WFPSilke

Energy is mainly thanks to coffee - it's 8am here but we've been up for a while... Time - well, we thought it was important to talk to you guys, so we carved out an hour. It has to be said that we're multitasking - we're sitting in our 'meeting room', a plastic table in a street in Tacloban, and people are coming and going and Samir is talking to colleagues about operational issues as he's typing...

So many people have touched my heart in the past month... One brave, kind and generous little girl stands out, though. I had to come back to Manila for a few days after my first week in Tacloban, and I got a ride back on a military plane, an American C130. It had arrived laden with relief cargo, and then loaded up a few aid workers and dozens and dozens of evacuees. It was so sad, these families carrying a few tattered plastic bags with the remains of their possessions, heading goodness knows where... There was one little boy sitting near me, he was with his grandpa and big sister, and he was just sobbing his heart out. He was the first person I'd seen since I arrived who wasn't putting on a brave face and smiling. I was pretty close to tears myself at that point. His sister, who can't have been older than about ten herself, must have noticed this, because when we were getting off the plane in Manila she kind of patted my arm and pressed somehing into my hand with a shy smile. It was a little keychain with a miniature pink plastic flip flop on it, I guess a trinket she had managed to save. It still gives me goosebumps thinking about it- she wanted to comfort me, rather than the other way around.

I got here five days after the storm... Yesterday I was coming back from a food distribution outside of Tacloban, and we passed a family sitting outside the remains of their home. They'd kind of built a shack from scraps of wood and metal, and were sitting together outside. Next to them was a fully decorated Christmas tree! I thought I was hallucinating for a moment, but there it was, complete with tinsel and ornaments. I have no idea how they got it or saved it, but it was such a heart-warming sight. It's the imagine I'm going to hold on to when I need an emotional pick-me-up.

Well, they're all different and unique... Apart from the geographic scale and the level of devastation, what has been striking about this disaster has been the amazing strength of the local people. Everyone is so kind, so positive, so friendly. I don't know if I would have the strength to keep smiling if something like this happened to me, but every single person I have met has held on to their positivity and hope for the future. It's really inspiring.

Oh and on issues hampering the relief work - well, the biggest challenge in the beginning was just the logistics and geography that made it physically hard to get to people, eg on remote islands... But that's working pretty well now, between boats, trucks and aircraft - the aid is flowing.