Eastern Samar Christmas: The beauty and spirit of my people

EASTERN SAMAR, Philippines – It was the first time for me to go home after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the two towns I had called my first real world. Last Christmas, I thought I would see the saddest picture there was. I was wrong. 

I had my formal elementary education in Salcedo, Eastern Samar, where the coastal areas facing the Pacific Ocean was badly hit by the super typhoon. Only a few minutes from Salcedo is the historic town of Guiuan, where I finished high school. This place, where the typhoon made its first landfall, was once loved by the Americans, and was a temporary dwelling place for the thousands of White Russian refugees in 1949.  

No one really knew what was left of my family in Salcedo a few hours after Typhoon Haiyan struck – until, I received a text message from my older brother, who at the time happened to be in Tacloban City, the only place where mobile phone signal was starting to work. He said the family was safe. 

It was not a reassuring message, though, because he said they were starving. So, in Manila, I helped organize a non-governmental relief operation for the town of Salcedo. Our goods even reached my people’s hungry stomach a day faster than the help from the national government. 

On the 22nd of December, I went home to join my family for Christmas. We did not have much compared to past noche buenas – a little of pasta, fried chicken, and kakanin (native delicacies). Our neighbors were just as happy with whatever they had on their tables. But we shared.

For us, celebrating the birth of Christ is not measured by how much we had given or how much we had received. We had little to give away but we had much from the depths of our hearts going with it. We all knew how much it meant to extend each other a hand after we had felt how it was to have nothing.  

Christmas Day itself kept most of us in the village inside our homes – it was raining cats and dogs on that day. But in the days before and after,  I walked once more the streets of Salcedo, combed the white shores of Luksu-on in Barangay Jagnaya, was met by smiles of familiar places. 

I share these photos I took.

I hope that these images will make our fellow Filipinos – as I did – realize that we in Eastern Samar, in the so-called devastated areas, are not a deprived people. We still have a beautiful place to live in, and we are blessed this Christmas to understand love and caring in this special way. – Rappler.com

Mr Duran is a communication lecturer at La Consolacion College Manila.