By Mozart Pastrano
But it was a sunny day. There were no dark clouds early that morning. The sea was not acting up at all. The night before, Felicisimo Ocbeña recalled, he had even brought out his motorboat and scoured through his usual fishing grounds. He caught plenty of red snappers. Today promised to be another good day despite all the talk about a coming typhoon. They said on radio and TV that it would be a strong typhoon, but Ocbeña could sniff no hint of danger in the air. Maybe the typhoon had come and gone without their knowing it. Maybe it had changed its course. Maybe it had slowed down. Maybe it was just like the other typhoons they were warned about before, Undang, Frank, nothing to worry about,
He saw off his wife, Margie, as she left for work. She was in the kitchen staff of a nearby resort. As usual, she walked to work. It was a mere 10-minute walk out of their district, down a side street and, instead of crossing the main road toward the beach, turning right and keep on going some hundred meters until she reached the upscale San Antonio Beach Hotel. Their three boys and two girls were lazing about at home because classes had been called off. They lived in a modest hut in RJ Medalla Milagrosa, an inner neighborhood in Barangay Baybay in Roxas City, in the western part of the central Visayan islands in the Philippines. The district got its name after the initials of the landowner, Rudy Javellana, and the name of the community’s spiritual patron, the Medalla Milagrosa (Miraculous Medal of the Virgin Mary). But the residents here also celebrate the feast days of San Vicente Ferrer and the Black Nazarene. Apparently, the community had many prayers to offer.
Toward noon, when the midday heat would typically begin to spike, Mr. Ocbeña noticed the whistling of the wind. He looked around his hut. The posts were made of reliable wood. He looked outside at the bamboo fence that surrounded the hut and banked on the resilience of bamboo. But then the whistle became a rumbling growl, and the rain came in a downpour, and all of a sudden everything began to get animated: things flew, things fell, the curtains flailed wildly as if in a horror movie, and the whole hut trembled out of its wits. There was a crash. Their kitchen had gone tumbling down.
Mr. Ocbeña shouted at his children to seek safe shelter in a neighbor’s sturdier house. Outside, he stopped in his tracks when he saw that the tall tree in their yard was teetering toward their hut. He grabbed his eldest son and hollered at him to help him cut the tree. They went back into the hut to look for the bolo (machete) they used for chopping firewood. They took turns at hacking at the tree. They were afraid the tree would tumble down on their hut. To Mr. Ocbeña’s astonishment, he saw his son being swept up by the wind. The son was able to grab a tree trunk and he hugged it with all his life. Before he could rush to his son’s rescue, he found himself swimming in the air, too. He dropped the large heavy knife and clung on to what he could of the tree. The tree they were trying to cut kept them alive.
When they managed to get down to solid ground amid the ruckus, Mr. Ocbeña realized there was no use saving their hut. The thing to do now was to save their lives. He told his son to run to the neighbor’s house and stay there and keep watch over his siblings. Mr. Ocbeña dashed back to their hut and opened all the windows so that the air could just stream through and not blow their house away. He left without closing the door. And that was the last he saw of his house. But he did not know it then because when he made it to the neighbor’s house, its roof had given way and they all ran pell-mell into the rain and wind and mud and a meteor shower of all sorts of solid and sharp objects zooming from all over this primal chaos. They herded into another neighbor’s seemingly stable house. And then another’s. And yet someone else’s house. Until finally there was nowhere to turn to and they just stayed where they were and braved the elements and prayed to the Medalla Milagrosa, San Vicente Ferrer, the Black Nazarene, and all the angels and saints.
After what seemed like four hours, everything stood still. It was a sinister silence. They were drenched and feverish and starving, but they dreaded stepping out of their hiding place. They were afraid the typhoon was not yet over, that this was only a lull that would trick them into emerging to their doom. On the other hand, they were also afraid that the typhoon was indeed over and they might not be able to take in its aftermath. But they did venture forth, eventually, and were not surprised at what they saw. Their neighborhood had become a wasteland and a memory all at once.
When they learned that the local government had evacuated the other neighborhoods around them before the typhoon arrived, they became angry that they were left behind, that they were left to fend for themselves. Was it because they were a community of mere fishermen, laundry women, ambulant vendors, and itinerant workers? This line of thinking festered and became a shared grievance that drew the community together and gave them the strength to face the light of another day. Now they had someone to blame for their woes. Now they could claim they were but victims in all this scheme of injustice.
