WE COULD DO NOTHING

It was all because of water, without abashment, this is how the 17-year old baffled maiden, Cecile Rivera, expressed her thoughts during our interview. In fact, it was arduous for us to deliberately persuade her that moment just to hear her encouraging yet heart-sickening story. According to her, 11:30 PM when the water abruptly diffused to the different houses settled in Bayug Island. Cecile, together with his 47-year old mother, Lolita, thought that the flood wont get higher than knee-level so they merely initiated to transfer their valuable things to the elevated portion of their incomplex, one-story house. Unfortunately, it was not how they thought it would be. After 5 short minutes, the water suddenly rose to the level which barely made them breathe. Her 48-year old father, Fernando, who was then widely awake due to the commotion made by people when the water was still rising, directly took Ceciles three siblings to the attic of an abandoned house passing through a sufficient hole that let them get inside. Left standing on a pile of hollow blocks which was about to *Cecile being interviewed at Venizas house. collapse due to the waters current, Cecile and her mother anxiously awaited there to be rescued and witnessed how the flood swept away the roof, the walls together with their precious things and the bases of their house one by one, nothing was left. At least no one died, right?, we asked.Wait until you hear the whole story, she answered with a synthetic smile. It went this way, after they witnessed that wrecking event; she got hit by a log which outbalanced her. Fortunately, she unconsciously grabbed her mothers shirt while her mother was depending their lives on a slim tree. Her father directly came back and helped them. They all got through the attic together with her uncles wife and since the space was so small for them, her father destroyed a portion of the roof and let them go up. Meanwhile, her grandmother and cousin were still on the other unsteady house so her uncle entrusted his wife to them and went to save them both. The plan was to get them both together but her grandmother insisted to stay a little bit longer to get some nice clothes she could save. Instead of giving her hand to let her son save her, she gave him a bag of rice and told him to get her grandchild, who was together with her, on the roof first and will go with him when hell come back to save her too. Disastrously, she never had a chance to land her feet on the *Ceciles father, Fernando Rivera roof. When her son was trying to come back to save her, the flood swept her house together with her. However, she managed to cling on a papaya tree! On the roof, the rest of them could do nothing; it would be fatal to save her from the slim tree. They continuously shouted, Gunit lang jud ma! Gunit lang jud la!, but the tree bent and a huge collapsed mango tree was coming towards her. Yes, they witnessed it, Ceciles grandmother was gone as the huge tree vanished from their sight. There was nothing they could do, or else, the one wholl save her grandmother would also lose his/her life. She was trying to stop her tears as she ended her tragic story but she maintained a smile that ironically showed how sorrowful she was. Her humorous personality didnt fade away though. She continued, You know what happened next? Light then appeared, and let us realize how catastrophic was the night before that. We were so hungry so we went down and looked for food. We saw a case of beer, my father and uncle started to drink it so everyone did. By eating coconut meat, coconut juice, beer and various kinds of edible stuffs the flood has brought to us, we survived until noon. Then the rescue team reached us.