Written by Dr. Pamela Gloria Cajilig
In the Philippines, the 16th of December marks a period of joyous anticipation and formal celebration of the Christmas season. As family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues take part in gatherings and parties around the country, many Filipino Catholics also attend the first of nine dawn masses (called Simbang Gabi or Misa de Gallo) leading up to Christmas Day. However, December 16, 2021 was different. On this day, Super Typhoon Odette rapidly intensified from a Category 1 to 5 typhoon and disrupted festivities as it swept across the regions of Visayas, Mindanao and Southern Luzon.
The Philippines’ second costliest typhoon
Torrential rain and maximum sustained winds at 185 km/hr near the typhoon’s centre destroyed lives, homes, livelihood, infrastructure, and areas rich in biodiversity while causing power outages in 284 cities and towns. As Filipinos struggled with the consequences of an infamously securitised response to Covid-19 -as well as a series of typhoons in late 2020- a new wave of loss overwhelmed the country: 13 million people were affected, 36 million homes were destroyed, an estimate of 1,371 were injured, and more than 400 people were reported dead. Odette was the second deadliest disaster of 2021 after the Haiti earthquake and the second costliest Philippine typhoon in history after Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013.
An archipelagic country situated in monsoonal Southeast Asia and along the Ring of Fire (a path along the Pacific Ocean where earthquakes and volcanic activity most frequently occur), the Philippines is vulnerable to multiple geophysical hazards as well as such climate-related hazards as typhoons and sea level rise. However, the country’s geographic characteristics are only one aspect of its vulnerability to climate change and disaster. Other contributors to disaster vulnerability are certainly within human control. These include but are not limited to: rapid, poorly planned, and market-driven urban development; lack of social protections; poor lateral and vertical coordination at various levels of disaster governance; elite capture of disaster management resources; lack of participation in decision-making by marginalised actors who are at the frontlines of ecological crises, and disaster management focused on response rather than preparedness.
The archipelagic province of Palawan in Southwestern Luzon was one of the nine provinces hardest hit by Odette, and San Vicente was one of the three towns in the province that were most affected by the storm (See Image 1). San Vicente residents partially traced the magnitude of the disaster to their general lack of experience with strong typhoons.
Image 1. Aerial view of San Vicente during the aftermath of Typhoon Odette. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Other stakeholders within the province similarly realised that, given the exigencies of human-induced climate change, residents need to disabuse themselves of the idea that they are safe from disaster because Palawan lies outside the Philippine “typhoon belt.” Odette was clearly a lesson in typhoon preparedness: the lack of it rendered disaster response and recovery within a global pandemic even more challenging.
Findings propelled by friendship
While I was a first time visitor to San Vicente for this project in late 2022, I was no stranger to Palawan. I had long been an advisor for Ugat ng Kalusugan (UNK/Roots of Health), a non-profit in the province focused on reproductive health, which was established by my dear friend and leading gender equality advocate, Ami Evangelista-Swanepoel. My role in UNK afforded me several opportunities to visit Palawan and familiarise myself with the social justice concerns of women and girls living in grassroots communities. It was also a way for me and Ami (and her family whom I’ve known since childhood) to stay connected and support each other's work as friends.
When Typhoon Odette struck the capital city of Puerto Princesa where UNK is based, I lost contact with Ami and the rest of the UNK team. I did not hear from any of them for about a week. Due to widespread power outages, media coverage about the province was scant. I used Facebook to stay in touch with Ami’s family and fellow board members who were in Metro Manila (where I’m presently based) during impact. While anxiously waiting to hear from the UNK team in Palawan, we mobilised our Philippine networks to locate them and our global networks to start fundraising activities for UNK’s partner communities. News reports of the extensive damage in Palawan finally started trickling in. Thankfully, Ami managed to contact us to say that her family and the UNK team were safe and okay, save for the need for home repairs and the challenges of having no running water nor electricity.
In December 2022, one year after Typhoon Odette, I travelled for the first time to San Vicente (about 3.5 hours from Puerto Princesa by land) for a post-Christmas beach holiday. It did not take long for Typhoon Odette to be brought up in my conversations with the locals. On the way to the resort, a landscape marked by fallen coconut trees and houses and bridges under repair became the prompt for our tour driver to share the hardships the town experienced during the typhoon. Soon, others we met - from resort staff to port administrators - opened up about their typhoon experiences. Despite signs of recovery on the surface, it was evident that people still had the need to tell stories of fear, loss, and community.
