Despite a very pleasant Christmas Day, I woke up a curmudgeon on this December 26th. I went out to have a cup of coffee at a place that had recently re-opened, and I was annoyed immediately outside my room’s door by the horrific tinny sound pouring out of a young man’s cell phone. This young fellow works at the hotel and has his fancy smartphone surgically attached to his body. Like most Filipinos, he listens to the same ten sappy love songs over and over and at such a high volume (regardless of musical device) that the sound is distorted and awful. When he isn’t listening to music, he is texting. And when he isn’t texting, he is talking on his phone. Just seeing him with his smartphone made me want to slap him. As I said, I woke up a curmudgeon.

The bakery slash coffee shop that reopened is a fair walk away from my hotel, and there were plenty of opportunities for this curmudgeon to be annoyed along the way. I was annoyed at the loud roar of the motorcycles – the ones with owners that think it is cool to run their machines without exhaust pipes. I’ve got news for you idiots: Just because your engine is making a lot of noise and bothering people doesn’t mean it isn’t still a dinky little 90cc piece of junk.

It has been raining non-stop for several days in a row, and I was annoyed yet again at having to fight my way through a sea of mud and gooey water. The constant water has kept the fly population at a high level, and I was annoyed at the huge piles of garbage with thick clouds of buzzing flies around them.

I was annoyed at the traffic of course. That’s just a given – the honking, the crowding, the impossibility of crossing a street safely. Then I was extremely annoyed to find that after all of this, the bakery slash coffee shop wasn’t open. This annoys me on a deep level because it is part of an overall pattern here where businesses don’t keep regular hours and wouldn’t post them if they had them. You simply never know if a place will be open or closed. You just have to show up and see. I stared at the closed Dream Bakery and Café with a sinking heart as I realized I could have stayed comfortably (well, sort of) in my room and had a cup of coffee there. This whole long, hot, sweaty walk had turned into a waste of time.

Around the corner on Venteranos Boulevard, I was pleased to see that the Stephanie Smokehaus was open. This place caters to the richer folks of Tacloban, and, as such, I had never been there. But this was an emergency, and I went inside to see if I could just sit there and have a cup of coffee and not a complete meal.

I was pleased to find out that they would serve me a cup of coffee for 50 pesos. The décor was horrific for my tastes – dark with all heavy wooden furniture – but it was cool and quiet. Then I was annoyed when I was brought a small porcelain cup of lukewarm water with a typical Nescafe 3-in-1 coffee packet. That was all I got for my 50 pesos – the exact same packet of coffee I had back in my room, which I purchased for 7 pesos. And in my room, I at least would have had boiling hot water in a large mug. I tried to count my blessings and just settle into my journal-writing session, but then they turned on the music. On the positive side, it wasn’t the usual ten sappy love songs that you hear everywhere else. But it was some old crooner singing Winter Wonderland. I could have lived with that, but the volume was beyond what would be acceptable at an eardrum-damaging night club. A mentally well-adjusted person would have asked them to turn the music down a bit. This curmudgeon just packed up and left. I felt like an idiot for having gone into the Stephanie Smokehaus in the first place. It knew it wasn’t my type of place. A funny thing is that most Filipinos assume I eat there all the time. I guess it is a regular hangout for the local ex-pat community. I don’t have anything against a nice restaurant serving good food, but places like that seem to just serve small portions of average food and charge a lot more. I’m not sure what the high prices are for. One rarely gets good value for paying high prices in the Philippines. Good value is found usually at the lower end of the price scale.

So the curmudgeon stalked out of the Smokehaus. My coffee mood had vanished, and I decided to stop off at one of my usual eateries for a typical breakfast of rice and assorted dishes. I got a complete and tasty and filling meal for 60 pesos – just 10 pesos more than I had paid for that pointless cup of lukewarm water at Stephanie’s.

With a good hot meal in my belly followed by a few glasses of fresh water, I felt much better and less curmudgeonly. Yet, I was still not happy. I found myself being annoyed at all the brand new and shiny 4X4 pickup trucks driving around with NGO logos on them. A cynic might conclude that the role of NGOs is to drive the streets importantly in fancy trucks and go to meetings and fill out assessment forms and make strategic plans. Hey, there are budgets to be spent after all. (This is likely sour grapes, as I would love to be driving around the countryside in a brand new bright red Toyota 4X4.)

I spotted a large sign outside a local college and I was annoyed at that, too. The sign was announcing that new classes were starting on January 8 and that they were accepting new students and transfers. At the bottom of the sign in large letters it read, “Tacloban, Let’s Move On!” This was added in my mind to the countless “Tindog Tacloban,” “Bangon Tacloban,” “Let’s Rise Again!” “We Hold, We Stand, We Rise as One” and a dozen other pointless jingoistic slogans that seem to cover the entire city. Granted, I’m not the target audience for these mindless slogans. I’ve never been the type of guy to lose himself in the excitement of a high school pep rally or a political rally or a rock concert. I look at the heaving crowds of people shouting “Four more years!” and “Go Team, Go!” and feel more convinced than ever that I somehow ended up on the wrong planet and of the wrong species. I just don’t get it. So my displeasure at these post-typhoon self-congratulatory slogans in Tacloban is probably just me being a curmudgeon.

