Playing Back Hope in Infanta, Quezon

Playing Back Hope
Infanta, Quezon
February 12, 2005

Months before the Tsunami hit Southeast Asia, a great storm hit the Southern Luzon part of the Philippines that resulted to death of many people. It washed out livelihood, houses and practically the lives of the people of Quezon province.

Various efforts were done by several private and corporate groups to extend assistance to the devastated province. One of which is the World Vision Philippines. They had a deep desire to help the community. Somehow, World Vision got hold of us and invited our group to help in their effort to do a psycho-social processing in the community. We were assigned to handle the children while the psychologists that are with us did the initial pyscho-social with the adults of the community.

While eating our snack, we had the children talk about some of their experiences about the flush flood that hit their town. Almost all of them cried while they recollect their stories. We heard stories about their frightful encounter with the storm-- being being washed out of their houses, getting almost drowned, losing a mother in the flood, climbing the roof to survive. It broke our hearts just listening to them. We then asked how they are doing now and about their hope in the future. This, then, was the material we used for their playback workshop. We played games: imitating houses, trees and water. They played-back particular instances they had experienced in the disaster and how they prayed for their loved ones to survive. After this process, we moved on to their joys of being able to go back to school since there is no more flood-water in their houses and on the street. It was okay for them even if it takes 30 minutes to an hour of long walk just to get to the school since major bridges were cut and destroyed because of the flood and no means of transport can bring to their schools. They enthusiastically Playback this experience. We also asked them to playback their dreams. Most of them wanted to become a teacher, doctor, nurse or a businessperson. They want to finish studying to help their families. We suddenly saw smiles in their young and innocent faces. After the Playback performances, they reflected that it was a great time to play and have fun again after what had happened in their lives.

After our workshop with the kids, they were asked to perform in front of the whole community who came for the assembly. They all went onstage and showed what we did in the workshop. They playback all their sad experiences and their dreams of moving on in life. The whole community saw hope in the children. We, too, saw that spark of hope. It was a great experience conducting workshop with them and seeing them perform their experiences. Life is beautiful with playback.

Panoorin Natin!