Joyful

I realised I hadn't really posted any photos of Joyful, our first canine friend here in Tacloban. She used to be very squeaky, not really whiney, but vocal in drawing attention to herself for pats. That seems to have calmed down a bit now. She had puppies a while ago, but we never saw them, so I don't think they survived very long. 

 She's a very sweet dog, and spends most of her days lounging on a chair outside the office.

 That chair is now covered in dog hair, so no-one else sits in it.

 She misses Lucky too.

Farewell Lucky

We first noticed the dog we named Lucky upstairs outside the restaurant. She kept to herself and seemed to sleep all the time. At some point, I don't remember when, she started hanging around with Joyful outside the office. She quickly became my favourite. 

Every morning as I rounded the corner to approach the office, she'd be standing there with her tail wagging. As soon as we made eye contact she'd come loping over for her morning pats. There was no better way to start the day than to have someone so happy to see you. 

She'd spend most of the day curled up sleeping. We later found out this was because she would spend her nights leading a pack of other dogs on all sorts of adventures I can only imagine. 

Whenever I went outside during the day, she'd lazily open one eye and as soon as she realised it was me, she'd immediately roll over and request belly rubs.

She was also very inquisitive and gentle with a new teeny tiny puppy.

But mostly her and Joyful would just pal around and play.

When we moved into a bungalow in the hotel grounds they found us before too long. Even with the door wide open, Lucky knew to stay outside as she'd be rewarded with more tummy pats.

Lucky was poisoned two nights ago. We'll never know if it was accidental or intentional, but it was a terribly distressing thing to witness. I couldn't bear to stay with her until the end, so part of me wants to believe that she shook it off and is now out there somewhere leading a new pack of dogs around Tacloban.

But mostly I will remember her as my happy little furry friend.

Farewell Lucky. 

Hard to keep track of the days

I've been busy. I can't believe it's February! I get to the office at 6:20am and plough through emails. During the day I'll spend time in internal meetings, like finalising budgets for the WASH programme, or talking to the monitoring & accountability team about our hotline, or in external meetings on shelter, camp management, protection...the list is endless! I usually finish around 7pm, when I can no longer ignore the growls of my stomach. Most evenings we eat in the hotel restaurant, where we have seen a big improvement in the food in the last week or so, but some evenings we muster up the energy to go out to eat. Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying all of the challenges my new role brings each and every day. There's a lot of problem solving, a lot of creative thinking, and I'm learning so much from my boss who's an experienced programme manager.

It rained for about 2.5 weeks a couple of weeks ago. We didn't really see the sun at all. Then there were a few beautiful days, until another tropical depression came through. There were rumours flying around that another typhoon was coming, but thankfully (particularly for the families living in tents) it was only one windy rainy night. The next morning the sun was out again. It's been a bit weird weather wise.

The Sunday before last I went on a bit of an adventure with two colleagues, to try and find some hot springs. It took about an hour to get to the town, but unfortunately our adventure was foiled by a gaping hole in a bridge we had to cross.

Last week I accompanied some high level visitors to one of our project areas. We've donated chainsaws and table saws to coconut farmer's cooperatives, so they can help families in the area to not only clear their land of fallen trees, but also turn the trees into lumber for reconstructing houses.

The chainsaws aren't the usual small type I see at home, but a good few feet long!

Finally, every night we are treated to the vocal and guitar styling of Miss Linda (2nd from right), who is extremely talented. She lets people get up and sing with her, or play her guitar, and is just great. Her 90 year old mother is always with her, and she's such a sweet woman (see if you can pick her out in the photo...)

She's also my biggest fan. After my roaring success with Pusong Bato, which I sometimes sing with Linda, her mother always demands that I sing it. She even followed me into the bathroom the other night to request it!! :-) 

A good day, a great night

The other night, my two roommates and I decided it would be good at the end of each day to reflect on one good thing that had happened during the day. That had been a particularly bad day for me, and I struggled to come up with something. But I didn't have that problem last night, as we had the most wonderful day.

Instead of doing a little Christmas party for staff, we decided to hold off and make it a new year's celebration. We asked each of the teams to prepare some sort of activity or performance to entertain the whole team. I had no idea what to expect. I'd been asking various teams throughout the week how their planning was going, and it wasn't until Thursday that I started to see groups sneak off to rehearse.

We were absolutely blown away. Our Public Health Promotion team, which consists of about 40 odd people including volunteers, rocked up in matching outfits. They did a fabulous dance number, which included a surprise element of a fire dancer!! One of the team hadn't been able to do any fire dancing since the typhoon hit, and today was his return to performing and it was just incredible. I almost got a bit teary watching them (ok, I did actually tear up).

The next team up was a composition of our Public Health Engineers, Monitoring & Accountability and Gender teams. They also did a dance number, which while not as involved as the PHPs was a lot of fun and full of humour. They also ran a couple of games which brought a lot of laughs.

