Dacawi: Picking up the pieces

THREE months after Typhoon Pepeng took its toll on lives and property, many surviving victims are still at the edge, unsure how to start recomposing and moving on with their lives shattered by the calamity.

Three families in Barangay Ambassador, Tublay, Benguet are just glad they had no member to bury, having moved to safety minutes before their homes, and everything in them, were buried by landslides deep in the night.

Click here for stories and updates on the Sinulog 2010 Festival.

Still, at the Bethany chapel where her family found refuge, 38-year-old Melita Tomas could hardly figure out her wish list of construction materials towards her being a housewife again, literally. She wrote: 30 pieces of 16-millimeter and 20 pieces of 10 mm. steel bars, 10 pieces one-fourth plywood and nails.

She forgot cement, sand and aggregates, corrugated sheet roofing, etc. She wouldn't know whether the pile of lumber she has slowly got hold of were of the right sizes or were enough to begin building a patchwork home for her two kids -- 10-year-old sixth-grader Eufemio Jr. and seven-year-old first grader Allan.

Her 68-year-old husband, Eufemio Sr., a retired "caminero" (road maintenance laborer) was out figuring out how to provide the more basic things like food, now that the relief operations are long over.

Her sister, Lolly Tomas, had her own incomplete list of construction materials she and husband Jose, a jeepney driver, needed to rebuild a home for their five sons - Jeffrey, John Jose, Joshua, Juerill and Janmark.

It was Jose who knocked on the Tomases' door below the Halsema Highway, telling them to vacate. It was 11:30 p.m. At midnight, a landslide wiped out the two houses.

Down at Km. 16, Dionisio Miguel 54, and his wife Nellie, 47, also needed somebody in the know how to list materials for a new abode. After all, they're not into construction but marginal vegetable farmers who know they can't till their mountain vegetable plots until the rains come.

Ironically, torrents of water rushed down the otherwise dry creek beside their idle vegetable plots at the height of the storm. Floodwaters sent rocks hurtling down, mountain, warning them an hour and a half before a landslide occurred at 10 p.m.

They never told their 25-year-old daughter Beverly, who left last May for Hongkong to work as a domestic help, how they lost all their belongings. She got wind of it from other people, perhaps through postings on the internet by people stopping by to take photos of the wreckage.

Beverly called, in tears over the loss of home yet consoled no one was hurt. Her eldest brother, Charles, 27, just found work as a driver. Her sister Stephanie, 22, just got her degree in agriculture but returned to being a cut-flower farm laborer for lack of a better job opening despite her diploma. Jenelita, 20, is still studying library science and Sylvester, 18, is still a farm-hand.

Dionisio and Nellie have all the time looking up the sky for answers to their housing problem. With the drought and no irrigation, they and 10 other farmer-couples would have to wait until the start of the rainy season before planting up the mountain where the rocks rolled down at the height of the typhoon.

Nellie wished the Department of Agriculture could install an irrigation pump and build a stairway to their gardens as part of its post-calamity support to farmers. She wished Stephanie could make use of her degree from the Benguet State University.

Former Tublay Vice Mayor Danny Pontino last week asked that their plight, and those of other victims of the calamity, be followed up by media, so Samaritans out there would know how they could still help, months after the rescue and relief operations.

Town Mayor Ruben Paoad said 95 houses were destroyed while 25 were damaged, adding that a 1.2 hectare lot is being worked out to relocate some of the displaced families.

Paoad, however, noted some of the homeless would like to rebuild near their farms and appealed for grounded support to the resettlement program before the next rainy season comes.

Perhaps an engineer, an architect or a carpenter passing by Ambassador can drop by with a simple design for a low-cost two-room affair, complete with a list of materials the victims couldn't figure out on their own. Then, perhaps, other passersby can deliver a kilo of nails, a bag of cement or a used corrugated sheet rotting in their yard.

"There are other victims whose continuing struggles you can write about," Pontino said, "but they are away from the highway."

Perhaps volunteer groups or students under the National Service Training Program can help level the three families' relocation sites.

For now, those with resources to spare can get in touch with the Tomas and Dionisio families through cellphone number 09202279719. The unit belongs to Nora Lindawan, the keeper of the Bethany Church. Miguel can be contacted through his son's number - 09183409126. They may also get in touch with this writer at cellphone 09159546534.

They can reach mayor Paoad at the municipal hall or Pontino at Km. 18, barangay Ambassador.

As Pontino said, perhaps even a tie wire will do. (email: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments).