Dig Out Your Soul
http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/home/sports/18020-dig-out-your-soul.html
words and pictures by rick olivares
Time was I was only afraid of heights. Now you can throw rain, typhoons, and floods into my personal hell. Being forcibly and violently evicted from one’s home due to Typhoon Ondoy can do that. It’s been over a month since we got a taste of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and now more people pay attention to weather patterns, rainfall, and climate change. I am one of them and the pitter patter of raindrops on my head that once called to mind the BJ Thomas classic has been supplanted with danger. And since I’ve been living in an area not far from the Marikina River, time and again I cast a wary eye to this dormant predator.
I haven’t exactly coped well from the aftermath of Ondoy as I’ve skipped work and stayed aloof from people for the better part of the past month. However life cruelly goes on and I have to muster all the willpower to fight this malaise in order for the healing to begin. And perhaps the best way to snap out of this funk is to immerse myself once more in the mud.
Some 10 days after Ondoy, a group of former Ateneo de Manila football players led by Atty. Eric Ingles put aside their personal concerns and demons and marched into hard hit Provident Village armed with shovels. “Team Provident” as they dubbed themselves, traded their cleats for boots and cleared the mud and garbage strewn streets of this once thriving residential area. They worked knee deep in the muck, side by side with Metro Manila Development Authority and military personnel. “Shovels for hope,” summed up Ingles who answered the call for help by Marikina Mayor Marides C. Fernando.
Ingles’ home in nearby Loyola Heights was also deluged by the flood but after a few days, he got back on his feet and set out to help those in Provident Village.
Several former players of the team -- JP Merida, Jerwin Belina, Peter Mortillero, and Zaldy Marañon -- now working as coaches for the various Ateneo varsity football teams, shared an apartment at the village. When the flood waters rose to alarming levels, they sought safety by climbing up the roof. Unmindful of their own situation and the obvious danger, they rescued 14 other people who neither had the will nor strength to the reach higher ground. And now they were back. Still helping others.
When a Philippine Army engineering battalion armed with payloaders and shovels themselves saw the small army of blue and white, a ranking officer approached them. It turned out that Major Arnel Fernandez, the head of this army unit, who was once the coach of the Philippine Army Football Club that regularly did battle with Ateneo and other teams in local tournaments. “The mud brings us together once more,” laughed Ingles.
And like any self-respecting footballer, Team Provident, for the last month, has been in the mud and water although on a cement pitch. And this time, I was able to join them. The dangerous water had subsided. But there is a heavy atmosphere of tragedy. You can smell it.
Most of its previous population has not returned. In fact, many will not. There are signs of “for sale” throughout. One home, was close to being constructed and now a sign has been slapped on its mud-strew gates –“interested parties may call…” There are opportunists from Tondo who try to cart away furniture and appliances of their own. There are unscrupulous towing companies who hitch on to their winches cars not their own.
Those who have stayed and lived here for years and years refuse to go. This is their home. But at the first hint of rain, hard rain, they crane their necks to listen. Their eyes watching the streets as it fills up with water. They say that if silent waters run deep, then noisy waters mean its shallow. Unfortunately in this case in Provident Village and the nearby areas, the noisy raging waters meant death and destruction.
Last Saturday, a light rain fell as Typhoon Santi spared the metropolis from much damage. Thank God for small miracles because how much more suffering can we take? In the streets we shoveled, we noticed that the water had no place to go. We have tried poking and clearing the drainage systems but they were clogged probably all the way inside and through every water way. The solution here is to open up the streets not just in one street but perhaps everywhere. And that will cost a lot of money and from where it will come I, we, everyone here has no idea. If the rainfall is more voluminous, it will repeat what it did on September 22 when the waters looked for those old waterways it used to flow into. Unfortunately, they are all suburban residential areas. And that calls to mind one of the very first history lessons I learned in school that our country’s topography kept changing because of the rise and fall of the waters.
And that isn’t the only lesson we learned. In the first weeks of Team Provident’s clearing mission, an elderly man walked back and forth watching as the footballers and their friends cleared the streets. He finally mustered the courage and tapped Atty. Ingles and asked if he was from here or had any family residing in the village. Mr. Ingles replied in the negative and said, “We’re just here to help.”
The man with tears filling his eyes shook the volunteers’ hands: “My sons are from the Ateneo.” Then he walked away softly saying, “Man for others. Man for others.” Tears from the tragedy apparently aren’t only exclusive to those who lived through it.
We helped clear out a couple of streets and by mid-afternoon, the team was done and we took refuge from the rain at the San Jose Manggagawa Chapel located inside the subdivision.
A woman had drowned inside the chapel during Ondoy. There was a service going on and most clung to the steel beams that held up the ceiling. The others, with the aid of construction workers who were working on the adjacent church, escaped through the ceiling and onto the roof.
We said the rosary as is the custom after each dig. Not soon after, Mayor Fernando arrived. Her office had been monitoring Team Provident’s efforts since the operations began and she had to personally come over and offer her thanks. With the city government’s resources strained, any help was most appreciated.
Around 4pm in the afternoon, we began our march back home (everyone walked back up the hill from Loyola Memorial Park to Ateneo).
Like everyone else, I was muddied but not tired. There’s something cleansing about the effort to help others that serves like downing a refreshing glass of cold water. A tonic. A shot of adrenaline. Maybe even that second wind. For me, it was getting back in the circulation of things. And I found out that shoveling for hope… I was digging out the personal demons from my soul.
It’s time to start over again.
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Thanks to Atty. Eric and Mickey Ingles. As you said it: servus servorum.
I have more pictures in my Facebook page.
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