Palo

Today my translator and I took a jeep to Palo, a smallish town near Tacloban that has a large memorial statue of General MacArthur and other nameless solders walking on water.  We started our hunt in the central market.  I didn’t like it very much; one of the people we asked for help was a grilled pig vendor, and as my translator asked him for leads I stood next to a pig head that was swarming with flies and tried to ignore the mentally handicapped girl who was screaming nonsense at me from across the street and the boy who had Downs Syndrome and several open, bleeding wounds on his chest who was tugging at my elbow.   I think a nearby vendor must have had an arrangement with a special-needs institution to put them to work.

Take a look at this leaf!

I was relieved to hop on a motorcycle taxi and rumble away to the rural outskirts of the town.  The scenery was beautiful.  The taxi driver told us to be careful and to return immediately if it started to rain.  The fields flood easily, apparently, and when the rice water covers the road it’s easy to catch a parasite that causes fever, cirrhosis, and psychosis.

Equally alarming, I received an unexpected visit in my hotel room today.  The windows in my room face an outdoors walkway, which means that I can often see people walking past and that I can’t change clothes with the blinds open.  Today I cracked the windows open to enjoy the nice rainy breeze.  A few minutes later, as I lay in my bed and checked my emails, I was startled by one of the hotel interns when he pressed his face against the screen and, less than a foot away from my ear, shouted “HELLO!”