In November 2013, the small town of Tanauan, on the Philippine island of Leyte was smashed to smithereens. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms to ever make landfall, left a trail of devastation across the town’s shoreline.

Entire families were swept away by seven-metre waves that battered the coast. Known locally as Yolanda, the superstorm killed more than 6,000 people and left four million homeless across the middle of the archipelago. 

Twin brothers Elmer and Mariano Labada fought hard to stay afloat with their wives and children in the storm surges.

“It was a struggle to survive. We were all drowning. I lost sight of my wife. When I emerged from the water, my youngest son was being swept away. When he went under, I thought maybe I wanted to die. He called out ‘Papa, Papa’. I couldn’t reach him,” Elmer said.

Both lost two children.

After the storm, the brothers searched for their loved ones in the debris and rubble. Eventually, they found the body of Elmer’s daughter at the morgue.

They didn’t want to open the bag for me because of the smell. She was a beautiful child. I wanted to hold her but I couldn’t because of the way she was. They gave her to me and told me to bury her the next day.

Elmer Labada, Typhoon Haiyan survivor

Elmer said he could only recognise her from her clothing. “They didn’t want to open the bag for me because of the smell. She was a beautiful child. I wanted to hold her but I couldn’t because of the way she was. They gave her to me and told me to bury her the next day,” he said.

Devastated by the loss of their daughter and son, Elmer’s wife left him and moved to the capital, Manila. Elmer then lost his full-time job at a soft drink factory in Tanauan.

“Many times I wished the waves killed me too. My family, house … Everything was gone in four seconds, the blink of an eye. Now life is pointless,” Elmer said.

Mariano said he was luckier than his brother. His wife and two other children survived. He was also able to keep his job riding a pedal cab.

“I feel guilty. It’s harder for Elmer to move on. Two of my kids died but two survived. What I learned is, if it’s your time to die, it’s your time,” Mariano said.

For journalists and photographers in Asia, covering natural disasters comes with the territory in the most disaster-prone region on earth.

Across the continent, earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis and mudslides befall communities frequently and ferociously. But the pressures of the daily news cycle can often limit the media’s capacity to document the long-term effects – environmental, economic and emotional.

What does recovery look like when you’ve lost everyone in your family?

Since the storm hit five years ago, Al Jazeera’s 101 East programme has revisited Tanauan three times returning to the same survivors to follow their roads to recovery.

From their stories, we crafted Tanauan: Stronger than the Storm, an interactive documentary to build a conversation around climate change and its effect on people.

Tanauan’s survivors are its storytellers.

In Tanauan, 1,380 people were killed by Typhoon Haiyan – the second highest number of fatalities in the disaster zone.

In the days after, the survivors were cut off from help and the town hall was turned into an emergency triage centre.

Today, signs of recovery are easy to see. Local Mayor Pel Tecson utilised government funding to rebuild.

“Every time I have the opportunity to speak with my people, I tell them that we have to set aside the painful experience of Typhoon Haiyan and we have to start moving forward and we can turn this crisis into an opportunity to rebuild the town. That’s the best way to honour those who’ve died. We can rebuild this into a much greater and more beautiful town,” he says.

Behind the town hall, where a mass grave was dug in the storm’s aftermath, lies a new amphitheatre, basketball courts and memorial site where the disaster is commemorated every year. 

“This is our living room in the town. If you come back here at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, you will see a lot of people down here. Life is back in Tanauan,” Pel says.

Today, Tanauan is one of three towns in Leyte to build a seawall along the shore. Mayor Pel hopes it will protect his community from future storm surges.

But not all recovery has been smooth. After Typhoon Haiyan, the Philippines government promised to build more than 200,000 houses for Leyte’s storm survivors.

But five years later, critics say not even a quarter of them have been built and many that have are already in a state of disrepair due to poor construction. Villagers who depend on the sea for their livelihoods have been forced to move away from the shore, which has been turned into No Build Zones.

