'Hope Stories of Haiyan' Main Page >>>

Haiyan Stories: Leyte (Marilou Cuayzon)

by Paula Nierras

Marilou Cuayzon’s house in Brgy. San Roque, Tanauan is the most festive in the area. An improvised Christmas tree stands against a pink cloth wall where pictures of Santa Claus and Merry Christmas signs hanged. By the door are flower pots to welcome guests. While inside, there’s this warmth that  somehow drowns out the miserable look of the tarpaulin floors and a tent roof. These details give one the impression that we were not entering just another makeshift house, it is someone’s home.

Marliou’s story is anything but festive. She had just buried her youngest child a week before Yolanda struck. Like many others, the storm took away all her family’s belongings, and though everyone else in the family survived, her husband was left traumatized and deaf from hitting his head during the storm surge. As if to offer no reprieve, Marie Antoinette – now Marilou’s youngest child, is plagued by the same heart condition which had already claimed the lives of her four other children.

Life had been cruel to her, but somehow she still finds the strength to smile.

“Masaya ako kahit maraming problema. ‘Pag nakikita kong malapit na ang Pasko, at nandito ang asawa at mga anak ko, masaya ako.” (I’m happy despite all the problems. When I see that Christmas is approaching, that my husband and children are here, it makes me happy.)

To have such hope is to be courageous. As Marilou looks forward to Christmas, she also eagerly awaits the prospect of transferring into one of the GK homes currently being built in Brgy. Pago. This good news is one of the things that makes her happy.

'Hope Stories of Haiyan' Main Page >>>