Aborted Despedida

My Mother-in-law is leaving tomorrow to fly back to Sydney, Australia. Last Friday, we (especially our niece-in-law) prepared a lot of food for an early despedida to be held on that weekend in a beach in Bagac, Bataan. Then Saturday came, all was set. Most of the foods were cooked, our clothes were packed, the utensils and each and every need were all ready to be boarded in the car when suddenly the rain poured heavily. There was a long discussion on whether to push through or not. NIL who's in Pampanga, requested that we push through our plan coz she was done in cooking lots of foods. Thus, despite the furious weather, we decided to board the car and drove through the rain. But after only few kilometers from our place, the traffic wouldn’t move. We were stuck in the midst of traffic jam . We learned later that streets were in deep waters, that's why.

We turned back when we had the chance, only to go through deeply flooded roads. We were lucky that we got back just in the nick of time. We could have been caught and stranded in the depth of Ondoy’s flood along North Luzon Expressway if we went on. We were glad we made it home with only little difficulty but it was so depressing to see what other people went through of which, amongst those was my SIL and her family. Her house was submerged in water more than six feet high. She’s lucky that they have their second floor where they took refuge together with their neighbors.

Ondoy’s havoc is unbelievably catastrophic and so distressing. Ondoy is gone but the aftermath will linger for long. Let’s pray for all the victims and give help in whatever way we can. There are many Operation Tulong where you can send your help. Let hope and pray that all the victims can recover soon and that our government officials won’t feast on those countless financial donations being sent by other countries for their own personal consumption. If they do, I pray, may God bless their soul.