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.

Mr. Nick Goes to Prison

Like most people who have seen Shawshank Redemption I have a keen interest in not going to prison. For one thing, I find orange jumpsuits unflattering. And aside from softball games and amateur winemaking courses, most jailhouse pastimes involve entirely too much stabbing for my taste. So you can imagine my discomfort as I stood outside the main gates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm, sweating profusely under the hot equatorial sun and wondering why the hell I was here.

~

Welcome to prison!

The Philippines penal system occasionally takes an interesting approach to rehabilitation. The famous dancing inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) have received international acclaim for their performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has nearly fifty-three million views on YouTube. Prisoners at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa practice yoga and meditation through a course sponsored by The Art of Living humanitarian movement.

In Sablayan, the inmates watch birds.

~

Visiting the prison was Marie's idea. My sole objective in Sablayan was to leave as quickly as possible. But Marie had read something about a penal farm in her Lonely Planet guidebook, and she wanted to see it. The desk clerk at the ecotourism office thought she was insane, but happily agreed to arrange visitor's passes for a nominal fee. After paying said nominal fee, along with a very un-nominal fee for the dirtbike, we were on our way.

The woman in red is smiling because she just robbed me blind.

~

Before arriving in the Philippines I had no intention of visiting the prison, or even the island on which it stands. I planned to travel from the touristy island paradise of Boracay to El Nido, a slightly less touristy island paradise famous for its picturesque sunsets and spectacular karst formations. Instead, thanks to a slight miscalculation involving a ferry and two cities with identical names, I wound up 630 km from my intended destination in the backwater town of Sablayan, where there are no tourists.

And so I found myself atop a battered dirtbike, with a terrified French-Canadian girl whom I'd met the day before clinging to the back, racing furiously out of town.

~

Thirty minutes and eleventy-billion potholes later, we arrived at the prison. As we pulled off the main road, I noticed a small sign with the words 'DO NOT PICK UP MALE HITCHHIKERS' painted in urgent red letters. Continuing down the dirt path, we passed a gaggle of inmates carrying long bamboo poles. They stopped in their tracks to stare at Marie. Their smiles could best be described as predatory. I sped up.

Once we reached the main prison complex, we were directed to the administration office. There we waited while the warden finished the final touches on his new screenplay and eventually approved our visitor's passes. Meanwhile, a horde of secretaries fussed over Marie and cast venomous glances my way. Apparently they felt prison was no place for a pretty foreign lady. I didn't have the energy to explain that visiting this den of thieves and rapists was in fact her idea.

Freshly stamped papers in hand, we walked out of the warden's office and headed back to the main gates. We passed the prison hospital, which appeared to be completely empty. Apparently the inmates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm enjoyed perpetual good health.

This song was stuck in my head the whole time.

Back at the main gate we waited again while a different set of guards double-checked our passes. We sat on stools in the cramped, dark shack and made small talk with a group of Filipina prostitutes who had come to visit their incarcerated menfolk. The girls were flirtatious and light-hearted; two of them asked if I was married, while another gushed over Marie's curly hair. They were the nicest hookers I've ever met in prison. They carried small bags of candy and gifts for their men, which they would presumably trade for cigarettes and...backrubs, maybe.

Soon the guard returned with our passes, and we were free to enter the compound. 'It is illegal to give the prisoners drugs or weapons,' he added cheerfully as he shut the gate behind us. I felt like I was entering the world's least-fun human zoo. But I revved the engine and we scooted off into the bowels of the penal farm.

~

Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm occupies an area of over 16,000 hectares, a unit of measurement as meaningless to me as a smoot or potrzeble. However I can say with reasonable certainty that it is really, really big. So big, in fact, that we spent the next hour meandering aimlessly in search of something besides hills and rice paddies. Periodically we passed checkpoints manned by bored shirtless men who chuckled at the sight of two foreigners staring helplessly around at the endlessly repetitive scenery. The area was beautiful, no doubt, but so are many areas that aren't crawling with violent criminals.

Finally we passed an army outpost, and I stopped to ask for directions. The soldiers were surprisingly friendly. One of them put down the heavy black assault rifle he was cleaning and helpfully pointed us in the direction of the prison lake, which he assured us was quite beautiful. He and his buddies waved goodbye as we headed back onto the road. Later I would find out that a prisoner had escaped the day before, and the soldiers were very much looking forward to catching him and shooting him full of holes. 'Dead or alive, dead no problem!', one inmate cheerfully explained.

Basically what you'd expect from an average lake.

The lake was indeed beautiful, though there is only so much fun you can have at a lake without a fishing rod or jet ski. We left after a few minutes, and set out for the Inmates Recreation Facility.

~

At the rec center, a tall muscular guard escorted two prisoners over to us and introduced them with the enthusiasm of a third-grader reading poetry. Their names were Ricky and Manuel, and they would guide us on a trek up the heavily forested mountain to see the local waterfall. Marie looked mildly horrified at the idea of wandering into the jungle with two convicts. I looked mildly horrified at the idea of hiking in flip-flops.

Manuel was a small, thin man who looked to be in his mid-forties. His main job was to scurry ahead of us and smoke hand-rolled prison cigarettes impatiently while Marie and I pulled our sandals out of the muddy path and tried not to step on anything venomous. I don't believe he said a single word the entire afternoon.

Ricky was a different character entirely. He spoke perfect English and chattered incessantly from the minute we left the rec center. As it turned out, he and Manuel were the prison's two foremost bird experts, trained to identify the numerous endemic species that dwelt in the thick jungle around the penal colony. He told us that most visitors to the prison were hardcore aviphiles who were quite happy to tramp through the mountains for hours, then sit motionlessly for additional hours while they waited for a kingfisher or imperial pigeon to flutter into view. Ricky proudly informed us that he was able to discern a bird's species, gender, and age simply from the call of its voice. Looking into his broad, smiling face I felt ashamed of my lack of interest in bird calls.

Turns out the streamwater was totally potable. Refreshing!

Marie's sandal-clad feet were already bruised and bloody from the unforgiving jungle trail, so we decided to turn back when we reached the mountain stream. She wiggled her toes in the clean cool water and Manuel sat on a rock and chain-smoked while I stood and talked with Ricky. He seemed disappointed that we weren't interested in continuing the hike. It was obvious that he took great pride in his birdwatching abilities, and he seemed to sincerely enjoy sharing his gift with others. I was deeply impressed by his genuine warmth and thoughtfulness. I never asked him why he was in prison.

Eventually we made our way down the mountain and across a rice paddy. 'We have no irrigation,' said Ricky as I stared at the verdant fields, 'so we must wait for the rain. All in God's hands.'

When we returned to the rec center, we said goodbye to Ricky and Manuel as the guard led them back into the fenced-off compound. Some inmates were playing basketball on a cracked asphalt court. Others stood around and stared at us, and once again I had the horrible feeling that I was a paying customer at a human zoo. I waved goodbye to Ricky and wished him good luck in the future. I have no idea what 'good luck' entails in his world, but I hope he gets lots of it.

Marie and I climbed back on the bike. I kicked it into gear and pulled back onto the dirt path. Minutes later we reached the main road, where we reentered the free world. We had that luxury.