Typhoon Daze

Last Wednesday around 4 pm, I was running up and down the stairs of my house in Saigon, yelling in vain for my buddy Kieran. I'd just finished loading a few seasons of Breaking Bad on his USB, and I needed to return it before leaving for work. I also had to swing by the tailor to be sized for my new suit, a sharp three-piece charcoal grey number whose specifications I'd lifted directly from the GQ style guide. And as always I was running just slightly behind schedule.

Finally I grew frustrated of hunting for the elusive Irishman, and decided to leave the USB with our Canadian housemate Gabe. When I knocked on his door, Gabe was slumped at his computer, shirtless and blasting David Bowie at ten thousand decibels. He took a long, glazed look at my starchy work clothes and fidgety impatience. Then he chuckled, 'Dude, might wanna check your phone.' So I did.

Dear teachers,
Due to the typhoon all VUS classes will be cancelled. 
Thank you.

Jesus, Allah, Buddha - I love you all!

If you've never been so delighted that you pooped a little then you, sir, have never had a typhoon day.

~

Like responsible adults, we began to gather emergency supplies for the storm of the century. By this I mean that Johnny and Kieran went to buy beer, while Gabe ordered a small pallet of pizzas. I contributed by stupidly going to the tailor's anyway (despite warnings that the typhoon was due to hit any minute), though I did remember to pick up a sack of ten baguettes on the way back. In the event of a weather apocalypse, we would not lack for carbs.

Carrying armfuls of pizza, beer, guitars and other necessities, we gathered on the roof for a frontrow look at the typhoon. We made ominous predictions about the imminent flooding and readied ourselves for a few days without YouTube videos and air conditioning. Then at 6 pm, a funny thing happened.

Nothing.

The hours stretched on, half eaten pizzas were consolidated into single boxes, and the table began to resemble a forest of Tiger cans. Johnny played guitar and I played ukulele. The ashtray became a porcupine as the sky grew darker and darker. Once I thought I heard thunder, but it was just a passing jetliner. Around midnight we wandered downstairs to bed, feeling like Tom Sawyer after a successful day of playing hooky.

The next morning it rained a little, but the skies were clear again by noon. Hurricane Yolanda came and went without blowing down a single leaf. In Saigon we sent reassuring emails to our friends and family, telling them we were OK and asking them to send Honey Nut Cheerios anyway. We went back  to our usual daily routines - working, eating, napping, compulsively checking Facebook every ten minutes, and so on. Business as usual.

In the Philippines, things were a little different.

~

Although it boasts some of the most picturesque beaches and mind-blowing scuba sites in the world, the Philippines is a precarious paradise. The archipelago has been hit by dozens of major storms in the past year. If you read an article in the paper about the Philippines that isn't about a recent natural disaster, it's probably focusing on government corruption or the sex trade. The country, which is still struggling to recover from years of mismanagement under the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos, could really use a break. Super Typhoon Yolanda was not that break.

~

I visited the Philippines in August after years of avoiding the country for no good reason. I was under the misguided impression that it was the Cancun of Asia; a place for drunk nineteen year olds to smear themselves with gaudy neon body paint and guzzle rum buckets until dawn. Like many carefully considered value judgments based off the best available information, this turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

No jello-shots dispensed from this party bus.

In the town of Sablayan I dove with a local guide named Ramon. He was a tall, handsome man with perfect teeth and the confident mellow vibe usually given off by exceptionally competent people. He was knowledgable about the history of the region, both natural and political. He could talk about hawksbill turtles for days. He knew every shipping route coming in and out of Sablayan, and the career scoring average of Dirk Nowitzki (Filipinos are nuts for basketball). He had a degree in tourism and hospitality from the provincial university.

Few tourists come to Sablayan, so Ramon supplemented his income by giving rides on his motorbike to friends and neighbors. In a good week, he made about 500 pesos - a little more than $10 USD. After we returned from our dive, he brought me to his home - a dilapidated hut crammed next to a hundred others in a corrugated shantytown, with a thin piece of plywood for a front door. He wrenched the 'door' open to reveal an unlit single room with a dirt floor. His elderly mother lay on a cot next to the wall, quietly coughing in the darkness.