I then began to explore possibilities for developing the Philippine contribution to Recipes for Disaster in San Vicente. Coincidentally, I was on holiday with my college friend, Maui Villegas, who, in turn, is friends with Minda Ponce-Rodriguez, a migrant and community leader in San Vicente. Minda has been active in post-Odette disaster relief and recovery, along with her husband, JP. Before we left San Vincente, Maui arranged for me to meet Minda and JP at their home, an airy four-story wooden cottage surrounded by groves of coconut and bamboo. In the couple’s treehouse, which was demolished by Typhoon Odette and since rebuilt, we began to discuss the idea of my returning to San Vicente to start this project (See Image 2). I returned two weeks later to start the project with the couple’s home as my base. Minda, JP, and Minda’s mother (whose name is also Minda and was visiting while I was in San Vicente) generously shared their experiences of the typhoon with me. The couple also kindly introduced me to their friends and neighbours who also freely shared their stories.
Image 2. The couple’s treehouse in which Minda and I began discussing my return to San Vicente for this project. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Minda
Minda and JP decided to relocate to San Vicente from Metro Manila in 2013, soon after taking multiple trips to the town as part of Minda’s work as a film producer (Image 3). Their visits left them longing for San Vicente’s lush surroundings that reminded them of growing up close to nature in their respective hometowns of General Santos City and Cuyo Island. The couple eventually purchased an orchard property by a stream, and built a home with their little daughter, Tana. Over the years and with their savings, they incrementally developed a small private resort on their property consisting of five bamboo huts and a treehouse. They were about to make further improvements when Typhoon Odette struck the town.
Image 3. Minda and JP. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Minda knew just how terrifying a super typhoon could be. During Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013, she was recruited as an assistant photographer and stringer for photographer and Pulitzer Prize nominee Paula Bronstein. The duo arrived in Tacloban, the hardest hit city, one day after impact. Minda recalled, “We were there in the City Hall. Whenever the planes would land, we could see the dead hanging from trees.” She added, “It was like the end of the world.” The two brought a few boxes of canned goods to survive during the coverage, but they eventually gave these away to the affected residents. “Paula and I had just eight candies and we survived on that perhaps for the first few days.”
Despite her intense experience during the aftermath of the relatively stronger Super Typhoon Yolanda, Minda found herself crying in fear and despair as Typhoon Odette battered their home. “Our house was rocking back and forth... We never really prayed so hard as a family,” Minda remembered the night of impact. “It felt like it was our time,” she added.
When the storm finally subsided and as they surveyed the damage to their property (mostly fallen trees and torn roofs), Minda and JP were thankful they took the weather predictions seriously and stocked up enough of their comfort food in advance. The couple bought boxes of their daughter Tana’s favourite cocktail sausages, which she likes to eat with rice and shrimp paste. They also stocked up on canned sardines so they could still make Minda’s favourite dish, sauteed sardines topped with alugbati (Basella alba; Image 4), a spinach-like vine that continued to grow on their property despite the destruction. “It’s my comfort food. When I fight with my husband he cooks that for me, so it cools my head,” Minda laughed.
Image 4. Alugbati vines grow abundantly in Minda and JP’s orchard home. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Like the rest of the community Minda’s family also survived on nilupak: a dish made of coconuts and bananas from the fallen plants and trees around them. “For people that’s the most instant thing to cook. It doesn’t need electricity. It's just a combination of young coconut and bananas that are unripe,” explained Minda.
With the power out in San Vicente and knowing they had enough provisions to last them for a while, Minda and JP went around town to check on friends and neighbours and to find a mobile signal so they could call for help. To their surprise, the only spot for miles with a signal was in Tana’s room on their second floor. Their daughter’s bedroom immediately became a centre for relief operations in the town. Minda mostly used Facebook to mobilise her family, friends, and former colleagues for assistance as did everyone else in town who had connections outside.
