly helped us with our clearing up,
cheerfully riding in the wheelbarrows giggling
and playing like school kids do and yet all of these
children will have already learned the meaning of
loss. If not a family member, then a classmate
or teacher, friend or neighbour, would have
perished on 8 November 2013.
It was an interesting month. I had to co-habit
with total strangers, each with their own views
and reasons for being there. We had a rota for
cleaning the bathrooms and washing up, which
not everyone adhered to. Some volunteers
clearly had a better work ethic than others. We
had to adjust to each other’s idiosyncrasies and
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The lack of private space, sharing a bathroom
with 20 others, outside showering, no electricity
for the first couple of weeks, no running water
and no internet – the physical hardships - were
things I was able to adjust to quite easily. What I
found harder was making allowances for others
and trying not to be judgemental. So this I
realise is a part of me which I need to grow and
develop. I need to learn to be more forgiving and
compassionate, we all deal with things in different
ways, which is not to say one way is right and
another wrong, we all need to learn to respect
one another’s viewpoint. One of my strengths is
my organisational skills and there were times I
got incredibly frustrated seeing how the house
would benefit from being more structured in the
day-to-day running. However, as I was only there
for a short period, and being a newbie, I had to
learn to let it go.
Throughout the month I stayed in Tacloban,
the one thing which never ceased to amaze
me, was the positivity, gratefulness and smiling
faces of the Filipino people I met. We would use
public transport, the brightly painted Jeepneys
to get to and from our work, wearing our IDV –
International Disaster Volunteer - t-shirts, we
would get constantly thanked by passengers on
the bus for coming to help them. These people
were living in tents, all their belongings had
been washed out to sea by the destructive and
fatal storm surges which had accompanied the
typhoon. They had lost loved one. Gone thirsty
and hungry, had fought to survive. They had
endured all of that, yet they were still smiling.
They humbled me and brought my perspective
back into line.
Typhoon Yolanda displaced over 4 million people;
more than 6,000 people were killed with 1,800
missing. In addition, 1.1 million houses were
either partially or totally damaged, 33 million
coconut trees (a major source of livelihoods)
were destroyed. It is now five years since Yolanda
struck the city of Tacloban, it is finally beginning
to return to normal, with the cost of rebuilding at
nearly $6 billion.
Following my time volunteering in the
Philippines, I decided to write a fictional book
to try and raise awareness of the struggles
the people of Tacloban had to endure.
Once the initial news is over, that’s not the
end of the problem for the people living
through it. And to my horror, I discovered
unscrupulous people took advantage of
the vulnerable. Children were recruited into
the sex industry and specifically one I had
never encountered before, Webcam Sex
Tourism. My book, Tindog Tacloban, follows
one family through their struggle to survive.
Available on Amazon as an e-book and as
paperback, it was a bestseller in its category .
#1 Best Seller
TINDOG
TACLOBAN
CLAIRE MORLEY
Claire Morley is an eco-warrior in her adopted country of Cyprus. She is
the Editorial Coordinator for Business Fit; she has worked as a journalist and
editor in Cyprus and has written a fictional book inspired by her experience
as a volunteer in the Philippines. She also runs a business helping authors to
self-publish and promote their books
www.myepublishbook.com
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