Eric Aseo

Standing at the beach of MacArthur Park just south of Tacloban city in Eastern Visayas, the Pacific Ocean looks playful and gentle – a sharp contrast from a year ago when Super Typhoon Haiyan, “Yolanda” in the Philippines, pounded the region, leaving more than 6,300 dead…

Marilyn Ecap, a 42-year-old street typist, is a permanent fixture at the main gate of the former Divine Word University campus in Tacloban City. For 12 years she has made a living typing documents for a fee, disrupted only when Super Typhoon Yolanda…

Last month, when the 7.2 earthquake struck the Philippine provinces of Cebu and Bohol, I was in the southern city of Zamboanga facilitating dialogues between Muslim and Christian leaders to alleviate possible religious tension following the September siege that displaced thousands and threatened the good relationship of the city’s two faith communities. It was the furthest thing from my mind that an even more devastating disaster would happen just a month later, right in Tacloban City, where I had left my wife and kids in safety (or so I thought) and in the province of Eastern Samar where I grew up playing in the gentle edges of the mighty Pacific Ocean.