Still, I wish the slogans read differently. I’d like to see a series of slogans under the heading of “Next Time, Let’s Do Better.”

Next time, let’s build homes with proper concrete so that they can withstand something more than a light summer breeze.

Next time, let’s not embezzle construction money. Let’s use it instead to construct buildings to a proper standard.

Business owners, next time let’s stay and help our community instead of cutting and running at the first stupid rumor and abandoning the city to its fate.

Rich people, next time let’s stay and help our less fortunate neighbors instead of fleeing at the first opportunity and creating panic.

Media, next time, let’s keep a sense of perspective and accurately report the story instead of being sensationalist.

Next time, if we’re serious about identifying those who died, let’s collect their bodies quickly instead of leaving them to rot in the sea and sun for days and even weeks.

NGOs, next time, let’s just get to work and not worry about the banners and T-shirts and flags and logos emblazoned on everything. And let’s save the happy group photos and toasts to our own noble sacrifices until the job is actually done.

Forget the “tindog” and the “bangon”. Let’s remember those who died and promise to do better next time. It’s the dead who I think about. I don’t think I’m a particularly sentimental person. I don’t weep for the dead because they are dead or because what happened was a tragedy. If I wept, it would be for the senseless nature of it. Most of those who died were poor and they lived in flimsy shacks crowded along the shoreline. Within a week or two of the typhoon, these same families were rebuilding their shacks in the exact same spots where they were before. And, if anything, these shacks are far flimsier than what came before. They simply have no choice. They have nowhere else to go. When the next super-typhoon arrives, be it next year or next decade, the same thing will happen. There will be the same loss of life and property. Tindog and bangon Tacloban? No, I’d say simply “Let’s do better.”

I mentioned at the beginning of this tirade that I had a good Christmas, and I did. It began, in fact, the day before on Christmas Eve. I was writing in the Dream Café and Bakery over a cup of brewed coffee (my first time in that café), and ended up chatting with a young NGO worker from France. He had just arrived in Tacloban the night before. His organization wasn’t technically part of the relief effort. They had had plans for this area even before the typhoon for long-term projects promoting better livelihoods for farmers and fishermen. Jofffrey, for that was his name, was here in Tacloban to pick up on that work and get it started.

Joffrey was understandably surprised at how undamaged Tacloban looked. From media reports, he expected to see barely a single building standing. Of course, the media reports were very inaccurate. The main destruction took place along the shorelines in the squatter settlements and other exposed area. The central part of Tacloban city was heavily damaged but not completely flattened as you might expect. And because of the work of the Tzu Chi Foundation and the city, the streets were cleared of rubble. The city was waking u,p and there were even traffic jams already. Joffrey was expecting devastation and found a relatively normal Filipino city. I offered to show him the shore area of Magallanes, and we went for a long walk (far too long in retrospect) there. The destruction there was total and even nearly fifty days on, it is still an impressive sight.

Joffrey and I walked all the way to the astrodome and back and then got caught in a heavy downpour. I was quite excited about showing this part of the city to someone, and I took him that far forgetting that perhaps someone else wouldn’t be quite as fascincated by every little detail of the destruction and reconstruction. I think poor wet Joffrey was glad to be free of me and get back to his hotel.

That evening, I had been invited by Manny and Christina to Hayward for a traditional meal – the media noche. As I understand it, this meal is supposed to be eaten at midnight, but they had moved it up to nine p.m. They had also invited the members of a Baptist church NGO medical team to come. One of their older members was staying in a room at Manny’s place.

The Baptist group was already there when I showed up around eight p.m. There was some confusion about the evening, unfortunately. The NGO team was under the impression that this was a Christmas party of sorts. So they had already had dinner and were expecting a social gathering with Christmas music, snacks, and perhaps drinks. Christina and Manny had other plans. They had put together a truly tremendous meal of many tasty dishes, and they sort of hung back and wanted their guests to help themselves and then sit down in the booths of Manny’s little restaurant and enjoy their food. I had a healthy appetite since I knew it was going to be a full meal. The others weren’t hungry, and they only partially filled their plates and then did not go back for seconds. I could see that Christina was disappointed, and she concluded, as she always did, that the foreigners just didn’t like Filipino food. I wasn’t sure if I should confess to Christina the truth – that the Baptist team had already eaten dinner. She had obviously gone to great trouble and expense to prepare a wonderful meal. I felt bad for her. And then the whole “party” sort of ended as quickly as it had begun. It fell somewhat flat, in my opinion. Again, it was a bit of a cultural misunderstanding. Christina and Manny held back and did not join us in the meal. Manny’s staff didn’t take part either. They probably felt we preferred it that way. In reality, the Baptists would have been much happier if everyone was involved and it was much more informal and social. As it was, we just sat down and ate our meal and talked amongst ourselves and then everyone left.

