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8 days after
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By Ayi Hernandez, 25
December 2011
[Read the first part of
Ayi's story here...]
The Balay Mindanaw Relief and
Rehabilitation Center is starting to get silent. Most of the
volunteers are on their way home to join their families, only the
children and the survivors of the flood are crisscrossing the
hallways of what used to be a very busy center. Everyone is talking
about a simple noche buena to thank the Creator and to bond as a
community with shared experiences of near-death and anxiety, but now
committed to help those who are in the same situation as, if not
more affected than, us.
When I tried to look back, I
consider it to be the most difficult week of my life. It was a week
of heartbreaking experience. It was a physically draining and
psychologically disturbing week, not only for the victims and
survivors like us but even to those who were not affected by the
floods. The sheer destruction to lives and properties is beyond
comprehension and asking the question why it happened makes it even
more difficult.
The other day, Belle
encouraged me to take a look at our house. I initially tried to
discourage her but she was insistent. I did not tell her that I
cried profusely for the first time after four days, because of
exhaustion, the foul smell of the mud and the dead animals, and the
acceptance that the house will not be habitable in the next two to
three months. On our way to the house, the same situation of
destruction and despair dominate the landscape. Fortunately, we were
not able to go near the house because we were worried the Multicab
we were driving might get stuck in the mud.
On our way back, the traffic
slowed a bit, and then I saw a family, all with very lonely faces,
outside their totally damaged house. Then I realized that inside the
makeshift tent was a coffin, above it the picture of their daughter
with all smiles. A very stark contrast indeed to the prevailing
atmosphere of despair and hopelessness for most in my neighborhood.
I also noticed that the group of four drinking buddies, who had been
drinking in the street since Day One of the flood, was not there
anymore. Maybe they were now too drunk to get up, or have come to
accept the reality that their homes will not be there anymore, and
that they have nowhere to stay in the coming days and weeks unless
they do something about it.
Back in the office, my
colleague whose home was also totally covered with mud, informed me
that they had to rush his father to the hospital as he couldn’t
walk anymore, his back apparently injured as they climbed to the
rooftop to avoid being swept away by the floods. I fully remember
her mother crying when she first saw me at the office. With tears in
her eyes she whispered, “Paunsa man ta magsugod na pod ani, Sir?”
(How do we start all over again, Sir?) All I can tell her was, “We
will rebuild soon. Don’t worry ma’am, we can overcome this one.”
It must be doubly difficult for them to see the family patriarch in
pain at the hospital
A story relayed by our
security guard about the fate of his colleague also disturbed me a
lot: His colleague was holding his wife and son when the water was
rising and then a log hit him in the chest. With the impact and the
pain, he lost hold of his wife and son. Hours later, he found his
son dead; I don’t know if he was able to find his wife
I had the chance to visit the
major evacuation camps in the city when I accompanied a volunteer
team from Sarangani and General Santos City to do medical and relief
services. There were too many people with too little space in the
schools transformed into evacuation camps. But I realized the people
in the evacuation camps were better off compared to the residents of
Consolacion village, that area beside Cagayan de Oro River under the
bridge in the highway, who are now staying by the roadside in
makeshift tents.
Amidst the chaos, Balay
Mindanaw was a very busy center coordinating, repacking and
distributing relief goods to five villages assigned to us by
Archbishop Antonio Ledesma. Very silently, with the leadership of
Kaloy, a system was running, volunteers were coming from all over,
and donations both cash and goods were flowing every hour of the
day. The kids were very active helping out in the repacking and
distribution of relief goods and medicines, and have a lot of
stories to tell, both happy and sad, on what they saw in the
evacuation centers.
Balay Mindanaw was
particularly amazed at the dedication of the medical and rescue team
from Sarangani. We decided to adopt them to maximize their stay here
as they found confusion and difficulty in coordinating with the LGU
when they arrived in the city. Kaloy captured all the details with
real time updates and. Apart from silently helping mobilize
resources to run the operation, I wondered if I could still carry a
50kg sack of rice for repacking. There’s only way to find out, and
so I tried. And I’m happy I still could! In all these frenzy, I
was receiving text messages, phone calls, email messages every hour.
