Triumph, not tragedy

This is not a story of tragedy; instead, this is the triumph of us.

Salvaging floating baby pictures in the nearly 5-feet flood, I saw my mom cry silently. It was between 1 o’clock and 2 o’clock in the afternoon of September 26, when super typhoon Ondoy badly hit our bungalow in Cainta, Rizal.

“You don’t understand… I can’t go back in time when you were young,” my shivering mother said in Filipino with her shacking voice.

“Those are just pictures mom. You’re more important than that,” I said in my most firm but still loving voice. I nudged her one arm to forcibly drag her from our wrecked house to a safer place, which at that time, I had no idea where.

The muddy water carrying a scent too alien for me to recognize filled the bungalow faster than we could secure our belongings. All the things that we thought were important and we put high up started falling down, creating massive craters in the flood.

I knew then that it was either we move out or…

Avoiding getting crushed by collapsing structures and debris that were made buoyant by the rising water and incoming current, I ushered my 60-year young mom to the safe and waiting arms of my dad in the elevated portion of our garden. I then went back in the house to get the three of us one change of clothes each, my laptop and DSLR to document the events.

By the time I was out with them the water in our street was too high to get out, and since my mom doesn’t know how to swim we climbed the 5-feet wall separating our house from my godmother’s two-storey place.

Depressing is an understatement to accurately describe how it was starting to feel like. From the roof of our neighbor’s place, I hopelessly watched our house be devoured by the flood that grew to 10-feet in an hour or so. With only a day's worth of clothes to our names, it was easier to break down.

But breaking down was never our option. Yes, for a working class who might have lost everything from baby pictures to a reliable 10-year old Toyota, we have nil to none left to claim as ours. But for some reason I do not have the omniscience to explain, it feels like we gained more.

Like what I told my Facebook universe last Tuesday, “We were flooded but loved.” When there’s an overwhelming outpour of affection and concern from strangers and significant others, there’s really nothing else to do but smile.

When we needed a safe and warm place to stay, people opened their homes. When we were famished, people shared their bread. When we were covered with mud, people rolled in dirt with us. We are just blessed to be surrounded by ordinary people who rise above themselves to do extraordinary things.

©Grace Ramos
Photo taken by Grace Ramos on September 26, the peak of Ketsana/ Ondoy's wrath.

For more stories on Ketsana/ Ondoy visit http://ketsanaondoywatch.wordpress.com/