Siftings
Surreal aftermath in Bayan Ko
A war zone. Never-before seen scenes of destruction and devastation. Waterworld is here. Hyperbolic images assail our sights and minds with numbing frequency: the brown swirling waters through which human victims wade chest-high; roofs and cars and animal corpses floating in the strong currents; rain with punishing force people driving people to leave their homes and property to the mercy of the elements and ruthless thieves out to make a fast buck no matter how; and in the wake of the these two super typhoons, mountains of garbage and mechanical debris, mixed up with animal carcasses and maybe a human body unseen, left to rot underneath the unspeakable mishmash.
Camera shifts to another war zone, another waterworld without rhyme or reason: a live baby floating in a styrofoam box, covered up to its brows from the harshness of the elements; a corpse in a closed coffin mounted on a makeshift raft floating on its way to burial while mourners wade
in waist-high water. And the height of surreality: coffins and disinterred corpses floating on the swollen Botolan River in Zambales!
Shift again, to aerial views of rice fields, vegetable gardens, even whole streets in Central and Northern Luzon provinces close to the giant dams that supply not only water but also electricity to homes and offices, and keep the fields from going dry in high summer. Air drops of food stuffs to people taking refuge on their rooftops while one is praying that the food doesn’t drop on the flooded streets below; while below, in water knee-high, people reach out with eager hands to catch manna from heaven, never mind the water swirling around their feet.
One more shift: People crowded into covered courts or public schools or gyms lying on cement floors, mothers fanning their coughing or feverish children; families queuing up for the relief goods that government and the two rival TV networks have kept supplying, all the while, smiling and waving at the camera, even! Aw, shucks! Such shocking cheerfulness in spite of their dire situation! Does this bespeak of the Pinoy masa’s vaunted gutsiness? Or is it just a revelation of his/her plain stupidity borne out of the brutishness and desperation of the constant marginalization he/she is subjected to, which translates to exclusion from the finer amenities of human life? The Pinoy masa has certainly been marginalized for so long a time, on the riverbanks of esteros or the alleys of slums in inner cities, that his/her exclusion is an accepted thing.
In the meantime, the thousands of evacuees have no more homes to go back to, their workplaces have also been drowned, along with the basic tools they need for daily struggle for existence. They are eking out catch-as-catch-can lives in miserable conditions at the overcrowded evacuation centers in Metro Manila, Central and Northern Luzon. This is so because the typhoons vented their wrath on us, and it is our poor brothers who suffer the most.
Now the Pinoy masa victims of the typhoons and floods are being given one of the following alternatives: 1) Magbalik probinsiya; 2) Hahanapan ng bagong malipatan at tutulungan sa pagtayo ng bagong bahay; and 3) Magpaayos ng bahay na nasira, kung nakatayo pa ito. Okay lang itong huli, as long as the new houses or repaired ones will not be built near or on the banks of rivers and esteros.
This unprecedented plan will cost billions of pesos, not to speak of the billions more needed to replace or repair damaged public works, infrastructures and agriculture.
How are things going to be from now on in BayaniJuan? It seems to me, at this point, that the surreal has become the norm. This state of constant calamity will prevail, will get even worse, will become ever more surreal, like a very bad horror movie.
Meanwhile, Man continues to satisfy his insatiable greed for the material, in the process raping the environment and driving Mother Nature to shed tons of tears which will eventually turn Earth into a waterworld. The big industrialized nations will continue to manufacture fast, luxurious cars which need fossil fuel; they will continue to drill for fossil fuel. The man-made vehicles – all kinds, land, sea, air – will continue to use up fuel and release heat into the atmosphere, along with the industries and works and everything man has ever invented for his own unappeasable appetites, to continue the global warming that is already upon us.
And the small nations like the Philippines will continue to be inundated by the waters from the melting icecaps, until most of our land is under water, driving us Pinoys away from the country of our birth even faster than our search for material survival! A scenario that can give us super-surreal nightmares!