Five years on, Mayor Pel admits storm survivors still need help but insists poverty rates are dropping.

But the Labada brothers say they find it harder to make a living now than when the typhoon hit.

I’m a bit disturbed, the big companies are able to build near the sea. But the poor, whose source of livelihood is there, are being chased out. Development doesn’t help storm survivors because we can’t get jobs [working] on new buildings.

Mariano Labada, Typhoon Haiyan survivor

During the aftermath, there was aid and assistance. Today, they say they must fend for themselves. They criticise the rebuilding around Tanauan, calling it commercially focused on projects that lock locals out of possible jobs.

“I’m a bit disturbed, the big companies are able to build near the sea. But the poor, whose source of livelihood is there, are being chased out. Development doesn’t help storm survivors because we can’t get jobs [working] on new buildings,” Mariano says.

His brother Elmer gets the odd shift back at the soft drink factory, a wage he desperately needs to support his family.

In the past few years, he has remarried and now has two new children.

“I really, really love my children like my first two children. Of course you need to stand again and start again. What happened was a tragedy, but I’m okay. I’m adjusting to my new life,” he says.

The Philippines remains one of the most disaster-prone nations in the world, but despite the dangers, the brothers have rebuilt their home on the same plot of land that Haiyan destroyed.

“I don’t care if another disaster strikes or if this house won’t survive,” says Elmer. “This is where I live.”

In a rural part of Moulvibazar in Bangladesh‘s northeast, a wooden boat crosses the narrow and shallow water, even in the midst of the monsoon.

As it reaches the other side, the passengers get off and start unloading cardboard boxes.

“It’s medicine, 35 boxes in all. I hope it will be enough. We only had two days to collect money this time, and this is what we managed to get,” said Marzia Prova, a university student from Dhaka, as she takes a box and starts walking up from the riverbed.

The others, all young, mostly students, do the same.

It was early morning when they arrived with an overnight bus from the capital to do something Prova has done several times before: set up a makeshift medical camp.

“We came to Moulvibazar today because there was a flood last week, and I heard that families needed help,” says Prova.

They soon approach a small village, where a man unlocks the heavy padlock on a house.

Inside, they set up tables. Two for the doctors and medical students in the group, one for the others to hand out medication.

The grounds outside fill up with people: fathers with their children in hand, elderly men and women. Two young people from the village come to join, and start noting down names on a waitlist.

“We have a lot of enthusiasm in the young generation. That’s why we do this, we want to use it in a good way,” says Jannatul Ferdouse, one of the students from Dhaka.

Volunteer projects like this are not uncommon in Bangladesh, a small and densely populated country.

Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation in 1971, after a war to end the union with Pakistan. A year earlier, the deadliest cyclone on record had hit the region; soon after the war, a devastating famine.

Located right on a large delta, Bangladesh is a prone spot for natural disasters – a challenge for its 160 million people, but also a reason to support one another.

“There is definitely something about the ecology and environment, the history of the country, that has brought about this kind of civil mobilisation,” says David Lewis, a professor at London School of Economics (LSE).

According to Rounaq Jahan, a leading Bangladeshi intellectual, most of the key NGOs are led by people who were involved in the liberation war.

“The war had an impact on people,” he said. “It weakened old social norms, taught people to do things on their own. It unleashed a sense of entrepreneurship.”

Microcredit pioneer Grameen Bank, of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, is among the humanitarian entrepreneurial organisations – making small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral.

Development heavyweight BRAC is another. Founded in 1972 by Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, a Shell executive who left his job in London to return and build the post-war capacity of women in his native region of Sylhet, BRAC has become the largest NGO in Bangladesh and the world.

Despite this, Bangladesh’s NGOs are lesser known than their Western counterparts.

“I do think it should be more of an example. But it is not, probably because people don’t know about Bangladesh, and the country finds it difficult to promote itself on a global scale,” said LSE’s Lewis, citing the South Asian country’s humanitarian work towards Rohingya refugees as an example.

