by Zoe Daniel
She rakes the last of the leaves away from the grave, smoothing out the loose dirt, and gives the inscription a final polish:
Luisa C. Reyes
A strong and brave woman.
Lost to us after Yolanda.
Much missed.
‘I’ll come back soon,’ she whispers.
Angel makes her way down the hill and places the rake at the back door of a little cement house. She shakes off her sandals and steps inside, the soles of her feet padding silently across the cool floor.
Their own house, so close to the water, is gone. One day they all stood and watched as Juan’s legacy was bulldozed. According to the government it was too close to the water and residents were advised to move away from the flat land near the sea. Juan didn’t need much persuading; he didn’t want his family living in the path of another storm like Yolanda. He accepted a parcel of land further up the hill, and began to rebuild. In the mornings he went out fishing and in the afternoons, while Veronica dried fish for the market, he built them a new house.
Angel and the boys helped as best they could. They salvaged tin from the ruins around them and pulled a water tank from the rubble. An unbroken window, a few roof beams, an old kitchen sink were all recycled from the remnants of abandoned buildings. Juan snapped the front door from their old house off its hinges, repainted it vivid blue and fixed it at the front of their new house on the hill overlooking the sea. They rescued pots and pans and bits of cutlery but there wasn’t much more than that left at the old place. Now their new home is all but finished.
It’s a simple home, much like the one the family lived in before the storm, with one large room downstairs and a ladder up to a sleeping platform. The kitchen is in one corner and there’s a side door out to a little washroom. Juan has built a covered porch at the front, too, with a panoramic view over the city and the sea.
It’s still early but the living area and the banigs on the platform are empty so Angel pokes her head out onto the porch, where Juan, Veronica and the boys are eating a breakfast of rice and boiled bananas. Juan is sipping his usual sweet cup of coffee.
‘Pangaon kita,’ says her mother. ‘Come and eat before these three gobble it all up!’ It’s one year today since the super storm struck. One year since their lives were changed forever. Angel meets her mother’s eyes. She knows what she’s thinking. So much has happened in a year.
The streets of Tacloban are mostly clear. The mountains of rubble along the seashore have been bulldozed into piles and lifted into great trucks and then tipped into landfill. Boats have been towed back out to sea, except the biggest, heaviest ones. Stuck fast, they remain where the flood left them, huge urban memorials to the storm and its victims. Cars and motorbikes have come down from trees. Damaged houses have been repaired or demolished. Shops have been fixed. Markets have reopened.
They’re among the lucky ones. Recovery has been very slow and some people are still living in tents a full year after the storm. Angel knows it’s because of Juan’s building skills and self-reliance that they have a roof over their heads. She’s grateful.
The children have been back at school for several months. Some of their classmates are still missing and there will be memorial services for them this week. But today the family is heading into the city to celebrate Angel’s recent birthday and to mark the anniversary of Yolanda.
After breakfast, Angel puts on a long, soft, green dress that her mother has made specially for her birthday. It has tiny flowers embroidered across the bodice in yellow and pink. Veronica spent many evenings doing the intricate needlework while the children slept. They had so many expenses after the typhoon that they could not afford nice things, but Veronica was determined her daughter would have something special to wear when she turned fourteen.
Angel brushes her long dark hair in smooth, even strokes. These days she lets it flow freely across her shoulders and down her back. The pearl her father gave her glows warmly against the soft skin of her throat. Out of habit she rolls it between her fingers, enjoying its smooth silkiness. She keeps it on all the time now. Since the storm she’s gone to sleep every night with her hand clasped around it protectively. Angel believes it helps to soothe bad memories and keep nightmares at bay.
Juan is waiting on the front porch and Angel joins him. He is shading his eyes with his hand, watching the big black seabird circle slowly above the house, its wings at full stretch. Angel hasn’t seen it for some months now, but she is glad to see it back today of all days. She remembers how she used to believe that it was a bad omen. Now she thinks of it as a strong, resilient survivor – a true Taclobanon!
She puts a hand up and waves at it. She could almost swear that the bird dips a wing at her as it turns and flies towards the strait.
‘Our friend, hey?’ Juan says to Angel. ‘He’s always hanging around.’
The rest of the family gathers on the front porch in their best clothes and together they walk down the hill. Many of their neighbours are among those still living in tents and half-repaired houses, their roofs swathed in sheets of bright plastic. But the roads are all clear and the power is on.
While her family goes on ahead, Angel ducks into Barangay 18, past the faded sign reading ‘WE NEED FOOD’, which is still nailed to a power pole on the corner. At Issy’s home all the mud and mess is gone and the yard is swept clean. There are chickens pecking at some loose grain and a dog is asleep on the path. The toppled water tank is upright again and the broken porch post has been repaired. The little house has had a fresh coat of white paint and there are shiny new sheets of iron on the roof.
‘Issy!’ Angel calls out. ‘It’s me, Angel. Are you ready?’
Issy appears at the front door wearing a bright, pretty dress covered in pink and orange swirls. Her dark hair is piled high in a bun and two perfect corkscrew curls frame her smiling face.
