A knock came on my door in the evening a couple of nights ago. It was Dan. He had gotten off work a bit early, and he stopped by to touch base with me. I was hoping we could sit around and have a beer and have a good, long chat, but it was clear that he had things to do. He could only stay a short time.

Even so, I got some interesting details about his new job. The job is with Save the Children. A journalist he had worked with had given his name and number to Save the Children, and they had called him. They officially hired him, and he had to fill out forms and sign contracts and all the rest of it. I liked the touch that they had to carefully backdate all the interview forms and application forms so that it looked like they’d followed procedure and hadn’t called him late one night and had him start work the very next morning.

Dan didn’t say exactly what his role was, but I assume he was hired largely because of his excellent English and knowledge of the local area. He could serve as guide and interpreter and then do lots of other work besides. I was quite envious when I heard him talk about driving around the remote countryside delivering relief goods and that sort of thing. At the same time, his stories added fuel to the fire of my rather negative view of NGO work in general. For example, he mentioned that his NGO had stopped providing relief in the Anibong area. The area was simply too much trouble. When they gave bags of relief goods to local people to distribute, these people had gone through the bags and removed all the flashlights so that they could sell them and make a profit. They found out about this when people complained that the flashlights were missing from their bags. They also saw people grabbing bags and boxes at the distribution centers and pushing them under the tables and hiding them to keep them for themselves to sell the goods later. Dan mentioned another NGO that gave up on Anibong. They had gone into the area with a truck of relief goods and the local people had attacked the truck and tried to loot it. Of course, these are just stories and who knows what the realities are. Still, it didn’t sound like the perfect relief operation that would probably be described in a neat and tidy CNN article.

Dan had gone out of his way to help me with my bicycle problems. He had gone to the Bohol bicycle shop and told them about me and arranged to have them expect me the next morning. I just had to go there between eight and nine in the morning, and they would fix up my bike. I was a bit conflicted about this because I had just made the arrangements (sort of) to take the navy ship to Cebu with the idea of having my bike repaired there. I wouldn’t want to have my bike tied up in the Bohol shop when the call came from the ship that it was leaving. But I thought I should check it out, and I got up early in the morning yesterday, and was down at the Bohol bicycle shop at about 7:40. The place was closed and had a big “Were Close” sign on the front. But I sat down on the ground and awaited developments.

The longer I waited, the less optimistic I felt about the whole deal. A bunch of teenage boys started to gather to wait for the store to open. These were those fashionable and somewhat intimidating Filipino boys with all the bright clothes, pants hanging around their thighs, underwear hitched up and exposed, jewelery dangling everywhere, crazy hairdos, and even painted toenails. I can’t even guess where this fashion style came from, but they all thought they looked pretty cool.

After a while, I heard some noises behind me, and after a great deal of trouble, the steel shutter doors slid open a little bit. A bunch of random people were inside the shop and one young guy came out to talk to me. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to speak a word of English. I had made a detailed list of all the things that I thought needed to be done to my bike and I showed it to him. I wanted to talk about these items and see what he thought about them, but we couldn’t communicate at all. He just kept saying “Yes” to everything I said. He wasn’t inspiring me with confidence. I was particularly concerned about the spoke nipples, and he went into his shop and emerged with a spoke nipple to show me. It seemed to screw onto my spokes just fine, but the base of it was a completely different shape. I had no idea if that was a problem or not, and I tried to ask him about that, but he just said “yes” again to everything. I noticed that the spoke nipple was much longer and much lighter than the ones I had. I wanted solid steel nipples, and these seemed to be aluminum. I wanted to ask him if he thought they were strong enough. I tried to get him to understand that this was a touring bike and the wheels would be supporting quite heavy loads. But nothing I said got through. When I pointed out that the nipples were much longer, he went back into the shop and came out with another nipple – a shorter one. He seemed to be asking me which one I wanted to use. I had been hoping he could tell me all these things. He was supposed to be the expert bike mechanic, after all.

After all this, I decided to just take my bike with me and not have them do any of the repairs. I just had no confidence in this guy at all and there was no way I could hand over my precious bicycle to him. It felt like it would just be a waste of time and money, and I’d have to have everything redone when I got to Cebu. This didn’t really surprise me. I had been quite surprised at the beginning when Dan recommended this shop. I had been to it a number of times on my walks around Tacloban, and it seemed to be a very basic kind of local shop dealing in only the cheapest of cheap bicycles. It was very crowded and chaotic and dirty and disorganized. I always went to the other bicycle shop – the one that sold high-end bikes and seemed much more like a bicycle shop in Canada – one that would be familiar with the difference between good quality components and crap. Unfortunately, that shop still hasn’t reopened. There has been no sign of life at that shop since the typhoon.

After my visit to the bicycle shop, I walked down to the harbor to check up on the navy ship. I got through the front gates just fine and walked over to the gangway shack. Unfortunately, Marie wasn’t there. There were some other people there and I asked them about the ship’s schedule and when it might be leaving for Cebu. They, not surprisingly, had no idea. They hit me with all the usual maybes, mights, and perhapses with no definite information at all. It still surprises me. You’d think that even in the Philippines, the navy would have some kind of schedule. I can’t imagine a US navy ship just sitting at a harbor with no one on board having the slightest clue what their next move will be. I imagine their departure date and time would have been set up months in advance. Then again, no US navy ship would allow a dumb white guy with a bicycle on board to begin with, so I should count my blessings. I was a bit disappointed when the people at the gangway shack said that I should leave them my contact number and they would text me when the ship was going to leave. I heaved a big internal sigh and told them that I had already left them my contact number. Apparently, this is just a thing they do to make people feel better. Leaving them my number meant nothing. There was no official system where my number and name was entered. I had no choice but to simply walk away and just keep returning to check up on them. I imagine that one day I’ll return and find that the navy ship has left without me.

I passed the post office when I left the harbor, and I noted that it was not open. It didn’t look like it would reopen for a very long time, so there is no chance of shipping my water filter from here.

I spent the middle part of the day just reading and doing some housework. I cleaned the bathroom and that sort of thing – a job that sorely needed doing. Then late in the afternoon, I took my camera and went down to the area around Mark’s house. I spent a very enjoyable two hours walking around and taking pictures. The scene, as always, blew my mind. It is nearly a month after the typhoon and it still looks like the worst disaster area you can imagine. I ran into an American man from an NGO there. He was taking pictures with a big Canon DSLR. He said that he’s been to typhoons all over the world doing relief work, and he’d never seen anything to rival what he was seeing in Tacloban. And this is a month after the typhoon struck. What would he have thought if he were here in the days immediately afterward?

I had all the usual friendly, and nutty encounters. One group of nice young men offered me a couple of shot glasses of Red Horse beer. I gladly accepted that. I generally turn down the tuba, as I don’t want to risk getting sick. But beer is always good. These guys were sitting on the cement sea wall, and they indicated a fishing bangka below them. They said that there were no fish in the water. When they went out with their nets now, they were generally fishing for debris that they can sell – cups and plates and cutlery and pots and pans. The bottom of their boat was filled with these items. Another group of very drunk people nearly tore me apart with the eagerness of their hospitality.

As I walked away from this area, I decided to shoot some video. That was very interesting, and I decided to shoot some more video today. I’m going to go to Anibong this morning after breakfast and perhaps back to Mark’s area this afternoon and walk around while shooting video.

 

 

Tags: bike, NGO, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Super Typhoon Yolanda, typhoon