12 photos: Discovering Happiness in the Wake of Typhoon Haiyan

Happy moments.

That’s what I learned to look for. Each day I worked in the Typhoon Haiyan emergency response, I celebrated those unexpected moments of joy.

By far, the destruction caused by Typhoon Haiyan was the worst I had witnessed. As a Canadian who works in southeast Asia for World Vision, I thought I’d seen the tough stuff before.

But the carnage of this disaster was endless. Mile after mile, the super typhoon had ripped apart homes, stole jobs and robbed people of all their possessions.

It was an unwanted new beginning.


If you weren’t careful, what you were witnessing could affect your emotions. It was easy to feel tangled in the wreckage, in the loss, in the magnitude of the disaster.

But every day, there were moments of unexpected joy.

The longer I stayed in the Philippines, the more I found.

Babies burst into fits of giggles while their mothers learned how to care for their children in the post-disaster reality.

In community after community, mothers with small children flocked to Women and Young Child Spaces, where the women learned new and were able to share their trials together. 


Children like five-year-old RJ played whimsically in his tent village, despite the dead bodies he remembered scattered along the shore in the aftermath of the typhoon.

 He was among the thousands of pre-schoolers who joined World Vision’s Child Friendly Space.

There, activities helped  address child trauma that may have occurred during the typhoon.


Through the activities, the children learned to laugh and play again, freeing them of the worry and anxiety.
 

And children who no longer had homes were excited to board a jeepney each morning, to carry them back to school after classes resumed a few months after the storm.


After meeting Norma, life seemed bleak. Unable to read or write, this single mother was raising four children on her own and squatting in a neighbour’s house after her own home had been destroyed by a falling coconut tree during typhoon Haiyan.

But Norma’s children were quick to bounce back. They roared with laughter at the sight of a stranger standing outside their door.

And I smiled widely when I learned World Vision helped Norma build a new house. (More on this story)


I met young gardeners who were thrilled to be digging in the soil and growing vegetables at their school.

After the typhoon, the land had been covered with debris from torn apart school buildings and fallen trees.

A Cash-for-Work project cleared the land and transformed it into a garden, enabling the children to get hands on learning about agriculture and home-grown nutrition.

On a tiny disaster-laden island, children of fishermen dreamed of basketball at night, talked endlessly of NBA legends and were quick to show off their slam dunk.


Children of coconut-tree climbers and fishermen continued to exude joy despite their parents’ lost livelihoods.

I marveled at how quickly the unemployed were willing to learn new skills and work tirelessly to regain some income for their families.

Filipinos taught me important lessons about hope.

Typhoon survivors showed me how to make the best of any situation.
They reminded me of the importance of laughter despite tough circumstances.
And they showed me how you can move forward, and come back even stronger, after going through the hardest of times.