Residents of a coastal community in Eastern Samar survived a super typhoon
and rebuilt their houses, toilets included.
September 2017, Eastern Samar — Before super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) ravaged Eastern Visayas in November 2013, all households in Caridad, a coastal village (barangay) in the municipality of Salcedo in Eastern Samar, already had their own toilets.
“It took us more than a year to reach 100 per cent [open defecation-free]. Yolanda took it away in one day,” recalls barangay captain Jessica Rojero.
Strong and rough winds felled coconut trees, which smacked right into the houses. Cogon roofs and walls were flattened.
The toilets were not spared. Walls were knocked down. Cracks formed on the concrete flooring. Some toilet bowls were ripped in half, while others, while undamaged, had clogged up, turning up waste and floodwaters.
Rojero surveyed the village in the aftermath of Yolanda and found that almost half of the households had no toilets again. She knew that people would easily go back to the old practice of open defecation if sanitation would not figure in the rehabilitation efforts of the community.
A coconut tree destroyed the house of Jeanita Quilbio, a 35-year-old mother of six and Roberto’s niece. A fruit vendor in Tacloban City, one of the places hit the hardest by Yolanda, Quilbio got stranded in an adjacent town on her way back to Caridad during the storm. She feared for the lives of all her children and husband, Mariano, a stroke survivor.
Her husband’s condition prevented Quilbio from quickly rebuilding the house walls or fixing their toilet. “Pinagtitiyagaan naming dumumi dun sa nasira na. (We settled for defecating in the damaged toilets).” Quilbio says.
Before Yolanda
In March 2013, Caridad was declared free of open defecation with the help of the municipal government. But Rojero admits it took time to change entrenched practices about defecating.
Old-time residents used to tell her, “Tumanda na kami dito pero wala namang namatay nang dahil hindi nagkaroon ng CR. (We’ve already grown old not seeing anyone die of having no comfort rooms anyway).”
With a vast expanse of farmland and mangrove-covered coastline, Caridad’s residents had thought they would not run out of places to find relief. At nighttime, with a bolo (a heavy knife) and a gas lamp in tow, residents would carefully tread the fields and find a place to move their bowels.
“Gagawa lang ng butas, tapos ihuhulog na (They would dig through the field [using the bolo] and shoot the feces on the holes),” recalls Amando Baillo, a 75-year-old native and a former village official. The farther residents go to relieve themselves, the less are the chances of getting caught.
Unfortunately, children would follow the ways of their elders.
“Yung pinagdinumihan po namin, tatabunan lang po namin ng lupa para hindi makalkal ng aso. Nakakahiya po, pero akala namin pwede naman. (We would just bury our feces so that the dogs would not scrape it. It was a shame, but we thought it was alright),” recalls Gieah Amor Pagayanan, 12.
Gieah’s story would echo in other remote communities in the town of Salcedo. According to Nora Gaitus, municipal sanitation inspector, half of her townsfolk had no toilets. “Sabi ko, malaking trabaho ito. (This would be a huge task, I told myself.)”
Gaitus sought help from the provincial health office to conduct the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS). As an approach to transform villages, towns, and provinces into zero open defecation (ZOD) areas, CLTS triggers communities to learn the effects of open defecation on their health and well-being, and hence, take action by drawing up solutions that are well within their means.
While many village officials paid little attention, Gaitus found a strong ally in Rojero: “[Alam naming] hindi kami mamomroblema dahil may kusa. ([We know] we wouldn’t have any problem with her because she had the initiative.)”
Rojero and Gaitus met with community members to discuss their sanitation conditions, and even went knocking at the doors of households without toilets. Support also came from Eva Esplago, the provincial sanitary officer.
In hindsight, Rojero says getting the buy-in of longtime residents was the most difficult part. Besides insistence on engrained behavior, they would also complain that building a toilet to seek relief would cost an arm and a leg.