‘You look gorgeous!’ She admires Angel’s new dress. ‘I love that colour! Hey, I forgot to give you this.’ She presses a small envelope into her friend’s hand. Inside is a photo that was taken of the two of them last year on Angel’s birthday. They’re both smiling into the camera, arms around each other, oblivious to the fact that they are days away from disaster.
‘Ayo, come on, kuya, we’re going!’ Issy calls into the house. ‘He’s probably fussing with his new “style”,’ she grins.
Sure enough, Justin emerges from the house smoothing down his neat ponytail. He has much longer hair now, which he wears loosely pulled back and his strong, high cheekbones and large, dark eyes are much more noticeable.
‘Many happy returns for Wednesday,’ he says to Angel.
‘Thanks,’ says Angel, flattered that he remembered.
There is an easy friendship between them now. They still disagree on many things, but these days they can joke about their differences of opinion. After Yolanda, Justin has a new respect for his little sister’s best friend and Angel knows now that underneath his gruff exterior is a thoughtful nature.
The three teenagers walk up to the road and jump into a passing jeepney. Some of the vehicles wrecked in the storm have been fixed and other new ones have been brought in from places like Manila. They disembark when they get near the waterfront. The harbour is clear again, although a few overturned boats remain submerged in the water. They’ll probably remain there until the ocean moves them.
Angel turns and looks up at the town hall with the Filipino flag. The broken windows have been repaired and the sweeping lawns out front are lush and green again. There are still a few aid agencies set up there, even a year later. People are still very much in need.
Today is an important milestone for the Santo Niño church. The exterior has been freshly painted white and all of the pews have finally been repaired. Like everything after Yolanda, progress has been slow and the final fixes are still being made inside. In that sense its recovery reflects the long, painful journey back to normality that everyone in Tacloban has experienced.
Father Jose and the
nuns have resurrected the gardens, digging over the salty soil, laying down fertiliser and replanting so the area around the church is green and colourful. Two frangipanis that survived Yolanda have burst into flower, one pink, one yellow. A top architect has led the process, but parishioners have helped to repaint the window frames, repair the roof and then carefully replace the precious panes of stained glass.
When the families enter from the back of the church it gleams newly fresh and white, aside from a few remaining ladders and tools. The pews are lined up in rows, the ceiling fans are whirring and the sunlight is spraying rainbows onto the sparkling walls through the coloured windows. A couple of little birds are spinning through the eaves and the boys eye them with interest, but they no longer chase after them. Carlo and Cristian are nine years old now and they are more interested in chasing a soccer ball.
Father Jose is at the front of the church and he peers at them through shiny new glasses, smiling in his gentle way.
‘Welcome,’ he says to the group. ‘I’m so pleased to see you here all together for the big event!’
The church is filling up with people. A woman stands and sings ‘Amazing Grace’ in a strong, clear voice and several people join in. Candles are lit, tears are shed, and people who haven’t seen each other since before Yolanda clasp hands, forever connected by what they’ve experienced.
Angel sits and listens for a while. Then she stands up and walks to the noticeboard at the back of the church where the list still flaps in the breeze from the fans. She remembers writing her family’s names on it, and then the pervasive relief of crossing them off one by one. Many names are crossed off with notes next to them, like ‘found in Samar’, or ‘recovering in the mobile hospital,’ or ‘evacuated early’ or ‘found safe and well’. Many names are still uncrossed and this is why the list remains here, as a kind of memorial to those who died in the storm. Sadly, Nadia’s father was one of them. He drowned when his jeepney was swept away and Angel’s heart aches for her friend, who has moved to Cebu to live with her uncle’s family.
At the end of the service Father Jose asks everyone to move outside for a special ceremony. A new sign has been erected at the front.
Father Jose addresses the expectant crowd.
‘After a difficult year, I stand here with you, the survivors of the storm. Against great odds you have fought hard in a climate of adversity. You have gone without food and water, you have suffered without shelter, you have lost loved ones. And in the midst of all this, you have picked yourselves up, you have dusted yourselves off and you have rebuilt your lives. I can’t tell you how proud I am to be a part of this community.’
People smile and murmur appreciatively.
‘As you can see, here at the Santo Niño church we have also been regenerating and rebuilding, and today we unveil our new church sign.’
The priest gives a signal and a sheet that’s been covering the sign drops away. Father Jose reads in a loud voice: ‘Santa Niño Church, Tacloban City. Proudly Standing Strong.’
The crowd begins to applaud and cheer. Angel claps so hard that her hands hurt and her face aches from smiling. It may only be a building, but this church means so much to the many members of the congregation who faced down Yolanda.
Soon a street band begins to play and an impromptu party starts up. There’s dancing and singing and even a small puppet show for the children. Angel joins in with the others, but after a while she wants a break from the festivities. She crosses the road and walks down to the sea, the sound of music and laughter in her ears and the salty air filling her lungs.