RESILIENT
But Mr. Ocbeña had no time for wallowing in such talk. He and his family picked up the pieces of their hut and tried to put it back one way or another. He insisted that his wife should continue with her daily routine of going to work. He commanded his children to go back to school when classes resumed. But he wanted them to learn a lesson that would last a lifetime. Instead of their usual daily allowance of P50, each of his five children now had to settle for only P35. He explained to them that the difference of P15 was their contribution to the rebuilding of their home. The day’s savings would amount to P75, he said, and at month’s end, or after 20 school days, the children would have contributed P1,500. This would go to the purchase of new nipa roofing, nails, and maybe some plywood. The children told their father they understood, and they went to school on foot instead of taking public transportation, and that was how they managed to live with their reduced allowance for many months.
One of the children came home with a new story their teacher read to them in school. Once upon a time, there were three little pigs who each built their homes. One pig built a house made of hay. Another pig built a house made of sticks. And the last pig built a house made of bricks. One day, a hungry wolf came to the neighborhood. He saw the house made of hay. He asked if he could come in, but when he was rebuffed, he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house in. He did the same to the house built of sticks. When he went to the house built of bricks, try as he might in huffing and puffing, but the house remained standing.
Not long afterward, the president of their homeowners association showed Mr. Ocbeña a form from the United Nations Human Settlements Program, or UN-Habitat. The UN-Habitat wanted to know who in the neighborhood were rendered homeless by the super typhoon and who could hardly afford to rebuild their homes. That was most of them. But there was the business of photocopying the form, and it cost two pesos. Some of Mr. Ocbeña’s neighbors were wary about this. He remembered that on other occasions he had gone to the city proper to register himself and his family in some humanitarian aid agency’s listing — and he had to pay for transportation expenses and even an occasional snack or meal. He decided two pesos for photocopying the form was not a big deal. He photocopied the form, filled it up, and submitted it. And that was how, in a manner of speaking, he and his family began to build a house made of bricks.
Except that there were no bricks at all. The UN-Habitat project, called the Post-Yolanda Support for Safer Homes and Settlements, named for the super typhoon that devastated their neighborhood and much, much more (international codename: Haiyan), aimed at building resilient homes for the typhoon victims. They were designed to resist wind speeds of up to 230 kilometers per hour. Each house measures 4.4 x 5.4 meters, with four reinforced concrete columns and four mid-wall stiffener columns, topped with reinforced concrete roof beams. The house has a hip roof, locally known as quatro aguas, with a wooden truss supporting the hip and common rafters, with 0.4 millimeters CGI roofing complete with extra perimeter nailing and ridge roll. The lower walls are made of concrete hollow blocks. The upper walls are made of split bamboo with wooden frames, a culturally accepted protocol. Clear-glass jalousie windows are used for natural lighting and ventilation. Electricity, plumbing, and sanitation systems for kitchen and toilet facilities are also included. A kitchen sink can be found at the back, which allows for incremental expansion later on. Each house costs P135,000; an on-stilt unit, a disaster risk reduction (DRR) feature in sites prone to flooding, goes up to P165,000. Mr. Ocbeña did not have to foot the bill. It was courtesy of the People of Japan and augmented by funds from the Philippine Government through the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
BUILD IT YOURSELF
What Mr. Ocbeña liked the most about the UN-Habitat project was that it was they, the homeowners, who were responsible for building their new homes. UN-Habitat called this the People’s Process, which empowers the communities to make decisions about the construction of the housing units. As head of the purchase committee, Mr. Ocbeña went around Roxas City to find the best prices and get the best deals. He learned to discern which was good construction material and which was not. He was not averse to improvising, to experimenting. He became a master at negotiating with suppliers. He wanted only the best, within the budget, for the resilient homes they were building.
In this way, the UN-Habitat project succeeded in building 660 new homes in 28 communities in the provinces of Capiz and Iloilo in Panay Island. But the project benefited not just the household partners (this is the term the project prefers to use instead of “beneficiaries”). Able-bodied people in the communities, even those not belonging to household partners, were invited for hands-on training in carpentry and construction supervision. Of the 323 semi-skilled artisans and 31 foremen who completed the training, 102 carpenters and 23 foremen were tapped in the construction of the houses for the partner households. This gave them practical experience as well as decent incomes for the duration of the project. After the project, the technical know-how they gained would ensure their gainful employment in other construction projects.
