STORMBORN

October 24, 2015

This week many parts in our country were again devastated by a very strong typhoon.  Many are left homeless, some have died, a lot of properties and livelihood washed out and destroyed, and hundreds are still in evacuation centers waiting for relief and aid.

For as long as I can remember, growing up in Cebu City, yearly typhoons and floods are common.  Hence, my family and I have developed a second nature of being prepared and securing our lives and meagre belongings well in the event the monsoon seasons and the typhoon seasons come. 

Unfortunately, one could not always be prepared in the event of stronger ones coming year after year.  When we moved here in Leyte, we were in for the biggest shocker of our entire life which was Haiyan/Yolanda.  Thankfully, only a very small part of our town was swept by the storm surge.  Yet at home, our entire roofing system was like a piece of cake to the Category 5 Super Monster.  Our huge lumber trusses were broken, all G.I. sheets and the cross-trusses flew away to who knew where, our screen door was ripped from its hinges and was thrown hard, grazing my cheek, and our light bulbs exploded when crushed by the winds. Our outside kitchen and laundry area got crushed to a pulp.  All the decades-old coconut and good lumber trees around the house fell down.  Everything inside the house were drenched or otherwise broken.  There was flood inside the house that rose almost knee-deep from all the rain freely showering the roofless us.  Mom and I got bruises, her asthma got worse by the stress of it all, and even my ankles got twisted in the whole process of dodging Haiyan’s 300 km winds so that I had to limp around for a week even while we took a much needed breather back in Cebu to shop for badly needed supplies.  I had the longest time of my life not sleeping or getting even just a wink for an entire week, especially when typhoon Zoraida followed a few days after.  I feel like being drugged the entire time.  But these experiences paled in comparison to the more than 10,000 dead and missing, and billions of properties and livelihood destroyed and gone forever.

Thankfully, international and local relief agencies had the heart to help, and even until now are still doing their part.  Unlike our very own government, which is still barely releasing one-fourth of all the funds they collected (especially from donations) for the rehabilitation efforts.

But I observed that our people are really resilient.  The first words I heard from our neighbours barely hours after the winds died down on November 8, 2013, even when their entire houses were flattened and a few of our neighbours have died, was that they were thanking GOD that they are still alive.  When I travelled the whole length from home to work, then to Tacloban downtown a few days after the typhoon struck, everybody seemed to look desperate, especially with all the dead and decaying bodies scattered along the sides of the road and trapped underneath all the debris in the whole 30 kilometre-distance from home to work.  (And I was pretty sure I could have seen more dead bodies still lying along the road and buried under the debris if I had gone many kilometres further).  One could feel desperation, exhaustion, yet determination in the air, especially as we went along with the Great Exodus of people walking and being caught in the biggest traffic jam (the daily EDSA grind I believe would have paled in comparison to it) of my life from as far as Samar Island, building up numbers along Tacloban, and more from Palo and Tanauan, down to Southern Leyte, when we went back home to Tolosa.  The entire Maharlika highway was filled with people walking, not entirely like zombies, but almost closer to it, with the horror of Yolanda in their eyes, their entire trauma as real baggage, with a despair that they did not make it to the C130, but with the hope that travelling by foot or any means to the only open ports in the Region would bring them closer to food, healing and sanity. 

But two years hence, the atmosphere has drastically changed.  Here are people on the rise, excited again to be rebuilding their lives and livelihood, and very much welcome and cooperative to all the help and support of others who care about them.  Even though the national government practically ignores us especially since it is already election season, and our very own President is still as ignorant as a caveman in thinking that everybody (the millions still currently alive and living) in the whole Eastern Visayas are surnamed Romualdez, our people still has that indomitable spirit to live and rise and build better.

I can only pray that Lando’s (who strangely sounds like Yolanda) victims will rise too.  Yet, I am confident they will because they are Filipinos.  As what Bamboo said, “Hoy, Pinoy Ako! Buo aking loob, may agimat ang dugo ko”.  There is something in the Filipino spirit that can never be broken by even the strongest typhoons in history.  It is our bond with family and strong faith in GOD that makes us strong and hopeful of a better life even if the worst has come to us.  A true stormborn people, that will rise as proud and as strong and as majestic as a lion to embrace a better life ahead.