never again Ondoy

This is another sharing on Ondoy experience, but this is all about me and this is not a sad story.

Don't come again, Ondoy. You're not welcome here.

It’s been over three weeks but the typhoon Ondoy experience still feels like it was just two days ago. I think maybe it’s because I haven’t really gone back to life as usual. Everyday as I travel the ‘long cut’ to work and back using public transport, I keep remembering how much easier life was before Ondoy, at least for me. Now it feels like I don’t have a choice but to live with its aftermath until, well, life is back to normal. Heaven knows how I hate not having choices.

Let's go jogging, anyone?

For the first time, I braved waist-deep flood to buy food from the nearest grocery from home, which was like walking from EDSA Central in Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong to SM Megamall in Ortigas, Pasig. I didn’t mind the walk; it was leptospirosis I was most worried about. My mom was most concerned about my panic-buying tendencies.

The other things Ondoy wiped out

When ankle-deep water inside the house subsided the night of that Saturday, I thought Ondoy was over and we can go on with our lives again until we learned that roads outside the village were impassable and the only way out was to ride a tractor or a make-shift boat. I thought I could deal with it; I would just have to think of it like an adventure trip, backpacking and all, and pretend that it’s a new culture I’m immersing myself in. Ah, a preview of Tonle Sap, I thought.

Not all best things in life are free

But the first time I went out of the village to report to work, I had to line up for hours at the village gate waiting for the tractor ride. It was free ride alright, but the dump truck was filthy beyond compare and it took in as many bodies as it could, leaving people with no choice but to bear the one-hour ride sweating like pigs and smelling all kinds of odor known to man. Even my boy scout and ROTC years didn’t prepare me for it.

Not your typical street party

Going home that first day out of the village was no different. In the city rotonda, I lined up for hours again for the free ride. I sat on the street gutter like many did, unable to hold up standing after a tiring day at work, trying to amuse myself by downloading songs on my mobile phone. Birthday Sex by Jeremy. Apologize by One Republic. Tokyo Mix. Jai Ho. Daughtry’s Home. Ahh, how appropriate, I thought.

A day in the life of a chicken. Or pig.

Several days after riding dump trucks and moving chicken pens and pig pens, we found a new way out of the village—the ‘long cut’ going to Taytay, Rizal. I have to take a tricycle passing through what they call a Floodway, a long stretch of residential homes, many shanties, where people crowd the street like it was part of their houses. I said in one of my previous posts that I have become numb, even blind, to poverty in Manila. That still holds true to this day, but for the past two weeks I have no choice but to recognize it because it’s right before my eyes.

Front-seat luxury on a truck

All the conveniences of travel that I was used to because I always choose in their favor were all removed post-Ondoy. I say ‘conveniences’ to contrast my experience with many others who lost loved ones, their property, and possessions to the flood. I say that to remind myself of the many stories I heard on news and overheard inside jeepneys and buses of how people survived that day, or how many others didn’t. I say that to remind myself that I have so much to be grateful for and I believe that with all my heart.  

While for others Ondoy opened their eyes to new realizations, it reaffirmed to me what I’ve always known about myself.

That I can adapt to the call of the day but that I refuse to accept anything less than I can get for what I work hard for. 

That I easily abandon the idea of having choices and making them in times of need because I stare at what is too long rather than on what else I can do.

That I’ve always hold on to the belief that one can still reach out and help, even when you yourself are wounded.

That I’ve already learned not long ago the lesson on happiness and fulfillment brought about by doing, not by having.

And that I can stand a long walk, a long ride, and a long day, but not bad odor. Never.