Mud soaked woman activist dramatized the plight of women in devastated areas of Eastern Visayas, in Mendiola yesterday. Macky Macaspac. No one wants to talk about prostitution in Tacloban. Or at least not directly. A year after Typhoon Yolanda hit Eastern Visayas and ravaged Tacloban, the survivors of the disaster are doing their best to survive from day and day and come to terms with the reality that they will not be getting the help they genuinely need from the government. The people of Tacloban are a resilient people, and they are also practical.
The wounds they have sustained from having lost so many loved ones in November during the super typhoon are still open and will remain so for a long time to come, but in the meantime, they are doing their best to survive. It was hard because the local and national governments were not able to immediately relief good to many areas where people were seriously affected by the floods.
There were hungry children to feed and so many had nowhere and no one turn to. Benjo is a technician a former landlord. Before Yolanda, he and his wife rented two rooms above their own small unit on the border of Tacloban and Palo. The typhoon destroyed their house and with it their immediate means of income. In the last year, he has been making the rounds of different business offices and residential areas fixing appliances and electricity outlets and lines.
It is while making his rounds that he gets to hear stories. He is reluctant to share what he knows because he will be talking about some of his former neighbors, or even former tenants.
With their husbands dead and two, three young mouths to feed, can anyone blame them if they sell their bodies in exchange for some cash or even relief goods? According to Benjo, in the weeks that followed Yolanda, many humanitarian groups arrived in Tacloban, and with them many foreigners.
