Wednesday, December 3, 2014
At the 6th Davao Writers Workshop, where I delivered the keynote speech.
http://www.upmin.edu.ph/index.php/news-sp-3476/colleges/college-of-humanities-and-social-sciences/2005-the-6th-davao-writers-workshop-2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
micro mini review of my book in the UP Likhaan Journal
Delgado, Daryll. After the Body Displaces Water. Manila: UST Publishing
House. Daryll Delgado’s first book of fiction contains eleven stories that showcase the
author’s versatility in using the forms and techniques of fiction. The subject matter
of the stories are just as varied, but are unified by the strength of the Delgado’s taut
and precise writing.
House. Daryll Delgado’s first book of fiction contains eleven stories that showcase the
author’s versatility in using the forms and techniques of fiction. The subject matter
of the stories are just as varied, but are unified by the strength of the Delgado’s taut
and precise writing.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Rebuilding libraries, rebuilding communities
I recently took part in NBDB's Booklatan sa Bayan in Tacloban and in Palo, Leyte. Talked to kids about writing and stories, and ran a mini-workshop. The kids were heartbreakingly bright and adorable. Some of them wrote very powerful stories too.
The photos below are by Camille Dela Rosa, Deputy Director of the NBDB:
The photos below are by Camille Dela Rosa, Deputy Director of the NBDB:
Friday, July 18, 2014
Other Selves in Hong Kong
I was in Hong Kong last June with poet Joel Toledo and singer-songwriter Charms Tianzon of Matilda, for a series of literary activities organized by writer and UP alumna, Armida Azada, who launched her second collection of poetry called Cataclysmal: Seventy Wasted Poems. The series of literary activities we took part in mostly involved a bit of workshopping, poetry-reading, paper-presenting, and a whole lot of eating, walking, and train-and-bus-and-tram-and-ferry/boat-riding. It was lovely.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
At the forum in Lingnan University, I talked a bit about language as a site of trauma, and humor as a site of resistance. Joel talked about text and context in poetry, Charms talked about her creative process as a songwriter, and Mida talked about, among other things, Victorian poetry. On of the attendees of the forum was a Filipino journalist in Hong Kong who, apparently, is a very good friend of Pete Lacaba's, and who had so many interesting stories to share about the Martial Law period. He also shared, during the cocktails, a beautiful poem he wrote for his wife.
After the forum, I found myself in a spirited discussion about language and translation issues with one of the PhD fellows, and I came out of that conversation with a new plot for a detective novel involving a writer of original texts masquerading as a translator. I also came out of that forum a bit drunk, thanks to Prof. Rice, human rights lawyer and Philo professor, who encouraged us to imbibe alcohol into our system while we delivered our papers, saying that, while he's not sure if it is done in Literature fora, in the ones organized by his department, drinking wine during talks is absolutely acceptable. So we happily obliged. Joel and I also went back to our hotel with lots of "take-home" food, thanks to the wonderful Pinay women who catered for the event.
I posted on Facebook that this was my first time to visit Hong Kong for non-work reasons. It's not entirely true. I should have written 'day job' instead of 'work'. Writing, or being a writer, is work (although it's ridiculous to call the fun that we had in Hong Kong 'work'). It's also not true that this Hong Kong visit did not entail putting whatever skills or perspective I developed in my day job to some use. It's hard to leave one's labor-rights-NGO-persona when you're in Hong Kong. It's hard not to be a labor rights advocate when you're in Hong Kong, even if you do not work for a labor rights NGO. I thought it admirable, for instance, how our hosts in Hong Kong, UP alumni who hold executive positions and live in high-end residential areas, just naturally take to helping fellow Filipinos in less-privileged situations in Hong Kong, in very many meaningful ways. I was ready to censure myself from making any remarks and observations that might make them uncomfortable. Instead, I found myself convinced, and feeling very proud, that UP does develop among its students a distinct social consciousness and sense of social responsibility, regardless of whatever position in their personal or professional life they end up with. I was thus also very glad to learn that among the literary activities we had to take part in involved holding a writing workshop for domestic helpers in a quaint and rather rustic island called Peng Chau. The afternoon spent in Peng Chau was, for me, the highlight of the Hong Kong trip.
.jpeg)
One of the helpers who atended the workshop in Peng Chau said that, on her days off, or while on buses and trains traveling to work, she always finds herself thinking of the past and of her daily experiences in Hong Kong, and feeling like she should be writing about them. She also shared that she likes visiting Mida's house because there are so many books there, and that she would sometimes read books which to her seem exactly like the kind she would someday want to write.
I realized, in the four days that we walked and commuted, and island-hopped around Hong Kong, that this was my first time to actually really interact with Filipino contract workers here. Previous visits to Hong Kong always only involved meetings with employers/companies and NGOs, staying in hotels in the city center, and taking the taxi to and from meeting venues. The little walking I would do usually only happened in night markets. Unlike in other countries I go to for work, I never have to do audits and worker-interviews in Hong Kong. So it was quite an experience for me to be jostling my way around the city, taking the public commute, and especially talking with and holding an intimate writing workshop with Filipinos in Hong Kong.
.jpeg)
On our last night in Hong Kong, after one of the readings in Dymocks Bookstore in Discovery Bay, I overheard some of the women who attended the launch talking about organizing a labor-rights awareness seminar for domestic helpers. I couldn't help myself, I interrupted their conversation and finally came out to them as an NGO worker. At the end of that conversation, I also found myself volunteering to return to Hong Kong in October with my husband, and offering our services to them, pro bono. What a relief it was to not have to downplay the work that my other self does anymore.
Thanks so much, Mida and Benjie, and Claire, and everyone who made us feel warmly welcomed in Hong Kong. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to exchange stories and poetry with Pinoys in HK, and, soon, for the opportunity to contribute to labor rights awareness-raising too. :)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
At the forum in Lingnan University, I talked a bit about language as a site of trauma, and humor as a site of resistance. Joel talked about text and context in poetry, Charms talked about her creative process as a songwriter, and Mida talked about, among other things, Victorian poetry. On of the attendees of the forum was a Filipino journalist in Hong Kong who, apparently, is a very good friend of Pete Lacaba's, and who had so many interesting stories to share about the Martial Law period. He also shared, during the cocktails, a beautiful poem he wrote for his wife.