And that was when I had the ugly realization that after a lifetime of hard work and filial dedication, all of Ramon's earthly possessions were worth less than my iPod.

~

Less than a week later, I was standing outside a small hospital in Coron, a small town on the island of Palawan famous for its shipwrecks. It was 2 am, yet the air was still stifling. I stood next to a cluster of divemasters and scuba instructors, both Filipino and foreign, all of whom looked worried. One of their brothers, a mischievous imp named Ken, lay on a thin bed inside, wracked by epileptic seizures. We had to stand outside because earlier one of the doctors threw a punch at Ken's friend Wizard, who was begging him to administer the oxygen that could save Ken from permanent brain damage. The doctor was more concerned with maintaining face than saving his patient's life.

And it wasn't even his oxygen. One of the German instructors and I had to retrieve the emergency oxygen tank from the dive shop and rush it to the hospital, because apparently Filipino hospitals are not equipped with their own oxygen supplies. Later, one of the dive masters had to rouse a local shipowner to buy a few pills of diazepam to help with Ken's uncontrollable spasms. Apparently Filipino hospitals are not equipped with medicines, either. It was no wonder that Wizard angrily described the place as 'not a hospital, just a place to die'.

We sat and waited for news from Ken. One of the dive instructors told me that his aunt had recently died in the same hospital from a simple case of asthma. I thought of the two Ventolin inhalers in my bag and imagined the terror of suffocating in one's own lungs. Another girl was cursing furiously in English and Tagalog in between chest-racking sobs, vowing that she wouldn't lose another friend to this place.

The Rocksteady family in happier days.

~

That story ended happily, an outcome that seems far too rare in the Philippines these days. The winds and waves of Yolanda have thrown the country into utter chaos as survivors struggle to find their loved ones, a place to sleep, and something to eat.

Like much of the world, there is little margin for error in the Philippines. If your house is demolished by a typhoon, insurance isn't going to cover the damages because who the fuck can afford insurance? Can the government help? Sure, if by 'help' you mean provide a few woefully inadequete supplies long after the moment of greatest need. Maybe if you're lucky you can seek help from family members, but chances are they're in the same boat as you.

And so ordinary Filipinos are left with the sobering realization that if this mess is ever going to be cleaned up, they must do it themselves. They must clear the rubble, they must rebuild the homes, they must bury the dead. And to their credit, all my friends in the Philippines seem to accept this fact with courage and determination. They aren't laying around feeling sorry for themselves, though they certainly have enough reasons to do so. In the aftermath, they seem pragmatic and rational - they're ready to start putting things back together.

~

From my comfortable, non-flooded home in Saigon it was easy to dismiss the hyperbolic reports of the 'biggest storm ever' as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. It probably became a semi-popular Facebook joke - 'Typhoon Yolanda 7/11/13 - Never Forget'. And beneath those words, a picture of an overturned lawn chair.

I still can't entirely wrap my head around the sheer destruction and misery left in Yolanda's wake. As a relatively affluent American, I was born into safety nets that most Filipinos will never, ever know. If Saigon did get blasted by a monster typhoon, my family, friends and credit cards would make sure I got out and returned home safely. Most Filipinos have nowhere to run, and no benevolent benefactor to save them. Like childbirth, this is a pain I cannot comprehend.

I am fully capable of feeling another kind of pain though, this one mixed about 50-50 with a hot cup of shame. This is the pain that comes with remembering all the past disasters that I read about: the tsunamis in Indonesia, the mine collapses in Chile, the meltdowns in Japan. All of these terrible, terrible catastrophes that I somberly watched on the news and discussed in hushed tones at work. And that sneaky feeling of self-satisfaction I got from 'sending good vibes' and 'wishing all the best' to the victims as I scrolled past the donation page to check NBA scores for the thirty-seventh time. It's the pain of knowing that I made myself feel better about a tragedy without doing a damn thing to help those who bore its wrath. It's the pain of empty words and self-congratulations.

~

I've learned my lesson this time: send your love and prayers, but send a check as well. Because people can't eat prayers.