From single teaching room to school foundation

Individuals like Prova, the Dhaka university student, have a more limited scope, but do make an impact.

Besides organising support for rural families, Prova also runs a project to set up “emergency pad corners” in schools across the country, with affordable sanitary pads for girls.

With the help of students and friends in different cities, she manages this initiative in schools in eight of Bangladesh’s districts.

“But my plan is to spread them to all 64 districts. Menstrual hygiene is such a taboo in the countryside,” she says.

In Dhaka’s low-income area of Rayer Bazar, in 2007, student Korvi Rakshand began teaching children of rickshaw drivers, day labourers and domestic workers, who had no access to education, from one single classroom.

The simple classroom turned into a school, and then a foundation, JAAGO, which now runs 12 schools across the country.

“I remember when we asked our first students about their dreams and one of them said, ‘I want to be a rickshaw puller, just like my dad’,” says Rakshand.

“Now, he is in the batch of first graduates from our school, and just started college.”

That child was Lenin Ahmed – 11 years older today.

He has come to the Rayer Bazar school with two other students, Siam Hossain and Sufian Sabbiar. It was Hossain’s father who rented out that first room to Rakshand, and the family still lives on the bottom floor.

“My mother was part of it too, she was the one who talked to people in the community, convincing them of the importance of education. She said, ‘I have three kids, so there are already three students’,” says Hossain.

The school corridor leads to an open courtyard at the back, with trees planted by the children and murals painted on the walls. A new extension building has been built.

“We can see the difference now between us and our old friends who did not get a chance to go to school. They all work as drivers and rickshaw pullers, or hawkers in the street,” says Sabbiar.

Lifesaving aid

Between 20 and 35 percent of the population is estimated to receive services from an NGO, mainly from one of the big actors.

“The government knows that they need us. Tuberculosis vaccine, for instance, could never have been delivered without BRAC, and education could not have been safeguarded. The government knows this,” says Afsan Chowdhury, a journalist and historian who worked with BRAC for several years.

Political mobilisation on the other hand, is less tolerated.

The most recent example is the student-led movement for road safety this summer, triggered by an accident with a speeding bus killing two schoolchildren.

Police and pro-government groups met protesters with violence, and the prolific photographer Shahidul Alam was arrested after commenting on the events in an interview.

Back in Moulvibazar village, the afternoon has turned late and the heat started to diminish. The crowds outside are almost gone, save a few parents and children still waiting for their turn.

Students and doctors at the tables inside have hardly moved an inch since the morning.

“But that’s fine. We are medical students, so this is only a good experience for us,” says Meril Afroz Jebin.

A woman with thin arms and a stubborn cough sits next to her.

Since the flooding, the woman says, the cough refuses to go away.

Jebin writes down cough syrup and nutrition supplements on a note, then sends her to Prova who sits surrounded by empty boxes.

“We only have vitamins for children left now,” Prova says. “So we are giving supplements for kids to the adults too, just telling them to double the dose. For next time, we know that we have to bring more.”

Ho Chi Minh City – Hanoi will host Vietnam’s first-ever Grand Prix in April 2020 with drivers battling it out on the streets of the capital’s western suburbs, but in a country where the sport is largely unknown organisers will have to work hard to ensure the race’s success.

The Vietnamese Grand Prix will become the 22^nd event on the global calendar and the fourth street race, Formula 1 announced on Wednesday.

Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, signed a multi-year contract with Formula 1 to act as host of the Grand Prix, although the value of the deal has not been made public.

“We are delighted to announce that Hanoi will host a Formula 1 Grand Prix,” Chase Carey, chairman and chief executive of Formula 1, who was in Hanoi for the announcement ceremony, said in a statement.

“We have talked about developing new destination cities to broaden the appeal of Formula 1 and the Vietnamese Grand Prix is a realisation of that ambition.”

Nguyen Duc Chung, Hanoi’s Chairman, added: “We are proud to be hosting the Formula 1 Vietnam Grand Prix, and showcasing the city of Hanoi to the world.”

Hanoi will be Formula 1’s fourth Grand Prix in Asia where races are already established in China, Japan and Singapore, which hosts a night race each September.

In 1999, Malaysia became the first country in Southeast Asia to host Formula 1, building a state-of-the-art circuit especially for the race.

But the race’s popularity began to wane, and coupled with rising costs the country decided the event no longer made financial sense. The final race was held in 2017.

‘Bang for the buck’

Alex Yoong, the only Malaysian ever to race in Formula 1 and now a motor racing pundit for Fox Sports, said Vietnam should try to learn the lessons of Malaysia’s experience.

“Was it good bang for the buck? Probably not,” he said of the event. “There are a lot of things that could’ve been done better to help support the local industry.”

But Formula 1 itself also changed in 2017 when the sport’s impresario, 88-year-old Bernie Ecclestone, sold the organisation to US-based Liberty Media.

The new owner’s plan is to expand the brand into non-traditional markets, starting with Vietnam.

But motor racing is a virtually unknown sport in Vietnam, where football is a clear fan favourite.

In February hundreds of thousands took to the streets nationwide as the country’s U-23 football team made a run to the final of relatively obscure tournament.

Race organisers hope to tap into this energy, but will have to do so without homegrown talent.

Most of the 20 current F1 drivers are European, and none hail from Asia.

This could make the race a hard sell.

Expensive tickets

“I’m interested and waiting for it, but I’m concerned about the quality,” said Vu Cao, who works for a start-up in Ho Chi Minh City. “Formula 1 isn’t very familiar to Vietnamese people, and I don’t know how they are going to organise it.”

Vu said he was proud Vietnam had been chosen to host such a major international sporting event, but was also concerned about the cost. “The tickets will be expensive, and I’m not sure that people will like it,” he said.

Vietnam’s GDP per capita is $2,343 and while incomes are higher in the major cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, attending a Grand Prix is usually pricey. The most affordable tickets for the Singapore Grand Prix cost more than $250.

“Formula 1 has come to a lot of Asian countries outside of its usual support base in Europe and it’s been a bit of a smash-and-grab technique in the past by Bernie Ecclestone,” said former driver Yoong.

“Charge a lot of money, come run a race for a while and [leave] when it’s done. I can’t think of any country where it’s benefitted the local motorsport scene or helped grow it.”

Yoong said he hopes the sport’s new owners will take a different tack.

“I’m hoping Liberty will have learned the lessons from Ecclestone, because if you want your model to be sustainable you need to pump some cash back into the local infrastructure as well,” he said.

While the sport has little visibility in Vietnam at the moment, the new Grand Prix won’t be the first time a Formula 1 race car has graced the streets of the country.

In May, Red Bull hosted a demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City featuring David Coulthard, a British former Grand Prix driver. At the event, Coulthard briefly showed off the power of his race car, although a concert and a collection of expensive supercars were also there to lure the crowds.

‘Racing spectacle’

Diep Nguyen, who manages a number of Airbnb properties in Ho Chi Minh City, said she would probably only follow the race if it presented business opportunities for her in the capital.

“I’m not really interested, though guys might be,” she said. “But it could be fun.”

The streets of Hanoi are known for being narrow, congested and teeming with motorbikes, but the roads in the city’s newer western suburbs are wider.

F1 is convinced the 5.6-km street circuit will be the kind of event that will enthrall spectators wherever they come from.

The team has “worked to enable a circuit that will not only test the drivers, but also ensure that our fans enjoy the racing spectacle”, Carey, the F1 chairman, said. “We are really looking forward to seeing Formula 1 cars speeding around the streets of this fantastic city from 2020.”

