Commerce has returned to the storm-savaged streets of Tacloban in the past week. People sell bananas along the roads, and a bustling market has sprung up across several blocks downtown.
Jimbo Tampol, who works for a local Coca-Cola distributor, drives across Tacloban selling ice-cold sodas from coolers. In a city where there is no electricity and little refrigeration, a cold soda is a big deal, a symbol of normalcy.
Children crowd around Tampol's flat-bed truck to pay their 50 cents, as if buying ice cream on a hot summer day. They run their hands along the cool, wet bottles.
"It's just now that they've been able to taste cold soft drinks since Typhoon Haiyan," says Tampol, 39, as he hauls bottles out of the water.
To cool the drinks, workers drove 16 hours round-trip to pick up the ice from a factory on the neighboring island of Samar. Because nearly all of the stores here are damaged, Tampol decided to sell the drinks himself and at only a small markup.
"You feel bad for the people," explains Tampol, who wears a Philippines national basketball team jersey. "Some of them, they're even just asking us for it when they don't have money. We just go ahead and give it to them."
Florentino Duero, 67, is a cobbler whose tools were washed away in the storm surge. He gazes at the bottles longingly with his rheumy eyes. A young aid worker hands him a 20 peso note to buy a Coke. But Duero, who wears flip-flops and a plaid shirt, decides to put the cash to something more essential.
"I'll buy rice," he says. "Before I drink, rice first."
That won't be easy; rice has been in short supply.
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