Soon, complete strangers flooded her inbox with offers of help. Since JP was formerly a Coast Guard officer, he and Minda reached out to their contacts with the Coast Guard to load a massive amount of donations from friends, strangers, civic organisations, other towns and provinces, politicians, and business owners from various parts of the country and abroad on a large ship headed to the nearby town of El Nido but with relief goods for San Vicente. The local government, business owners, and volunteers then pitched in to distribute the aid. Aside from coordinating relief efforts online, Minda and JP also physically delivered much needed assistance to hard-to-reach areas [Image 5].
Image 5. Minda trekking up a hill to deliver food relief in the aftermath of the typhoon. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Minda reflected, “At the time there was a calling to stand up. We had the capacity to help. When the Lord gives your home the only signal in your community, aren't you going to find a way? It’s like stars were placed on top of our house.”
Recipe: Sardines with alugbati.
Recipe: Nilupak - made of unripe banana and grated fresh coconut.
Perlits, Noralyn, and Jerry
Across the road from Minda and JP lives Perlits and Noralyn, a farmer couple who are long-time residents of San Vicente. We chatted about their experiences with Perlits’ brother-in-law, Jerry, in a dilapidated shed by the road that bordered their rice fields. I later learned that the shed was actually part of the ruins of Perlits’ and Noralyn’s home, which was destroyed during Odette [Image 6].
Image 6. The author chats with Perlits in the ruins of his home. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Perlits moved to San Vicente from Agutaya Island in search of better livelihood opportunities. He eventually met Noralyn and, as the couple raised their six children, they acquired land for rice farming. Within their farmland they built three houses made of semi-permanent materials, including one that doubled as a small workshop for producing concrete hollow blocks, a side business.
Perlits had never seen a typhoon as strong as Odette since he moved to San Vicente. He recalled Typhoon Pepang (Dan) in 1999 as the second strongest storm to strike the town. But the destruction of Pepang, a Category 3 typhoon, was minimal compared to Odette. “There were only fallen trees. Only a few people lost their homes. But nearly everyone lost theirs during Odette,” Perlits remembered.
Odette destroyed all of the couple’s livelihood and housing. The violent storm brought about floods that destroyed their rice fields which had just sprouted bogilya, rice stalks with young grains [Image 7]. Several hectares of rice fields under the couple’s care were damaged, including the rice fields of Noralyn’s uncle that were entrusted to them. The couple’s main house and their hollow block workshop were severely destroyed by fallen coconut trees. They prioritised rebuilding the workshop because it could be a source of income as others in the town repaired their homes.
Image 7. Rice fields like these in San Vicente were damaged during the typhoon just as the grains were starting to sprout. Image credit: Pamela Gloria Cajilig
Jerry, Perlits’ brother-in-law, also owned rice fields that were damaged by the typhoon. The typhoons destroyed one room and several walls of his house. Jerry recalled that several parties stepped in to help, including the local municipal government, the Department of Education, the Department of Social Welfare and Development and other individuals and organisations based in Manila. Affected households reportedly received PHP 5,000 each (about SGD 122) and homeowners were also given opportunities to participate in post-disaster waste management schemes in which they were paid in-kind for their labour. For example, a household could obtain mosquito nets by joining river cleanup efforts.
One thing Noralyn and Perlits’ extended family felt they needed to give up was Noche Buena, a Christmas Eve feast that starts at midnight. Noralyn and her daughters would typically prepare Noche Buena consisting of pansit (a noodle dish with meat and vegetables ), spaghetti, and salad. The family’s favourite Noche Buena dish is salad. Norilyn does not stick to a particular recipe but she noted that the dish has some key ingredients. “When they’re not sure, sometimes my daughters search Google for recipes to complete the salad,” shared Noralyn.
In the aftermath of Odette, the family had no time nor interest in celebrating Noche Buena. They also didn’t stay up until midnight as they typically would on Christmas Eve. Noralyn recalled, “It was nothing. We just wanted to fix our place. We were cleaning because we couldn’t pass through anywhere.”
Otherwise, and while food was not as abundant during the aftermath of the typhoon, the group felt they had enough to survive. Since they all lived near the sea, they could make dried fish which does not require refrigeration. There was also ample fruit available from the trees in the area. As farmers, Perlits, Noralyn and Jerry’s families generally have rice in storage, although those who did not work in rice fields were not as fortunate. Eventually affected households eventually received rice donations from a politician. Noralyn recalled that staple foods were mostly available especially because they frequently shared food within their neighbourhood. For example, Perlits and Noralyn gave Minda and JP ten sacks of rice, while the latter gave the former bananas from their property [Image 8]. Acts of reciprocity such as these were essential to forging a strong sense of community that sustained the town in the challenging days and weeks that followed the typhoon.
