Victory Island, Eastern Samar: Every day since the most powerful storm on record smashed across this tiny coral island 12 months ago, Gemyma Alterado has looked out to sea, refusing to give up hope that 11 members of her family will somehow return.
''What can we do but pray and hope? There are no bodies to bury so we don't have anywhere to mourn,'' says Alterado, referring to her nieces, nephews and other relatives who were swept away in massive wall of water whipped up by Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the central Philippine islands on November 8, 2013, killing 6300 people, leaving 1000 missing and displacing 4.1 million others.
''We were a very close family . . . now those of us left just sit together and cry,'' she says.
In Tacloban, a provincial capital four hours from Victory Island by boat, relatives of 2600 people killed when a seven-metre-high surge of water hit the city come to pray at a mass grave site in a muddy paddock marked by white crosses.
They don't know where at the site their loved ones were pushed into pits in the chaotic days after the storm, as looters desperate for food and water roamed the traumatised city.
''I allowed them to put names on the crosses. At least that gives them somewhere to come and pray and pay their respects, which is important in Filipino culture,'' says Tacloban mayor Alfred Romualdez.
Twelve months ago I walked through piles of twisted rubble left by Haiyan's up to 300km/h winds and spoke with people who were stoically trying to bury the dead and find food and water to survive, their homes destroyed and their livelihoods gone.
I returned before Saturday's anniversary to see survivors living in shanty towns in the same locations as their former houses, while others are crammed into temporary bunkhouses, not knowing what their future holds as the Philippine government only last week finalised a $US3.7 billion rebuilding plan.
The enormity of the disaster appears to have overwhelmed the government and critics say implementation will take years.
The plan calls for the construction of 200,000 new homes across the devastated Leyte, Eastern Samar and other islands, but authorities have struggled to acquire suitable land.
In Tacloban, only 100 of 14,500 permanent houses promised by the government have been built and there is resistance among many families to relocate to an estate near mountains an hour's drive from the seaside, where many of them work.
Thousands of families are living in huts built with battered corrugated iron and other materials salvaged from the storm along the city's waterfront in clear violation of a government-declared ''40-metre no-build zone''.
In an area known as Anibong, which before the storm was a vibrant community with homes, schools and businesses, naked children now play amid rubbish, broken glass and waste.
Workers are cutting scrap metal from the Eva Jocelyn, a ship pushed ashore that has become a symbol of Haiyan's enormous power.
A three-year-old girl squats amid the chaos of a row of bunkhouses to paint her toenails, and while her mother scrubs clothes her father scales a fish for their evening meal.
On Victory, an outcrop of coral 100 metres wide and 400 metres long, I again saw Sofia Deximo, who was born shortly after the typhoon struck, a healthy one-year-old with a cheeky grin, one of Haiyan's so-called ''miracle babies''.
But despite a huge response from international aid agencies and NGOs, many survivors say they feel angry and frustrated by the slow pace of the recovery effort and see much of it as misdirected or wasteful.
On the eve of the anniversary, Gabriela, a women and children's advocacy group, said many families remain hungry and have been unable to rebuild their lives.
Pedro Lacandazo, 50, lost 40 members of his clan, nearly half of them children and including 12 members of his direct family, when a wall of water swept into Palo, a town eight kilometres from Tacloban.
Their names are written on a sign below a cross at the site of his former house, where he witnessed the death of his wife and five daughters as he struggled to stay above the water after being hit by a falling coconut tree.
While $US1.6 billion was pledged internationally to help build devastated areas, Lacandazo, a former fisherman, says life is very hard as he struggles to survive on a salary of less than $US200 a month, payment for serving on his local community council.
''Since Yolanda I have received only 25 kilograms of rice and 15 pieces of corrugated iron,'' he says, referring to Typhoon Haiyan's local name.
Lacandazo's 35-year-old son Pedro III is rebuilding the family's house with money from relatives of his wife, who was also swept away with their two children, aged one and two.
Government money is available for families such as the Lacandazos but local authorities have lost necessary paperwork for the family's death certificates as they struggle to deal with the disaster.
To mark the anniversary, Pedro Lacandazo will go to his local church where the bodies of his family members are buried, their photographs pinned to a board, as sirens will sound and church bells ring to mark the moment when Haiyan roared in from the Western Pacific.
''There is no happiness now, just emptiness. I think of them all the time,'' Lacandazo says with tears in his eyes.
Mayor Romualdez, the 52-year-old nephew of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, says that after initially just struggling to survive people are now trying to move forward with their lives.