After the forum, I found myself in a spirited discussion about language and translation issues with one of the PhD fellows, and I came out of that conversation with a new plot for a detective novel involving a writer of original texts masquerading as a translator. I also came out of that forum a bit drunk, thanks to Prof. Rice, human rights lawyer and Philo professor, who encouraged us to imbibe alcohol into our system while we delivered our papers, saying that, while he's not sure if it is done in Literature fora, in the ones organized by his department, drinking wine during talks is absolutely acceptable. So we happily obliged. Joel and I also went back to our hotel with lots of "take-home" food, thanks to the wonderful Pinay women who catered for the event.
I posted on Facebook that this was my first time to visit Hong Kong for non-work reasons. It's not entirely true. I should have written 'day job' instead of 'work'. Writing, or being a writer, is work (although it's ridiculous to call the fun that we had in Hong Kong 'work'). It's also not true that this Hong Kong visit did not entail putting whatever skills or perspective I developed in my day job to some use. It's hard to leave one's labor-rights-NGO-persona when you're in Hong Kong. It's hard not to be a labor rights advocate when you're in Hong Kong, even if you do not work for a labor rights NGO. I thought it admirable, for instance, how our hosts in Hong Kong, UP alumni who hold executive positions and live in high-end residential areas, just naturally take to helping fellow Filipinos in less-privileged situations in Hong Kong, in very many meaningful ways. I was ready to censure myself from making any remarks and observations that might make them uncomfortable. Instead, I found myself convinced, and feeling very proud, that UP does develop among its students a distinct social consciousness and sense of social responsibility, regardless of whatever position in their personal or professional life they end up with. I was thus also very glad to learn that among the literary activities we had to take part in involved holding a writing workshop for domestic helpers in a quaint and rather rustic island called Peng Chau. The afternoon spent in Peng Chau was, for me, the highlight of the Hong Kong trip.
.jpeg)
One of the helpers who atended the workshop in Peng Chau said that, on her days off, or while on buses and trains traveling to work, she always finds herself thinking of the past and of her daily experiences in Hong Kong, and feeling like she should be writing about them. She also shared that she likes visiting Mida's house because there are so many books there, and that she would sometimes read books which to her seem exactly like the kind she would someday want to write.
I realized, in the four days that we walked and commuted, and island-hopped around Hong Kong, that this was my first time to actually really interact with Filipino contract workers here. Previous visits to Hong Kong always only involved meetings with employers/companies and NGOs, staying in hotels in the city center, and taking the taxi to and from meeting venues. The little walking I would do usually only happened in night markets. Unlike in other countries I go to for work, I never have to do audits and worker-interviews in Hong Kong. So it was quite an experience for me to be jostling my way around the city, taking the public commute, and especially talking with and holding an intimate writing workshop with Filipinos in Hong Kong.
.jpeg)
On our last night in Hong Kong, after one of the readings in Dymocks Bookstore in Discovery Bay, I overheard some of the women who attended the launch talking about organizing a labor-rights awareness seminar for domestic helpers. I couldn't help myself, I interrupted their conversation and finally came out to them as an NGO worker. At the end of that conversation, I also found myself volunteering to return to Hong Kong in October with my husband, and offering our services to them, pro bono. What a relief it was to not have to downplay the work that my other self does anymore.
Thanks so much, Mida and Benjie, and Claire, and everyone who made us feel warmly welcomed in Hong Kong. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to exchange stories and poetry with Pinoys in HK, and, soon, for the opportunity to contribute to labor rights awareness-raising too. :)
Thursday, July 17, 2014
I have a narrative poem in AGAM
A narrative poem I wrote in Waray is included in the ground-breaking anthology on climate change and stories of uncertainty called Agam. http://agam.ph/writers/ Here's a brief description of what book is about:
About AGAM (http://agam.ph/about/)
Agam reflects the confrontation between climate change and diverse cultures across the Philippines. It combines original new works in prose, verse, and photographs and depicts uncertainty—and tenacity—from the Filipino perspective, minus the crutch of jargon.
This is a book that asks you to sit down and take a deep breath, it draws a line in the sand and whispers in your ear, “This is where our stories begin.”
The title, Agam—an old Filipino word for uncertainty and memory—captures the essence of this groundbreaking work. Inside are 26 images and creative narratives in eight Filipino languages (translated into English), crafted by 24 writers representing a broad array of disciplines—poets, journalists, anthropologists, scientists, and artists.
Agam represent story-telling at its best.
More than climate change, Agam is about people; it is about what was, what might be, what is.
It is the story of all of us.
All proceeds from the sale of Agam will go to the project Re-Charge Tacloban, an integrated solar and sustainable transport services and learning facility in Tacloban, a city devastated by Typhoon Yolanda (international name:Haiyan), the strongest storm ever recorded at landfall.
The crisis brought about by the supertyphoon presents in itself an opportunity to reboot development without inefficient, unreliable, and polluting energy and transport systems. iCSC believes new approaches must be taken to develop—and rebuild — safer, more resilient, sustainable communities. Re-Charge Tacloban project helps generate local jobs by hiring locally, diffusing technical expertise, and by designing appropriate business models for sustainable social enterprise through the provision of renewable energy systems coupled with electric, locally built, public transport fleets. Re-Charge Tacloban is also the site of the Solar Scholars program of iCSC, which seeks to empower humanitarian workers in local government and civil society.
Visit www.ejeepney.org for more information about the project.
About AGAM (http://agam.ph/about/)
Agam reflects the confrontation between climate change and diverse cultures across the Philippines. It combines original new works in prose, verse, and photographs and depicts uncertainty—and tenacity—from the Filipino perspective, minus the crutch of jargon.
This is a book that asks you to sit down and take a deep breath, it draws a line in the sand and whispers in your ear, “This is where our stories begin.”
The title, Agam—an old Filipino word for uncertainty and memory—captures the essence of this groundbreaking work. Inside are 26 images and creative narratives in eight Filipino languages (translated into English), crafted by 24 writers representing a broad array of disciplines—poets, journalists, anthropologists, scientists, and artists.
Agam represent story-telling at its best.
More than climate change, Agam is about people; it is about what was, what might be, what is.
It is the story of all of us.
All proceeds from the sale of Agam will go to the project Re-Charge Tacloban, an integrated solar and sustainable transport services and learning facility in Tacloban, a city devastated by Typhoon Yolanda (international name:Haiyan), the strongest storm ever recorded at landfall.