Next on stage were Finance, I.T, H.R, and Logistics. They started with a lovely rendition of We are the World, which was rather demure, and then launched into a Filipino song which involved the guys rolling their shirts up and our big Kenyan loggie donning a tutu and busting out some serious dance moves. Terrific!

After the lunch break, Jane and I surprised everyone with the first real performance of Spudnik this deployment. We changed the words of Eight Days a Week to apply to the Tacloban team which was met with lots of laughs. Thankfully we had an encore prepared: we pulled out the big guns by performing a Filipino song called Pusong Bato (in Tagalog) and frankly I don't think I've ever been met with such cheers before. It was so fun! But you know, we're rockstars so we're used to the adoration....

Our Emergency Food Security and Vulnerable Livelihoods team then staged an epic five station series of games, which provided a lot of laughter and squealing. One of the tasks was to come up with a team chant, and one of our distribution volunteers, a very sweet girl who's probably only 18 and is absolutely tiny, busted out this epic rap with some sweet dance moves and brought the house down.

We ending up awarding the prize for the best team (which was a meal out for the team) to the PHPs - every single one of them participated with enthusiasm and high spirits and they'd obviously put a lot of thought into the performance. The day ended with another activity from the PHP team, which was a dance along to this strange video of the song Funky Town, with this weird dancing alien. Hilarious.

And so the afternoon wound down, and some of us had to do a little bit of work. At about 6:30pm we decided it was beer o'clock, and we were just expecting a very quite evening. It was Jane's last night and the weather has been so bad the past few days that we didn't feel like going out, so we just went to the restaurant in the hotel as usual. There was a woman playing guitar and singing (she's very talented) and as the night wore on, more and more of us got up and sung with her, until eventually, she wasn't singing at all and it was just one person after another coming up and singing...with varying degrees of tunefulness! At one point some people in branded jackets came in, and we indicated that they should sing. Somehow the man who was obviously most senior found out Jane was leaving, jumped up on stage and launched into Leaving On A Jetplane (which had already been sung once or twice before...). I found out half way through his performance that he's actually a Senator!!

It was a night full of laughter, and I'm a bit hoarse this morning after all the singing. Those low key nights that unexpectedly turn into something wonderful are always the most memorable. We'll miss Jane terribly, but I'm glad we were able to send her off with a bang!

2014!!

I normally would have written this blog post a few days ago, at the end of 2013 and looked back at the year and what it brought me, but I was a little bit busy getting stuck into my R&R, which has been extremely relaxing, and extremely needed! I rung in the new year with my friend Steph at a quiet little resort in Mactan, the island next to Cebu. We spent the evening by the pool, playing cards and watching the fireworks that lit up the sky every now and then. The best new year's eves are always the quiet ones!

It's hard to remember what happened in 2013. I spent the first half of the year in Lebanon, working on the Syria Crisis, which was a frustrating response as the funding we had was really limited. Conflicts are always more difficult to fundraise for, and this was no exception. But it was wonderful to be based in Lebanon again, particularly living in Beirut just down the street from my favourite cafe in the world, and catching up with the friends I made when I lived there in 2009/10. And the evenings spent with Jane and her ukulele on our balcony, re-writing songs to be about our colleagues and then performing them were some of the best of the year.

We had such great teams working in Lebanon and Jordan, and it was a lot of fun to work with them, even though the response was difficult. Seeing the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan on a number of occasions was a new experience, I've never seen a camp like it, and doubt I will again. The size of it, the location of it, and the challenges around providing some of the 120,000+ people living there with the water and sanitation they needed were mind boggling. But our team managed that with aplomb, because they're legends.

The four and a half months I spent at home were spent hanging out with my parents, and Jules and Vardy on the weekends. It was nice to be vegging out at home, it felt like it took about 2 months to get back to normal after the stress of the Syria crisis! The road trip my Dad and I did to Canberra was so much fun, there's nothing quite like the Australian country side, particularly in a little red convertible! :-) Then of course there was the unfruitful apartment buying attempts, and while I loved spending time getting to know Melbourne better, and catching up with all my friends there, it was disappointing that I wasn't able to afford the type of apartment I want. Maybe in 2014....

And then to round out the year with a fast paced, high pressure response like the typhoon Haiyan response has been fantastic. The extent of the destruction is truly devastating, and the size of our response is impressive. We have a huge team in Tacloban, made up of internationals, relocated staff from elsewhere in the Philippines, local staff we've hired, and a fantastic team of volunteers (some of who have become staff) that have helped deliver assistance to over 200,000 people in Leyte, and over 350,000 in total across the affected areas. Not too shabby for less than 2 months of work. We're now planning the recovery phase, which will focus more assistance on a lower number of people, to help them re-establish livelihoods, and also make sure they have access to clean water and sanitation facilities. There's a long road ahead, but it's been an absolute pleasure working in such a motivated and enthusiastic team. And endlessly challenging for me in my new temporary role as deputy programme manager; I've learned a lot in the past month, about all aspects of managing a field office and it's been the type of professional development opportunity I've been looking for for some time. I'm thrilled to have been given the chance, and I'm doing a good job, the hard part will be leaving this role at the end of January and going back to my normal job!!