Image 8. Perlits and Noralyn share a light moment after our chat. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
Recipe: Fruit Salad.
Junalyn
When Junalyn and her husband, Napp, went on a holiday trip to San Vicente in 2012, they were immediately drawn to the town. Upon seeing the beauty of the town’s long beach, Napp decided that he wanted to retire in San Vicente and the couple started to enquire about properties for sale. They were invited to view a piece of property the following day, a sprawling and hilly piece of land beside a tree-lined creek that would later become their home as well as the base for their hardware and livestock businesses. They immediately purchased the property and moved to San Vicente one year later.
Image 9. Junalyn poses with the area of their home that was flooded during Odette in the background. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
In the nearly ten years Junalyn has lived in San Vicente, she had never before experienced a disaster of Odette’s magnitude. “We only experienced low pressure of Category 1 or 2 typhoons. The water overflows because of things that block the river flow and also bamboo. But the river generally doesn’t rise that high,” she said.
Junalyn was alarmed when Minda showed her satellite images that captured the movement and magnitude of Odette. Three days before impact in San Vicente, Junalyn also started to closely monitor the news. She saw how the typhoon destroyed cities and towns in its path. On the day before impact, she went around her immediate community to warn families living by the river and participants of the Christmas tree decoration contest she was helping organise. Many took her warnings lightly, believing that Palawan was safely out of the Philippine “typhoon belt” and that the town’s many trees would protect them from impact. “That’s just a typhoon, we are stronger,” residents deflected Junalyn’s call to prepare for the storm.
Odette was so strong it knocked down the oldest and largest mango and star apple trees on Junalyn’s property. The typhoon also blew away structures housing their fighting cocks and chickens and their open air kitchen. The river next to them overflowed and flooded the lower lying portions of the couple’s property. They were unable to secure their windows and soon their living room was filled with broken glass. Junalyn, Napp, and their daughter, along with Junalyn’s two siblings and their families living across the road huddled in the hallway of their home to shield themselves from the storm’s destruction.
Image 10. Junalyn’s siblings and their families evacuated this house across the road during impact and took shelter in their home. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
After attending to their individual losses, the town’s residents began to cooperate for relief and recovery. Junalyn and Napp used the truck from their hardware store to deliver relief goods to communities in need [Image 11]. They also used their personal savings to buy groceries and fund the housing repairs of families that worked for their businesses. Napp’s siblings in the US also sent assistance for them and the community. “I don’t remember what happened everyday. But we were busy everyday,” said Junalyn.
Image 11. Junalyn and Napp volunteered the truck from their hardware store for typhoon relief operations. Image credit: Minda Ponce-Rodriguez
As Christmas Eve neared, Junalyn managed to travel to Palawan’s capital, Puerto Princesa, to do groceries for their Noche Buena feast to which they invited extended family, employees, and neighbours. The household prepared their usual celebratory dishes such as kare-kare (a stew with meat and a savoury peanut sauce), chicken afritada (a dish made with tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes), salad, cake, and lechon (suckling pig). Junalyn cooked most of the dishes as she typically does. She served her most popular dish, lumpiang Shanghai (deep fried spring rolls) made with pork which she processes using her own grinder and which I was able to sample when I was kindly invited to celebrate the village fiesta in their home (I went for seconds). “Somehow we found a way to celebrate,” she said.
Recipe: Lumpiang Shanghai.
The ‘Recipe’ of this Disaster
Typhoon Odette wreaked havoc on San Vicente, Palawan, Philippines, leaving behind a trail of destruction and loss. The disaster was a result of several contributing factors, including the geophysical characteristics of the Philippines, the impact of climate change, lack of data literacy, insufficient preparedness, and inadequate recovery mechanisms.
Climate change has resulted in more intense typhoons that bring stronger winds, more rainfall, and which may also move more slowly, causing increased hazard exposure. This makes it challenging for those living in vulnerable areas to prepare adequately for storms of this magnitude. San Vicente’s residents were caught off guard when they were met with Typhoon Odette, a storm of unprecedented strength in the area. Residents lacked data literacy and were unable to interpret and appreciate the significance of satellite images, which would have informed them of the approaching typhoon. As a result, many of them did not take appropriate action to protect themselves, their homes, and their livelihoods.
