Remembering Tacloban and Leyte 11/25/2013

This was written more than two weeks after the onslaught of typhoon Yolanda.

“Did you cry when you personally saw Tacloban?,” Imee asked me when we were watching the news yesterday.

“Frankly speaking, I did not,” I said.

Four days after typhoon Yolanda pounded central Philippines, I left Calamba to search for my relatives in Leyte. I focused on finding them and thought of the dangers that might be lying ahead. While in Tacloban, I felt I was no different from the storm victims since I was then with them in the middle of devastation.

After answering Imee’s question, images of Leyte flashed back. Tacloban was destroyed to the ground. Even the strongest structures were damaged. The city was eerie at night and pitiful at daytime. Nearby Leyte towns all lied in ruins. Vehicles were overturned. Trees lost their foliage. Coconuts had their trunks snapped. There was virtually no shade to hide from the afternoon heat. People were falling in line for water. There were signs allover crying for food, water and medicine. Body bags lined the streets.

I also recalled how people, despite losing everything, managed to offer me food and water when I hiked toward the far-flung barangay of Capahoan in Tabon-tabon. I remembered their faces. They were smiling! A family who were having lunch under a makeshift tent warmly told me, “Pangaon kita!” A man who bitterly survived the storm as shown by a wound on his face offered me water and told me to fill whatever there was to fill. A couple living in a hut also gave me water, the man personally poured water into my empty plastic bottle. Sensing that I was from out of town, he struggled speaking in Tagalog saying, “Inumin mo muna ang bagong salin. Pagkatapos, lagyan natin uli.”

I was humbled by the astonishing generosity and hospitality of the people of Leyte. I went there to help. But I ended up being helped and accommodated by a people who had just lost their loved ones, neighbors and towns.

I remembered how the Philippine flag was hoisted amidst ruins, waving magnificently anywhere I went, as if it was telling me and the whole country, “We are your kind. We are of the same flesh and blood. We will prevail as long as you remember us!"

Yesterday, I remembered Tacloban and Leyte. Tears fell and I cried.