Still, it was a nice night. I enjoyed myself immensely even as I felt bad for Christina. The food was fantastic. There were many dishes that I didn’t even know were part of Filipino cuisine. And there was a large fruit dish with diced apple, pineapple and jello with cream. It was a wonderful change from my usual diet. And it was a great release for me to sit down and talk with all these Americans in natural flowing English and talk about things other than my age and marital status. It was very refreshing.

During the evening, I learned that a musical performance (a “cantada”) was planned as part of the morning services at the United Church on the corner. It started at ten a.m., and having heard almost no Christmas music, I decided to attend. I was awake early as always, and I made my way to the church in plenty of time. The full name of the church was the UCCP – the United Church of Christ in the Philippines. The building was large for Tacloban and well-constructed. A lot of windows had been blown out during the typhoon, but it didn’t seem to have suffered much other damage. The main church hall was upstairs and relatively small. It was all very familiar from my childhood – the same wooden pews, the same hymnals and Bibles in wooden compartments on the back of the pews, the same little holes drilled in the wood for the glasses of wine at communion. It had been raining heavily all night and the services were delayed by half an hour to allow latecomers to show up.

The service itself was quite casual. There was a short welcome speech and then everyone sang a hymn. There was a scripture reading and a short sermon. I tried to focus on the sermon, but it was as impossible as always. No matter how many thousands of words hit my ears, I couldn’t sort them into sentences that meant anything. It was just a pleasant drone in my ears.

The highlight was the performance by their youth choir. Apparently, this choir was a strong tradition at this church going back some forty years. They had evolved into quite a professional group that termed itself not just a choir but a “show choir” with choreography and drama. They usually had 35 to 40 members and began practicing for their Christmas concert in September. They did so this year as well, but their work was disrupted by the typhoon and the concert was cancelled. However, a small group of ten or eleven singers said that they would really like to keep practicing and put on the concert anyway. At first, they were just going to sing and not worry about choreography, but they decided to make a full effort and the result was a pleasure to watch and listen to. They had a total of about twenty singers in the end, and they had great energy and strong voices. Considering the small size of the congregation, it astonished me that they could come up with that many passionate youthful singers. In Canada, you’d be lucky to find two or three young people willing to sing like that in a congregation of many hundreds of people. Their music was an absolute delight. They even put together a medley of all the most popular and traditional Christmas carols and invited the congregation to stand and sing along. The lyrics to all the songs were projected onto a screen and recorded music was played over speakers. All of this was controlled by a computer and an amplifier and a bank of other electronics and it all went off without a hitch. My thoughts inevitably drifted to the TV show Glee. Without a doubt, these kids were also modeling themselves after that show even though it was in the context of a church and not a school.

A large communal meal was organized for the entire congregation down on the first floor, and I was invited to join them. That was not as pleasant as it could have been. The food was clearly very good. It was, in fact, quite a feast with two large roasted pigs as the centerpiece. Unfortunately, the area was quite small and crowded and there wasn’t nearly enough seating or even room for everyone. There was little chance to sit in comfort and talk over the food. I ended up not really eating anything. I had a bit of spaghetti on my plate and I had that only so that people would stop worrying about me not eating. I planned to stop by to visit Manny and Christina after the church service, and I had a feeling that Christina would ply me with the leftovers from the night before. I wanted to please her by showing up with a solid appetite equal to a second helping if not a third. I was a bit concerned because I was still somewhat sick to my stomach. I hadn’t been able to eat very much because of that. I’d even begun to worry that I’d picked up yet another serious bug that was going to make my life miserable for weeks and months and have to be treated with anti-biotics. The jury is still out on that.

I ended up having a very good meal provided by Christina and then I hung out with Manny for a while. I asked him if I could use their computer to transfer pictures from memory cards to my flash drives, and that was arranged. I went back to the hotel to get my stuff and I returned to find a nice Acer laptop set up on a table for me to work on. I transferred all my pictures and then I had the treat of watching a Typhoon Yolanda DVD that Manny had purchased. Someone had pirated as much news footage of the typhoon as they could and put it all together on a DVD and sold it. I was mostly interested in seeing footage of the storm surge itself – something that would explain the severe damage to all the houses on the shoreline. Unfortunately there was very little of that. In fact, there was only one 3-second clip of a flood of water hitting some houses. This flood was moving at a very high speed – like a tsunami – and clearly could have destroyed any structure in its way whether made of wood or concrete and steel. Unforyuntately, that one clip was all I saw. Everything else consisted of the standard footage of the wind whipping through the trees and of the flooded streets. I didn’t see much in the footage that was new to me, but it was still interesting. I was quite interested, for example, to note that not one time did you see a single Filipino smiling or waving at the camera or saying “Hey, Joe!” or anything like that. That indicates some serious editing. There is no way that anyone can point a camera at Filipinos without them smiling and laughing and posing and otherwise acting up. Even at the height of the typhoon’s aftermath, Filipinos would not be able to resist mugging for a camera. But you never saw this in the news footage. It’s clear that for the news, they only chose the footage that showed Filipinos looking serious and sad and in shock. To that extent, the news coverage did not reflect reality as it was but the reality as the news organization thought it should be.

 

Tags: Bangon Tacloban, choir, music, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Super Typhoon Yolanda, Tacloban, Tindog Tacloban, typhoon