Burma: a Natural Disaster or Political Calamity?

A Filipino journalist happened to be in Burma during the terrible cyclone that recently claimed tens of thousands of lives. Here is her account:

Cyclone Nagris that hit this former capital of Myanmar and its neighboring areas last weekend has made the already impoverished people in far worse situation in the months, and maybe years, ahead. Read more

View surreptitious photos taken by Tita Valderama here

Selvakumar Knew Better: a picture book on the tsunami

I was moved by this achingly beautiful picture book Selvakumar Knew Better by Virginia Kroll and illustrated by Xiojun Li which tells the terrible story of the 2004 tsunami but manages to light up its message with hope and innocence. Visit LookyBook to view a larger version of the embedded book.

Disaster and the Politics of Forgetting

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the screening last week of Tsunami: The Aftermath, the BBC TV drama series written by Bafta winner Abi Morgan (Sex Traffic and Murder).

Was it shown too soon after the disaster (it is only the second anniversary of the Tsunami that devastated so many coastlines in 2004)?

Did it disregard the feelings of survivors and families of those who died?

A long, long time ago, I wrote an article about a tsunami.

It was rather ignominous journalism — I reported from the comfort of my desk at the Philippine Daily Inquirer in Manila, telephoning the mayor’s office in Tacloban, Leyte hundreds of miles away, to get the stats from a garrulous PR person. Earthquake out there in the sea. Very high on the richter scale. Drove a giant wave to the shore. Hundreds dead, so many casualties. Property destroyed. It was automatic writing as far as I was concerned. Then he said, wait a minute, there’s a man here who was a witness.

The man was sitting in the mayor’s waiting room, hoping to ask the mayor for some help. He took the phone and told me how he and his family took shelter behind a thick concrete wall, thinking the water would simply wash over them. But the wave was so strong, the concrete bowed inwards and cracked. His family ran. They made it but lost everything, their animals, their home. "I don’t know what to do," he said. "What should I do?," "Thanks for talking to me," I replied, eyeing the clock above the subs’ desk to check how much time I had left to file the story.

He was one of the lucky ones.When my piece came out on the front page of the following day’s paper, people complimented me on how moving it was. They said they were so touched they donated money to the tsunami relief effort.

The story was accompanied by a photograph. Four tiny white coffins in a church hall, a woman kneeling, head touching the ground. Weeping for her four dead children.

The photograph was like an accusation.

What did I know about how it felt, to have your life wiped away by an unexpected act of fate?

I knew nothing. I had no idea.

Sometimes I comfort myself, thinking, that photograph, that article, must have moved many to donate money towards helping those poor people.

But I was not to know. The story was over: even as people began reading the article in their morning papers, I was already working on the next story. Something about a clash between government troops and insurgents.

But of course, the victims of that tsunami had not moved on. They were in the thick of their ruined lives. They may still be picking up the pieces to this day, 20 plus years on.

Was it too soon for the BBC to remind the world about the 2004 tsunami? It’s never too soon.

Disaster is not an end. It’s the beginning of a long process of survival.

Please give generously to the Philippine Red Cross appeal for victims of the recent Typhoon Reming Disaster. From the UK, you can contact my trusted Filipino remittance company London Manila Express and cheaply arrange a transfer of funds to the Red Cross account.

Photo of Tsunami, The Aftermath © the BBC, photo of the tsunami in 2004 from freerepublic.com.

Calamity is about People

"They fled a toxic cocktail of volcanic gas and ashes and then suffered an avalanche of volcanic debris that has buried most of their homes," he said in an official sounding voice. "Now they shelter where they can —"

He pointed the camera directly at Mouse.

Mouse puckered his lips and made a rude noise, "Pfffttbbbfff."

Excerpt from Volcano Child

When you watch television news videos of calamities in the Far East, do you see sad, hopeless, faces with nothing much to say and nowhere to go?

When I see videos like that, I see my own brown face multiplied a hundredfold.

It happened again the other day.

Around Mayon Volcano, the scenery turned from this:

To this:

A super typhoon slammed into the Philippines and Mayon Volcano unleashed a torrent of mud and boulders, burying towns and killing (by the most recent count) almost 1,000 people. And there, on the BBC news, were the sad fathers and the sobbing mothers and the homeless orphans.

This is one of the reasons I wrote Volcano Child. I wanted to show that calamity happened to real people.

Like me.

Like you.

The Philippine Red Cross is on the scene now and I am sure donations will be welcomed. This can be done via a bank transfer (see the bank details on their website). From the UK, funds can be transferred more cheaply via a Filipino remittance firm. The one I use is London Manila Express

Photographs © Tommy Bombon, English Al-Jazeera and Red Cross Philippines

Waiting for Calamity

Father once told me that animals knew when calamity was imminent. Dogs barked, roosters crowed, water buffalo abandoned their mud holes.

I glanced at Bowow, who lay flat on his back at the foot of Mouse’s mat, snoring, mouth open, paws limp in sleep. Ridiculous dog. No sign of calamity there.

Excerpt from Volcano Child

Albert Garcia emailed to wish me well with the website. He's the photojournalist who snapped the van escaping the pyroclastic flow. He apologised for the un-updated state of his website – "I've been away for a month photographing Mayon," he wrote in Tagalog,"just hoping I'd strike it lucky again!"

Oooh, Albert, be careful, man. Looking at that amazing pic of the van fleeing the eruption cloud, what you don't realise is that Albert was in the vehicle in front, hanging out of the back door, breathing sulfur and composing his shot, instead of whatever it is you're supposed to do when death is staring you in the face.

The volcano they were running away from is Mount Pinatubo. I based the eruption in my story on Pinatubo. But Pinatubo was not much to look at - in fact, now that it's erupted, Pinatubo is more a lake than a mountain.

So I had to look elsewhere for a nicer looking volcano to describe and I chose Mayon. That's Pinatubo on the left (not quite sure which lump is the actual volcano). And that's postcard-perfect Mayon on the right in Per-Andre Hoffman's postcard perfect photo.

To tell you the truth, I had no idea Pinatubo was a volcano until it blew its top. Literally. It was a catastrophic eruption, one of the largest and most violent in the 20th century! The sort of thing you would see on those Extreme Volcano shows on cable TV. But more about Pinatubo later.

Strange coincidence that Mayon Volcano decided to wake up just as I was finishing my book.

Mayon is a busy volcano, erupting once every ten years which is plenty often – especially if you live on its slopes as up to 50,000 people do. It's not a Krakatoa but it makes up for it in its persistence. Here is a video of it huffing and puffing last July from MysteriousGreenEyes over at YouTube:

Beautiful but scary. You can also check out the news videos on the BBC. It didn't in fact erupt, but stones the size of cars flew out of the cone. Residents are this minute making their way home again fed up with living in uncomfortable evacuation centres, oh dear.

Living next to a volcano must be like having an unexploded timebomb in the next door bedroom.

Like living with a teenager really.

Joke only, as we say in the Philippines.