Vietnamese officials see the race as an opportunity to boost both domestic and international tourism, while Vingroup sees it as a chance to tell the world about its own car-manufacturing ambitions.

The event’s main sponsor is likely to be VinFast, Vingroup’s automotive arm, which was founded last year.

“Through the F1 racing event, we are going to proclaim the first Vietnamese car manufacturer, VinFast, to millions of audiences in the world,” Nguyen Viet Quang, CEO of Vingroup, said as the race was announced.

Colombo, Sri Lanka – In the labyrinth corridors of power in Colombo, politicians loyal to two rival prime ministers have been fighting tooth and nail to muster enough votes to prove a majority when the country’s suspended parliament meets next week.

But on the streets of the Sri Lankan capital, home to almost one million people, the country’s protracted power struggle feels all too distant.

“All these politicians are crooks. All of them,” AK Piyadasa, an 83-year-old merchant, said matter-of-factly. “There’s no one to help us.”

It’s a sentiment that reverberates throughout Colombo – from the busy Pettah market, where AK Piyadasa sells plastic combs and strainers on a street corner, through the bustling middle-class neighbourhood of Wellawatta, to the quiet leafy suburb of Rajagiriya.

The chorus of despair – “everything is expensive”, “my life hasn’t improved at all”, “politicians don’t care about us” – seems to prevail across this multi-ethnic seaside city, where residents have been brought to their knees after years of high taxes, stagnant wages and a falling currency.

Grievances over the stuttering economy and the country’s direction have gained new impetus over the past two weeks following President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to abruptly fire Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a controversial former president accused of corruption and grave human rights abuses.

The shock moves, which included a presidential order to suspend parliamentary proceedings, have plunged Sri Lanka into constitutional chaos. According to legal experts, the president has the authority to appoint the prime minister, but does not have the power to sack the incumbent.

Since being fired, Wickremesinghe has remained holed up in the prime ministerial residence while also demanding a parliamentary vote to prove his majority. Amid mounting pressure, Sirisena, who denies acting unconstitutionally, recalled parliament on November 14, when legislators are expected to hold a vote in order to resolve the political crisis.

But with both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa claiming to be the country’s rightful prime minister, the turmoil risks straining a struggling economy – already at its lowest level in 16 years – as well as threatening major development projects and scaring off tourists amid warnings of violence.

‘Useless’

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Back in 2015, Sirisena and Wickeremesinghe joined forces in a bid to defeat Rajapaksa, who was seeking an unprecedented third five-year term after ending a decades-long bloody war against Tamil separatists.  

The pair’s promises of economic reforms, accountability for alleged war crimes and a crackdown on corruption struck a chord with voters weary of alleged nepotism, graft scandals and rights violations by Rajapaksa’s government.

Soon after taking office as president, Sirisena appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister. But the euphoria of their unexpected election win gradually gave way to disillusionment as the two leaders began to clash over day-to-day administration and economic reform.

The new government, saddled by huge amounts of debt incurred by the Rajapaksa administration to fund an infrastructure boom, made a series of unpopular decisions, including leasing for 99-years a critical port in the country’s south to a Chinese company, hiking fuel prices, cutting fertiliser subsidies, and raising taxes.

As the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe infighting grew and the economy slowed down, investigations into human rights abuses and corruption also stalled. At the same time, Wickremesinghe became mired in a graft scandal in which a central bank governor he appointed was accused of manipulating bond auctions, causing millions of dollars in losses to the state.

Meanwhile, garbage piled up on the streets of Colombo, while the waterways that crisscross the city clogged up with waste, and residents of suburbs complained of poor street lighting and uncut grass. 

“Wickremesinghe is useless. No one has benefitted from him,” said 25-year-old Pradeep Udaykumar, who barely makes ends meet by selling mobile phone batteries in Pettah.

Nearby, a 40-year-old sunglasses vendor, W Ravindran, said: “No one cares about the poor. Politicians – they make deals and they look after themselves. It’s us who suffer.”

A 60-year-old woman selling lottery tickets echoed the same sentiment. The only way out, she said, was a general election. “That way, everyone has a say.”

‘Go to the people’

That call for new polls seems to be on everyone’s lips in Colombo, partly because of a widespread belief that those already elected will not act in the public interest. The disenchantment has only grown in recent days over allegations that legislators have been taking millions of dollars in bribes to switch support, as well as long-standing grievances over the electorate’s impact on the political process.

“Go to the people,” urged a Muslim man. “Let the people decide,” said a Tamil woman. “We need change,” added a 21-year-old female university student.

That’s also a message Rajapaksa has been keen to trumpet.

His Sri Lanka Podujana Permanuna trounced Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) in local council elections earlier this year, and observers say his party is likely to come out on top if snap elections are held.

That’s partly because Rajapaksa, 72, continues to command huge support among Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority, who make up about 75 percent of the population. For many of them, the former president is a hero.

At a rally in Colombo on Monday, HA Upali, a former soldier and the sole survivor of a mine explosion in 1992, said Rajapaksa “saved” Sri Lanka by ending the war, which according to the United Nations claimed more than 100,000 lives over three decades.

Upali, 58, travelled more than eight hours from his village in the country’s central highlands to attend the mass rally, which organisers said gathered more than 100,000 people despite heavy rain. 

“I lost both my legs. I love my country and I have done whatever I can to safeguard our sovereignty,” Upali said over the din of patriotic songs and chants.

Blasting Wickremesinghe for “selling national assets to foreign countries”, the former soldier said the government’s decision to cut fertiliser subsidies has “destroyed the agricultural sector” in his home town of Horowpathana, where farming was the main source of income.

Return of fear

But on the opposite side, particularly among members of the country’s Tamil and Muslim minorities, the fear that Rajapaksa will roll back freedoms and democratic gains made under Wickremesinghe is more than real.

“Under Mahinda Rajapaksa people saw development. They had money. But under Ranil Wickremesinghe, I feel safer,” said Giyas Deen, a 52-year-old imam from the city of Galle in the country’s south.

“Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, we can all live together now.”

Deen, a father of two, said Rajapaksa had empowered Buddhist nationalists “who believe Sri Lanka is for Buddhists only”, adding he now feared a resurgence of anti-Muslim violence – such as the 2014 clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in the town of Aluthgama, in which at least four people were killed and more than a dozen Muslim houses were torched to the ground.

There are more concerns. The ex-president’s critics are particularly worried about the result of ongoing investigations into corruption allegations against members of his family, including his own brother over the massive losses incurred by the national carrier during Rajapaksa’s time in office.

‘Media taken hostage’

Amid the growing uncertainty, several journalists working for Sri Lanka’s public media company say they are thinking of quitting their jobs because of increased government censorship.

“We have been taken hostage,” said one young female journalist at Lakehouse, a colonial-era building housing the company. “Everything we write has to be approved by government supporters.”

That editorial shift has been evident on the articles published in the company’s English newspapers. Since Rajapaksa’s appointment, the front pages of the relatively independent Daily News and the Sunday Observer have been full of flattering articles that push the government’s lines on the transfer of power and the recall of parliament.

“It’s sickening,” said the Lakehouse journalist. 

The attempt by the new government to influence public debate is also omnipresent on Colombo’s streets – lampposts, traffic lights and city walls are all covered with posters showing a smiling Rajapaksa and featuring words of gratitude for Sirisena and his “brave decision”.

It’s a message, however, that is still met with resistance ahead of the crucial parliamentary vote.

Shala Amarasinghe, 23, said it was this exact fear of renewed government control that prompted her to join hundreds of activists on Sunday protesting what they called the “unconstitutional” transfer of power.

Amarasinghe said it was her first time at a demonstration.

“I’m here because if they can change the prime minister in such an arbitrary manner overnight, they can do anything they want,” she said.

“And that scares me.”