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At the Tacloban astrodome, refugees find a home in ruined bars


She found Santa Claus and her Christmas tree strewn in the streets after the looting. With these, she decorated her shelter in what used to be a bar set around an astrodome that had been the gathering spot of Tacloban City’s entertainment crowd.

She picked up teddy bears too, and some angels in the ensuing days of shock and fear, washing them clean in the waters that was her neighborhood, which disappeared in the path of the storm surge and where bodies floated.

She made a home, however temporary it may be, taking the time to fix it up, even sewing up a curtain to give her collection of decorative pieces a touch of supreme value. She just loved them, she said she’s always had. It’s that spirit that can’t break her.



Florentina Duma is 58 years old. She was one of those who took to safety inside the astrodome, a grand basketball stadium, as typhoon Yolanda was bearing its strongest winds through the islands of Samar and Leyte. The roof caved in, pouring down water that drowned people inside. She rushed to the higher elevation of bleachers, taking her blind 84-year old mother with her.

Her family was among the 1,200 households of ‘B-61’ – the Barangay 61 of a squatters’ colony that lived on stilt houses in a water village washed out by the typhoon, leaving its remnants of poles sticking out by the coast near the stadium. All gone.

When you ask them what happened inside the astrodome, which had served as the city's main evacuation center, they are brief: people died. They panicked and after it was over, the stadium started smelling bad. There has been no official death count, but it’s been estimated that about 300 bodies were retrieved. Today Navy teams in their blue uniform are cleaning it, bailing out the water and carrying piles of wood that fell from the roof. No one wants to answer questions about what happened to the bodies, who collected them, where they were buried.

Staking a space

Two weeks after Yolanda has shown what nature can do, pockets of life have revived, people from around the world have come to save them, there are planes always on the run to send food or take victims away to safer places, to Cebu, to Manila. Everyday a crowd stands in line by the airport, waiting there for as long as it would take before they get their chance for a ride.

No one around the astrodome appears to be in a rush to leave. They’ve taken on the quality of sustaining themselves wherever fate throws them; the poverty that generations of their families have carried gives them the easy fortitude of carrying on. They’ve occupied their space in each of the ruined nightlife liquor bars in the ring of the astrodome, making it their own open-door apartments viewed in varied stories of each family.

A woman outside said there must be a show coming soon if they’re cleaning it up. Her mind was elsewhere and she stood there, aimless. At the entrance, a television screen was on Cartoon Network for the children on the dirt steps, giving them the sort of entertainment so removed from the reality of the devastation, a consolation like the sweetness of candy. A generator powers the wide screen TV, portalets have finally arrived for the displaced families, and relief teams distribute food and water regularly.

A volunteer from a missionary clinic that was set up with its improvised equipment and standard medicines went from door to door, telling the refugees they could go to the second story of the stadium, by the landing, if anyone needed medical care. He went around without disturbing much of the normal pace of the new life around the astrodome.

Mosquito bites

Florentina’s next-door neighbors are three women in their forties who have all lost their husbands; at least they believe they’re missing, and not entirely giving up hope that they would show up one day. They were fishermen who’d gone out to sea a week before the fateful day of November 8. A fishing operator from Negros had offered them a job to be part a crew of 13 men. He didn’t listen to the warning. It’s nothing, he told the fishermen, it’s just the wind.

These women’s space was marked ‘B-61 – 1 Family’ on a masking tape put there by staff from the Department of Social Work and Development, whose table is positioned by the side entrance, like a concierge. Although there are three of them with their grandchildren in tow, they’ve decided to band together. The worst thing about being here, they said, is having the mosquitoes eat them at night. They light a fire in one corner to drive the insects away, but the other neighbors couldn’t stand the smoke.

They said they’ve lost their husbands, they’ve lost their clothes, this is all they’ve got.

Like the others, they walked about the streets in the chaos, scavenging for clothes, sleeping mats, cooking pots, pillows, anything they could use. Their beds are the concrete slabs that fell from one side of the wall. One of them was able to save her cell phone by wrapping it in plastic in her pocket.

They’re desperate for a mosquito netting, showing the cluster of bites on their arms and legs. They can’t sleep because of the damn mosquitoes and when they complain about this to the social workers, they say they get shrugged off.

They could move to the tents donated by foreign aid workers, but they say it’s too hot to be living inside them. The tents are pitched on the grounds by the grand building, whose structure still holds up despite the danger. More than 300 families have moved into the temporary shelters, families from Barangay 61 that remained even after the typhoon.

So this is their home for now. They’ve picked up a sofa somewhere; a woman is lounging there while clipping her nails. Each cubicle has its own way of making it to their likeness from things owned by others before the typhoon, a display of ingenuity in starting from scratch. A mother was able to get hold of foam play mats, which she has pieced together like a puzzle in pastel colors. It fit the size of her family.

There are no more families inside the coliseum; those who were unable to stake their claim in the former hangouts around its perimeter have all been relocated to the tents. Florentina Duma does not know how long they will be able to stay here. The city might have to be flattened before it could be built anew. Machines have begun the task of clearing the roads of debris. “Our life is floating,” she said.

She had worked so hard to escape poverty. She had started a barbecue business by the side wall of the astrodome, in near proximity of her home in Baranggay 61. It catered to the employees of the bars because it was cheaper, and it picked up quickly when she offered drinks, adding more tables for her customers. She’d lost everything too; in her panic she forgot to take her savings in a box, preoccupied on her worries for her mother and two daughters. Her husband was away in Samar.

She sat there by her Christmas tree, but her eyes were cast on the bay that gave them the curse of living by the coastline. It’s been quiet now and abundant too: a three-feet bucket of fish has been harvested, and vendors have been making the rounds of the shelters. Others are selling bananas and root crops along the road.

A girl walked past with victory on her face, holding a live chicken upside down and announcing to everyone that she got it for two hundred pesos. Among the cluster of refugees, she will have a better meal. – YA, GMA News

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