The pale moonlight bathed the ramshackle hut of Pacita de la Cruz, which the 45-year-old mother shares with 11 relatives. The shack, built from twisted iron sheets and wood salvaged after last week's typhoon, measures about 8 square metres. It shelters de la Cruz, her two children and relatives of her missing husband. Next to it was a plywood board with the message: "Missing. We need your attention." It listed the names of three of eight relatives who were unaccounted for.
Wood, bent iron sheets, bicycle tyres, buckets, chairs, cutlery, cooking utensils and refrigerator parts were strewn all over the place. "All in all, we lost 15 relatives in the storm," de la Cruz said while washing dishes at a nearby well where they get foul-smelling, brownish water. The hot, humid air smelled of death and rotting flesh. "That's from the body of a dead woman at the back, which has not yet been retrieved since the storm struck," she said.
De la Cruz lost her eldest son, a daughter-in-law and a 3-year-old grandson when a wall of water submerged their seaside community in Tacloban City, the capital of the worst-hit province of Leyte. Her husband and another grandson are still missing. "We have no time to grieve," she said. "All our dead relatives were picked up by rescuers and placed in a dump truck. The rescuers told us they would be buried in the mass grave." Nine of her family's dead and missing were children, she said.
Sitting on plastic chairs nearby were two cousins by marriage, resting after spending most of the day looking for their missing loved ones. Arsenio Arogancia stared at the wasteland across the road, which used to be a thriving community of more than 1,000 families. Not a house was left standing. His 14-year-old daughter was killed, while his wife, 7-year-old daughter, mother, one brother and a 5-year-old niece were still missing.
"I miss my children and my wife," the 47-year-old bus driver said. "I wish I could have spent more time with them." Sobbing uncontrollably, he added that even if he cannot give them a proper burial, "I have to find them, whatever it takes." It was past nine in the evening when cousin Angelito Amistoso, 40, returned with two nephews, carrying packs of noodles and sardines they got from a truck distributing aid.
"This is our life here now. We distribute the work - some of us search for our missing, some look for distribution sites of aid, while some of us do the laundry and house chores," de la Cruz said. Her daughter and a niece put broken wood under three big stones, where they placed a pot of water to cook the noodles. Half an hour later, de la Cruz and her relatives went inside the shack and squatted around the pots. After saying grace, they ate under the flicker of two oil lamps.
"We are thankful that we were able to eat two times today," she said. "But I know these donations will not last very long, so we will have to start thinking about our future." But the family had only the following day on their minds as they slept on wooden doors and a mattress they had found. At daybreak, everybody was up and about. The men put on boots they had looted from a department store and walked grimly back to the wasteland.
Amistoso, who suffered a deep cut above his knee during the storm, said he would go to a park where a Japanese medical team was stationed to have the wound checked. "I had chills last night," he said. "I am afraid the wound has become infected." Other family members set out to look for food and other relief goods. De la Cruz and her daughter stayed in the hut, quietly cooking noodles and sardines.
At midday, all the relatives gathered to eat their breakfast. Two nephews brought back fried noodles and rice, but the food already smelled off. "We have to eat fast before the food spoils," de la Cruz said. As they ate, volunteers walked past de la Cruz to retrieve the body of the dead woman, but backed out after they saw it was submerged in water. Another team with a backhoe would come to retrieve it, they said. The family no longer minded the smell from the rotting corpse. "We cannot do anything about it," de la Cruz said. "Anyway, we are already used to the smell."