The Real Story - Inspiration Behind 'Miguel Builds a New House'

Late 2018, there was a typhoon which ripped through parts of Northern Philippines. Farmers lost hectares and hectares of maize just before harvest time and whole communities lost their homes.

The feeling was surreal, walking through the devastated farmlands. I remember walking alone for a long time until all that surrounded me was dry, ruined crops – and I couldn’t see much else. Someone flew a drone for an aerial shot and I watched it rise, and rise, and rise. Because there was just too much devastation. Around me were some old men and women, who were trawling through the dead crops in search of any maize to salvage at all. They picked these up with care and added them to the sacks they carried.

On that trip, I met a little girl who was so affected by the disaster that she couldn’t really talk to anyone. When I met her, her entire family lived in a makeshift scrap house. She had grown up watching her parents save for a sturdy house. Before they could build it, the typhoon came and destroyed everything. She stood at the window of her uncle’s house and watched her family’s house fly away.

I could only imagine the immensity and intensity of emotion – and how a child at her age had to bear that.

But this is also a story of hope and resilience. The community rebuilt their houses and the most beautiful part? They helped each other. Neighbours pitched in, carrying wood and zinc sheets for each other. I watched as laughter rang as men lifted and heaved new tree trunks as pillars for each other’s houses. That was no longer the aftermath of a disaster. It was so many other things: resilience, friendship, strength and hope.

Miguel Builds a New House is inspired by exactly these. In sharing this story with children everywhere, we do not pity victims of disasters. We celebrate the resilience of survivors as we engage in important global issues like climate change and related disasters and friendship in adversity.

*Written by Rachel Nadia. Photos are stock photos and are not the real shots I took from my travels.