Unnerving and disquieting views

Among the things that I learned from my old folks is that experience is, indeed, a good teacher. It is, at times, a better teacher than a very knowledgeable instructor because while the theories a good professor imparts to his students may have far-reaching implications, they are appreciated best only if felt in actual events. In going thru real life situations, we validate many things including those which maybe differently packaged.

Our trip, last Sunday, to the northern part of the Cebu province, a ground zero of sort, in so far as Yolanda was concerned, gave us the experience that was both unnerving and disquieting. My family, seven doctors, members of the Volkswagen Club, other friends, two Japanese, a Vietnamese and a Nepalese, brought two truckloads of relief goods to two areas in Bogo City, one in Medellin and Tapilon, Daanbantayan. Our experience was far better than some criticisms that got peddled thru social media.

My family thought of attempting to do our own simple way of bringing relief, little though it may be, to those who suffered from the super typhoon. So, we sounded the idea to some close family friends who responded positively. In no time at all, assorted relief items started piling up at our garage. The sight of people bringing whatever things they thought could be of help was most touching. That experience of man's helpfulness was more profound than the best prose I came across.

Applying the kind of formula mentioned by big centers of relief operations in packing goods, we spent three days and two nights collating and packing together items that, we thought, could be of immediate use to typhoon victims. Immediacy of use was our primary concern. Our next consideration was that the goods contained in each pack would last for, at least, three days for a family of four. To make sure that the packed merchandise could right away mollify the hunger and thirst of the recipients for that estimated period of time was mentally straining and physically tiresome. In sum, it was not an experience of an easy work.

When we saw a social media account posted by a person who claimed to be a volunteer in packing goods at a DSWD center, we were aghast. From our experience, we could validate his (or was it her?) statement that the task was, though an apparent labor of love, taxing. It was not easy. But, we felt insulted by his insinuation that the DSWD had to open the large bundles from Indonesia because DSWD personnel were helping themselves to those items. That statement was unnerving, if not downright irresponsible, as it was malicious. When we packed the things entrusted to us by friends, our only concern was to be able to bring relief to typhoon victims. That was our experience and, we suppose, that was also what the DSWD personnel had in mind when they unbundled relief items in placed them different packs.

The scenes in those areas we visited looked like the television footages of Fukushima and Sendai, in Japan, after the March 2011 tsunami destroyed almost everything in its path. The destruction in Northern Cebu was as unimaginable as it was in Japan. But the similarity ended there. Another point of view was disquieting.

The images beamed to us from Japan days few days after the tsunami showed an entirely different race. I could not see a Japanese idly standing by. Perhaps, no cameraman found anyone worth the shot. Yes, their faces bore the visible signs of the horrific calamity but, at the same time, they displayed their remarkable determination to bounce back. Everybody seemed busy cleaning the debris as initial step in rebuilding his home.

By comparison, that was not what we saw in our trip. Nobody appeared struck even with the idea of gathering the littered branches of trees, not so much as to make marketable bundles of firewood as to clean his surroundings. It was rather disquieting for me to see no more than a handful of people trying to retrieve what could be re-cycled as housing materials. If only they busied themselves with the re-building process…