In her hushed, motherly manner, Rojero would not only explain the health benefits of keeping a toilet, but also tell them that toilets do not need to be sophisticated and costly. “Simple lang naman kung wala talaga kayong pera. Pwede naman kayong mag-butas. Tapos lagyan ninyo ng kahoy, tapos lagyan ninyo ng kahit sira-sirang yero tapos tabunan ninyo ng lupa, puwede na yun. ([I would tell them]: If you don’t have money, you can dig a deep pit, cover it with wood and beat-up roofing sheets and cover with some soil. That will do.)”
Eventually, she was able to convince every household to comply. “Yung ibang may kakayahan, sinementuhan talaga nila [Those who can already afford to scale up their toilets had cemented their improvised toilets]”
Standing Up and Scaling Up
Caridad had become a town-wide model for sanitation. Neighboring barangays, Gaitus recalled, would visit Caridad and get pointers on how to convince their residents to build and maintain their own toilets. And then Yolanda happened.
For residents hungry and displaced, building a toilet would land at the bottom of their priorities. But Rojero knew she had no time to weep over sanitation efforts washed away by the storm.
Whenever any form of help came her village’s way, Rojero convened her council. In a meeting, she focused on helping households rebuild their toilets, lest they would be forced to defecate elsewhere.
“Sinabihan ko ang konseho: ‘Kailangang ma-cover lahat. Simulan natin sa mga [pamilyang] maraming mga bata. Kailangang hindi maputol ang pagtuturo sa kanila ng tamang gawi.’ (I told the village councilors: ‘We should cover all households [with damaged toilets].’ Let’s start with households with the most children. We should ensure the kids will keep on practicing proper sanitation,” she said.
Rojero looked for whatever help she could collect from the government and development groups.
As part of the emergency response, UNICEF provided toilet repair kits. Plan International also provided assistance to families who were most financially incapable of rebuilding their toilets. The municipal and provincial government complemented these efforts by allocating higher budgets for sanitation.
With the initial batch of toilets provided through emergency response, she prioritized giving out to families with bigger number of children. At the village school, teachers told the pupils not only about how to use a toilet and keep it clean, but also how to wash their hands properly.
Then, she gathered all the men across the village to rebuild toilets. They were paid for reconstructing their respective comfort rooms through the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Cash-for-Work Program.
But after ensuring that all families have their own toilets, Gaitus encouraged Rojero to bring sanitation to the next level by joining the National Search for Barangays with Best Sanitation Practice (NSBBSP) of the Department of Health (DOH). This search does not only focus on the access of individual households to improved sanitation. It looks at the total sanitation of a community, including the disposal of animal waste.
Rojero also addressed animal feces. She made sure not even dogs defecate in open spaces. Local officials provided a dog leash for every pet dog in the community. Hog raisers were mandated to build septic tanks.
Rojero guaranteed the barangay budget would make sanitation efforts irreversible. When sanitary inspector Gaitus asked village chiefs to set aside five percent of their Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA) to health and sanitation, Rojero set aside 18 percent and 20 percent of Caridad’s IRA for 2014 and 2015, respectively.
A Force of Habit
With the persistence of Rojero and everyone else in Caridad, the village was able to rebuild not only toilets, but also a soild commitment to proper sanitation and waste disposal.
In the afternoon, mothers would sweep dried leaves off the streets. Children, upon reaching home from school, would fetch water from the nearest communal faucet or jetmatic pump to wash the dishes and clean their toilets. Others tend to their vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers like magnolias and carnations that adorn their front yards.
Recently, the DOH recognized this commitment by awarding Caridad the first place for Category 1 (villages with at less than 200 households) in this year’s NSBBSP.
They have also earned the respect and emulation of other communities. Officials in neighboring towns and villages would again visit Caridad to learn how they bounced back. Social media accounts of residents are full of posts, admiring how Caridad has changed.
“Nakikita na nila sa social media ang Caridad na malinis. Sabi ko nga ang ganda pala ng Barangay Caridad. Pero hindi na namin napapansin na ganun talaga kaganda, kasi araw-araw na naming nakikita. (Everyone now sees photos of our clean surroundings over social media. Even I would be surprised at how beautiful our village is in images because to us, it has become an everyday sight.),” beams Quilbio. Cleanliness has indeed become a force of habit—an essential routine in the daily lives of Caridad’s people who all have risen from a stormy setback and have never looked back.
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