Saturday, November 16, 2013

Finding Strength After the Storm

After withstanding the strongest recorded typhoon in history, the survivors of Yolanda showed the heart and spirit of Filipinos. The CNN broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper has been overwhelmed by how we Filipinos are in times of calamity and disaster. There's the good side and the bad side, but what Anderson can't get out of his mind is the best of the Filipino People.

Here's the video Anderson Cooper's report on CNN:



When everything else is taken away, broken, battered, soaked, raw, stripped bare, you see things. You see people as they really are. This week in Tacloban, Samar and Cebu, amidst the hunger and thirst, the chaos and confusion, we've seen the best in the Filipino people. Their strength, their courage. I can't get it out of my mind. Imagine the strength it takes for a mother to search alone for her missing kids, the strength to sleep; on the street near the body of her child.

We've seen people with every reason to despair, every right to be angry, instead find ways to laugh, to love, to stand up, to move forward.

A storm breaks wood and bone, brings hurt and heartbreak. In the end, the wind, the water, the horror it brings is not the end of the story.

With aid and assistance, compassion and care, this place, these people...they will make it through. They already survived the worst. They're bowed, perhaps tired and traumatized, but they are not broken.

Mabuhay Philippines! Maraming salamat for all you've shown us. Maraming salamat for showing us all how to live.