The crisis brought about by the supertyphoon presents in itself an opportunity to reboot development without inefficient, unreliable, and polluting energy and transport systems. iCSC believes new approaches must be taken to develop—and rebuild — safer, more resilient, sustainable communities. Re-Charge Tacloban project helps generate local jobs by hiring locally, diffusing technical expertise, and by designing appropriate business models for sustainable social enterprise through the provision of renewable energy systems coupled with electric, locally built, public transport fleets. Re-Charge Tacloban is also the site of the Solar Scholars program of iCSC, which seeks to empower humanitarian workers in local government and civil society.
Visit www.ejeepney.org for more information about the project.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Interview with NBDB
Fictionist Daryll Delgado once wanted to be a dog
Interview by Kris Lanot Lacaba
(Full interview piece is here: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152064030061715&id=371941300497&stream_ref=10)
Today, Daryll Delgado—a brilliant fictionist and the author of the short story
collection After the Body Displaces water—has become a more voracious reader
than ever. As a young girl, the books she read made her want to be a detective,
or a castaway sailor, a Russian priest, a Japanese boy, or a dog.
What are you reading these days?
I just reread Mookie Katigbak’s Burning Houses, Alwynn Javier’s Ang Pasipiko so
Loob ng Aking Maleta, and the two short story anthologies, Manila Noir, and
Maximum Volume.
I always have to read lots of media reports and NGO reports, laws and regulations,
and such. I don’t not enjoy this kind of reading, but I don’t seek it either. When
I’m swamped, my in-between-work-reading tends to be a Nabokov or a Cortazar,
a John Banville or a Borges, Gluck’s poetry or a random romance novel. I read the
way I listen to music, sometimes. I let my mood dictate my choices. I don’t always
process too much.
What will you read next?
I really don’t know. I don’t have any kind of reading program. I don’t update my
reading list. These days, I read whatever I can get my hands on. I am in the middle
of several books right now, apart from my staple ones. I’m in the middle of DFW’s
Everything and More, Yi Yun Li’s Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Carol Maso’s The Art Lover,
Agnes Keith’s Land Below the Wind, and Proust’s Swann’s Way. I might go back to
Proust. I keep going back to Proust, and I don’t mind not getting to the end of it
just yet. There are also so many books by Filipino writers that I have been meaning
to read.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
How to Stay Alive - Tacloban City, Forty Days After the Storm
How to stay alive – Tacloban City, Forty Days After the Storm (Daryll Delgado)
The last time I was in the DZR Airport in Tacloban City was in early November. My husband and I had come home for a few days to visit the graves of my parents and other relatives, for All Souls Day. At the airport, we met many people we knew, all of them also home for the occasion - to honor their dead.
We were home for only a few days, and we left on the first flight out of Tacloban on November 4th. I remember how lovely the view of the sunrise over the bay was, from the airport. And I remember telling my husband how, back in the day, on semestral breaks, after a night of partying with friends, we would drive to the airport, climb over the fence and lie down on the runway facing the ocean, or gaze up at the always-clear night skies, and wait for the sunrise. And just before the guards showed up and the airport opened at daybreak, we would scramble and run out of the compound or risk getting caught. That would then serve for a thrilling experience enough to last us for days and days.
I always tell my husband that, every time I come home to Tacloban, as soon as I step off the plane, and encounter the vast sea around me, the tree-lined path to my right, and the clear blue skies above, I always feel like I am set free, and my favorite expression has always been that it is as if walls have been magically blown off around me and I instantly feel like I can breathe more freely and think more clearly.
The next time I came home with my husband, just over a week after we left Tacloban, wasn’t on a plane, or through the airport. There were no commercial flights to Tacloban then, and there was hardly anything of the DZR Airport left standing. No more trees lined the path leading to it. There were instead huge piles of debris, very many roofless and totally wrecked houses, long lines of hungry and desperate people, and hundreds of dead bodies lining streets. The treacherous sea, however, was still there, entrancing as ever, but also haunting and mysterious, and as we now know, very, very deadly.
* * *
I was in Kuala Lumpur, on a work assignment, when the typhoon struck my home. The only other member of my family who wasn’t home during the typhoon was my sister who lives in California. Everyone else, my three siblings, their spouses, their children, our cousins, our housekeeper and her whole family, were in Tacloban. For three very long and agonizing days, after the typhoon, we heard nothing from our family, while all over the TV and social media, we saw the devastation, the destruction, the deaths wrought by the typhoon.
As soon as we heard from my brother, and confirmed that they were safe, but that some friends and an uncle were dead, that some of the people staying in the house which has been turned into a mini evacuation center were injured, that supplies were running out, and all around the city there was chaos and hardly any medical care, we knew what to do. It was decided that I would make my way to Manila from KL as quickly as I could, and then my husband and I would charter a van to Tacloban and evacuate as many of our family as we could to Manila.
My husband and I left Manila at 3 o’ clock in the morning of the 13th, and arrived in Tacloban at mid-day of the 14th, after almost forty hours of travel. We reached Tacloban through the famed San Juanico Bridge. Our mission was to deliver whatever relief goods we had, check on people whose families and friends had no means to do so themselves, and then evacuate our family, including my brother-in-law’s family, an aunt and cousins, who were then taking shelter in our house. To maximize space for the people who needed to be brought out of Tacloban, everyone had to bring only the barest minimum. Thus, we left our ruined home, our city, with very few possessions, and with very heavy hearts, before the sun could even set on the 14th of November.
* * *
As someone who writes mostly for pleasure, which is to say that I cannot and do not live off my writing, I have found it very, very difficult to write of what I saw, and heard, and feel about my home city, about the lives and experiences of my people, my family, my friends. I cannot stop consuming news about it though. But I cringe at the so-called “human interest” stories that have been coming off the pens of otherwise very good writers and journalists who have been covering the tragedy. In fact, and I know this is very irrational, I am offended at how we have become a city of stories for other people’s catharsis, nay, indulgence.
During Week One, I was asked by a few agencies to write a report, an account, anything they can print or publish. But this was all I could come up with, and I decided to publish it on Facebook myself: https://www.facebook.com/notes/daryll-delgado/what-is-there/10152424193399325
* * *
It has been a month, since I wrote that little piece, 40 days since the typhoon struck. Commercial flights have been resumed and the airport is semi-operational. People tell me that so much has changed, that there are marked improvements in Tacloban. The government even goes so far as to claim that normalcy has been restored to the city. And this piece is supposed to be about how Tacloban is getting back on its feet.