''Yes, they are suffering and they see a lot of money being spent on infrastructure and not enough help going to them,'' he says.
''For example, they see money being poured into widening roads and building bridges and they come to me and ask why the money is being spent on infrastructure . . . they want the focus on helping their families.''
Romualdez says almost 60 per cent of Tacloban's businesses have reopened - including last month a branch of McDonalds - and by day the city appears much like other provincial centres in the Philippines.
Hotels are near-full with aid workers and new four-wheel-drive vehicles bought by international agencies vie for space on busy streets.
But soon after nightfall the streets are empty, a stark reminder of the terror of that early morning 12 months ago when a 12-year-old girl desperately clung to a downpipe in swirling six-metre-deep waters for four hours, believing that her mother who had been carried off was dead.
For weeks many children were so traumatised that they could not speak.
Hector Go, a 58-year-old commentator on Tacloban radio, says the survivors are ''afraid of their own shadows''.
''After Haiyan it lingers in their minds that something else bad will happen . . . it may not be a typhoon but something bad,'' he says.
''People are staying at home with their families.''
The World Health Organisation estimates that as many as 800,000 Haiyan survivors are suffering mental health problems.
Studies show the problems are exacerbated by fears of another storm in the disaster-prone nation that sees on average 20 typhoons a year, as well as periodic volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, droughts and landslides.
Lope Robredillo, a Catholic priest at the 15th-century Immaculate Conception church in the town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar, says Filipinos are by nature resilient.
''We endure frequent storms and disasters . . . the only difference with Yolanda was that it was really quite big,'' he says at the church that was badly damaged but is slated to be rebuilt with American aid money.
''People are getting on with their lives - they have no choice,'' he says.
Kevin Apurillo, a priest at Leyte's San Joaquin church, says survivors are still reeling from the pain of their losses.
''This is really very difficult but because of their faith, they are trying to move on,'' he says.
On January 17 Pope Francis is scheduled to fly into Tacloban to preside over a Mass that could attract as many as a million people from devastated areas, where most people are Catholics.
''The Pope's visit is giving people hope where before there was little,'' Romualdez says.
Throughout the devastated areas, survivors praise the response of international aid agencies whose projects relieved hardships in the months after the typhoon.
Many agencies have re-focused programs from emergency assistance to sustainable livelihood projects such as training and skills development and assisting survivors to establish small enterprises encouraging self-reliance.
In the year since Haiyan, for example, Save the Children has reached out to 750,000 people, moving from emergency food distribution to cash to restart livelihoods, providing tools and money to rebuild and fix houses, as well as renovating health and education buildings.
Hector Go says that without the international aid agencies ''I don't know what would have happened''.
But he also says it is time for the agencies to wind down their operations and leave.
''It seems like we are being dragged into dependence on outside help when in fact it is almost time for people to stand on their own,'' he says.
''I ask people from the international agencies what is their exit strategy . . . they don't answer because they don't have one. As long as the donations keep flowing they will continue to be here.''
Go says that for much of the past year people some people have been lazy.
''They awoke and went to fall into line for handouts . . . just like goats. Sure the help was fantastic, but it is time to again take care of themselves and their families.''
Greg Cummins, a former builder from Melbourne who owns a waterfront hotel called Misty Blue in the town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar, agrees there is a risk of aid dependence.
''Some of the aid is probably not really doing much good at this stage because people are sitting back waiting for the handouts,'' says Cummins, a big man with a moustache who is known in the town as 'Hulk Hogan' because he looks like the American wrestler.
Food handouts on Victory Island and other rural communities ended in March and have been reduced in many other areas. Most of 140 or so houses on the island that were destroyed or badly damaged by Haiyan have been rebuilt with the help of international agencies.
But Lorenzo Echaver, head of the Victory community, says it will take another two years before his people, originally from the large island of Bohol, who settled on the island in the 1960s, will again be self-sufficient.
Fresh water has to be brought by boat from Guiuan and the fishing grounds are not as productive as they used to be, he says.
An aid organisation has built concrete fish-breeding tanks, but the community doesn't have enough money to buy fish stock.
Echaver, 47, says he has been told by authorities in Guiuan, an hour's boat ride away, that there are no plans to relocate the families from the island despite its vulnerability to severe storms like Haiyan.
He says if people had a choice they would probably stay on the island anyway, to be near fishing grounds.
Asked if he is worried about another disaster striking the community, Echaver replies: ''Yes. We think about that all the time. But we pray there will not be another one like Yolanda. We are in the hands of God.''
