Reming victims refuse to have sad Christmas

26 December 2006

By Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer Southern Luzon

LEGAZPI CITY—They’ve lost their homes but they refuse to have a blue Christmas.

The 145 families displaced by Supertyphoon “Reming” and who are temporarily housed at the Bitano Elementary School in this city have found a way to celebrate Christmas.

As early as 3 p.m. on Saturday, a group of housewives talked and laughed while they shredded stalks of malunggay or horseradish they had planned to cook in gata or coconut cream.

“Wala kaming pambili ng lechon, kaya ito na lang (We don’t have money to buy roast pig, so we’re serving this). What matters is that we are all together,” said Lea Agripa, an evacuee and one of the camp leaders in the shelter.

Cleofo Moyo, another camp leader said the families shared whatever they had for the simple celebration, like Bicol Express (a pork dish cooked with siling labuyo (chili peppers) and coconut milk) and other homemade delicacies.

Each family from Barangay Bitano also cooked one kilo of rice and donated a portion of their rationed relief goods which would be put together in a raffle during the party.

“We also want to feel the spirit of Christmas despite the things we’ve lost,” said Moyo.

Since electricity had been restored at the shelter on Friday, Agripa decided to borrow a sound system.

“We plan to have parlor games for the children, sporting events for the teenagers and a lot of singing and dancing,” she said.

In one corner, a group of teens was playing volleyball while another group was singing Christmas carols.

The adults prepared food while grandmothers told stories of Christmas past.

Closer

Agripa said she couldn’t recall of any time when their community gathered together like this.

“Some of us here didn’t know each other until we were forced to live together in the evacuation center. Most of our homes were destroyed by the typhoon,” she said.

For almost three weeks now, each room at the shelter housed 18 to 27 families. Because of the physical closeness, they started to treat one another like family, she added.

At the height of Reming, Agripa and her son scrambled out of their house minutes before it was carried off by rushing floodwaters.

“I didn’t want to leave our house and our belongings but my son kept telling me we should leave. He is my angel. If I had not listened to him we could have been trapped inside,” she said.

Agripa and her son had to wade through the floodwaters to a nearby public dome, where the rest of the villagers had sought refuge.

Her son sustained deep wounds from galvanized iron sheets floating in the floodwaters.

Agripa recounted that other residents who waited till the last minute to leave their homes also had to swim to safety.

Picking up the pieces

“After the disaster I was sad because only the flooring of our house was left. It was only when my neighbors started to chide me: ‘Bakit ikaw lang ba? Lahat tayo wala nang bahay (You’re not the only one. We are all homeless),’ that I felt I was not alone,” she said.


Relief goods abound in villages affected by lahar, according to Moyo, but the government has yet to bring housing materials.

“The government gave food items to families with totally damaged houses. But what we need most are materials to rebuild our homes,” she said.

With the resumption of classes on Jan. 3, the evacuees will have to leave the shelter. They have nowhere to go.

Dark Christmas

“We need tents. We even cleaned up an abandoned building which does not have a roof just in case there’s nowhere else we can stay,” said Moyo.

Esperanza Bantigui said her family gathered scrap materials and constructed a make-shift roof over their heads.

“Basta may masurukan sana (Just so we would have a space for shelter),” the 71-year-old woman said.

And since full power had yet to be restored, 83 percent of the villages in Albay had a dark Christmas Eve—literally.

Alex Realoza, general manager of the Albay Electric Cooperative, said they were only able to restore power in the downtown areas.

Residents, however, found comfort in this forwarded Christmas text message: “Even if this city is bathed in darkness, there is no reason not to celebrate Christmas, whose meaning lies not in material things.”