Walk from Candahug to the Office

We walked the orange route (two wheel traffic) out to
the circle on this map drawn at the Sunday meeting.

After our meeting with the Council on Sunday afternoon, we decided to walk back to the office in Pawing, by way of footpaths through Candahug. Through the community mapping, we learned that there is a meandering way out of the neighborhood, heading west. Motor bikes can make it through, if they want, but anything larger can't make it.

The narrow walkway leading from the core of the village
to a small residential area across a field, and then on
to the Government Center. Only foot traffic and two-
wheeled vehicles and take this route.

Turning to the right after the church, just a block from the barangay hall, we began winding our way through a residential street that dead ends at a fork where two paths begin. One heads out through a field and then by some houses before emptying out on the coastal road. We took the one that would lead us to the government center, where we would then take the road to the office at Leyte Information, Community, and Technology Park. The first section of this path is a long straight-away concrete walkway headed out through a field. This would roughly parallel the evacuation route through the rice paddies that Candahug has suggested, (which would lead all the way out to the highway into Tacloban).

A row of new homes in Candahug.

Marie with new construction off to the left.

What was striking about the walk was the view of Candahug, looking back towards the densely settled core. Though we were in the midst of a lot of construction activity in Candahug, it was surprising to note, from this vantage point, just how many new homes there were on all sides of the community, clustered around the buildings that the storm surge did not wipe out: the church, school, and barangay hall. Don Bosco, an engineering and technical school in Cebu, has been providing relief and recovery in Leyte, and students and staff from the institution have been building many of the replacement homes in Candahug. They are the simple, square but solidly reinforced structures with the metal roofs that you can see in the photos.

As Marie noted in a previous post, the neighborhood is nestled between the sea and coastal roads and several fields, through which several creeks flow. Some of these saline and brackish tributaries into the sea are lined with nipa palms, the drifts of which crop up above the surrounding fields. At the edge of the west side of the village, the low mountains of Tacloban span the horizon. Looking back on the main residential area generates this feeling that Candahug is isolated--though not that far from the national highway and the built up areas of

New homes surrounding the barangay hall (peachy
building).

Tacloban and Palo, it's set apart from
everything nearby.


After several hundred yards, the concrete walkway took a sharp ninety degree turn to the southwest passing through a small neighborhood comprising Zone Camia. Nearly everyone said "Good afternoon!" and a gaggle of children ran after us, grabbing my hand and touching it to their foreheads. I wasn't sure what that meant, but the kids got a kick out of it! By this point in the walk, the path took another two ninety degrees turn, forming a zig-zag, before emptying out onto one of the spurs coming out of the government center complex. We followed this into Pawing, noting vegetation along the way. 

The axial and circular road of the Government Center can be seen
in the center of the photo. The residential area of Candahug,
current-day, is off to the left by the coast.

During all of our presentations this term, our classmates and faculty were mystified by the strong geometric pattern, formed by a series of roads, that is imprinted on the Candahug landscape, as seen in aerial photographs look the one to the right. "What is that?" people asked. Seeing the white bunkers (temporary shelters) lining one of the roads, some asked"Does that have something with the disaster response?". This strange-appearing circular road and avenue leading from the Pan-Philippine National Highway to the seaside MacArthur monument are actually the roadway framework for what is dubbed the "Government Center" a complex conceived during the Marcos era that consists of several Leyte provincial government buildings and district offices of various national agencies. This complex plays an important role in Candahug's history, that we not have mentioned yet. The neighborhood was actually completely relocated in 1976, forced to move within a kilometer or so to the northeast, to make room for the new government structures and park (including a monument to the Boy Scouts and MacArthur's landing). Though we did not discuss this history with residents at length, it seems to be important context to the redevelopment of the neighborhood and it fuels long-time residents' attitude towards and uncertainty about the government's role in eventually forcing them to, post-Yolanda, relocate once again at its bequest, to what it

Looking back on the same area pictured above, from
the opposite direction, and before Yolanda. Notice the
vegetation along the coast.

may deem "safer ground."

The trees of a once dense wooded area near the
MacArthur Landing monument, post-Yolanda.

In actuality, the Government Center never quite filled out around the rotary and larger concentric circle that stand out so prominently in the maps and aerial photos. Today, most of the development is either closer to the national highway (foreground in the photo at right) or not far from the MacArthur statue by the coast. In an earlier aerial photo (taken from exactly the opposite direction, looking inland), one can see just how forested the area was prior to Yolanda. In fact, some of the Kusog Volunteers said that you could not see the government center or Candahug from the water before Yolanda, so thick was the vegetation. That changed dramatically with Yolanda. Many trees were felled in the storm's 150-plus mile-per-hour winds that battered the coast, and those that remain are missing major limbs. The empty lots around the circle road have given way to temporary housing, a Korean military unit's relief operation center, and other relief and response projects. Walking from the office to the coast, the view across the expanse is rather bleak (photo at right).

Looking across the central part of the Government
Center.

Candahug is literally so close to national and provincial government resources. In fact, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Mines and Geosciences Bureau regional offices are just a stone's throw away from the neighborhood. But in terms of the residents' access to up-to-date data and maps and education on hazard risks, Candahug seemingly sits a world apart from these institutions at the Government Center. Can the outcome of this project and the ideas that it sets forth work to bridge this divide--to connect communities with government resources--as well as empower communities to weather the changes that are out of their control--the life-altering edicts that a government might hand down to leave one's home, or the calamitous disasters to which government is not equipped to handle?