The news won't get better anytime soon. As a Filipino away from my homeland it always breaks my heart to see my country suffer from one calamity to another. Lately, on international news television channels you see the Philippines not with its beautiful beaches anymore but with ruined buildings, flashed houses, flooded streets, dead bodies, debris everywhere and all other horrible and unimaginable things. Watching the news has become so hard and painful. My country, my poor country is being crumpled.
The Visayas, where I come from, has just suffered from a very strong earthquake few weeks back and now suffering from the aftermath of one of the strongest typhoons to make landfall on earth. I feel very helpless and yes, sometimes I do question why the Philippines, where people don't have so much? But this should not be the question to ask. No country deserves to be hit by any calamities. It is by nature to have some storms. Natural disasters happen everywhere; rich country, poor country, it doesn't matter, a disaster is still a disaster. Now instead of asking "why the Philippines?" I instead thought, why are we not prepared enough? Why don't we have strong, decent houses? Why don't we have enough search and rescue/retrieval equipment? In my country we pay taxes too. Taxes that should have been used for: fixing our roads, fixing our drainage systems, educating our people so we can have the chance to improve our lives and thus provide our family with a safe and decent home, having decent and fully-equipped hospitals, fire stations and other public necessities. Well, these are just some of the many things that our taxes should have been used for but no it does not happen that way. Corruption is a huge problem in my country. While a part of the country is suffering from the ruins of the strong earthquake, the senate (located in the capital, Manila) is busy for one of the most important trials of the nation, which of course concerns a huge CORRUPTION CASE concerning billions of tax payers' money. It's a pity and a shame at the same time. I am very proud to be a Filipino, so proud of where I come from but so ashamed that we have this bad and corrupt system.
I have lived a very traumatic experience in November 1990 when we were hit by a very strong typhoon locally named "Ruping" and internationally called "Mike". I was just a little girl but I remember the dark night, the very strong wind, the rain which felt like thousands of sands when they hit my skin (it was so painful), the crawling in the middle of the night for survival, the cold, the shaking and breaking of our house and the houses of our neighbors and then the "rebuilding our house and recovering our farms" phase. It was horrible and when I saw the news about the coming of that typhoon Yolanda I couldn't help but feel the fear, remember all the trauma that I had and fear for my family and friends' safety. Thankfully we have the new technology now which make us able to communicate with our love ones almost instantaneously. The same technology making people now more aware of how strong an upcoming storm can be.
I am enormously thankful and glad that my family and friends are doing well in Cebu but still heartbroken to see and know that not everyone can say the same thing. I am so afraid to know that a friend or someone I know have lost a family or a home due to that storm but the possibility is so huge because I know a number of people who come from the most devastated areas. I feel for the people who lost their love ones, their friends and what they have tried to build all their lives. I am very happy and humbled to see the outpouring of international helps and the volunteers trying to help the victims as fast as they can but at the same time I am hoping and praying that "THE HELP" will really be used as it should be and will be distributed fairly. Knowing my country, sadly, I can say that we really need a touch of miracle when it comes to money and aide distribution.
