Happy New Year!

2014 was the warmest year in Denmark since records began to be kept 140 years ago. Autumn, all the way into December, were also quite mild, with only a few nights at below zero temperatures. But on Christmas morning snow fell, and we woke up to a white world -- as though to confirm that Christmas Day is the most peaceful day of the year. And so for the first time this year we had a few days of slight frost, and the blue skies and bright sun that ironically accompany them.

Once in a while the pop of fireworks breaks the silence, as people let loose a rocket or two in anticipation of New Year's Eve; in the living room stands a Christmas tree topped with a white star, hung with paper drums, flags, angels, tinsel, hand-folded paper hearts, and red candles now lit on New Year's Eve, the last day of the year.

2014 was an exciting one for me, with many welcome challenges in my professional and creative life.

In February I started work as a moderator at a children's social networking game / website. Although the community is in the United Kingdom, I work from home in Denmark; it is a job that gives me considerable flexibility in my schedule and reduces the amount of time spent on a long and expensive commute. The portability of the job was aptly demonstrated during a four-week visit to the Philippines in March, where I continued to work while able to spend time with my family (and applauded as my niece Fia graduated from elementary school).

In May I published my third work of fiction, the novel called Sweet Haven, which was released as an e-book by the New York Review of Books in the United States and Canada. I continue to write fiction, and this year stories were printed in a magazine in the Philippines and in an anthology in the United Kingdom.

We entertain quite often, at a table that my husband inherited from his father (and grandfather), at which two Nobel prize winners, Wole Soyinka and Bjørnsterne Bjørnson have sat. This year, we were visited by Valerie Coghlan from Ireland, director of IBBY's journal Bookbird, and Edwin Thumboo, Singapore's "grand old poet", and two of Brazil's children's literature stars: Ana Maria Machado and Roger Mello. In the summer, we visited two of Vagn's longtime friends at the seaside town of Bastad in Sweden, where world-famous tennis matches are held. And this summer I persuaded my husband to drive me all the way to the Louisiana Museum to watch a reading by Margaret Atwood, one of my favorite authors, and to get my copy of Handmaid's Tale in Danish signed. It joins the modest collection of signed books in the small room I call my office -- I have likewise a small piece of authors like Doris Lessing, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison and Richard E. Grant.

In the fall came another challenge, something I had been looking forward to for some time -- teaching two writing courses in English (intermediate and advanced) at Studieskolen, a language school in Copenhagen, as well as a course in beginning-level Filipino.

My health has not been perfect the last few years, and three weeks into the fall term I underwent laparoscopic surgery -- my first under general anesthesia; fortunately what was found and removed was not malignant. The procedures at the Danish hospital where I was treated were all impressive, and I amazingly it was free, or rather, paid for by the high income taxes (nearly 50% in some cases) that are a part of life in Denmark. Now I have every reason to pay them with gusto (insert smiley!) I recovered quickly and missed only the fall break and two class days out of the fall term.

This year, I travelled to Mexico for the first time to accompany my husband Vagn to the IBBY Congress in September. We spent three days on the Yucatan peninsula, renting a car and driving from Cancun to Rio Lagartos, then Valladolid, then the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, then the seaside resort of Tulum. Once we drove through a curtain of rain so thick we navigated only through the lights of the truck in front of us. We took a boat tour through mangrove swamps, and photographed flamingos, egrets and a crocodile that slipped sinuously out of its hiding place in the mangroves to take a whole fish from our guide. Flying to Mexico City, we visited the canals at Xochimilco (boatloads of mariachis bellowing "Cielito Lindo" etc), and, while Vagn was at the Congress, I ventured out into the city with map in hand, visiting the Zocalo, the Diego Rivera museum, and the amazing National Anthropology Museum. I took a guided day tour to the ruins of Teotihuacan.

Six years have passed since I moved to Denmark to be with my husband, and 11 years since I first set foot in this country. I speak Danish fluently enough, but I doubt will ever be considered "one of us," and so I am happy to have found jobs that make use of my English skills. There are many challenges in this adoptive country I have learned to call home, but many beautiful things besides, not the least some very special individuals I wouldn't have met otherwise. And thanks to the miracle of technology, we can keep in touch with the many wonderful people who have crossed our lives, so that if we choose, we can opt for a constant state of awareness of each other, making the state of foreignness that much more bearable.

Happy New Year, dearest friends!

