After Pablo HD

DAVAO ORIENTAL, Philippines - This is the story of Pablo, of the many small towns from Andap to Kinablangan. There were warnings of a storm, but very few knew what it meant. When the wind began whipping, those who could ran to schools and gyms and high ground, many of those who died were killed on the way, or crushed under the rubble of evacuation centers that were also built by men who had never seen storms. There is old man Egido, who stands on the side of the road, smoking his last Marlboro, staring at the coconut trees he cannot harvest. In Andap, a field of rocks is all that is left of the Charlie Company detachment, the 27-year-old man pretends not to cry when he recites the names of his 7 dead, and is wracked by guilt when he speaks of the sergeant whose hand he was clutching slipped in the flashfloods. In New Bataan, there is a young man named Dante digging through bodies, looking for 18 of his family who disappeared when he was in Davao. Maybe he is there still, haunting the funeral parlors and sitting beside unmarked graves. All he wants, he says, is a body to bury. It is a story so huge it is difficult to grasp. There are families who refuse to admit that "missing" may now mean dead more than a month after Typhoon Pablo. There are mothers who receive bags of rotten rice and cook them anyway, there is electioneering and politicking, but there are also teachers who teach classes in muddy slippers and pristine uniforms inside classrooms without roofs. There are ...