Delubyo

Last Monday my hunger overpowered my laziness as I found myself near the door reaching out for my umbrella. I was cooped up inside my room for a while from the bad weather. I’m so hungry and I just can’t sleep it off and forget about it and so I hurried and went to buy me some food. I was having a hard time selecting from the different varieties of viands offered by the nearby carenderia. While I was trying to decide what tasty dish would satisfy my appetite, the owner was expressing her sympathy to another customer about what happened in Tacloban (a province in Leyte, Central Philippines). She told the other lady how she got goose bumps watching the news, a lot of people died and she was stating in facts that it was definitely worse than Ondoy (a tropical cyclone in 2009).  I knew that there was a typhoon that hit the Philippines and I never thought that it was that serious since we only experienced strong winds and unexpected rainfall here in Manila from time to time. I was really clueless to whatever tragedy the Philippines was facing at the moment. I don’t watch television that much and I wasn’t online for the past few days and so as I got back, I immediately turned on the TV to watch the news.

It was over almost as quickly as it started, yet the tragic scene that super typhoon “Yolanda” left, remains a nightmare as the tsunami-like swirl of water caused by the storm surges swept almost everything.  As I watch the news, I can’t help but mourn for those people who died and grieved for those people who lost their love ones which is impossible for them to provide even a decent burial. While switching the channels, I find it heart breaking to watch. Seeing the same tragic scenes, I finally decided to turn it off.

I can’t help but asked myself, “What’s next after this, is there such thing as the end of the world or is this nature’s way of balancing our world’s population?” The most important question is “Are we even prepared for it?” I think I’m just scaring myself, knowing that I was the last one to know about the news. Well, the point is that these disasters will surely happen again. If we look back, reports of different typhoons every year visited the Philippines and yet every time another typhoon struck our country, death is still inevitable. For now, there’s really no use in pointing fingers on who’s to blame.

The typhoon moved fast and didn’t last long destroying almost everything but no matter how strong this typhoon was, hope still shines in every victim’s hearts. It's comforting to know that everyone is now doing their best to reach out a helping hand. Deep inside I know that in time, everything is going to be alright.