I spent the first 16 years of my life living in the
southernmost tip of the Philippines. In a disaster-prone archipelago, Gensan,
my hometown, seems to have had the most luck of not being in the proverbial typhoon
path. I’m stating this while knocking on wood copiously, because in this era
of climate change, one can never foretell how the weather will turn. In the
immortal words uttered by movie star-turned-mayor-turned-governor, Vilma
Santos, ‘you can never can tell’.
In the 70s and early 80s, weather patterns were more predictable. Guess that’s how it is when you have only two: dry and wet season. The wet season ran from June-September (sometimes ending as early as August), while the rest of the year was ‘dry’, with April and May being the hottest and most humid. With Gensan being so close to the equator, cold weather was an alien concept to its residents and real only to those who lived on the ‘other side’, i.e., the mountainous northern tip of the country.
Back then, the rains were a welcome respite from the
scorching heat. Seeing our school grounds littered with tiny rivulets would
always give me a strange sense of serenity. Those hypnotic ripples! The rains
knew when to halt and the only damage they caused was on my mother’s laundry,
which she had left outside to dry.
While being virtually typhoon-free, Gensan was not spared
from the occasional earthquakes and landslides. One earthquake I would never
forget was in 1976, which struck at around seven in the morning, just as I was
getting ready for school. Our display cabinet that was filled with precious
Noritake dinnerware had toppled over, scattering debris of precious porcelain
broken into smithereens. I was only eight years old then, but I mustered enough
courage to not show any grief, as I gingerly helped my parents gather the
broken pieces. It must have been heart-breaking for both of them to see an
entire ‘made-in-Japan’ dining set, complete with serving pieces, shatter into utter
uselessness. Moral of the story? Don’t keep your nicest things for display. Use
them for as long and as much as you can, because if they get damaged or lost,
you can at least say you’ve used them for what they were worth. After all,
they’re just stuff. Then, move on. But, I digress.
My typhoon experience started when I moved to Manila for
college. Each Signal Number 3 warning would be greeted with jubilation because
it meant that classes in all levels were suspended. One would think that the
most sensible thing to do was to stay home to be safe and dry. Instead, we
would make a beeline to the nearest mall to watch a movie and eat burgers and
fries afterwards. Guess one can afford to be brazenly idiotic while still young
and living away from the parents. But I do remember the post-disaster relief
operations that our university would organize: soliciting and packing relief
goods for distribution to areas heavily damaged by the typhoon. Our school
campus was strategically located on top of a hill and from there, one could get
a panoramic glimpse of the entire Marikina Valley submerged in floodwater.
Fast-forward to the new millennium when the seasons are no
longer predictable, when the summer heat gets unbearably worse after each
passing year, when typhoons pay visits during the holiday season. One casualty
of climate change that I can audaciously claim is the annual LGBT Pride March.
Previously held in the month of June to coincide with the global pride
celebrations (which had its roots in the Stonewall riots in NYC in June 1969),
the organizers decided to move the event to December precisely to avoid the
rainy season. The other main reason was that it was closer to International
Human Rights Day, which was commemorated every 10th of December. Lo
and behold, our parade also ended up getting rained on in December!
 |
| 2005 LGBT Freedom March: The party tent, umbrella and raincoats say it all. |
By far, the strongest typhoon I experienced in Metro Manila
was Milenyo (International Code Name, Xangsane) in 2006. Thanks to the internet
and local cable news TV, we were amply forewarned that landfall would be at
around ten in the morning, with the eye of the storm directly hitting Metro
Manila. Like clockwork, by mid-morning, the winds started howling in ghoulish proportions,
the skies darkened into a somber gray and the rains began pelting down. I can
confirm how destructive Milenyo was, because for the first time ever, freakish
gusts of wind managed to spray water into the ceiling of the second floor bedroom
of the apartment that I was living in. Outside, it looked like raging behemoths
had crossed paths: tree branches were scattered all over the streets, sheets of
galvanized roof were flying about and electric poles were dangerously teetering
from side to side. But the typhoon left as fast as it came. Two hours later,
the winds had calmed down and the sounds of the rain were reduced to a soft
patter. But oh, the destruction
and the havoc that Milenyo wreaked in the metropolis. In just two hours! And
don’t get me started with Ondoy, Pepeng, Sendong, Pablo and the entire
alphabet-soup of tropical storms that have hit the country in the last decade.
On an annual basis, there are 19-20 typhoons that enter the
so-called ‘Philippine Area of Responsibility’. Of these only a third actually
hit the ground. But, as if we’re
not pummeled enough by these storms, we also have our share of volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, and floods. Guess, we’re not in the Pacific Ring of Fire, for
nothing.
But geography is not destiny! Yes, our country has
everything to offer when it comes to disasters, just like SM Shoemart’s earworm
of an advertising slogan in the 1980s, ‘We’ve got it all for you’. Yet, it does
not mean that we have to resign ourselves to this unfortunate fate. We have learned
to live and survive with disasters – be they ‘natural’ or human-made. When
Ondoy struck in 2009, I blogged about it – extolling the Filipino spirit of resiliency,
unity and cooperation in crisis situations, but at the same time, deploring the
lack of disaster preparedness and management on the part of government.
As the country prepares to face the aftermath of Typhoon
Yolanda (Haiyan), which just hit Central Philippines, I am reminded of this
tongue-twister in my youth. This, among many others, was taught by my high
school Speech teacher, who just died a couple of days ago (and this is my
quirky way of thanking her).
or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather,
whatever the weather,
whether we like it or not.
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