keeping afloat

I was still in Manila that Saturday morning at around 2am when i read a facebook post from a friend abroad asking for prayers as our city in Iligan is supposedly flooded. i sent my niece a text message, their residence is known to experience floods when rains get too heavy. true enough, their home is now flooded up to the second floor! they managed to cross to the other side towards their neighbor which has more rooms on their third floor. rain abated a bit but they could still hear the rush of water around them as if the river is just nearby.

they somehow managed to leave the place and transfer to my mom's home in Noria which thankfully was untouched by flood waters. that was already around 11am. 

that is the wooden plank which they used to cross through to the other house. "they" included my sister and her 2 daughters, 2 sons, grandchildren ages 3 years old and one month old, and my 5 year old son.

when i saw the news the morning after and the extent of the damage to properties and to the staggering number of casualties i just could not help but be grateful that they all survived.

i went home to Iligan that Sunday and these are my aerial photos of Cagayan de Oro. debris are still floating in the rivers towards the seas. and i later learned that these are actually houses carried away by the rushing waters. in it were lives lost as well. 

1000 lives perished, and still counting...

thousands of families displaced.

a lot more are still missing.

millions of infrastructure destroyed. 

it's been several days, people are still trying hard to rebuild their lives while bodies are still about to be recovered and be laid to rest.

what does one do really? we try hard to keep afloat especially when Christmas time is about to come, supposedly the merriest time of the year.

and since we are still one of the lucky ones, we try to do our share in helping each other out. nature has it's own way of shaking us off our own stupor of apathy and neglect, hopefully we all learn from all this and live each of our precious lives more meaningfully now.

this is our littlest boy survivor oblivious to the perils in this world. let's all hope and pray for a better tomorrow for them.

a blessed Christmas to all.