As for 2014, I think it's going to be a good year. I have certain goals in mind, both personal and professional, but I don't believe in new year's resolutions. Let's just hope that it's a safe and happy year for us all.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's time for another swim!

Another busy week

It's been a long, busy week in Tacloban. I spent a day in the field with one of our distribution teams, who started distributing tarpaulins, ropes, nails and hammers to families to provide them with a bit of temporary shelter. I was so incredibly impressed by the team. Most of them are university students, who were affected by the typhoon themselves but have been volunteering with us over their holidays. They are so enthusiastic and happy to be part of the response. I watched them stand in the baking sun, registering community members and handing them jerry cans and water treatment bottles, along with the tarps. I joined them in a row from the truck to the very organised lines of people, handing tarp after tarp down the line. They kept saying "ma'am Carly, you should go and stand in the shade," but were delighted when I told them that I was their assistant for the day. They told their team leader that they'd loved having me with them for the day as it forced them to practice their English (which is very good as it is!)

I spent yesterday morning around Tacloban city, figuring out where we could distribute more tarps. We drove along one stretch of road, just beside the water, and the devastation was mind boggling. The driver told me that after the typhoon, everything that had once made the houses along the water line had been blown onto the road and the other side. The road was now clear, and there were just piles and piles of timber, iron sheeting, and other household goods stacked up beside the road. One 6x4m tarp isn't going to go a long way here, as these families have basically nothing left, but I hope it will go some way to keeping them dry in the rain we've been having.

At one stop there were military and police hanging around, and they didn't want to let us walk down the road to the community we wanted to visit. We found out that the UN Secretary General was going to be visiting, but not for a couple of hours, so they finally let us through. There was a hive of activity going on, with people cleaning the road further, and trying to tidy up a little bit more. Looking around and noticing what had survived the typhoon was so interesting, a wall here, a door there, a toilet sitting out in the open. I haven't seen any of the coverage of Ban Ki Moon's visit, but I hope it brings more attention to the response, and the vast amounts of work left to be done.

And so now it's Sunday and we have the whole day off. It really doesn't feel like Christmas in just a few days. 

Tindog Tacloban

I arrived in Tacloban on Friday. For the first time in my life I travelled by helicopter, a free service provided by UNHAS, the UN Humanitarian Air Service. And it wasn't a dull beige or white like the UNHAS planes normally are, it was fancy and red.

We hovered for quite some time, just off the ground, and so I entertained myself by reading the safety card. I interpret this as "in case of emergency, casually saunter from the aircraft looking uber cool"

Light heartedness aside, as we flew closer to Tacloban, the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan became quite evident. 33 million coconut trees were destroyed by the storm. From the air I could see trees that had been uprooted, and flung horizontally into the ground. Then there was this:

There wasn't a car available to pick me up at that time, so I jumped into a moto trike and was shocked and impressed at what I saw on the way. The damage is overwhelming. I've never seen the aftermath of a bombing in person, but it's what I imagine Tacloban, and other affected areas of the Philippines most closely resemble. But the other incredible sight to see, was the amount of work that's already been done.

The trip to the hotel we're using as an office wouldn't have been more than 20 minutes, and the road was clear the entire way. Debris is piled up around everywhere, but the road has been completely cleared.

On Monday I headed south to two municipalities we had helped the local authorities to organise coordination meetings in. It was a sobering journey, to see kilometre after kilometre of mangled shells of factories, of small remnants of concrete houses, and vacant spaces where other homes used to be.

There were stretches of road where I could see where the storm surge had rushed in. Vacant lots covered in silt, people and homes just washed away in a matter of moments. The media has not over sold this crisis, it's absolutely devastating.

The organisation I work for has already done a lot of fantastic work. I'm here in Tacloban to help kickstart three areas of work, which unfortunately have no staff recruited for yet, but are really important elements to complement the water, sanitation and hygiene promotion activities, and the food security and livelihoods work that we do. It's a new role for me, with added responsibilities, so it's already been extremely interesting, engaging and challenging, and I'm looking forward to seeing the areas progress.

Even though there is a lot of work to be done, the people of Tacloban, of Palo, Tanauan, Macarthur, Mayorga and all of the other municipalities that have been affected, are absolutely inspiring in their resolve to pick up the pieces and rebuild their communities and lives. "Tindog" means "rise up" in the local dialect of Waray and that spirit is evident everywhere you go. We throw the word 'resilience' around a lot in humanitarian work, but the Philippines has it in abundance.

As we drove I noticed a lot of hand made cardboard signs saying 'we need water' and the words "help" or "SOS" spray painted on roads. And I also noticed twice as many hand made signs that said things like "Thank you to the world for helping us" and "Thank you for being here." There has been overwhelming support financially for our work here in the immediate aftermath, I just hope that the world won't forget about the Philippines in a few months.