I arrive in Tacloban this time on a plane. The airport structure is still in ruins, but the runway is clear. Repairs and construction work at the airport take place amidst the hustle and bustle of passengers arriving and departing. Makeshift signs have been put up to direct people to arrival and departure areas. Airport attendants are on hand to assist passengers, and, outside, some enterprising locals have put their cars to public use, often for fees that are not at all normal.
There are trucks bearing the logos of international organizations – UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO, USAID, MSF, WFP, PLAN, and many others. There are banners announcing performances by foreign artists. A week ago, Justin Bieber flew to Tacloban to entertain the kids at a public elementary school, and there are talks that Katy Perry is in town.
There are tents for aid workers and military personnel from other countries set up near the airport, and, where the Fisherman’s Village used to be, there is now a village of white tents bearing the logo of the United Nations’ agency for refugees. In the Calanipawan area, a relocation site has been developed, and rows of wooden houses are being constructed and being readied for occupancy by Christmas, I was told. The main streets from the airport to the center of town have been cleared. There are tow trucks and workers bearing DPWH orange uniforms, alongside locals who have taken part in the cash-for-work initiative of the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation. There is a proliferation of small food stalls and makeshift stores selling fresh produce and, I’ve also been told, looted goods. The strip of lechon stalls is now mostly back in business, and there are eager buyers where there used to be none just a few weeks ago. There are also much less people walking about aimlessly or in a daze, and a few passenger jeepneys and tricycles are now plying the streets of Tacloban, their loud rumbling lovely music to my ears.
At night, the street lamps in some parts of the city center are actually lighted. A few food establishments have started operating along Avenida Veteranos, where a number of restaurants, a school, and Tacloban’s biggest private hospital are located.
Indeed, there are signs of recovery everywhere. And if you choose to see only these signs, there is much to be glad about. In fact, if I stop the piece right here, I would have fulfilled my assignment of writing about how the city is getting back on its feet. * * But it’s very hard to take comfort in the improvements I see around Tacloban, when the reminders of what were taken away from the city and its people by the deadly storm and by the government’s inefficiency are everywhere, including in the air that people breathe, which still bears the smell of corpses that have yet to be unearthed from the debris, or of those buried haphazardly by their own families in shallow graves around the city. The Kusog Tacloban volunteers staying in our house (which has been turned into a headquarters for Kusog Tacloban) tell me that, every day, bodies are still recovered among the debris, under the rubbles, in the bushes. They find it laughable and absurd that the death count has been stopped weeks ago.
On the day I arrive in Tacloban, more than a month after the storm, six bodies are recovered in the mangroves near the airport, and I see two body bags in the street being readied for pick up. On my way to the airport, two days later, to pick up my husband and another lawyer friend who has come with him to help out, I and one of the volunteers driving for me see another body bag on the street where he lives. He tells me that behind his house in Burayan, San Jose, just a few days ago, the bodies of a mother and her child had just been recovered under a pile of wood and rocks. He says that he and his family are lucky – his family lost their home and all of their possessions, and here he is volunteering in relief efforts and saying he is lucky – because his grandmother died inside their house, and they didn’t have to go on a futile search for her body. He says that, for a few days after his grandmother died, his uncles had tried to keep watch over their mother whom they had bundled up in clothes and blankets and laid down on the street, hoping someone would pick her up and help them bury her. But the decomposition was happening too fast, they had to bring their grandmother to what used to be a morgue, where bodied were being left for the authorities to get them. He tells me that they are not sure where she was brought to after that, but that when they checked, all the bodies in the morgue had already been taken and most likely buried in a mass grave at the public cemetery.
Where streets have been cleared, so much trash and debris have accumulated in piles that continue to grow every day, while collection of garbage is still not done regularly. In many areas, these piles are now as high as people’s homes. In an area near Manlurip, where there used to be a lovely pond and fronds, there is now a sea of trash and people have taken to poking through it, for money or for anything they can make use of.
Two friends of ours, sisters, whose entire house in San Jose, near the airport, was washed away, and whose parents and the child of one of the sisters drowned in the 17-foot-high storm surge, have also taken to poking through the mountain of trash near their area. Ever since they found a piece of clothing which they are convinced belonged to their mother, and some kitchen ware which they believe, or want to believe, were part of their mother’s collection, they have been obsessed with collecting as many of these articles as they can. I implore them to please don’t do this, for health reasons at least, but they have bigger reasons to keep at it. They never saw the bodies of their loved ones who died. They were both in Manila when the storm struck. For weeks after the storm, they searched night and day for their parents and for the child, until they were informed by a neighbor who had positively identified their family members that he himself had helped in bundling them up for burial in a mass grave in a place called Vasper, near the San Juanico Bridge. Since then, they have taken to recovering, collecting, rebuilding from the trash and debris what they can of the home and family that they lost.
Some people have taken to burning trash piles every afternoon just before dark, and in many parts of the city, you see flames and thick swirls of gray smoke against a deep orange sunset. The scene this makes is strangely beautiful, surreal, and cinematic, except that this is not happening in a movie, it’s happening right in front of your very eyes, in your home city. * * * It is very hard, as well, to take comfort in the miniscule improvements one sees in Tacloban City, when in the neighboring coastal towns of Palo, Tanauan, Tolosa, Dulag, and others that were also badly-hit by the storm, where many of our relatives and friends are from, where so many people died and lost their homes and livelihoods, hardly any improvement can be seen.
To this day, these towns still look like they’ve been bombed out. Fishing villages are no more, concrete houses are now just piles of rocks. Thousands of coconut trees in vast coconut plantations have been decapitated, and only the trunks remain, a few of which are standing, but many are completely felled to the ground. Where thriving, dense communities used to be, these have been replaced with tent homes, nice ones from the UN if they’re lucky, or makeshift ones using tarpaulins they’ve somehow managed to get from other organizations if not so lucky. Many of the school buildings have been crushed, entire structures flattened. Some of the schools were lucky to get tent classrooms, many others have to wait from the DepEd for help.