Sweet Haven by Lakambini Sitoy (New York Review of Books), 2014: now available

My novel Sweet Haven is now available as an ebook in North America, published by the New York Review of Books. Here is the synopsis from their website:

From a brilliant new talent, comes a sharp and sensual novel set in a decaying and unromanticized Philippines. In the little city of Donostia, bad news travels fast. So when 16-year-old Naia is found in an illicit pornography video, the tight-knit community is outraged. They want answers. The finger of blame soon points to Narita, Naia’s absentee mother, for putting career ahead of duty. Now Narita is back from Manila and must face her past and the memories of a life she fled. In search of the answers to her daughter's scandal, she follows a trail of evidence to reveal a web of family secrets, corruption, prejudice and the barriers of social class. 
At its heart, Sweet Haven is a story of a family buffeted by an ailing and intransigent nation, of the simple and bitter ways by which a family falls apart, and the brave leaps they can take to put themselves back together. Sharp-witted, keenly observant, with a passion for the rich tragic-comedy of life, Lakambini Sitoy takes on the everyday complacencies that can shatter a life – or save it.

Coke, my sister Leilani, and 50 shades of cray

Two Belgian professors tested the 10 most borrowed books in the Atwerp public library, and found traces of the herpes virus on a copy of erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey.

Just goes to prove real women don't write trashy porn novels, they ride 'em.

***
And get this: all 10 books tested positive for traces of cocaine. Significant enough for anyone handling the books to test positive for the drug, but not enough to get high on.

A link to the news story from Time.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/14/professors-test-fifty-shades-of-grey-library-book-find-it-has-traces-of-herpes/
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It is November 18, 2013, exactly six years from the day (and time: 10:35 pm) that my sister Leilani died. "Bing will have to get along without me," she said, a day or two before. She didn't want me slopping around in grief, but I did, living in a repeating reel of her final hours, 24/7, for the next few years. This year, I want to celebrate her funny, irreverent, off-beat spirit. Hence, the post above.

I can imagine she would have found the link first, then showed it to me. Then she would have roared with laughter at my quip: "Real men don't write trashy novels, they wear them." Soon after, one of us would have come up with the clincher: "Real women don't write trashy erotic novels, they ride 'em."

We were like that. Cray-cray. In a good way. We made each other laugh. I got my sense of comedy from her. I was the fast-talking stand-up, she the appreciative audience of one.

My sister Leilani posing with entertainer Sam Milby at the PSBank Christmas party, 2006.

Typhoon Haiyan remains a top story in Danish press

Danish newspaper Politiken continues to give major space to typhoon Haiyan and its victims, devoting a full-page spread in its Saturday, September 17 issue. The title says, simply: "What now?"

Top story in Danmarks Radio(DR)'s noon broadcast was how foreign aid is helping -- but also hurting -- victims on the ground.

Raising funds for typhoon Haiyan victims in City Hall Square, Copenhagen, Nov 16

 

 

 

 

 

Young Filipina au pair receives a donation from a passerby at a fundraiser event for the victims of typhoon Haiyan, City Hall Square (Rådhuspladsen) in Copenhagen, November 17, 2013. The event was organized almost entirely through Facebook and brought together several generations of Filipino migrants to Denmark.

 

 

Letter from Merlie Alunan, poet, critic, academic, and typhoon Haiyan survivor

MERLIE ALUNAN, acclaimed poet, critic and academic, lived in Tacloban, Leyte for 20 years. She and her family survived typhoon Haiyan, their house, a relative distance from the seaside, losing its roof. I was among her many friends - colleagues, former students - who constantly monitored their Facebook news feeds for word about her. Four days ago, a message that she was safe; today, she posted the letter below on her Facebook wall, writing out of Cebu City.

Photo from Tim Tomlinson, grabbed off Merlie's Facebook wall.

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Dear Friends,

For three days after the storm at least, we puttered around the house and out in what was left of the garden, trying to get dry, put things back, fix what we can of the roof. The pipes have dried up, people around us were beginning to worry about what to drink. The day after the storm, Jang and Eb and Dax and Anya took a car to go around the city and came back with stories--the looting had seriously gotten started in whatever places they could get to-- Robinson's Mall, Natasha, Godsend.

On this second day, not a sign of government presence, though we had already heard about the deaths in Astrodome, a major evacuation center, the total desolation of San Jose and the downtown area. We heard rumors of the mayor's own encounter with calamity, probably the reason why the response from the local government had not been forthcoming. We also considered how the storm had affected everyone, each one was now preoccupied with his own household to mind anything else. The black out of communication was worst of all, the city was stranded in that limbo for all the two days. We kept looking up to the skies and it was only on the third day that we heard the welcome roar of a plane, and soon after that, helicopters. We were living in the suburban area, far from the more populous downtown area. My children made occasional forays into the downtown area to check on things. They brought home eyewitness stories of the looting that was happening all over the city.

