Talking about Positivity: Witnessing the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda(Haiyan). Yes, it can kill us but not our Faith and Hope.

Hi Steemers! This is for the Project Positivity made by @lifeisawesome, @honeyscribe and @kushed and with the support of some respected whales. I thank you all for this great initiative. And for the first challenge you've announce lately, this is my story.
PS: Sorry if I can't provide original photos because I only use analog phone on that time but I tried my best to give related photos with their link source for this.

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Super Typhoon Yolanda with the international name Haiyan considered to be the most powerful storm to make landfall in recorded history and the largest typhoon that struck the Philippine Islands,
November 8, 2013.

The Aftermath

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It was raining hard when I was dropped off at Tanauan Leyte on November 12, 2013 at 2 in the afternoon. I had managed to hitch a ride, which was a first for me in a small pickup truck with nothing to shield me from the rain at the back. I couldn't believe what I saw while I slowly walked with only a backpack. There were bodies covered in black bags on either side of the road. And then, there were those that sadly, were just lying lifeless on the ground. The worst part? There were children. I closed my eyes trying to understand it all. I can see so many trees had fallen, and the town had turned into what seemed like a wasteland. I breathed deeply because I had a long walk ahead of me, about 8 kilometers, before I reach my hometown of Palo. I didn't know what to feel anymore but I know I cannot break down. Not now, not when I need to be strong enough to find my family and strong enough to face what had become of the place I grew up in.

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I passed Barangay San Joaquin and I was in time to see a mass grave in the churchyard. You can imagine how hard that was, but it was nothing compared to the families crying on the highway to find their loved ones in a churchyard that had turned into a swamp full of floating bodies. It was a horrible way to see them abandoned like that. I did not stop to watch more of it. My strength was faltering, and I thought, "where was the help?" And I had another painful thought. Some of my friends lived there. They could have been among that grave. I kept walking, very heartbroken, because I cannot recognize where I was anymore. The places where it once had been, the churches, the stores, the houses, they were gone. Almost nothing.

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A year after the typhoon devastated us is just like yesterday for me and for everybody who lost their loved ones.

My feet was growing sore but I kept walking, at a pace where only one who is determined to find her loved ones in the aftermath of Yolanda, could muster. At a distance, I saw our church, and my heart ached to find it in ruins, from afar. I also saw what people had put on makeshift signboards and streets. Oh, my poor people, they painted the streets. I was able to make out "S.O.S", "HELP" and "WE NEED FOOD" on the same streets I walk on when going to school or meeting my friends, for so many years. It was hard trying not to cry. Everywhere I looked, cameras were flashing from foreign media, and army vehicles were coming to and from. At each corner, there were soldiers. And death, there was death. I could very much smell it.

The Palo Cathedral
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If Tanauan was like a wasteland, Palo, with the scene it was in, could very well be a war zone. I had to stop to take it all in. It was like I was in the middle of a very very bad dream and I had no choice but to finish it. I shook my head because I always liked the idea of coming home. But now, it was so different. I did not imagine ever coming home like this. Ours was a small town where everybody knows almost everybody and the kid you see at church is the same kid you went to school with. The scene, with all its broken roads and broken homes tarnished the very best of my childhood memories.

My mother was safe and I cried so much like a poor little kid.

I was just a block away when I stopped dead to see my mother with her back turned putting wet clothes in a makeshift clothesline from electricity wirings on the fallen posts. She looked disheveled and with that, at the top of my lungs, I called her like I never called her, in a voice I never known. "Mama! Mama!" She stopped and looked at me and burst to tears. I ran to her and I hugged her tight. From the shaking of her body, I knew she'd been scared. It was also when I saw our house. Or at least, what was left of it. I laughed a little, finding it very much roofless, with wood still hanging barely from its walls. I smiled and looked from my mother to our house. I had my only remaining parent. She was safe.

If a mountain won't bow down to a strong wind then we won't do it either.

With all the broken windows, debris of the house, my room, which left my things wet and no wall anymore, with the porch being the only part of the house useful, I was still lucky. From days of mental toture and horrors that I've seen and was still seeing, I was very blessed. It did not matter what we had a government who was doing poorly in helping us, who had not given us the decency of quick mass graves for lost lives. I watched people walking to and from, offering each other food and water. It did not matter that we had an irrelevant leader. It did not matter anymore because from what little my people had, contrary to what others were saying, they haven't lost their minds even if they had every right to. In the aftermath of a devastation like no other, we were still giving so much to help each other survive. And that, that makes us different. We had almost nothing. Waray na nahabilin(There is nothing left). But we cling to every last faith and hope. And in my thought "We will rise from this!" Just like what General McArthur's very words when when he made a promise many many years past when he landed in Palo, "we shall return."

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That's all Steemers! I still consider myself as new here on steemit and I would be glad to know your insights and read your comments below. I hope you find it very inspiring. Feel free to resteem if you like it. Don't forget to follow me.. Kudos!!