''What can we do but pray and hope? There are no bodies to bury so we don't have anywhere to mourn,'' says Alterado, referring to her nieces, nephews and other relatives who were swept away in massive wall of water whipped up by Typhoon Haiyan that devastated the central Philippine islands on November 8, 2013, killing 6300 people, leaving 1000 missing and displacing 4.1 million others.
''We were a very close family . . . now those of us left just sit together and cry,'' she says.
In Tacloban, a provincial capital four hours from Victory Island by boat, relatives of 2600 people killed when a seven-metre-high surge of water hit the city come to pray at a mass grave site in a muddy paddock marked by white crosses.
They don't know where at the site their loved ones were pushed into pits in the chaotic days after the storm, as looters desperate for food and water roamed the traumatised city.
''I allowed them to put names on the crosses. At least that gives them somewhere to come and pray and pay their respects, which is important in Filipino culture,'' says Tacloban mayor Alfred Romualdez.
Twelve months ago I walked through piles of twisted rubble left by Haiyan's up to 300km/h winds and spoke with people who were stoically trying to bury the dead and find food and water to survive, their homes destroyed and their livelihoods gone.
I returned before Saturday's anniversary to see survivors living in shanty towns in the same locations as their former houses, while others are crammed into temporary bunkhouses, not knowing what their future holds as the Philippine government only last week finalised a $US3.7 billion rebuilding plan.
The enormity of the disaster appears to have overwhelmed the government and critics say implementation will take years.
The plan calls for the construction of 200,000 new homes across the devastated Leyte, Eastern Samar and other islands, but authorities have struggled to acquire suitable land.
In Tacloban, only 100 of 14,500 permanent houses promised by the government have been built and there is resistance among many families to relocate to an estate near mountains an hour's drive from the seaside, where many of them work.
Thousands of families are living in huts built with battered corrugated iron and other materials salvaged from the storm along the city's waterfront in clear violation of a government-declared ''40-metre no-build zone''.
In an area known as Anibong, which before the storm was a vibrant community with homes, schools and businesses, naked children now play amid rubbish, broken glass and waste.
Workers are cutting scrap metal from the Eva Jocelyn, a ship pushed ashore that has become a symbol of Haiyan's enormous power.
A three-year-old girl squats amid the chaos of a row of bunkhouses to paint her toenails, and while her mother scrubs clothes her father scales a fish for their evening meal.
On Victory, an outcrop of coral 100 metres wide and 400 metres long, I again saw Sofia Deximo, who was born shortly after the typhoon struck, a healthy one-year-old with a cheeky grin, one of Haiyan's so-called ''miracle babies''.
But despite a huge response from international aid agencies and NGOs, many survivors say they feel angry and frustrated by the slow pace of the recovery effort and see much of it as misdirected or wasteful.
On the eve of the anniversary, Gabriela, a women and children's advocacy group, said many families remain hungry and have been unable to rebuild their lives.
Pedro Lacandazo, 50, lost 40 members of his clan, nearly half of them children and including 12 members of his direct family, when a wall of water swept into Palo, a town eight kilometres from Tacloban.
Their names are written on a sign below a cross at the site of his former house, where he witnessed the death of his wife and five daughters as he struggled to stay above the water after being hit by a falling coconut tree.
While $US1.6 billion was pledged internationally to help build devastated areas, Lacandazo, a former fisherman, says life is very hard as he struggles to survive on a salary of less than $US200 a month, payment for serving on his local community council.
''Since Yolanda I have received only 25 kilograms of rice and 15 pieces of corrugated iron,'' he says, referring to Typhoon Haiyan's local name.
Lacandazo's 35-year-old son Pedro III is rebuilding the family's house with money from relatives of his wife, who was also swept away with their two children, aged one and two.
Government money is available for families such as the Lacandazos but local authorities have lost necessary paperwork for the family's death certificates as they struggle to deal with the disaster.
To mark the anniversary, Pedro Lacandazo will go to his local church where the bodies of his family members are buried, their photographs pinned to a board, as sirens will sound and church bells ring to mark the moment when Haiyan roared in from the Western Pacific.
''There is no happiness now, just emptiness. I think of them all the time,'' Lacandazo says with tears in his eyes.
Mayor Romualdez, the 52-year-old nephew of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, says that after initially just struggling to survive people are now trying to move forward with their lives.
''Yes, they are suffering and they see a lot of money being spent on infrastructure and not enough help going to them,'' he says.
