[ T - T R A i N ]: Story of a flood

A couple of weekends ago, a couple of friends and I tried to pull together whatever resources we could gather--cash, cleaning equipment, warm bodies--to help out a another friend who became one of Typhoon Ondoy's (Ketsana) hapless victims. I shared the experience to a friend in the US a few days later and it ended up being the bulk of my email. I guess it was my way to debrief--or to process the experience. I would also like share part of the email here.

A lot of places are still under water and many families have not yet been able to resume normal lives. Last Sunday, me and my friends drove up north to Montalban (in the province of Rizal) to help another friend, R, clean up his house. Two Saturdays ago, the water in his area rose above the roof of his house. He and his family had to seek shelter at a neighbor's house that had a second floor. But even there, the water rose to waist level. They were not rescued until 2 am the next day.
When we picked our friend up and we were driving up to his house, R recounted his experience to us. He seems to be coping well, although there's definitely a bit of trauma. He said he and his wife still get nightmares at night. Their 4-year old son, though, seems to be doing okay and does not even realize the gravity of what happened (which is probably for the best). It was a bit disconcerting at first for R to punctuate his stories of the flood with laughter. How should one react when someone tells you "We almost drowned!" while laughing? We laughed with him. It was good to see him there, alive, and with his family intact. He lost almost everything in terms of property, but it could have been worse, and he realizes that. That's why he is able to laugh about the experience.

We didn't know what to expect at the site. We just knew that the area was still about knee deep in mud. We came prepared with every cleaning equipment you could think of. I scoured the internet for cleaning tips post flood. There were a lot out there, especially after Katrina. However, what we saw wasn't anything like what we were expecting. Cleaning up didn't mean washing out filth, picking out the flotsam that washed in from the river, or sorting and rearranging their stuff. Cleaning up, as a first phase, meant shoveling out mud. Liquid mud, hard mud, runny mud. Brown mud, green mud, gray mud, red mud. Dirt, soil, loam, clay, silt, rocks. Chocolate pudding, mousse, batter, cream, cake, brownie. But whatever the shape, the color, the form, the texture, it smelled like the earth. Walking into the house felt like burying your face into the ground.

R's house, now that I'm trying to remember its dimensions, is just a little bit bigger than the kitchen in my family's house. It was really a very modest size and very simple in both design and construction. But the whole floor area had about a foot and half of mud on it. Their personal stuff, furniture and appliances where strewn all over the place. (At one point, according to R, a neighbor's refrigerator settled on their roof.) It was dark, damp, and depressing. So, for about five hours that day, equipped with three shovels, a few pieces of plywood, and some plastic trays, we moved mud from inside the house and onto the street. The street, however, was already knee high with mud and the tractor still hadn't hauled mud off of it. Our group of four grew to a group of seven. We got mud on our boots, legs, shirts, arms, faces. It was pure physical back-breaking work. We were on our feet the whole time because there was no place to sit. All around his neighbors were doing the same thing. I tried to work for as long as I could, with as little break I could bear, because resting would mean leaving them with a home that could have been a little bit cleaner. We managed to clear a lot of floor space but the house still wasn't livable by the time we left. So far from it. And that was a little depressing.

They're not sure about moving back permanently, although I'm sure R would like to be able to do that. They haven't been in that house for more than two years. They really have nowhere else to go. But when or how do they even begin to go back to their normal lives? Unfortunately, it's going to take more than house cleaning to sort things out for them. The psychological shambles that the flood had wrought will be the trickier bit to fix.

Three days later, my body is not so sore anymore. But that's really nothing to complain about when put against the kind of pain others have suffered because of the typhoon and floods. While we were shoveling dirt at R's house, we joked that we would dream about it that night. Sure enough, I did. Lying in my bed that night, I could still smell the earth. It wasn't an unpleasant smell; it was, in fact, a very familiar smell. It reminded me of the community I served as a volunteer in Bukidnon. So, when I closed my eyes, I could smell the outdoors. But then, in my mind's eye I could see my shovel slicing through the sticky mud and scraping the concrete floor beneath it. That was the image I saw, over and over and over... Until I drifted off to sleep. But even in my dreams I was trying to finish the job we left half done.

Unfortunately, R's story is just one story among thousands. Many more suffered from the floods and are very much worse off. At this point, it's just hard to imagine how so many people are going to rebuild their lives.

Then, just a few weeks after Ondoy, Typhoon Pepeng (Parma) wreaked havoc up north, causing massive flooding and and landslides. I hope Good Samaritan fatigue has not set in yet.