San Pedro Bay looks calm as we take in the seaside view from the Veranda Café of Leyte Park Resort Hotel in Tacloban. Jutting out in the horizon is Mount Danglay, which our friend Jerby Santo says he was scared of when he was a kid. His mom used to tell him that naughty children were snatched by monsters and brought to that mountain.
A funny thing happened in our search for moron in post-“Yolanda” Tacloban. We found it when we got back to Cagayan de Oro, but we’re getting ahead of our story.
Barely 24 hours after landing in the Philippines, best-selling author Mitch Albom commented on how Filipinos love taking photos. The Michigan native was also glad to temporarily leave the freezing winter in the United States in favor of cool, sunny weather here.
I wept as I watched Supertyphoon “Yolanda” destroy lives and homes in Tacloban with end-of-the-world fury. Millions of others, too, watched in tears. Hope and help were also blown away by the storm.
What a pity that after the storm surge came the sabong (cockfight) between Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez.
This story ends with a family reunion. But it revolves around a man who made the reunion possible—by hand-carrying 18 liters of diesel to destinations guided only by cell phone numbers, in the chaos and trauma following Supertyphoon “Yolanda’s” destruction of the Visayas.
I was in Tacloban when Supertyphoon “Yolanda” hit. Our house was in San Jose, a kilometer away from the airport. San Jose is a promontory surrounded by the sea.
Nov. 14: I just met Tatay Ricardo Artiaga, a taxi driver in Manila who is from Tacloban. He apologized for having swollen eyes.
“I was buying medical stuff in Bambang, Manila, for a friend in Tacloban. As I was waiting for the stuff to be packed, the owner of the store, Triple S, started talking to us about the sad state of Tacloban.
The supermarket had announced that it was closed by the time we approached the checkout counter. I braced myself for the look of annoyance on the cashier’s face. I couldn’t blame her.