''For example, they see money being poured into widening roads and building bridges and they come to me and ask why the money is being spent on infrastructure . . . they want the focus on helping their families.''
Romualdez says almost 60 per cent of Tacloban's businesses have reopened - including last month a branch of McDonalds - and by day the city appears much like other provincial centres in the Philippines.
Hotels are near-full with aid workers and new four-wheel-drive vehicles bought by international agencies vie for space on busy streets.
But soon after nightfall the streets are empty, a stark reminder of the terror of that early morning 12 months ago when a 12-year-old girl desperately clung to a downpipe in swirling six-metre-deep waters for four hours, believing that her mother who had been carried off was dead.
For weeks many children were so traumatised that they could not speak.
Hector Go, a 58-year-old commentator on Tacloban radio, says the survivors are ''afraid of their own shadows''.
''After Haiyan it lingers in their minds that something else bad will happen . . . it may not be a typhoon but something bad,'' he says.
''People are staying at home with their families.''
The World Health Organisation estimates that as many as 800,000 Haiyan survivors are suffering mental health problems.
Studies show the problems are exacerbated by fears of another storm in the disaster-prone nation that sees on average 20 typhoons a year, as well as periodic volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, droughts and landslides.
Lope Robredillo, a Catholic priest at the 15th-century Immaculate Conception church in the town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar, says Filipinos are by nature resilient.
''We endure frequent storms and disasters . . . the only difference with Yolanda was that it was really quite big,'' he says at the church that was badly damaged but is slated to be rebuilt with American aid money.
''People are getting on with their lives - they have no choice,'' he says.
Kevin Apurillo, a priest at Leyte's San Joaquin church, says survivors are still reeling from the pain of their losses.
''This is really very difficult but because of their faith, they are trying to move on,'' he says.
On January 17 Pope Francis is scheduled to fly into Tacloban to preside over a Mass that could attract as many as a million people from devastated areas, where most people are Catholics.
''The Pope's visit is giving people hope where before there was little,'' Romualdez says.
Throughout the devastated areas, survivors praise the response of international aid agencies whose projects relieved hardships in the months after the typhoon.
Many agencies have re-focused programs from emergency assistance to sustainable livelihood projects such as training and skills development and assisting survivors to establish small enterprises encouraging self-reliance.
In the year since Haiyan, for example, Save the Children has reached out to 750,000 people, moving from emergency food distribution to cash to restart livelihoods, providing tools and money to rebuild and fix houses, as well as renovating health and education buildings.
Hector Go says that without the international aid agencies ''I don't know what would have happened''.
But he also says it is time for the agencies to wind down their operations and leave.
''It seems like we are being dragged into dependence on outside help when in fact it is almost time for people to stand on their own,'' he says.
''I ask people from the international agencies what is their exit strategy . . . they don't answer because they don't have one. As long as the donations keep flowing they will continue to be here.''
Go says that for much of the past year people some people have been lazy.
''They awoke and went to fall into line for handouts . . . just like goats. Sure the help was fantastic, but it is time to again take care of themselves and their families.''
Greg Cummins, a former builder from Melbourne who owns a waterfront hotel called Misty Blue in the town of Guiuan in Eastern Samar, agrees there is a risk of aid dependence.
''Some of the aid is probably not really doing much good at this stage because people are sitting back waiting for the handouts,'' says Cummins, a big man with a moustache who is known in the town as 'Hulk Hogan' because he looks like the American wrestler.
Food handouts on Victory Island and other rural communities ended in March and have been reduced in many other areas. Most of 140 or so houses on the island that were destroyed or badly damaged by Haiyan have been rebuilt with the help of international agencies.
But Lorenzo Echaver, head of the Victory community, says it will take another two years before his people, originally from the large island of Bohol, who settled on the island in the 1960s, will again be self-sufficient.
Fresh water has to be brought by boat from Guiuan and the fishing grounds are not as productive as they used to be, he says.
An aid organisation has built concrete fish-breeding tanks, but the community doesn't have enough money to buy fish stock.
Echaver, 47, says he has been told by authorities in Guiuan, an hour's boat ride away, that there are no plans to relocate the families from the island despite its vulnerability to severe storms like Haiyan.
He says if people had a choice they would probably stay on the island anyway, to be near fishing grounds.
Asked if he is worried about another disaster striking the community, Echaver replies: ''Yes. We think about that all the time. But we pray there will not be another one like Yolanda. We are in the hands of God.''
