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Three months after Typhoon Haiyan destroyed most of their school in Tanauan,
a group of Filipino children relive the trauma
as a surprise torrential storm drenched what remained of their classrooms
at Santo Niño Elementary School.
Large puddles formed in their makeshift classrooms
and forced the children to huddle in the driest spots,
sometimes atop rocks placed on the dirt floor.
A UNICEF team was at the school
installing a weatherproof tent, but the crew had to repeatedly stop their work to avoid the storm,
which was terrifying the young students.
"The kids were soaking wet, and then they were just there wailing.
They started crying. They started panicking. They started looking for their parents."
As the rain became more intense,
UNICEF Education Officer Yul Olaya calmed the crying children.
"I instructed them to move to a small space,
where there's better roofing. And it's a small space.
It's more or less 60 to 70 kids who are
packed in that small space, and everyone was panicking, including their teachers."
When the storm finally stopped, many of the children were still traumatized.
"There were three girls who were still crying,
and I told them, 'Would you like to still cry?'
And they just kept on crying, and I said, 'It's okay to cry. It's okay to cry. Keep on crying."
The UNICEF tent being installed at Santo Niño began its journey that day at a UNICEF warehouse in the nearby town of Palo.
Olaya says that UNICEF has installed about 150 tents,
with the total goal of 500 tents at schools affected by the typhoon.
At the warehouse, the tent boxes are loaded on trucks and delivered to schools.
The tents are shipped in wood crates, with a total of three tents destined for Santo Niño.
Because of the near total destruction of the original school,
Principal Marlon Tangpuz says the tents are needed to get children back into safe classrooms as quickly as possible.
"This UNICEF tent is very conducive now for learning
because it has walls that trap the rains.
And it is built elevated from the ground
so the water cannot enter anymore inside the tent."
On this day, after the storm had passed, the UNICEF tent was finally installed.
As the work crew left the damage school, they could hear the sounds of a job well done --
children inside the tent, laughing and playing,
just as it should be.