We meet several kids happily hanging out in school grounds, a couple of brave and naughty boys jumping precariously on unsteady, broken walls. They tell us that they have started going to school, using just one building, but that they don’t really do any schoolwork yet. When I ask them how it is that they fit into just one building, they tell me that many of their schoolmates are no longer around, that many of them have died, and others went away with their families to Manila or Cebu. We meet more kids in the intersection of Tanauan and Tolosa, in the small triangle park where used to stand a big sign saying “this way to Tanauan Poblacion” but which the locals have turned into a grave site. They point us to their families’ burial mounds, and we see many haphazard crosses and wood plaques bearing long lists of names with the same family name per mound.
One boy, Diether, about ten years of age, brings me to where his four brothers and sisters, his father, his grandparents and two baby cousins he wasn’t sure were boys or girls, are buried. I ask him where his mother is and he points to a small makeshift tent house. He tells me that he survived by hanging on to a trunk of Gemelina tree, because, he informs me, Gmelina wood is a good floater, and that it manages to stay on top of strong, strong waves, much like the waves that came and ate up his house and his brothers and sisters and his grandparents. He says he was separated from his mother when the waves came, and when the waves went back to the ocean, he was thrown to the ground and then he just got up and started walking, walking, and walking until he chanced upon Elvie, his youngest sister aged one year old, near the “Triangle”. Elvie is among those buried in the mound on the triangle park.
Another child, a girl named Angela, aged nine years old, tells me she found herself on top of a mango tree when the waves came, and she held on to a branch for four hours, her body shivering, going rigid in the cold. She says that at some point she wanted to let go already, but that her hands were frozen and she could not lift them from around the branch. Her older sister, several cousins, and grandparents are buried in the mound she brings me to. She tells me that her mother’s name is also written on the wooden cross planted on the ground, but that her body is actually buried in another area. When I ask her why this is so, she says that her mother’s body has just been found only the day before, and can no longer be buried with the other members of her family who had died.
A little boy, aged five, proudly volunteers that he survived by “sorfing”. When I ask him if he means that he laid on top of a wood plank, he says, no, he actually, really “sorfed”, and the two other kids confirm that they saw how he did it, that he had indeed stood and balanced himself on a floating plywood and rode the waves. I ask him if he is a surfer, like many of the boys in Tanauan, and he says that he just learned to “sorf” during the storm. I tell him that he is very brave and that he should join my brother and his friends when they come back to Tanauan to surf, and I am rewarded with a very sweet toothless grin. This boy also lost a parent, and he points me to a part of the triangle park with rocks formed into a square. It is not very clear from his innocent, childish narrative if he also lost siblings, but I see many names bearing the same last name inscribed on the small crosses lining the head of the rocky plot, and I do not bother asking him whose these names are exactly.
There are many more plots, mounds, bearing makeshift crosses on the triangle park. Next to the crosses, we see articles of clothing belonging to the dead loved one, a limbless doll, a pair of sneakers, and unopened bottles of water. I ask a man tending to his wife’s grave why there are bottles of water, and he tells me that they don’t want their loved ones to go thirsty much like what they, the living, went through, days after the storm. He says that these are also a reminder that it was water that took their loved ones away.
* * *
In Tacloban City, we find ourselves hanging out, at the end of each tiring day, in Giuseppe's, the Italian bistro along Avenida Veteranos. The place is well-lighted, always packed. From the outside, it all looks normal indeed, festive even. But when we enter the place we do not recognize anyone except the owner, Joseph. The place is packed with foreign aid workers who like to come to the restaurant for a good meal, a bottle of wine, a cold beer, after a long day’s work. While here, as long as you don’t see the many military personnel walking around, and police cars constantly patrolling the street outside, it is easy – and sometimes necessary – to forget that, elsewhere, there is darkness and disorder, death and devastation.
On my first night back home, I meet with a doctor friend, Mabel, who is working with one of the international organizations on the ground. We are telling ourselves just this, exactly, that we like and maybe deserve this fantasy, this illusion of normalcy, when, from the street, a young woman, speaking very loudly, laughing hysterically, intrudes into the scene. She is scantily clad, and covered in grime. Her eyes are wild, dilated, angry.
The crowd of international volunteers and aid workers remain calm, and try to ignore her. The police watch her very intently, aware also that they're being watched by humanitarian workers. The woman continues to provoke the crowd, starts dancing, gyrating in the middle of the street. She starts to approach us, even as we try to avoid staring at her, hoping she won't single us out. She does single us out and in a very loud voice, demands for a slice of pizza, speaking in English. We tell her, in a calm and what we hope is a comforting voice, to ask nicely and put on her top. She calls our bluff and shouts, demands even more loudly. Then, she says, you want me to put this on? This? Here! She pulls at her tattered top violently, flings it to the ground, and flaunts her almost-naked body at the crowd instead. Then she breaches the small garden separating the restaurant from the street and comes straight for us, grabs our beer and dashes back to the street. She takes a gulp from the grande bottle, pours the rest of the content on herself, and then smashes the bottle on the street. She then grabs a sliver of glass and threatens the women tending a small stall across the restaurant, and suddenly she is lunging at them with her weapon, and the women start to run. She runs after them, shouting, waving her weapon in the air. The people, the foreign aid workers in the restaurant tell the two policemen to please restrain her already. The policemen finally run after the crazed woman, while we all look on, helplessly, and try embarrassedly to go back to our pizza and beer.
My doctor friend says there are many like her, and many more will be like her, if they remain untreated, if their trauma remains unaddressed. She fears that the young woman might be on drugs or might have gone through something very, very violent. She says she can see it in the woman’s face. And I think, well, there she is, hers is the real face of the city. And perhaps we need to gaze at her straight in the face, no matter how difficult, or painful, or frightening it may be.
* * *
I start writing this piece only on the fortieth day after the storm. In traditional Catholic practice, the fortieth day is significant in that it marks the official end of mourning, and the dead are honored and “sent off” with prayers and a feast we call “pa-cuarenta”. All over Tacloban and in neighboring coastal towns, people are lighting candles, saying prayers. Our families in different parts of the world also light candles in their own homes.