Juan keeps his bangka here now, tied up along with the other little fishing boats, bobbing in the water on the rising tide. Someone is already sitting there on the seawall and she realises that it’s Justin, taking some time out just like her. He turns his head, and before she can ask, he indicates the spot next to him. She sits down and the two of them stare out at the water in silent companionship.
‘You know, a few months after the storm I decided that as soon as I finished school I would leave Tacloban and never come back,’ says Justin.
Angel is surprised, but she also understands. The process of recovery has been slow and difficult.
He continues: ‘I felt there was no future for me here. It was no place for a young person to start out on life.’
‘And now?’ asks Angel.
‘This is my home. I will always love it here. What about you?’
Angel thinks for a moment before she replies. ‘Maybe I will leave one day – there are things that I want to do and see. But I think that I will always return, no matter what. Yolanda taught me that.’
They stay there silently for several minutes more. Dark, steel-grey clouds are piling up on each other the way they do before a storm. The sea is still flat, but there’s the occasional ripple as a gust of wind rises and then falls away.
‘There’s going to be a storm,’ Angel says, shivering, though not from cold.
‘Looks like it,’ replies Justin.
Angel eyes him thoughtfully. ‘Not a super storm though, right?’
He laughs. ‘Not today!’
Fat, heavy raindrops begin to fall and the two of them stand and walk back up the hill towards the music and the dancing and the people they love.
Author’s note
I landed in Tacloban City about a day after Typhoon Yolanda hit.
Cameraman David Leland and I had flown overnight from our base in Bangkok, where I was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s South-East Asia correspondent. In the dark hours of the morning we then caught a Philippine Air Force C-130 into the disaster zone.
We were one of the first international TV crews to make our way in. The flight was standing room only, packed with soldiers, relief workers and a four-wheel drive van sitting on a pallet that we all had to push against to stop it sliding backwards down the centre of the plane as we took off into the stormy sky.
We flew into a dim, drizzly morning at the devastated airport, where the roof was in shredded pieces lying around the carpark along with rows of chairs flung from the terminal, which was awash with thick mud.
The scene was truly shocking, with upturned cars everywhere, buildings and trees down, debris and water and mud from the storm surge, and of course the bodies of the dead.
Initially we had no vehicle to leave the airport, which is some distance from the city, so we walked out as far as we could to film the devastation and talk to the shell-shocked people, who were dazed by the trauma of what had happened. We returned to the ruins of the terminal to use our satellite equipment to file the first of our stories. It was still raining and water was pouring through the roof so we dragged some bits of tin under one of the less leaky sections and popped up the two dome tents we had brought with us. That night we slept for an hour or two surrounded by refugees from the storm who had walked to the airport, desperate for a way out of the flattened city. Their numbers would grow in the coming days, with soldiers eventually forcibly holding people back from rushing onto departing planes.
That night cargo aircraft and helicopters landed one after another, spraying mud and grit over all of those waiting in the hope that they could leave.
The next day, with the help of our Filipino producer Sol Vanzi, who helped me check some of the facts in Angel, we found a kind businessman with a functioning car who agreed to take us into town and give us a bed for a couple of nights at his largely undamaged house up on the hill behind the city. We would eventually have to leave due to looting and shots fired in the street outside, but it gave us a place to work for a day or two until we had to relocate again.
The scale of the disaster was quickly apparent when we left the airport. The wind and storm surge had virtually flattened Tacloban. Cement buildings had been smashed; powerlines were down; cars, couches, TVs were in trees; boats were sitting on piles of debris nowhere near the ocean. Survivors sat dazed, or rushed to talk to us, to show us their ruined houses or to ask us to tell thei
r families they were okay.
Many told amazing stories of escape, clinging to power or light poles, escaping through ceilings, retreating to higher ground while being chased by the ocean. All told of the loss of family and friends, either confirmed dead or disappeared.
In some parts of the city there was so much debris that it created what felt like tunnels to drive through, the walls higher than the car.
Communication, as always in disasters, was a huge problem, along with lack of power and fuel. The priest at Santo Niño was very proud of his idea to bring in a generator so people could charge their phones, and rightly so. Lack of network, however, remained a problem and people constantly asked me if they could use our satellite phone to call their families. I started taking email addresses and phone numbers to let people know that their loved ones were safe.
The characters in this book are fictional, of course, but the description and narrative reflects what I saw when covering Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines.
The list of names of the missing and dead at the back of the church, for example, is one of my enduring memories of the assignment.
As always in challenging situations, the strength of the human spirit displayed was inspiring, particularly in communities already challenged by things like poverty and lack of support to deal with disasters.
The situation after Yolanda was frustrating because aid was slow to flow. That’s always the way as authorities mobilise and then sort out who’s in charge and how to deploy help, but the self-reliance and optimism of the Filipinos was a privilege to witness and report.
I have not yet returned to Tacloban City. I hope to one day, but it’s a place I will never forget.
Timeline
2013 2 November A low-pressure system develops 425 km east-south-east of Pohnpei in the Pacific islands of Micronesia.