Mr. Ocbeña noted with appreciation that the housing construction, plus the livelihood opportunities it engendered, were not the only UN Habitat strategies in rebuilding communities toward resilience. By empowering communities to manage the construction funds by themselves, the international development agency also encouraged them to incur savings — and to use these savings to further construct community infrastructure. This resulted in a total of 54 community infrastructure projects in the 28 partner communities. These were mainly multipurpose centers, road improvements, and drainage construction. But there were also others: riprapping, re-gravelling of roads, streetlight installation and rewiring, and water system installation.
For Mr. Ocbeña, this overhaul of the physical landscape of RJ Medalla Milagrosa also triggered a transformation in the community’s social dynamics. He felt a new — no, a genuine — kind of neighborliness. To be sure, there were still a handful who seemed halfhearted in their participation. Sometimes they attended meetings, most of the time they could not be found in communal activities like hauling construction materials. Mr. Ocbeña would look for them and talk to them. He would tell them they had two options: do their share of the work or be stricken off the list. Participation improved to a hundred percent. Everyone now had a stake in community-building.
When UN-Habitat organized the household partners and other key people in the community and trained them in disaster risk reduction (DRR), especially with regard to housing construction, Mr. Ocbeña volunteered. The participants became Household Self-Assessment Guiders, or HAGs. They visited the rest of the community folk who did not make it to the list of household partners and offered advice on how they could repair and rebuild stronger homes. They assessed houses and trained families on building back safer using DRR techniques.
Mr. Ocbeña assessed more than 50 houses. What was noteworthy about his efforts was that he went outside of his community. He took one-hour jeepney rides past the city limits to ensure that his friends and relatives were safe in DRR-enhanced homes. He made it clear to them that “disaster” did not pertain to typhoons alone. It also meant fires, earthquakes, flooding, and the frequent twisters that visit in their part of the island. He assured them that strengthening their homes for these eventualities need not entail great cost. He who used to call himself the silent type was now a preacher of resilient housing, his eloquence harnessed by his experience. In all, 4,594 households were reached by Mr. Ocbeña and the other HAGs.
On weekends, Mr. Ocbeña likes to just putter about at home. He had subdivided it into bedrooms and a living room and a kitchen area — the toilet is tucked in a discreet corner. He takes pride in having set up the bamboo-slat walling by himself, carefully pairing each bamboo slat with another until the whole enterprise took organic shape. He laughs at the time when he found himself having the luxury of choosing between mahogany stain or maple stain for the wood finish. Even though his fishing boat is gone (he recovered the engine and hid it for future use), he sometimes falls into the old habit of weaving a new fishnet or extending one he has in stock, in lieu of repairing an actually used one. But he knows he is just like his father, who was known, honorably, as an all-around laborer. Having no fishing boat is not a problem. Mr. Ocbeña can work, because he has worked: as a messenger, a driver, a security guard, a politician’s security detail, even a masseur. He is especially sought after for his foot spa massage. Nowadays, though, he busies himself as a river cruise guide, happily giving tourists on special eco-tour packages an insider’s track of the marshlands in the vicinity.
ANOTHER STORM
Shortly after he and his family moved into their new home, another typhoon struck. It battered RJ Medalla Milagrosa with wind speeds of up to 130 kilometers per hour for three days in a row. Typhoon Ruby (international codename: Hagupit) huffed and puffed, huffed and puffed, and huffed and puffed like a pack of big, bad wolves, and inside their UN-Habitat home the Ocbeña family huddled in prayer, with other members of the community who sought safe refuge with them. While the wind howled outside, there was calm and comfort inside the house. The visitors saw on the wall in the living room a sepia photograph of Felicisimo and Margie on their wedding day. She was beautiful and he was handsome, and they were all smiles. Those who sought refuge with them swore it was the same ebullient smile the couple flashed when the typhoon eventually spent itself and went away, and they realized they were all safe and sound in the new Ocbeña residence.
This story first appeared in the six-volume People’s Process in Shelter Recovery published recently by UN-Habitat Philippines, the People of Japan, and the Social Housing Finance Corp.