I even had a 40-minute Skype conversation with a probable partner
based in Australia!
These efforts from friends,
partners and even new acquaintances offering their help and their
moral support keep our energies up all day; we only feel tired after
dinner. These are blessings that lessen the pressure, these are acts
of kindness that give strength, these are measures that provide real
hope in the situation of despair and… this is the kind of synergy
that adds that fire in the belly….
Reflections:
While we found meaning in
distributing food items and water over the last seven days, we also
asked the critical question what should we do next.
Starting next week we have
decided to focus on the non-food items. Initially we computed an
amount of P400 per family. We are also working to forge partnership
with Habitat for Humanity and Gawad Kalinga for the repair of the
homes, and the most difficult job of building homes for those who
completely lost it. Surely, this will be more tedious than
distributing food items, this will be much more difficult than
distributing clothing and other non-food items.
In all of these efforts, I am
also looking at another angle that I think is equally important. The
rebuilding of our confidence, confronting the experience of fear, of
a near-death experience, the most difficult process of having to
accept the fact that you lost a family member or, worse, family
members who are still missing even after a week of searching, and
praying that they can still be alive. Is there a way to accompany
the large number of people who are deeply troubled not only because
they lost their belongings, but more importantly, because they lost
the confidence to rebuild their lives?
If we believe that the
biggest and the most important resource is human resource, then
trauma healing, stress debriefing, or in what other terms it is
called, should be a major intervention not only in the next few
weeks but maybe in the next 12 months, or even more.
I couldn’t imagine what
happened to those who lost their loved ones. How are they coping?
They must be having a real hard time confronting reality. As I wake
up every day, I can still hear the shouts of “tabang” (help) or
“tabangi mi” (help us) of the unlucky ones swept by the flood,
even though we are so lucky that all of us are safe and even spared
from injury. I can’t help but think about the colleague of our
security guard, or even the thousands others still asking the
question how to rebuild their lives after the floods.
25 December 7:40 am
We went to see the house
after receiving a text message that there is running water in our
area. On our way I couldn’t help but look at the family who are
still grieving the loss of their daughter. Part of me wanted to stop
for a while and ask but I didn’t have the courage to do so. Just
before we reached the gate of our compound, I hold back tears as I
saw a horse lying dead on the ground. How cruel. Maybe it died after
not being attended to for the past seven days. I suppose the pony
died yesterday because it was not beside the mother this morning. I
just thought the owner must have lost the interest of saving one
after losing a lot in his stable.
Once inside the house, Belle
and I couldn’t help but pick up some things we found above the
mud. After filling three sacks of items that can still be salvaged,
of things that might still be useful, I told Belle to prepare to go
back to the office. On our way back, I hesitated again to stop at
our neighbor who lost their daughter. I asked Belle to shell out
P500 as our modest donation to the family, then I slowly drove back
in front of their house. The father was a bit surprised when Belle
handed over the little cash and sincerely thanked us. After a short
exchange of words, we found out that there were two families living
in that house. Her sister also lost her daughter, probably even more
painful because they still have to find her body, one of the
thousand or so still missing people in the aftermath of typhoon
Sendong. That broke my heart again….
By 11 o’clock this morning,
a good friend, along with his wife and daughter, came to visit us
all the way from Manila. It was a short yet very meaningful bonding
with his and my family. He simply wants to celebrate Christmas with
us. So we had a tour of the area, then we had lunch, then they flew
back to Manila. Then the whole afternoon was devoted to sharing a
lot of stories with Itay, Inay and Brod Lito. With a meaningful and
blessed Christmas celebration with a friend and my immediate family,
I think I’m ready for another week, or maybe another month, of
challenges…
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