My Own Ondoy Story

When the Typhoon Ondoy first hit, I was in my usual Saturday Fin105 class. Grossly underestimating the true extent of the rain, I had dismissed it as just another torrential downpour which would leave in a couple of hours (as it had been a tad bit sunny in the morning). But with the grass along the walkway to JSEC slowly disappearing below the rising water, and the rain pelting the windows of my classroom at the CTC, suddenly it seemed like it wasn't going to stop any time soon.

Lunch confirmed it.


Katipunan Ave. was flooded.
The area directly in front of Starbucks and National Bookstore was submerged.
Traffic was not moving.
Hundreds were trapped in school.

Luckily though, I was able to hitch a ride with ST and his tito to Mcdo. But without a phone (I had run out of battery earlier), without cabs, and with the overwhelming infeasibility of taking the LRT/MRT/jeep/fx ride to Pasig or Makati (where my parents were), I decided to walk the 10 kilometer stretch of C5 going home. Having done this back in my days as a rookie in the track team (we ran the stretch from Ateneo to Fully Booked, Serendra); and having walked home on the last day of my freshman year in High School, I figured what the hell. The rain's intensity was down a bit, and it was slowly dawning on me that I wasn't particularly inclined to spend X hours staying put somewhere.

To put it simply, it was gut wrenching from the onset. Walking along the edges of the Katipunan Bridge, I felt the wind would hurl me to the depths below. My umbrella was being blown out of proportion every second or so. My jacket was being manhandled by the elements. From where I stood, everything seemed submerged in a palette of floodwater-gray: with unspeakable numbers of people out on the streets and in the floods (with some on their roofs) as the melancholic clouds hung over the populace. There wasn't any turning back though, that was clear.

Two long hours of walking. In those two hours, I had my bag, jacket, and clothing, soaked irreverently; and I lost a sock and a book (considering I have a Hi165 Long Test coming up, this is nothing short of a disaster). Three times I had passed by waist-to-chest-deep floods: (1) Between KFC and the Ortigas Bridge, (2) At Tiendesitas, and (3) After passing Silver City. I had also gone through despicable waters where roaches floated about, where the flood was laced with piss from people releasing excrement along the Tiende area.

I had met a score of new friends as well, friends who perhaps I will never see again. I met a driver from Greenmeadows, a family on their way SM, an MMDA person helping out an old lady (who dared me to jump and walk in the chest deep waters, as the island I had been walking on reached its end and the only choice left was to jump), and people helping other people get from one place to the next.

But most of all though, this experience taught me about the indubitable power of the human spirit. I mean, it was no ill-advised adventure. Neither was it a story of mere ego-satisfaction. In surviving the weather's onslaught, I felt the whole endeavor was more of a spiritual encounter than anything else. Because in braving the flood and torrents and in facing the distinct possibility of drowning or death, not only did I find myself, but I realized too, the pre-eminence of a far, far Greater Being.

In fact, at that exact moment where I thought the waves fronting Tiendesitas would devour me (as most already know, I am of diminutive height), I recalled Sir Francis Drake's quip (albeit haphazardly):

Disturb us Lord, to dare more boldly
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery
Where losing sight of land
We shall find the stars.

It's funny how sometimes the "craziest" and most "out of this world" decisions that we make in our lives are the ones which lead us to discover the things which are most substantial; how, when our backs are against the wall, we learn of an internal power with inconceivable magnitude; how, when we're thrown in the brink of despair and danger, we find the courage to hope; how in the face of all these occurrences, we find God.