Magina Fernandez, Joji Dorado, and the Kusog Tacloban volunteers have involved themselves in the arrangements for the “pa-cuarenta” memorial and candle-lighting in remembrance of the dead. They have taken time off from distribution of relief goods, from doing repairs of people’s homes, from assisting medical missions, for this equally important undertaking. The “pa-cuarenta” candles provided by the tourism office illuminate the city, and the people, as a collective, temporarily confront the darkness around them. When the candles melt and their lights die, a full moon appears and is reflected on the still body of water that surrounds the city. Many people take comfort, find grace in the fact that the “pa-cuarenta” falls exactly on the night of the full-moon, on December 17th. They find meaningful connections and patterns in these incidents and coincidences. And, indeed, the event, the public display of mourning and grief, is really much about helping people find grace and comfort too where these are scant, through symbols and rituals of healing and recovery they believe in and understand.
My friend, Didits Palami, whose family owns a school in Tacloban, for her part says that, in terms of coping, the best way she knows of right now, is to not stop working, not rest, not relax. My cousin, Marie Apostol, who initiated Kusog Tacloban, also feels the same way. And so do I, so do many of us who survived, who were spared, or who weren’t there in Tacloban to go through what our families went through on November 8th.
We have read enough books to know that this is survivor’s guilt, but this is also, in very practical and pragmatic terms, what is needed right now – to work hard, to not waste time, to not flinch. But then, on the fortieth day, at 3:00 in the afternoon, we also stop, to light candles, to remember, to honor the dead, and the city that once was.
The last time I was in the DZR Airport in Tacloban City was in early November. My husband and I had come home for a few days to visit the graves of my parents and other relatives, for All Souls Day. At the airport, we met many people we knew, all of them also home for the occasion - to honor their dead.
We were home for only a few days, and we left on the first flight out of Tacloban on November 4th. I remember how lovely the view of the sunrise over the bay was, from the airport. And I remember telling my husband how, back in the day, on semestral breaks, after a night of partying with friends, we would drive to the airport, climb over the fence and lie down on the runway facing the ocean, or gaze up at the always-clear night skies, and wait for the sunrise. And just before the guards showed up and the airport opened at daybreak, we would scramble and run out of the compound or risk getting caught. That would then serve for a thrilling experience enough to last us for days and days.
I always tell my husband that, every time I come home to Tacloban, as soon as I step off the plane, and encounter the vast sea around me, the tree-lined path to my right, and the clear blue skies above, I always feel like I am set free, and my favorite expression has always been that it is as if walls have been magically blown off around me and I instantly feel like I can breathe more freely and think more clearly.
The next time I came home with my husband, just over a week after we left Tacloban, wasn’t on a plane, or through the airport. There were no commercial flights to Tacloban then, and there was hardly anything of the DZR Airport left standing. No more trees lined the path leading to it. There were instead huge piles of debris, very many roofless and totally wrecked houses, long lines of hungry and desperate people, and hundreds of dead bodies lining streets. The treacherous sea, however, was still there, entrancing as ever, but also haunting and mysterious, and as we now know, very, very deadly.
* * *
I was in Kuala Lumpur, on a work assignment, when the typhoon struck my home. The only other member of my family who wasn’t home during the typhoon was my sister who lives in California. Everyone else, my three siblings, their spouses, their children, our cousins, our housekeeper and her whole family, were in Tacloban. For three very long and agonizing days, after the typhoon, we heard nothing from our family, while all over the TV and social media, we saw the devastation, the destruction, the deaths wrought by the typhoon.
As soon as we heard from my brother, and confirmed that they were safe, but that some friends and an uncle were dead, that some of the people staying in the house which has been turned into a mini evacuation center were injured, that supplies were running out, and all around the city there was chaos and hardly any medical care, we knew what to do. It was decided that I would make my way to Manila from KL as quickly as I could, and then my husband and I would charter a van to Tacloban and evacuate as many of our family as we could to Manila.
My husband and I left Manila at 3 o’ clock in the morning of the 13th, and arrived in Tacloban at mid-day of the 14th, after almost forty hours of travel. We reached Tacloban through the famed San Juanico Bridge. Our mission was to deliver whatever relief goods we had, check on people whose families and friends had no means to do so themselves, and then evacuate our family, including my brother-in-law’s family, an aunt and cousins, who were then taking shelter in our house. To maximize space for the people who needed to be brought out of Tacloban, everyone had to bring only the barest minimum. Thus, we left our ruined home, our city, with very few possessions, and with very heavy hearts, before the sun could even set on the 14th of November.
* * *
As someone who writes mostly for pleasure, which is to say that I cannot and do not live off my writing, I have found it very, very difficult to write of what I saw, and heard, and feel about my home city, about the lives and experiences of my people, my family, my friends. I cannot stop consuming news about it though. But I cringe at the so-called “human interest” stories that have been coming off the pens of otherwise very good writers and journalists who have been covering the tragedy. In fact, and I know this is very irrational, I am offended at how we have become a city of stories for other people’s catharsis, nay, indulgence.
During Week One, I was asked by a few agencies to write a report, an account, anything they can print or publish. But this was all I could come up with, and I decided to publish it on Facebook myself: https://www.facebook.com/notes/daryll-delgado/what-is-there/10152424193399325
* * *
It has been a month, since I wrote that little piece, 40 days since the typhoon struck. Commercial flights have been resumed and the airport is semi-operational. People tell me that so much has changed, that there are marked improvements in Tacloban. The government even goes so far as to claim that normalcy has been restored to the city. And this piece is supposed to be about how Tacloban is getting back on its feet.
I arrive in Tacloban this time on a plane. The airport structure is still in ruins, but the runway is clear. Repairs and construction work at the airport take place amidst the hustle and bustle of passengers arriving and departing. Makeshift signs have been put up to direct people to arrival and departure areas. Airport attendants are on hand to assist passengers, and, outside, some enterprising locals have put their cars to public use, often for fees that are not at all normal.
There are trucks bearing the logos of international organizations – UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO, USAID, MSF, WFP, PLAN, and many others. There are banners announcing performances by foreign artists. A week ago, Justin Bieber flew to Tacloban to entertain the kids at a public elementary school, and there are talks that Katy Perry is in town.