Some stories began floating around about a "group" from Samar who masterminded the looting, the Taclobanons did not start it, so the stories go, some outsiders were the ones who started it, or the prisoners released from jail. The looters brought trucks, jeeps, even cars, to cart away whatever they could--refrigerators, tv sets, washing machines, clothes, shoes, bags, computers--whatever they could find inside a warehouse or depatment store. It was like sharks in a feeding frenzy, and occasionally, we hear it told, the looters would kill each other inside a warehouse as they vie to get as much as they can of the coveted items, whatever that may be. The looters were not only the poor and the homeless, the middle class were visibly involved in it, with impunity and gloating at unprecedented opportunity to acquire for free what they had coveted for a long time. In the face of this, Taclobanons have their share in pushing their own city deeper into the mud.

Sunzibar Cafe and Canto Fresco's two units have all been invaded. Very small gleanings there. Ayo Cafe cannot be opened. All told, these little stores are down. So we only have our life--unharmed and for that we are grateful, praise God. Ayo, Sunzibar and Canto Fresco are in the respective brains of the owners and they can be transformed with a lot of will power and hard work into material reality. We are on our way to Dumaguete now where my son, Babbu and his family live. You will hear from us again. Thank you for your concern.

We would like to return to Tacloban. It had been our home more than twenty years. We have many friends in Tacloban. The most significant works of my life I may have done for Tacloban and the people of Leyte. We pray that they city finds its heart again and it will once again be a haven for its people.

 

Day 6 in Tacloban, Leyte; a Danish news program tells a now-familiar story of scarce aid and desperate evacuation

 

http://www.dr.dk/tv/se/tv-avisen/tv-avisen-881#!/

Segment on the Philippines at 06:45 - 11:50.

ABOVE, a link to DR's (Danish television) news show at 9:30 pm Thursday night. We are no longer the top story. The clip about the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines starts at 06:45. Steffen Kretz, the reporter, begins his reportage with footage of his arrival two days ago, and what greeted him; I wonder if he may be reassigned soon, leaving the other two, Søren Bendixsen and Philip Khakhar, to continue the coverage. Tacloban is being called the epicenter, the worst hit; this corresponds with many news reports forwarded by my friends on Facebook referring to the capital of Leyte as “ground zero.”

The images are the same, the stories the same, as over the past six days, themes and images also found on CNN and the BBC. “There are no emergency workers in some parts of the city, odd given the global media focus on the disaster,” Kretz says. “Food and clean water” are still what people are in dire need of.  There is no way to buy anything, and people are dependent on aid from outside. “Help comes in small parcels, and comes slowly.”

There is a welcome sight: Red Cross workers filling giant containers with clean water that has been trucked in from Manila.

To the anchor’s question of how people are surviving in city so ruined, Kretz replies that it is difficult to comprehend. People have been leaving – flown out on cargo planes or packed into a naval ship bound for another city. Children stand by the roadside, reaching out as the media vehicle passes, their eyes desperate.

The UN estimates the death toll at 4,500, the anchor says. The clip ends at 11:50.

Day Six, and this is how it looks.

Guiuan town's plight in the headlines in Denmark

Danish newspaper Politiken has the Philippines in its headlines today – not Tacloban, Leyte, which has gained a lot of media coverage the last six days, but Guiuan, a fishing town in the neighboring province of Eastern Samar.  

***

My translation of the front page article:

 

Guiuan waits desperately for help (Politiken, November 14, 2013, Denmark)

Kim Rathcke Jensen, correspondent, Guiuan

Peter Hove Olesen, photo
 

IT LOOKS like a tropical paradise on a perfect day. The sky is blue. So is the ocean. And down below in the rolling water lies Guiuan, with white beaches and palm trees.

But it is not paradise.

"Can you smell that," the pilot asks, as he swings the little propeller plane in over the landing strip.

Already, at several hundred meters above the ground, the sweet reek of dead bodies. People and animals.

Guiuan is a town of 50,000 inhabitants on the Philippine island Samar. It was the first to get hit when typhoon Haiyan made landfall on Friday. But it is the last to get emergency aid.

The situation is the same as in hard-hit Tacloban, but maybe worse. Everything is ruined. The town, neighboring towns, the entire surrounding area are flattened. People in the hundreds are dead.

"All attention is on Tacloban," says Henry M. Afable, mayor of Guiuan's neighboring municipality Maydolong.

Therefore only a few deliveries of government aid have arrived, and international organizations such as the Red Cross have yet to come forward.
 

"We need food. Medicine. Shelter. We have too little. Our supplies are nearly depleted," says Henry M. Afable.

 

Politiken is one of the first Western media outfits to reach the town. Everywhere, inhabitants are desperate. Many have lost everything.

37-year-old Raquel Husun lived by the seashore in Guiuan with her husband and five children. Today the house is gone. Just the floor and a wall remain. They have stretched a tarpaulin overhead, and here she sits and cradles her three-year-old Jiff.

