Salmonberry: Barayong: A mountain village in recovery

July 1, 2014

Leyte Island, Philippines

Filipinos are an integral part of the commercial fishing industry and community in Alaska, and a major reason for the donation of salmon to Yolanda victims. When I was a kid I used to follow my parents through the canneries that processed the salmon we caught. There were fish parts everywhere and Filipinos would be racing around on forklifts, expertly processing seafood, and yelling to one another over the roar of the machinery. As a kid I only knew they weren't speaking English, but now I know that they were probably speaking Tagalog (though in this region they speak Cebuano, the language of Cebu). Now I know what the lush islands they come from look like, the smells of lechon (roasted suckling pig), the colors of the fruit stands and mini-buses and unbelievable tropical flowers. What I do not know is how it feels to have one's home devastated by a super-typhoon.

We flew from Cebu to Leyte, the island most ravaged by Yolanda (the local name for Typhoon Haiyan), graciously accompanied by members of Don Bosco’s relief team. We were based in the coastal city of Tacloban, which still has an apocalyptic feeling beneath its recovering city buzz. While a lot has been cleaned up, concrete rubble is still piled along the roadsides. Some large buildings are now shells, their concrete skins crumpled, rebar poking out all over, and massive metal frames and trusses mangled; contorted as though they were broken toys. Almost everyone lost their roof, many lost their houses and all of their belongings. Everyone lost family members or friends. Thousands of the dead were trapped in the ruins for over a month, the government and local people overwhelmed by the casualties. It’s hard to fathom what survivors of Yolanda experienced and are healing from.

Though most media coverage and aid centered on coastal communities, mountain Barangays (villages) were also irrevocably damaged by Yolanda. We visited a small community called Barayong in the impossibly lush mountains just above Tacloban to which Don Bosco has been contributing food aid and reconstruction assistance. We spoke with some people who have been eating the canned salmon, and listened to their post-typhoon experiences.

A young woman named Crystal explained how the environmental damage has deeply affected her community. She told me that the entire mountainside her village is nestled in, now a vibrant green, was bald and brown after the violent winds from Yolanda eight months ago. Most of the coconut trees that had provided food and livelihood died. “We used to get our coconut milk for free, but now we have to buy it,” Crystal told me. Gardens that were an important source of nutritious subsistence foods (squash, pineapple, eggplant, sweet potato and cassava, to name a few) were demolished, only recently starting to produce again. Now people have to buy things they used to harvest for free, as they tend to the healing land. Trees that used to provide shade don’t have leaves now, forcing everyone to work under the hot sun. The environment that used to provide so much sustenance and protection will take years to recover.