Typhoons

I panicked when I could not text my parents the day when the storm was announced to hit the country. I was wondering what happened at home. I got no clue whether people there were safe or what.

I texted my ‘kababata’ studying here in Manila if she had any idea how was our province. Then, she just confirmed that, yes, the typhoon hit our province. Neither of her relatives were reachable by phone.

So I just thought my vacation will be wrecked. And that impulse was just too selfish. My personal concern there was, that our phone line has just been restored, after two months of waiting, after Milenyo ripped the communication systems apart. So when I go home for the Holidays, there might be a difference between spending it with city services than with none. Pretty weird. Actually, the reason behind that is during my semester break, just right after Milenyo’s doom of horror, there was neither DSL signal nor dial tone. And I am ashamed to confess that—not a social issue though.

Just this noon, my mother called me over the phone. She traveled to Daraga, Albay because communication in Sorsogon was dead and she was checking up on my Auntie there. I was relieved to know that our house was fine. Our phone line which I was crazed to care about was fine. There was a dial tone.

Compared to the damages brought by Milenyo, Reming was not as destructive in our place according to ‘ma. Compared to Albay’s condition, where 300 and rising dead bodies found, we were pretty lucky. She was visiting my Aunt in Daraga.

What was very alarming was that the majority of my batch mates in high school are studying in Bicol University Campuses, which are located among the seriously affected areas (Legaspi City, Daraga, Tabaco, etc.) in Albay Province. And there were reported cases of students which were dead. The mudslide, brought by the excessive rainfall over massive ash deposits formed on Mt. Mayon’s slopes, was pretty much too convincing to be destructive. I saw on the television that some houses were buried up to their ceilings—trapping people inside. It is far more that what happened in my province in late September though finding trees in the horizon was tricky during my sem break in Sorsogon.

People here in NCR might be celebrating typhoons coming in the country because they bring ‘classes suspended’ announcements. But there are some people suffering the loss of property, livelihood, and life in some places they might not take to consider.

Provinces on the pacific side of the archipelago suffer the worst because they serve as the frontlines or receptionists of typhoons. People there might have just recovered from Milenyo. Some of them could not bear to witness the trauma of another typhoon.

Natural calamities have been a part each Bicolanos life—not just siling labuyo, pili nuts, or Peñafrancia Festival. They have been part of mine too. I don’t mean to really embrace the fact that destruction is something cute or exotic. It just feels uneasy for me not to be with my family in times of calamities. I was used to power-downs and water fetch-burdens.

We can’t change calamities. They don’t need a revolution for them to: halt, go around our borders and hover to China. We can not blame any president for these. We just have to pick up what is left and put them up together.

Moving on is slow and painful. The problem is, the quality of living here in the Philippines does not compensate for the loss and damage the affected people discouragingly trying to endure.