Flood

It was really only by a magnificent stroke of luck that I escaped the devastation the wreaked havoc in Manila the past few days. I had to go home to the highlands in order to put some papers in order, and when I’d left, I was only told by a neighbor that there was a low pressure building up somewhere out in the Pacific. I shrugged it off, as I suppose most others have done. It is the rainy reason after all, and this hasn’t been the first storm, neither will it be the last. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last really dry day since the season turned.

The entire year has been littered with deaths of consequential men and women. I think I may have made a note of this before in one of my previous entries. And now the storm came and the water rose and big and little people alike were indiscriminately washed out of the comfort of their homes. I watched the videos of the streets of Manila running with tons of water that washed people, pets, cars and various unidentifiable objects in its oceanic tides. I heard a friend recall with horror the sight of the bodies of two young women that washed up near the gates of their village, apparently from a nearby creek. I watched with horror numbers of people holding on to a makeshift raft that they’d made of a floating rooftop, which disappeared under water as it was swept under a bridge. Then the rooftop emerged with not a person remaining.

It’s a bit difficult to assign blame to a single person for the incident, if indeed blame can be assigned. Maybe it is simply nature’s display of power, no matter how clinical an observation one might deem this to be. I remember people talking once that someday our island country will soon be under water, when the water level worldwide begins to rise. I remember the headache of trying to fight against mining and illegal logging in this country (my one real cause). And I remember the feeling of frustration at the dilemma of inadequate housing, pollution and squatting in congested Manila. And now, and yet again, it is time to remember the dead…

~ by dwanderingmind on September 30, 2009.