Having limited lived experience of typhoons, residents did not have the necessary individual and institutional knowledge or skills to be adequately prepared for the storm, nor were they able to personalise their imaginations of risk and possible consequences. This lack of previous lived experience of strong typhoons contributed to significant loss and destruction.
The destruction of these primary sources of income had a severe impact on the villagers' ability to recover from the disaster, with many of them still rebuilding their homes and livelihoods at the time of the interview. Additionally, there was a temporary lack of food security systems to provide a buffer for communities in the face of the destruction caused by the typhoon, especially among those who did not have direct access to agricultural resources.
The recovery process was also protracted due to the lack of sustainable and alternative livelihoods to farming and fishing. Recognising the need for other sources of income, Noralyn and some of her women friends who also come from farming families have been establishing a cooperative for alternative women’s livelihood to strengthen their disaster resilience. Meanwhile, some residents recalled that livestock carcasses were strewn throughout the town after the typhoon. Livelihood rehabilitation was further hampered by the lack of preparedness for livestock and working animals. Overlooking these animals' safety posed significant challenges to the recovery process, particularly in the area of livelihood rehabilitation.
Moreover, a few town dwellers observed that the inconsistency and lack of awareness of solid waste management practices resulted in plastic overflowing into certain bodies of water within the town after the typhoon. This poses a hazard to both human and environmental health and which could exacerbate the consequences of future disasters.
Lastly, the amount of torn roofs demonstrated the vulnerability of the town’s built environment, particularly in the housing sector. This reveals an opportunity to “build back better” where “better” needs to be co-defined with affected communities and through engagement with the town’s various stakeholders
Overall, the stories above show how the disaster was a result of several influences, including intensifying climate hazards, lack of data literacy, insufficient preparedness, inadequate recovery mechanisms, and poor waste management practices. These highlight the need for improved disaster planning and management strategies in the face of an increasingly unpredictable climate.
Crucially, the stories also demonstrated several capacities that were instrumental to surmounting the challenges of disaster, particularly during disaster response. This includes the proactive stance of women across social classes, mechanisms that allow for coordination between local and national government units, the ability to mobilise social capital through digital technology to obtain aid, and the willingness of the local business owners to use their assets for the public good, and practices of mutual aid that fostered a strong sense of community.
Final Thoughts
The United Nations Office defines “disaster” as follows:
"A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to one or more of the following: human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts."
With this definition of disaster in mind, I began this project seeking to understand the domains of life that were unsettled by Typhoon Odette. Indeed, the narratives show the different aspects of discontinuity as San Vicente residents struggled to overcome the typhoon. The damage to the physical environment (including the built environment), in turn, led to the devastation of livelihoods. There was also disruption in a cognitive sense: the idea that Palawan residents could no longer take comfort lying outside the country’s “typhoon belt.” Finally, there were disruptions in the domain of food. Food was not as abundant as it was before impact and there was a shift towards ingredients that were available from one’s immediate surroundings and which could be prepared without the need for electricity. Celebratory food was an area that revealed disaster inequalities: some could still afford to have a Noche Buena feast while others withheld their celebration and instead made do with wistful thinking of what they could have prepared.
However understanding disaster through the lens of food also illuminated how this domain is crucial to maintaining a sense of continuity during a crisis. In Minda’s case, stocking up on “comfort food” was the family’s way to create a sense of normalcy for herself and her daughter. In the second story, having access to staples such as rice contributed to the sense that hardships could be overcome. Lastly, one can create a sense of continuity by focusing on special events, as in the case of Junalyn who endeavoured to find Noche Buena ingredients despite calamitous circumstances to continue celebrating Christmas with family, friends, and staff.
In a tribute to the groundbreaking work of food historian Doreen Fernandez on understanding vernacular cuisine, anthropologist Martin Mananlansan emphasises that the former understands “Filipino” food as “a product of people trying to struggle with what’s available, with their own limitations, the environment, what the government [and] the economic conditions will allow…” By extension, this inquiry into the recipes that make life in disaster bearable is an exploration of struggle, its roots in socio-ecological conditions, and, as in the case of all struggles, its currents of despair as well as hope.