| New Classrooms for Bohol | ||||||||||||||
| By Li Wei-huang Translated by Tang Yau-yang Photos by Lin Yan-huang | ||||||||||||||
The island of Bohol, a popular tourist destination in the Philippines, was visited by an unwelcome guest in October 2013: a 7.2-magnitude earthquake. More than 200 people perished. Buildings and houses in the area suffered poorly as well. Six in ten schools were damaged to some extent. Tourists stopped going there after the quake, but Tzu Chi volunteers started going. They helped put up 150 prefabricated classrooms for 16 schools in seven towns. They had many local helpers—5,000 residents, parents and teachers made 100,000 concrete flooring bricks for the new classrooms, and students helped move construction materials. Built with so much help from the community, these classrooms feel like home.
On October 15, 2013, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked Bohol, an island province in central Philippines. The disaster took the lives of more than 200 people. Of the 7,000 school buildings on the island, 2,700 were damaged. Many classes had to be held outdoors. Charitable organizations, among them Tzu Chi, rushed into the area to help the afflicted. Four days after the quake, 30 Tzu Chi volunteers from Manila and Cebu inspected areas that had suffered heavy devastation and distributed emergency cash to victims. They also visited schools to assess the damage and see which ones were in greatest need of help. Barely three weeks later, in early November, Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged central Philippines. The damage from the typhoon was much worse than that inflicted by the earthquake. Tacloban in Leyte Province was among the hardest hit. Bohol Province, slightly to the south of Leyte, did not suffer any damage from Haiyan. However, it sustained some collateral damage of sorts: Outside aid that had been coming to Bohol was diverted instead to Leyte. For a while, reconstruction in Bohol was all but forgotten. Tzu Chi was among the international charities that had to divert its aid resources to Leyte after the typhoon. But as soon as emergency aid to Leyte came to an end, Tzu Chi resumed its assistance efforts in Bohol. In June 2014, 150 prefabricated classrooms provided by the foundation were completed at 16 schools. Cortes Central Elementary School received seven of these classrooms. As the school started a new semester in June, teachers and students said goodbye to the tents or straw huts that they had used as make-shift classrooms for eight months. With the new classrooms now in service, Principal Amelia Ancog could breathe easier. Reconstruction agonies Cortes Central Elementary School was closer to the provincial capital than the other 15 recipient schools, but proximity to the capital did not translate into more available resources. The school received little help from the government after the earthquake. “Principal, what should we do?” Seeing the destruction at the school, teachers, parents, and villagers felt helpless. With so many things in ruins waiting to be repaired or replaced, she could only tell them to have faith and patience. As much as everyone wanted to have things immediately restored to normal, she knew that was out of the question. “They all thought that I was really strong,” Ancog said, “but in fact, I was quite stressed out by the pressure.” Not only was aid inadequate and slow in reaching the school, her own family also kept her worried. Being the oldest child among her siblings, she had many family responsibilities. Her father had just had a diabetes-induced amputation at the end of 2012, her mother had an eye injury, and her 18-month-old son had just been diagnosed with an eye condition. Juggling family and school responsibilities and hiding her own hardships from public view, Ancog sobbed and prayed when she was alone. With little aid reaching the school, people in the local community were forced to come up with money themselves in order to purchase materials needed to fashion makeshift classrooms so that school could resume. What they built was similar to what other schools had built throughout the disaster zone: simple frames with roofs of straw, plastic sheets, or galvanized steel sheets. Though they seemed airy at first glance, these structures often provided inadequate shelter from the elements. Rain often forced the suspension of classes. Many teachers and students caught colds, suffered heat stress, or fainted in class.
The structures were far from being proper places for lessons, but Ancog was helpless. Without outside assistance, there was no way to make improvements.
Sharing the agony As can be imagined, Ancog was not the only school principal struggling in the aftermath of the earthquake. Principals and teachers at damaged schools were among those who had to work the hardest in the recovery process, a task made even more difficult for them considering that many of their own homes had also been damaged. Instead of thinking about getting their homes back in shape, they had to tend to their students and school reconstruction first. Understandably, many of the principals and teachers were overextended and exhausted. Sagbayan, the epicenter of the quake, was one of the seven towns that later received prefab classrooms from Tzu Chi. Bebeth L. Diez, principal of Sagbayan Central Elementary School, and her husband had lived and slept in a junked car in their yard since the earthquake. They had spent their life savings to build their concrete home, but the quake had caused so much damage to its structural integrity that it had been rendered useless. Her husband was unemployed, and their three children were in college. Now the house was destroyed. She could not help wondering if she would be able to continue to keep her children in school, or how much longer the two of them would have to sleep in the car. “Will I have the stamina to face the challenges of reconstruction day after day?” she asked herself. These thoughts brought her to tears. Juvy Marie R. Inojales taught fifth grade at the school. She said that it had been tough holding class in makeshift classrooms after the school had been all but wiped out. The sun made it extremely hot, but rain was no easier. In a heavy rain, she sometimes needed to hold an umbrella and change into sandals because the downpour would result in a small flood in her classroom. Like the principal, she used to wonder how she could carry on. She had neither a home nor a functioning campus. She has been living with a relative since the tremor.
