She sat on a dusty makeshift mat of cartons at the lower front of the stage. Wearing rumpled and unkempt clothing, she cradled her baby to sleep. Amid the heat, the noise and the number of random people busy passing her by, she had no choice. Just to her left, piled against the stage wall is her bag of clothes – perhaps what’s left of her belongings. I did not hear her name nor heard what went through the entire interview with my friend M, but I can see the grief and despair from her eyes. And it spoke much louder. A few moments through, she looked down at her baby and uttered no more. M rubbed her back to comfort her for a few minutes then stood up and came to where I was observing them from one corner of our school gymnasium. “What happened? That was too quick for an interview” – I asked M. “I can’t do this anymore. They almost always cry and that’s not the problem. It’s just that I really feel sorry for them and I don’t know what to say to ease their burden, more so their situation. I CAN’T do anything. Let’s just stop this and get ourselves something to drink, I’m thirsty.” – M frustratingly answered me back with a look of sadness herself. I thought she was already good at this having been a journalist for a national paper doing stories of sort. Maybe this time, it’s a different case. Because she too, knows how it feels. M’s neighborhood wasn’t spared by the deluge and she perhaps experienced it for the first time in her life.
We made our way through the crowd and exited through the front gate. Leaving behind us, inside the evacuation center, were medical personnel and other volunteers attending to all of the two-thousand families displaced by tropical Storm Sendong. And there's more of them. My school gymnasium is just one among the sixteen evacuation centers in the city. As of recent count there were already a thousand dead bodies recovered, hundreds more that are still missing and thousands more families left without homes to return to. Overnight, the flooded residential areas turned into a muddy wasteland of trash and nothingness, ravaging and deluding houses, cars, properties and lives. No one was spared. Not the poor, not the rich. This was the wrath of nature that struck Northern Mindanao. And this is the first time it happened to us - to my hometown and to my very people. Although I was lucky that I was still in Manila that day and that my family and neighborhood was safe, still I cannot bear to just be at ease. After all, I grew up here. This place is part of who I am and it is such a pain seeing my home like this and knowing traumatic stories of unimaginable struggle and eventual loss. My heart bleeds for my people especially that it’s Christmas time.
As of this writing, the President had already signed the declaration putting the country under a state of calamity. Help has been pouring in. And in behalf of the victims, we wish to convey our message of gratitude to everyone who has been sending in and giving any help whether in cash, in kind or even through prayers. We greatly appreciate everything and may it return to all of you a hundred fold. There’s still a lot of things that we need and a lot to fix. But more than anything else, there’s a lot of healing to be done. Please do continue to help our people recover from this life-crippling tragedy. Please do continue to help us stand up. Everybody deserves another chance. Everybody deserves a second walk at life.
http://bit.ly/sendong-cdo
http://www.facebook.com/notes/boggs-tanggol/how-to-help-bagyong-sendong-victims/10150431785163262
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