MikeLigalig.com

- Power of two -

They met at a cash-for-work programme run by a foreign aid group six months ago, with a joke from the incomprehensibly effervescent Luana borne from their similar first names and shared tragedies an unlikely icebreaker.

"I told him: 'I am a Jo, you are a Jo. I am a widow and you are also a widower. So we were meant for each other'," Luana said with a big smile as they stood outside their shanty hut recently just a few metres (yards) from the sea on the outskirts of Tacloban, one of the worst hit cities.

Luana, 31, said she unexpectedly felt hope after meeting Aradana, nine years her senior.

"I realised we both had similar values... and he is loving, he is caring, he is responsible," Luana said, pointing out Aradana worked hard as a fisherman and construction worker, yet also helped do the laundry and cook.

"He would make a good father."

Aradana cited companionship and the power of two over one as initial attractions.

"Since she likes me and I like her, I told her it is much better that we live together so we can move on with our lives together, rather than doing it alone," said Aradana, who speaks much more quietly than Luana and is seemingly less able to mask sadness.

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- Deeper poverty -

Haiyan also crippled Aradana and Luana financially.

The couple's new home is in one of the typhoon-affected areas' newly declared "danger zones" in which people are not legally allowed to live but where tens of thousands of the poorest Haiyan survivors do.

Luana could not return to her job as an appliance sales woman and a year later the only work she can find is giving pedicures, manicures or massages to neighbours in their slum community for the equivalent of about one dollar a session.

Aradana occasionally gets construction work for about eight dollars a day, or if not goes fishing using a boat donated by an aid group then sells his meagre catches at the local market.

They rent their hut, made of scavenged typhoon debris and a tarpaulin from an international relief group, for 200 pesos ($4.5) a month.

The government plans to relocate hundreds of thousands of people from danger zones, but no-one has told Luana and Aradana if they will be included.

An initial flood of food and other relief goods dried up months ago.

For a recent breakfast of noodles and vegetables, Luana added a single prawn given to her by a neighbour.

"It is really hard for us to rebuild again, we lost everything... it is as if we are back to zero," Luana said as she sat outside after breakfast on a small stool painting a neighbour's toenails a shiny purple, earning enough for one more meal.

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Jovelyn Luana washes rice before cooking it at her house in Tacloban, which was devastated by typhoon Haiyan in 2013, on the eastern island of Leyte, on October 14, 2014.

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Jovelyn Luana (L) cooks rice with Joel Aradana in their house in Tacloban.

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