Two Days in Philippines - Day Two
Day Two: “Resilience” of another kind
If the team led by His Majesty were impressed with the resilience of Queenie and Jerwin and their peers, nothing could prepare them for the scale of resilience they would encounter in their trip to the City of Tacloban next day.
The sheer scale of the disaster left behind by the typhoon was mindboggling. A series of three nine metre waves formed a storm surge with flattened the community buildings being used for refuge by hundreds of islanders whose own flimsy homes stood no chance at all … Mayor Romualdez described how two thousand bodies lay in the town, many washed more than a kilometer from their homes at the far side of the lagoon.
And despite losing almost a third of their peers, students of the San José high school welcomed His Majesty to the remains of their school … amid the stench of muddy debris in the once proud library, now roofless, the school principle explained how the students who had just welcomed His Majesty with smiles and warm greetings had all lost friends, or family, or their homes and belongings or all the above … but who would know that? The Social Sciences teacher, who doubles as the Scout leader in his spare time, talked of the role played by his senior Scouts who led a campaign to get children from affected families to return to school … where the teachers were able to offer psychological support and care …
But what could possibly explain the resilience of these amazing people. The sense of los, the uncertainty of “the missing” and the hardships to have to double up in temporary tent schools, taking shifts day and night to follow their classes. “We are sorry we cannot be in our Scout uniform to greet you”, a teenage Scout explained to the King, “but we lost everything in the Typhoon”. The dignity and thirst for learning of these young people and the incredible belief in the future is stunning!
When asked by one of the King’s group what do they need most, one of the young men turned and said “more classrooms” ….
Scouting saved my life, explained a junior Scout leader. She used the knots she learned to tie herself safely to a tree in the seconds before the storm surge hit … “otherwise I was dead!”
Philippines Scouts have run Emergency Service Corps since 1942, where senior Scouts follow training and pass this training on to their younger Scout friends – to ensure that they try to avoid falling victim themselves, where they can help prepare their families for disaster, and when disaster strikes they can help to secure themselves, their families and their communities to survive in the hours and days before the national authorities and certainly the international agencies and NGOs come to their aid. These first hours are crucial … and having survived and helped, perhaps this explained how these young people have such energy and hope. They know they can truly change their world when they take leadership!
Once again, in a solemn moment at the city’s central monument, His Majesty called for a moment’s silence. The clearly moved Monarch joined his fellow Scouts, the Vice President of the Republic of Philippines and the Mayor of Tacloban. These three men, by showing their care and humanity, inspired hundreds of young Scouts they met to be prepared for the next time!
His Majesty later handed a cheque for USD100,000 to invest in disaster preparedness training and programmes of the Philippines Scouts. We are not the Red cross, so we have not brought relief, explained World Scout Secretary General Scott Teare (who accompanied His Majesty throughout the visit) but in times like these, all community based organisations play a vital role. We train young people to take leadership. And that’s what leaders do, they lead when their communities need it most! … and in an interesting twist, the “Street Scouts the King met in Manila had been volunteering their evenings for weeks before packing individual school kits and Scout Uniforms for the students affected by the typhoon … who says these young people were poor – with a generosity of heart, they are indeed rich!