Local efforts School principals and teachers in the disaster areas were in despair. Students, too, could not have felt too good when their schools could not provide services as basic as roofs over their heads to keep out the harsh sun and rain. In the midst of such frustration, Tzu Chi decided to help. When Tzu Chi volunteers visited Cortes Central Elementary School for the first time, Principal Ancog was not able to meet them. She was off campus that day, but her staff informed her of the visit when she returned. That news brightened her mood, because she knew the group. In 2012, her father’s amputation cost 300,000 pesos (almost US$7,000). However, the family could not afford the additional high cost of fitting him with a prosthesis. Tzu Chi volunteers in Cebu put him in touch with the Tzu Chi Great Love Physical Rehabilitation and Jaipur Foot Prosthesis Manufacturing Center in Zamboanga, Mindanao, where he got his prosthesis free of charge in August 2013. That was how Ancog came to know about the foundation. She believed that Tzu Chi was God’s answer to her prayers. But some of her colleagues were not quite so certain about that. They did not know the foundation, and they doubted whether the volunteers would indeed come back. Principal Ancog told them of her father’s experience with the foundation, and she assured them that the visitors would make good on what they had promised. She was not disappointed. Tzu Chi volunteers did come back to help. Before the classrooms could be put up, volunteers in Taiwan worked as fast as they could to prepare the building materials. In the meantime, folks in Bohol got busy too. In the seven towns that received classrooms, more than 5,000 teachers, parents, and residents signed up to volunteer for the Tzu Chi project. They prepared the sites, made concrete flooring bricks, dug drainage ditches, and greened up the campuses so that their schools would be ready for the immediate assembly of the classrooms as soon as the materials arrived. “Tzu Chi volunteers came from far away just to help us, so how can we not do our bit?” a local resident said. Jessica A. Verano, a second grade teacher at Cortes Central Elementary School, often went with her husband on weekends to help mix sand and cement for making concrete bricks. She said that school reconstruction had been painfully slow. There was no telling how much longer they would have had to wait if Tzu Chi had not reached out to them. She was glad to do what she could to help.
Tzu Chi also provided classrooms for Infant King Academy, situated beside Cortes Central Elementary School. Many parents at this school had also gone there when they were children. For the sake of their alma mater and for the future of their children, they also volunteered to help with the reconstruction.
Their efforts helped 15 prefabricated classrooms go up at Infant King Academy. Knowing how scarce resources were in the aftermath of an earthquake and a super typhoon, and knowing how thin the government had been spread, Principal Margarita R. Lomod appreciated the aid from Tzu Chi. Though it took eight months after the earthquake for her school to receive the Tzu Chi classrooms, Lomod did not think that they had come too late at all. Now her students and teachers could devote their energy to learning and teaching without being distracted by the elements.
Hidden strings? The town of Loon received a heavy blow from the earthquake. Tzu Chi built more classrooms there than in any other town. Sandingan National High School alone received 12 classrooms. When Principal Mario L. Garcia heard about the plan to install these classrooms at his school, he was suspicious. “What strings lie behind assistance like that?” he wondered. As he worked with Tzu Chi volunteers, he began to learn more about the foundation and its ideals. As a result, his suspicion gradually dissipated. When all 12 classrooms were completed, he was finally convinced that there were indeed no strings attached to the gift of the classrooms. “Tzu Chi has won me over. I even hope that folks in Bohol can learn from these volunteers,” he said. And some of them have already done so. Of the 1,400 local volunteers that Garcia recruited to help build the classrooms, 600 have already joined the foundation as donating members. Garcia himself deposits money into a Tzu Chi coin bank in his office every day. Through their donations, Garcia and his fellow donors are helping people in need. When Tzu Chi conducted training courses for people in Bohol who wished to become Tzu Chi volunteers, Garcia was among them.
After school lets out, many students and teachers return to the tents or shanties that serve as their homes. They are without electricity and are infested with mosquitoes and other pests. Even though life is still hard, the prefab classrooms provide them with a sense of hope. Those temporary classrooms might not be as comfortable as permanent school buildings, but they do offer a reasonably good place for instruction and learning to take place. They let the users know that there are people who care enough to give them a hand. At the sight of the new classrooms being used, Principal Amelia Ancog of Cortes Central Elementary School was in tears. This time, she cried not because of the unbearable pressure from her work and home, but because she was deeply touched by the goodwill that had come to her school.
She said that after Tzu Chi provided the classrooms, other benefactors stepped forward and pledged to underwrite the rebuilding of the school library and infirmary. A school alumnus has promised to put up the money to rebuild the quake-damaged school perimeter wall. Of these heart-warming good deeds, Principal Ancog said, “Tzu Chi volunteers brought us more than just new classrooms—their benevolence has activated a chain reaction of goodwill.” Now her students can learn and teachers can teach in the safety and relative comfort of the new classrooms. The floors in the classrooms—paved with the concrete bricks that so many loving people made—are solid; even when it rains, they no longer have to worry about stepping on muddy ground. Ancog said that she had applied before the earthquake for a transfer back to her hometown. Now she wants to wait till the school reconstruction has reached a reasonable point before she feels it right to hand the school over to her successor. “Until then, I hope that Tzu Chi volunteers can continue to accompany us.”
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