Typhoon-ravaged Tacloban revisited

The bubbling mozzarella comes out piping hot, concealing a wafer-thin crispy base coated with a layer of delicate tomato pasata, while peppery salami and fresh basil poke through the elastine cheesy goo.

Giuseppe’s restaurant and pizzeria, run by an Italian-New Yorker called Joseph, seems worlds away from the typhoon-ravaged Filipino town of Tacloban, but it’s not; it’s on the main street.

The restaurant’s European interiors are near-perfect, decorated with hordes of hungry aid workers from around the globe, while a distorted Britney Spears tune blasts out of a nearby radio station at those dining al fresco.

This improbable scene is hard to reconcile with the dead bodies still waiting to be retrieved just streets away.

Prices of dishes, upwards of Dh30, count the vast majority of the townsfolk out of dining at the eatery, with one dish similar to the average daily wage — in 2012, calculated at Dh31.6, placing the Philippines third lowest in average wages, according to the International Labour Organisation.

Joseph Bonavitacola and his wife Cathy, a native Taclobanon who he met in New York, are the city’s well-to-do.

“I came to Tacloban to meet Cathy’s parents...we thought we’d stay two years, we opened a small restaurant, then two years went by, then one son and another.”

During the November 8 super typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 6,000 and counting and left more than 3 million homeless, the restaurant was flooded a metre high. The water deposited 15 centimetres of mud and silt throughout.

“The kitchen was destroyed, we had to have technicians change all the electronic equipment.”

A month after the typhoon, the door is still broken but “life’s too short to worry and cry about spilt milk. We have to get on with our life and it has to be (through) work”.

The humming restaurant opened for business on November 25, two weeks after the typhoon.

And the customers are back with a vengeance.

“We had a very good business before, we were already full house, but now it’s a full house three times, four times over.”

This means 10-hour days, but Bonavitacola says he’s less busy now than before, as Guiseppe’s and one of his 10 meat shops are his only operational outlets, with a second restaurant also closed. It should take another two months to get all back up and running.

“They were all destroyed and looted the same day of the typhoon...they took everything, the cash register, CCTV (cameras), which were already broken (from the typhoon). Crazy.”

He says contrary to media reports, the looting didn’t start in the days after the typhoon in a fit of desperation, but by opportunists on the very same day — who ransacked his first shop within an hour of the typhoon subsiding.

To keep food standards high, specialty goods are flown in from Cebu and Manila. And the fresh basil?

“We grow our own herbs and they were not affected...the typhoon wiped out our 300 mango trees, broke all the coconut trees, but the plantations of basil, half was gone, half was still there.”

Standing with the couple at the bar in Guiseppe’s is a local businessman who owns five shops, a youthful man who identifies himself only as Mr Yu.

The trio are concerned. They have visions of full-scale pandemonium besetting the city in future months. While the aid organisations and international media are on the ground, they feel confident.

“Once the media are gone, what happens? I’m worried because our government doesn’t care,” Cathy laments.

She says her government has such a high population with so many problems, the growing death toll — currently stands at 6201 — is not a concern.

“To them 20,000 or 30,000, it’s nothing. It’s just a number.”

She says she no longer feels safe in her hometown. “There’s still so many looters.”

“I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first time I’m scared” she says through tears. “We’re not afraid of any hardship that can come, it’s our safety that we can’t protect.”

In the wake of the typhoon, a political battle ensued between Tacloban mayor Alfred Romualdez and a cabal of the rival national political leadership including President Benigno Aquino III, with each accusing the other of inaction and failure to help survivors adequately. Cathy says she fears the bitter feud will mean the rest of the country leaves Tacloban to flounder in a state of lawlessness.

Despite the hundreds of police and army servicemen who have been relocated into Tacloban, she says it is just for show.

“If you see them, they pretend not to see anything (illegal).”

While Tacloban is one of the devastatingly poor nation’s wealthier cities, slums are rife. The people who had little before Haiyan have nothing now.

“People are hungry, people have no jobs. This is where we live, this is where I grew up, this is where we invested...we have our life here but it seems like the government doesn’t (care).”

Yu says he and his neighbours held a meeting shortly after the typhoon and handed out guns to those who didn’t have them, to create a local security squad. The amateur guards have alarm codes to alert each other to any danger. The men, mostly businessmen, took matters into their own hands after earlier pleas to city officials to deal with looters fell on deaf ears. “They told us to get guns.”

While people have food handouts and some financial opportunities, such as a cash for work initiative funded by the Tzu Chi Buddhists, life has an uneasy calm. But when these things dry up, people will be desperate, Yu says.

He is glad people who were involved in the looting have been provided with temporary work. While they are otherwise occupied and provided for, the businessmen’s shops and homes are safe. They have breathing room to concoct a plan of action — one they are yet to make.

“Nobody wants to open (for business) because we know we will not be protected...people are going to leave this city.”

Yu says it took 30 years of rapid development to make Tacloban what it was before the typhoon — and he can’t see it taking any less than that to rebuild it.

Evidence of the lack of infrastructure, is the fact most of Tacloban’s hospitals have been taken over by foreign mercy missions.

Hundreds of doctors and nurses were flown in to handle the emergency situation shortly after the typhoon.

At the Mother of Mercy Hospital Hospital, there were only three doctors — two of whom never turned up to work after the typhoon hit, nurse supervisor Rikki Uy tells me. A team of 17 from a German medical charity, mostly doctors, were the first NGO into Tacloban, reaching the day after it hit.

The operation was scaled back recently, while a skeleton team will stay on til perhaps June, when it is hoped the hospital will be self-sufficient. But in a building badly water-damaged, one that lacked essential equipment in the first place, it will be a difficult transition without governmental support.

Outside on Tacloban’s still-muddy streets, trade is in full flow. There are makeshift stalls in outdoor markets selling everything from toothbrushes to petrol. Talk to these people and they tell you they are reclaiming their trades.

Faidah Radia, who presides over an electronics stall with several workers in her charge, says she returned to the streets of Tacloban just weeks after the typhoon hit.

Radia, who was little affected by the typhoon due to her high altitude home, says her goods are the result of trips to the country’s main cities.

Around the corner, Raul Resuera is selling petrol for Dh4 per 500ml bottle refill. People must turn up with their own bottle, which Resuera, who lost his uncle in the typhoon, fills from a drum.

The majority of Tacloban’s petrol stations were put out of action by the ferocious typhoon, and only four were operational by the end of the year. Even open stations have been doling out no more than 5 litres per person, to ration supplies.

“It will take four to five months before the supply returns to normal.”

Until then, Resuera says he will continue his business of driving the 120kms to the next province, Samar, three times a week to buy the bulk petrol for Dh4.5 per litre.

But Tacloban’s ordinary residents tell a different story about street vendors. While many are legitimate, many others aren’t – with new stalls popping up where there were previously none.

Father Virgie Murillo, who is the bishop for 14 of the area’s churches and more than 10,000 families, says much of what is on sale is whatever landed in people’s back yards, as a result of the typhoon’s whipping winds.

But do the residents care?

“I just bought some car oil from a looter - it was very cheap,” he confesses.

In a town that was plunged into apocalypse in the aftermath of Haiyan, to have a functioning marketplace is a win in itself.

What will happen in the days and months to come is a problem for tomorrow. Residents are working from the base up; For now, the elaborate toppings in Tacloban will be reserved for Guiseppe’s and the customers who can afford them.

amanda@khaleejtimes.com