I know it’s a bit late right now. But I feel that there some things better said late, than not said at all. Ondoy was devastating. I feel it really brought us Manilenos out of our shells by making us feel what less developed sectors of our country experience pretty much on a yearly basis.
My village in Filinvest Homes East Marcos Highway wasn’t one to be spared by the floods. People who lived in single floor houses had to count on the hospitality of our neighbors. In our own home, the flood almost reached the second floor. All of our cars were submerged and I was stuck on the second floor with my family, the household help, a couple of kind strangers who came our way and my cousins.
One of my closest cousins, Reginald Meria who was 5 years my junior was worried sick for his older brother, Ren-Ren Meria who unfortunately, went to school at University of Sto. Tomas (UST) was was last heard stuck without food in the Dominican residence. By the time we had lost contact with Ren-Ren, (in the cutting off of electricity, power, signal and phone lines) none of us had informed Ren-Ren that our village was pretty much inaccesible. This was friday night at the height of the storm.
Morning came and the rains have stopped, I looked outside and it was unbelievable. The village looked like a river – some cars had drifted away, some people were already using boats and people were walking shoulder-high on the main road. I thought the water would have evaporated by then – but that was my elitist-ignorant head talking. (It didn’t evaporate for a looong time). I guess for the most of us in the Metro Manila area, this is God’s lesson on Humility 101.
Speaking of lessons, I’m here to write about my Ondoy Moment. For a good number of my friends unaffected by the flood, their moments were the service they rendered to the victims such as helping out in relief operations and the like. For these people you know who you are, you are awesome. For a good number of my family members, it was when they had to rebuild – have the cars fixed, clean out the houses, etc. Yep, I shared a lot of these moments with them.
But my favorite moment, MY moment was when me and Reg were outside walking in the flood that Saturday noon, and we caught sight our his Kuya Ren-Ren hugging his backpack who had trudged all the way from UST, walked across the flooded Marcos Highway famished and hadn’t eaten for over a day.
I was just lucky enough to have my camera with me to capture it:
Yes, our cars were all rended useless for a while and I had to commute against overwhelming MRT odds in those two weeks that followed Ondoy. Yes, we lost a lot of stuff. Capturing this moment though, kind of takes that pain away from us. (Self-explanatory) ;D
