Manila Eyewitness Account

Here are some additional thoughts and observations on the storms which recently hit the Philippines. The reporter is Dr. Michael Smith (pictured), professor of journalism at Campbell University in North Carolina, who followed BMH publisher Terry White as a trainer for the Magazine Training Institute. This is an excerpt. To read the entire entry, click here.

Storm batters Manila, writers hone their craft

Editor’s note: The Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina published a variation of this piece Oct. 12, 2009.

MANILA—Clerks in the Kultura Store in the 600-shop Mall of Asia stopped dusting and greeting customers when a favorite Filipino song comes on over the in-store stereo system.

The girls in matching tan jackets and skirts, their hair styled in a tight bun customary in traditional Filipino fashion, began clapping and dancing down the aisles of a store known for its rice pearls, wood accessories and uptown fashions in Asia’s largest mall, the kind that could include Fayetteville, N.C.’s Cross Creek Mall, Cary Towne Center and Raleigh, N.C.’s Southpoint Mall with plenty of room leftover.

Shoppers, up to 200,000 a day, look on delighted as the young clerks are joined by their male counterparts and dance with élan.

Just a few miles a way, a young man, about the same age as the clerks, teetered on the unsteady debris of Manila Bay, home to nearly 20 million people and location of the U.S. Embassy off Roxas Boulevard. The man collected what he could from the trash leftover from two back-to-back typhoons from the past two weeks. That man, like so many others, may find something to sell to thousands of Americans who visit Manila just like me. As cars stream along Roxas Boulevard, young men and some small children dart in and out of traffic offering to sell some dubious item or two.

Reuters reported that Tropical Storm Ondoy and the storms that followed led to more than 200 deaths as of mid-October yet this city and the country of 92 million, the 12th most populous in the world, is soldiering on. Yet while I was there late last week, business went on as usual.