At
the makeshift relief centre John bent forward and carefully
cleansed the wounded knee of an old man lying on the wooden
bench. He put a clean towel on top of the wound and tied it
with his handkerchief to control the bleeding.
When the man was feeling better, John approached the young boy
crying across the room and comforted him. As he turned his head,
he saw a man limping by the door. John helped him to the chair.
In another corner of the room, John saw a man lying on the floor.
When he went over to check, John was shocked. The man was dead.
John Oliver, a youth volunteer of the Philippine National Red
Cross (PNRC) gasped for breath as he recalled what he saw the
morning after typhoon Winnie struck Quezon Province on the main
Philippine island of Luzon on 28 November, 2004.
“It was horrible. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There
were dead bodies, hundreds of people injured, weak bodies lying
about, children and women crying frantically,” he remembers.
“I imagined the Battle of Solferino must have looked something
like that. I felt like Henry Dunant treating the wounded one
after the other and comforting the children and women crying,”
John says, his eyes rolling with emotion.
Dunant’s experiences at Solferino in 1859, in particular
his attempts to mobilise the local population to care for the
wounded, were the inspiration for the founding of the Red Cross.
John, a 16-year-old high school student, was on his way into
the town of Real to visit a sick classmate that morning when
he met people running and crying, some of them helping others
to their feet, while others were carrying children in their
arms.
Others were carrying heavy ‘loads’, wrapped in blankets,
on their back. He realized these were people who had died.
Shocked by what he saw, John immediately thought of the strong
typhoon that had battered the province the night before. Wasting
no time, he rushed to the far end of the road and helped the
villagers struggling on the rope as they crossed the strong
current brought by rampaging floodwater from the higher areas.
Several men tried to replace the broken bridge with sandbags
and trees that were felled by the typhoon.
John, whose village in Ungos, also in Real, was not severely
affected by the typhoon, did not realize the extent of the devastation
until he saw for himself that morning the damage from the flooding
and the landslides that covered entire villages.
At Central school in the town of Real proper, where people from
the isolated villages of Kinanliman, Capalong and Tiguban had
sought refuge, John, together with his classmates and other
Red Cross volunteers from nearby communities, spent the rest
of the day and night separating the dead from the survivors,
treating the injured, providing hot noodles and water to the
evacuees and comforting the children.
“It was the most fulfilling experience for me,”
says John, who has been an active volunteer of the Red Cross
for four years and is now the president of the Red Cross youth
council in his school.
As a Red Cross volunteer, John has been involved in several
community projects, including tree planting, environmental clean-up,
teaching out-of-school youth first aid and other life saving
courses and conducting drug and HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns.
“But nothing made me feel so useful yet so inadequate
as when I took care of our townfolk ravaged by the typhoon.
It was a situation that demanded 200 per cent from me and I
could do nothing but respond with the best that I could give,”
he explains.
Maria Katrina Calong, 16 and classmate of John, says she felt
the same when she gave first aid and distributed relief goods
to the evacuees of Tignoan village, who sought refuge at the
chapel when the building that was sheltering them also collapsed
and buried more than 100 people.
Katrina, who is vice-president of the schools Red Cross Youth
Council, barely survived when the building came tumbling down.
She says the first thing she did was to look for clean water
and pieces of cloth, including her own clothes, to treat the
injured.
“I forgot that I was scared by what happened. All I had
in mind was to do my best to help the people. All of us were
running on adrenalin. There was no time to feel tired or scared.”
Elmer Potes, 33, is John’s and Katrina’s Science
and Computer teacher and adviser to the Red Cross Youth Council
in their school. He says he was proud of his youth volunteers
who worked tirelessly, especially when another super typhoon
ravaged the province in December 2004 and brought more damage
to life and property.
“More than 100 of the youth volunteers helped pack and
distribute relief goods. They also organized programmes and
parlour games for the children to help ease their stress and
tension.
Elmer, a father of two whose wife Jinky is also a teacher in
the same school, says he ensures that his students practice
and appreciate humanitarian values through community work.
Their “favourite” extra curricular activity is community
service, especially on weekends when they go house- to-house
to visit families and share basic first aid skills or when they
interact with out-of-school youth to talk about the value of
education, clean living, community involvement or discuss the
myths and realities about HIV/AIDS.
“Wanting to help is different from being able to help
because you have the skills,” John says.
“We are happy we have learned from the Red Cross how to
handle disaster situations and how to give first aid to save
lives. In the aftermath of typhoon Winnie, I saw with my own
eyes and carried out with my own hands the work of the Red Cross
in saving lives.”
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John,
Katrina and Elmer stand in front of their Red Cross Youth
Council office at Real High School (p12633)
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Teacher
Elmer watches over fellow Red Cross volunteers Katrina
and John as they work on their computer (p12634)
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