There are tents for aid workers and military personnel from other countries set up near the airport, and, where the Fisherman’s Village used to be, there is now a village of white tents bearing the logo of the United Nations’ agency for refugees. In the Calanipawan area, a relocation site has been developed, and rows of wooden houses are being constructed and being readied for occupancy by Christmas, I was told. The main streets from the airport to the center of town have been cleared. There are tow trucks and workers bearing DPWH orange uniforms, alongside locals who have taken part in the cash-for-work initiative of the Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation. There is a proliferation of small food stalls and makeshift stores selling fresh produce and, I’ve also been told, looted goods. The strip of lechon stalls is now mostly back in business, and there are eager buyers where there used to be none just a few weeks ago. There are also much less people walking about aimlessly or in a daze, and a few passenger jeepneys and tricycles are now plying the streets of Tacloban, their loud rumbling lovely music to my ears.
At night, the street lamps in some parts of the city center are actually lighted. A few food establishments have started operating along Avenida Veteranos, where a number of restaurants, a school, and Tacloban’s biggest private hospital are located.
Indeed, there are signs of recovery everywhere. And if you choose to see only these signs, there is much to be glad about. In fact, if I stop the piece right here, I would have fulfilled my assignment of writing about how the city is getting back on its feet. * * But it’s very hard to take comfort in the improvements I see around Tacloban, when the reminders of what were taken away from the city and its people by the deadly storm and by the government’s inefficiency are everywhere, including in the air that people breathe, which still bears the smell of corpses that have yet to be unearthed from the debris, or of those buried haphazardly by their own families in shallow graves around the city. The Kusog Tacloban volunteers staying in our house (which has been turned into a headquarters for Kusog Tacloban) tell me that, every day, bodies are still recovered among the debris, under the rubbles, in the bushes. They find it laughable and absurd that the death count has been stopped weeks ago.
On the day I arrive in Tacloban, more than a month after the storm, six bodies are recovered in the mangroves near the airport, and I see two body bags in the street being readied for pick up. On my way to the airport, two days later, to pick up my husband and another lawyer friend who has come with him to help out, I and one of the volunteers driving for me see another body bag on the street where he lives. He tells me that behind his house in Burayan, San Jose, just a few days ago, the bodies of a mother and her child had just been recovered under a pile of wood and rocks. He says that he and his family are lucky – his family lost their home and all of their possessions, and here he is volunteering in relief efforts and saying he is lucky – because his grandmother died inside their house, and they didn’t have to go on a futile search for her body. He says that, for a few days after his grandmother died, his uncles had tried to keep watch over their mother whom they had bundled up in clothes and blankets and laid down on the street, hoping someone would pick her up and help them bury her. But the decomposition was happening too fast, they had to bring their grandmother to what used to be a morgue, where bodied were being left for the authorities to get them. He tells me that they are not sure where she was brought to after that, but that when they checked, all the bodies in the morgue had already been taken and most likely buried in a mass grave at the public cemetery.
Where streets have been cleared, so much trash and debris have accumulated in piles that continue to grow every day, while collection of garbage is still not done regularly. In many areas, these piles are now as high as people’s homes. In an area near Manlurip, where there used to be a lovely pond and fronds, there is now a sea of trash and people have taken to poking through it, for money or for anything they can make use of.
Two friends of ours, sisters, whose entire house in San Jose, near the airport, was washed away, and whose parents and the child of one of the sisters drowned in the 17-foot-high storm surge, have also taken to poking through the mountain of trash near their area. Ever since they found a piece of clothing which they are convinced belonged to their mother, and some kitchen ware which they believe, or want to believe, were part of their mother’s collection, they have been obsessed with collecting as many of these articles as they can. I implore them to please don’t do this, for health reasons at least, but they have bigger reasons to keep at it. They never saw the bodies of their loved ones who died. They were both in Manila when the storm struck. For weeks after the storm, they searched night and day for their parents and for the child, until they were informed by a neighbor who had positively identified their family members that he himself had helped in bundling them up for burial in a mass grave in a place called Vasper, near the San Juanico Bridge. Since then, they have taken to recovering, collecting, rebuilding from the trash and debris what they can of the home and family that they lost.
Some people have taken to burning trash piles every afternoon just before dark, and in many parts of the city, you see flames and thick swirls of gray smoke against a deep orange sunset. The scene this makes is strangely beautiful, surreal, and cinematic, except that this is not happening in a movie, it’s happening right in front of your very eyes, in your home city. * * * It is very hard, as well, to take comfort in the miniscule improvements one sees in Tacloban City, when in the neighboring coastal towns of Palo, Tanauan, Tolosa, Dulag, and others that were also badly-hit by the storm, where many of our relatives and friends are from, where so many people died and lost their homes and livelihoods, hardly any improvement can be seen.
To this day, these towns still look like they’ve been bombed out. Fishing villages are no more, concrete houses are now just piles of rocks. Thousands of coconut trees in vast coconut plantations have been decapitated, and only the trunks remain, a few of which are standing, but many are completely felled to the ground. Where thriving, dense communities used to be, these have been replaced with tent homes, nice ones from the UN if they’re lucky, or makeshift ones using tarpaulins they’ve somehow managed to get from other organizations if not so lucky. Many of the school buildings have been crushed, entire structures flattened. Some of the schools were lucky to get tent classrooms, many others have to wait from the DepEd for help.
We meet several kids happily hanging out in school grounds, a couple of brave and naughty boys jumping precariously on unsteady, broken walls. They tell us that they have started going to school, using just one building, but that they don’t really do any schoolwork yet. When I ask them how it is that they fit into just one building, they tell me that many of their schoolmates are no longer around, that many of them have died, and others went away with their families to Manila or Cebu. We meet more kids in the intersection of Tanauan and Tolosa, in the small triangle park where used to stand a big sign saying “this way to Tanauan Poblacion” but which the locals have turned into a grave site. They point us to their families’ burial mounds, and we see many haphazard crosses and wood plaques bearing long lists of names with the same family name per mound.
One boy, Diether, about ten years of age, brings me to where his four brothers and sisters, his father, his grandparents and two baby cousins he wasn’t sure were boys or girls, are buried. I ask him where his mother is and he points to a small makeshift tent house. He tells me that he survived by hanging on to a trunk of Gemelina tree, because, he informs me, Gmelina wood is a good floater, and that it manages to stay on top of strong, strong waves, much like the waves that came and ate up his house and his brothers and sisters and his grandparents. He says he was separated from his mother when the waves came, and when the waves went back to the ocean, he was thrown to the ground and then he just got up and started walking, walking, and walking until he chanced upon Elvie, his youngest sister aged one year old, near the “Triangle”. Elvie is among those buried in the mound on the triangle park.
