LIFE GOES ON... Plan Philippines helps children in Iligan City be restored to full normalcy by teaching them games — and chores! Above right, Plan Phils. ambassador Cheryl Cosim meets her young friends.

MANILA, Philippines — The images bounce off as though from a surreal landscape. A mattress stuck on a tree branch. Cars frozen in mud. Pots and pans, smothered in cakes of mud left to dry in the street, awaiting water for washing. Motorcycles zipping by, heavy with cargo of sacks with salvaged items.

As though dispensing hope, backhoes and tractors dig where flies swarm, a telltale sign of a decomposing body underneath the muddy rubble. Water trucks distribute drinking water, while NGOs race to bring food, medicines and sanitation tools.

“Iligan was as badly hit as Cagayan de Oro but its relative poverty compared to the City of Golden Smiles will make it recover longer,” assesses Elias Salazar, a Plan Philippines officer from Koronadal.

Salazar was en route home from Basilan where he dealt with children in conflict when his country office asked him to check the aftermath of Sendong a day after it hit. He could not believe his eyes. Scenes of the tragedy played before his eyes everywhere he went. He has since resolved to spend months here, helping the most vulnerable children.

A full three weeks after the disaster, very little has changed in Iligan. Our group visited to engage affected children in play therapy, relieving them momentarily from fetching water and helping wash clothes. Scores of youth volunteers from Iligan and Cagayan de Oro, many of them victims of flooding, put up brave, cheerful fronts to lift kids’ spirits in tent cities and decrepit evacuation centers. With candies from Columbia and a lot of spunk, the youth volunteers helped de-stress children from the sad reality that they faced: disrupted schooling, no power, no TV, lost clothes and toys, devastated houses. And the worst of all, missing parents.

MORE THAN DISTRIBUTING RELIEF GOODS

The tact employed by Plan is to identify and help who among the victims are the least served and the most adversely affected. The organization has graduated from distributing the usual relief goods. (How can people cook? How much canned goods can one’s stomach endure? How many pre-owned dress shirts does a homeless man need?) Instead, the international organization was setting up water-proof tents so displaced families could live with a semblance of a normal household. They give out sanitation and hygiene kits and blankets, mosquito nets and malongs, the latter so useful to women who have to live with makeshift bathrooms.

With TV5’s Alagang Kapatid and a genuinely concerned and helpful Cheryl Cosim partnering in the efforts, children had a field day with simple parlor and street games. Generally unwashed because water was a scarce commodity, the children’s faces belied the tragedy they went through, leaving the worrying and despair to their adult relatives who either queued up for medicines or awaited word about new relocation sites.

One only needs to spend a few hours on the scene to realize his blessings. Plan, as is customary, stays long after every agency and politician has left. They are still in Isabela and Albay, years after the flooding, making certain that children’s lives in particular are restored to full normalcy, which could mean starting and nurturing livelihood enterprises so parents can provide for kids and reconstructing classrooms so kids finish schooling in decent surroundings.

Seeing the tragedy in northern Mindanao, we can safely assume that Plan will be there quietly for the children. And that’s for the long haul.

(If interested in the advocacy for family-friendly television, visit anaktvweb.com or email the foundation at anaktv_seal@yahoo.com.)