"The water rose to our necks," she says, of that fateful day. She looks away.

The mayor in Guiuan, Sheen Gonzales, is not in doubt: "You must help us."  

Translation: Lakambini Sitoy
***

 
Below is page 4: again a full page, with a shot of Guiuan taken by Politiken's own photographer. I can count five Danish journalists in the Philippines right now (there might be more), plus the head of the Danish Red Cross who is in Manila.

 

In the central Philippines, a humanitarian crisis, on Facebook, TROLLS!

 

NOW the Danish news is focused on the humanitarian crisis in Tacloban, Leyte, and the rest of the Philippines: the delay in receipt of food, water and medicine on the ground, despite the loads of aid arriving from foreign countries. DR (Denmark's state television) has three reporters as of today in my country.

Philip Khakhar, normally assigned to Afghanistan, filed his report from Cebu, the afternoon of November 13. The death of eight people in a panicked stampede at a store or warehouse came up, Khakhar quoting a witness who said the looters were not criminals nor professionals, just ordinary citizens who were starving.

He mentions President Aquino's statement that the actual death toll was closer to 2,000 - 2,5000 instead of 10,000, adding that it sounded like an attempt to downplay the extent of the damage in the face of a storm of criticism of the government.

In the second part of the report, Danish Red Cross director Anders Laderkarl is interviewed via Skype from Manila, speaking of the logistical challenge of getting help out to those who need it.

I don't have a direct link to this report but here's a link to DR's news menu as of today, November 13: http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/

(Sorry, it's in Danish: my loose summary is the best I can do at the moment).

 

***

For the first time in five days I've gotten away from my computer, to which I'd been glued relentlessly reading through the updates on Facebook. Today the anger and frustration have escalated into full-scale arguments among my roster of friends and connections, most of whom have ties with the Philippines if not actually living there.

 

There are the usual conspiracy theorists, alternating criticism and defense of the Philippine government (especially those involved in getting aid to the victims of typhoon Haiyan), and, perhaps not surprisingly, a return to the cutesy forwarded bull --- blah invited you to play blah, blah likes a page, blah has uploaded a food-porn shot as she was wont to do pre-typhoon -- that makes me want to throw the portable phone at my computer screen (not advisable, not advisable at all).

And of course, there are the trolls, the many-striped Philippine and the common North American variety, slinking around to feed with ever-growing confidence and to spread their foul leavings over the internet. Whether it's disgruntlement at the defeat of a political patron, or righteous confidence in the proximity of the Rapture, or a just-plain-racist conviction that Filipinos ought to be sterilized out of existence, trolls take pleasure in rudeness and playing on the emotions of their victims. Fortunately, their grunts and howls are easily detectable, and solved with a simple click on the cursor.

In short, things on Facebook are getting back to normal. People who, like me, were glued to their computers over the weekend up until Tuesday, are now numbed by what had once been gruesomely riveting: ships' bows rearing up over the splinters of a house, cars stacked on top of each other like mating wildlife, a vista of what had once been middle class neighborhoods lying like a heap of matches, pretty facades standing alone like faces in a war zone, faces with everything else in back of them blown away.

Grotesquely, only the dead bodies have really changed in the now well-documented wasteland of Tacloban, lying bloated and black on sidewalks.

But I'm still sitting in front of my monitor, waiting for word from the rest of the afflicted provinces. Guiuan, Ormoc, Bantayan, Capiz, Antique ... what is the news?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Areas in Central Visayas, Philippines struggle for survival after Haiyan

Last night, I saw images of the damage on Bantayan island, Cebu, Philippines for the first time since the storm struck. This was on DR's (Danish television) nightly news program, where the Philippines remains the top international story. DR flew in two reporters to Cebu province.

Heartbreaking ... children and adults lined up by the roadside, reaching out with bare hands to the vehicle bearing the camera, a girl of about six supporting a hand-lettered HELP sign. No electricity. No refrigeration, no sewer service, and no mobile phones nor internet to let the outside world know.

The attention of the world has been on Tacloban, a thriving city of some 120,000 inhabitants and the capital of Leyte, because Tacloban was one of the first areas reached by disaster teams. But there are so many other parts of the central Visayas that need help. These images need to get out, be shared, too.

Here is a link to the news story (in Danish). Above photo is a screen grab from the same story.

http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Udland/2013/11/12/205356.htm

Tacloban - before and after typhoon Haiyan

Australia's ABC net has posted a series of satellite photos showing the once-thriving town of Tacloban, Leyte, Philippines, almost entirely devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. Roll your mouse over each image to see neighborhoods in Tacloban before, and after.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/typhoon-haiyan-photos-before-after/

Screen shot is from abc.net.au.