Another child, a girl named Angela, aged nine years old, tells me she found herself on top of a mango tree when the waves came, and she held on to a branch for four hours, her body shivering, going rigid in the cold. She says that at some point she wanted to let go already, but that her hands were frozen and she could not lift them from around the branch. Her older sister, several cousins, and grandparents are buried in the mound she brings me to. She tells me that her mother’s name is also written on the wooden cross planted on the ground, but that her body is actually buried in another area. When I ask her why this is so, she says that her mother’s body has just been found only the day before, and can no longer be buried with the other members of her family who had died.
A little boy, aged five, proudly volunteers that he survived by “sorfing”. When I ask him if he means that he laid on top of a wood plank, he says, no, he actually, really “sorfed”, and the two other kids confirm that they saw how he did it, that he had indeed stood and balanced himself on a floating plywood and rode the waves. I ask him if he is a surfer, like many of the boys in Tanauan, and he says that he just learned to “sorf” during the storm. I tell him that he is very brave and that he should join my brother and his friends when they come back to Tanauan to surf, and I am rewarded with a very sweet toothless grin. This boy also lost a parent, and he points me to a part of the triangle park with rocks formed into a square. It is not very clear from his innocent, childish narrative if he also lost siblings, but I see many names bearing the same last name inscribed on the small crosses lining the head of the rocky plot, and I do not bother asking him whose these names are exactly.
There are many more plots, mounds, bearing makeshift crosses on the triangle park. Next to the crosses, we see articles of clothing belonging to the dead loved one, a limbless doll, a pair of sneakers, and unopened bottles of water. I ask a man tending to his wife’s grave why there are bottles of water, and he tells me that they don’t want their loved ones to go thirsty much like what they, the living, went through, days after the storm. He says that these are also a reminder that it was water that took their loved ones away.
* * *
In Tacloban City, we find ourselves hanging out, at the end of each tiring day, in Giuseppe's, the Italian bistro along Avenida Veteranos. The place is well-lighted, always packed. From the outside, it all looks normal indeed, festive even. But when we enter the place we do not recognize anyone except the owner, Joseph. The place is packed with foreign aid workers who like to come to the restaurant for a good meal, a bottle of wine, a cold beer, after a long day’s work. While here, as long as you don’t see the many military personnel walking around, and police cars constantly patrolling the street outside, it is easy – and sometimes necessary – to forget that, elsewhere, there is darkness and disorder, death and devastation.
On my first night back home, I meet with a doctor friend, Mabel, who is working with one of the international organizations on the ground. We are telling ourselves just this, exactly, that we like and maybe deserve this fantasy, this illusion of normalcy, when, from the street, a young woman, speaking very loudly, laughing hysterically, intrudes into the scene. She is scantily clad, and covered in grime. Her eyes are wild, dilated, angry.
The crowd of international volunteers and aid workers remain calm, and try to ignore her. The police watch her very intently, aware also that they're being watched by humanitarian workers. The woman continues to provoke the crowd, starts dancing, gyrating in the middle of the street. She starts to approach us, even as we try to avoid staring at her, hoping she won't single us out. She does single us out and in a very loud voice, demands for a slice of pizza, speaking in English. We tell her, in a calm and what we hope is a comforting voice, to ask nicely and put on her top. She calls our bluff and shouts, demands even more loudly. Then, she says, you want me to put this on? This? Here! She pulls at her tattered top violently, flings it to the ground, and flaunts her almost-naked body at the crowd instead. Then she breaches the small garden separating the restaurant from the street and comes straight for us, grabs our beer and dashes back to the street. She takes a gulp from the grande bottle, pours the rest of the content on herself, and then smashes the bottle on the street. She then grabs a sliver of glass and threatens the women tending a small stall across the restaurant, and suddenly she is lunging at them with her weapon, and the women start to run. She runs after them, shouting, waving her weapon in the air. The people, the foreign aid workers in the restaurant tell the two policemen to please restrain her already. The policemen finally run after the crazed woman, while we all look on, helplessly, and try embarrassedly to go back to our pizza and beer.
My doctor friend says there are many like her, and many more will be like her, if they remain untreated, if their trauma remains unaddressed. She fears that the young woman might be on drugs or might have gone through something very, very violent. She says she can see it in the woman’s face. And I think, well, there she is, hers is the real face of the city. And perhaps we need to gaze at her straight in the face, no matter how difficult, or painful, or frightening it may be.
* * *
I start writing this piece only on the fortieth day after the storm. In traditional Catholic practice, the fortieth day is significant in that it marks the official end of mourning, and the dead are honored and “sent off” with prayers and a feast we call “pa-cuarenta”. All over Tacloban and in neighboring coastal towns, people are lighting candles, saying prayers. Our families in different parts of the world also light candles in their own homes.
Magina Fernandez, Joji Dorado, and the Kusog Tacloban volunteers have involved themselves in the arrangements for the “pa-cuarenta” memorial and candle-lighting in remembrance of the dead. They have taken time off from distribution of relief goods, from doing repairs of people’s homes, from assisting medical missions, for this equally important undertaking. The “pa-cuarenta” candles provided by the tourism office illuminate the city, and the people, as a collective, temporarily confront the darkness around them. When the candles melt and their lights die, a full moon appears and is reflected on the still body of water that surrounds the city. Many people take comfort, find grace in the fact that the “pa-cuarenta” falls exactly on the night of the full-moon, on December 17th. They find meaningful connections and patterns in these incidents and coincidences. And, indeed, the event, the public display of mourning and grief, is really much about helping people find grace and comfort too where these are scant, through symbols and rituals of healing and recovery they believe in and understand.
My friend, Didits Palami, whose family owns a school in Tacloban, for her part says that, in terms of coping, the best way she knows of right now, is to not stop working, not rest, not relax. My cousin, Marie Apostol, who initiated Kusog Tacloban, also feels the same way. And so do I, so do many of us who survived, who were spared, or who weren’t there in Tacloban to go through what our families went through on November 8th.
We have read enough books to know that this is survivor’s guilt, but this is also, in very practical and pragmatic terms, what is needed right now – to work hard, to not waste time, to not flinch. But then, on the fortieth day, at 3:00 in the afternoon, we also stop, to light candles, to remember, to honor the dead, and the city that once was.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)