I wrote this soon after the torrential downpour in Metro Cebu late afternoon last Wednesday.
I was at the Cebu City Sports Center oval when the first drops fell. I looked at the sky over the Capitol area, it was pitch-black. Normally, you could see the mountains at the back, but that day there was nada. Zero visibility.
Rain has been on the forecast since the beginning of the week and it’s expected to last until Sunday. However, with weather, one can never be sure. Even when armed with the latest prediction thingamajig, the weather seems to have a mind of its own. Like some petulant, rebellious teenager that refuses to obey orders. In other words, to quote a veteran award-winning Filipino actress, “You can never can tell.”
And that was precisely in my mind when I headed out to the center for my daily jog. I knew the odds were against me, but I continued to hope against hope that the heavens wouldn’t open their mouth and do an Exorcist on us mortals on the ground. Despite my dogged optimism, I still went prepared, lugging my mutated umbrella the size of the late Superstar. I also packed an extra pair of socks in my bag in case my shoes would get wet if it did rain. In hindsight, I should have also brought an extra pair of shoes.
Because rain it did. Very hard. For more than an hour. I was able to finish two rounds of walking and two rounds of jogging at the oval before the rain forced me inside. Actually, the cloudburst arrived minutes later while I finished my five-kilometer walk in the hallway. And I did. To those who don’t know, that meant brisk-walking from one end of the hallway to the other head 48 times. Back and forth. Don’t ask me how I arrived at the math. I just did. I guess I’m your regular Raymond Babbitt in that sense.
You might be wondering why I’m going on about the rain and the flood it expectedly caused in flood-prone areas in the metro.
Well, we just emerged from one of the hottest and most humid summers that I can remember since moving back to Cebu in ’94. And when that season officially ended, the weather bureau Pagasa issued a dire warning about an emerging El Niño that had a “69 percent chance of becoming strong by late 2026 and a 62 percent possibility of intensifying into a very strong ‘super’ event by the final quarter of the year, which will likely persist into early 2027.”
A mouthful? Yes, but it didn’t come from me.
With this forecast, I had pictured withered crops and dry, cracked earth, basically your hell-on-earth scenario with occasional videoke and drinking breaks, but you know what I mean. Ankle-deep water at the sports complex’s parking lot was farthest from my mind.
And that was how my shoes and socks got wet last Wednesday. There was no other way out. Actually, there was but it was at the other end of the facility and my ginormous umbrella was at the courtesy booth by the parking lot so it made more sense to exit from there. And I just happen to be a very sensible person. With a very active imagination, I may add.
So you can imagine what went through my head as I stepped into the floodwater. Fecal matter from some unknown animal. Check. Decaying body of some unknown critter. Check. All the harmful germs that can wreak havoc on your immune system not to mention the urine from an infected rodent that can cause leptospirosis if the water made contact with your open sore, if you had one, which I did not. I made sure I checked. It was the first thing I did when I got back from the oval after which I grabbed a bottle of alcohol – not the drinking kind, mind you, it was too early for me to have a drinkie-drinkie – and poured all its contents on both my feet. Drowned would be a better word.