by Zoe Daniel
We climb over trees and around cars and jeepneys that have been tossed around like toys. There are bodies lying uncovered by the roadside and shell-shocked survivors who ask us for food, water and above all, a phone so they can contact relatives outside to tell them they’re alive. Even concrete buildings are smashed to smithereens. The real damage has been caused not by the wind, which hit speeds close to three hundred kilometres per hour, but the water, a storm surge two storeys high that pounded in and then sucked everything out, including thousands of people.
That night we sleep in the airport surrounded by people displaced by the storm. David and I, and Sol, our elderly Filipino fixer who’s come in on a late plane, sleep amid a crowd of survivors who want to get on the next aircraft out. At first light the planes and choppers start descending, showering dust over everyone and everything as the people jostle, traumatised and desperate to get on one to Manila.
What seems like days of paralysis follow as people become increasingly desperate for food and water and communications. We’re lucky to find a local businessman who has a car and fuel and takes us to his house to sleep and work for a couple of days. The damage goes on for miles and miles and miles. At times we can barely drive on because the bodies are so close to the roadside, rotting in the midday sun. We spend our days climbing over mountains of wreckage trying to reach people who are camping among the debris, among the corpses of friends and family members whose bodies have yet to be retrieved. When we visit the next island over from Leyte – Samar – no one has had any help at all and we’re the first outsiders, let alone journalists, to come anywhere near them.
‘Where is the army? Why has no one brought us any food or water?’ they plead.
It’s horribly difficult to have nothing much to give them but we still have barely any water and have had little food since we arrived. I take people’s details, email addresses for family members and phone numbers. When I finally speak to Rowan I ask him to make the calls and he reaches people as far away as the United States to tell them their family members have survived the storm.
I almost totally lose my voice, in part I think due to the scalding, toxic dust at the airport over those first couple of days, and exhaustion. The desk in Sydney wants to pull me out but I refuse to go. We’re not finished yet. The Beijing bureau crew – Stephen McDonnell and cameraman Wayne McAllister – join us, taking the pressure off, and we all move into the mayor’s office in the town hall, sleeping on the floor and filing madly around the boardroom table. They bring more food and water with them, and Wayne and Sol whip up one-pot meals of pasta and tuna in the evenings on the gas stove in the mayor’s kitchen.
Finally there’s a sense of action as supplies begin to arrive and mass distribution gets underway. Central Tacloban is slowly cleared of debris, but even a kilometre or two from the centre of the city the mountains of debris and uncollected dead remain. The recovery will be long and slow.
David and I pack. I feel very guilty for leaving while so many people are in need of help, and I’m also aware that this will probably be my last assignment as Southeast Asia correspondent. I’m not sure I want to go.
We catch a Singapore Air Force C130 to Manila, shoulder to shoulder with refugees from the storm. I find a few lollipops in my bag and hand them out to the little kids on the flight. They take them, wide eyed and silent, as the big plane grinds into the sky and away from the disaster zone.
In Bangkok Rowan is home from Melbourne and keeps the kids up late to greet me. The house is half packed up and a little unfamiliar with all of our pictures missing from the walls and the coloured lights gone from the front terrace. Coming back is always strange after such intense experiences. I wonder how we’ll cope when we land back home in Melbourne soon.
Telling me he’s writing a book about the storm, Arkie presents me with a written list of questions to answer, among them ‘Who did you talk to?’, ‘How did people feel?’, ‘Who helped them?’, ‘What did they do?’, ‘What could they do?’.
I wonder where life will take my little boy.
Pearl snuggles up to me and yawns. ‘I’m glad you’re home. This is your last trip, yeah Mumma?’
‘Yes darling,’ I answer.
For now.
PICTURE SECTION
Cameraman Sipho Maseko shooting during my first trip out of South Africa as a correspondent, Sierra Leone 2005.
An Oxfam water truck delivering to people during a devastating drought on the Kenya–Somalia border, 2006.
Filming as a solo V-J in Malawi during a food crisis, 2005.
With Granny Ba at Ta Prohm temple at Angkor in Cambodia, 2009. Arkie is almost two, Pearl not quite one. It was on this trip that Arkie cut his nose open.
With cameraman David Leland in Laos during our Foreign Correspondent trip along the Mekong River, September 2010. (Photo Greg Wilesmith)
Family shot at the Bangkok Flower Market, 2011. Arkie is aged almost five, Pearl is three. (Photo Carolyn O’Neill)
Talking to the foreign desk to file radio from the field during the redshirt protests in Bangkok, 2010. (Photo Paul Gates)
View from our office balcony towards Chidlom Skytrain Station at the end of the redshirt protests, Bangkok, 19 May 2010. (Photo Paul Gates)
With Thai producer Jum behind the redshirt barricades in Bangkok, May 2010. (Photo Paul Gates)
Navy divers search for missing asylum seekers off the coast of Christmas Island, December 2010.
With David and our borrowed vehicle on Christmas Island, December 2010. (Photo Andrew O’Connor)
A Christmas Island crab – a protected species, difficult to avoid on crab-covered roads, December 2010.
Outside the famous amulet market during the Bangkok floods, October 2011.
With former Thai prime minister Dr Thaksin Shinawatra at his home in Dubai, June 2011.
With Yingluck Shinawatra at Pheu Thai party headquarters just before her election as prime minister of Thailand, June 2011.
Conjoined twins Stuti and Aradhana at Padhar Hospital, Central India, July 2012.
Doctors preparing for surgery on the conjoined twins at Padhar Hospital, India, July 2012. They include (from left): Radiologist Deepa Choudhrie, Dr Gordon Thomas, Dr Albert Shun, Professor David Baines.
Filming our piece for Foreign Correspondent about the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh and the treatment of women, India, February 2013.
With Aung San Suu Kyi (and a portrait of her father Aung San) as she writes a postcard to Arkie at her house in Yangon, June 2011. (Photo Wayne McAllister)
Filming in a razed Rohingya township, Sittwe, Rakhine State, Burma, September 2012.
With Aung San Suu Kyi on her back terrace at home, Yangon, June 2011. (Photo Wayne McAllister)
This harrowing list was posted at the Santo Nino Catholic Church in Tacloban City, Philippines, November 2013.
In Tacloban City, Philippines, November 2013. (Photo David Leland)
Where we slept at Tacloban City Airport after Typhoon Haiyan, November 2013.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the ABC for the use of quotes and still frames from some of the many stories that we have made.
Heartfelt appreciation to current and former ABC Southeast Asia bureau staff David Leland, Supattra (Jum) Vimonsuknopparat, Rosalind Kaopatumtip, Channarong (Tu) Apichattham, Paul Gates, Nina Teggarty and Monty Sangar. With thanks also to former ABC Africa bureau staff Peter Ramatseba, Sipho Maseko and Molatelo Mainetje.
For mentorship, support and friendship, particular thanks to colleagues Mark Colvin, Peter Cave, Bronwen Kiely, Sally Sara, Fiona Reynolds, Mark Willacy, Michael Carey, Kate Torney, Steven Alward, Steve Taylor, Marianne Leitch, Greg Wilesmith, Trevor Bormann, Mavourneen Dineen, Derek Williams and Matt Jasper.
To all of the brave and hard-working fixers and drivers in so many countries who have helped me in so many ways: your work is invaluable and appreciated.
To Monta and Nisha: thank you for keeping my house ticking over and my children
safe during my many absences.
And to Rowan, Arkie and Pearl: thank you for your trust, patience and love and for giving me the freedom to pursue my dreams.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After growing up in Tasmania, Zoe began her career in journalism as a regional radio producer in the ABC’s Adelaide office in 1993. Over the next few years she travelled widely for the ABC, including stints in Kempsey, Sydney, Lismore and Launceston, before being appointed presenter of the Victorian Country Hour in 1997. Presenting roles with National Rural News and Radio National’s A Country Breakfast followed. A position as Business Reporter/Presenter with ABC Radio Current Affairs took Zoe to Melbourne and was followed by stints at 7.30 and Lateline.
Covering the Olympics for ABC Radio in 2004 took Zoe to Athens; her first foreign correspondent posting was Africa, based in Johannesburg. During 2005 and 2006 Zoe frequently filmed her own television reports and often travelled alone, editing and sending material back to Australia via satellite phone from remote locations. Zoe and producer Trevor Bormann won the United Nations Media Peace Award for their undercover report on the humanitarian impact of the Zimbabwean government’s slum demolition campaign. In 2009 she covered the Khmer Rouge war crimes trials from Phnom Penh in Cambodia.
Zoe Daniel has just signed off as the ABC’s Southeast Asia correspondent, where she was based in Bangkok with her husband and young family. She reported on nine countries across Southeast Asia, filing copy and stories for TV, radio, online and social media.
Follow Zoe on Twitter @zdaniel
Like Zoe at www.facebook.com/ZoeDanielABC
COPYRIGHT
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under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.
First published in Australia in 2014
This edition published in 2014
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
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harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Zoe Daniel, 2014
The right of Zoe Daniel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Daniel, Zoe, author.
Storyteller / Zoe Daniel.
ISBN: 978 0 7333 3231 9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978 1 4607 0059 4 (epub)
Daniel, Zoe.
Foreign correspondents – Australia – Biography.
Foreign correspondents – Australia – Anecdotes.
Journalists – Australia – Biography.
Journalism – Political aspects.
Southeast Asia – Description and travel.
Southeast Asia – Politics and government – 21st century.
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