Survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines struggle to rebuild their lives, six months on
Survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan are not just having to rebuild their homes. Six months on, they are still struggling to rebuild their lives, too
Six months after the strongest typhoon to hit land killed his mother and tore down much of their house in the eastern Philippines, Sofronio Cervantes wants to return home.
Like thousands of others, the 38-year-old farmer fled the destruction wrought by Super Typhoon Haiyan to Manila.
After a fruitless search for work and surviving on the charity of his wife's relatives, Cervantes says it is now time to go back to his village.
His father is still living there in what remains of their house - a tarpaulin roof strung between two broken walls.
"I want to restart our lives there," he said while visiting the Social Welfare Department, where he managed to get a cash handout of 2,800 pesos (HK$496) to cover the bus fare for his wife, one-year-old son and himself back to his home province of Leyte. "What will I do here? It is better for us to go home."
There are signs of progress since the storm slammed into the Philippines on November 8, leaving more than 7,300 dead or missing and flattening hundreds of thousands of homes.
