Our town mayor along with the provincial governor plus some councilors are making speech and the relief goods near the altar of our Barrio's Chapel obscured by the people around them.
It is better than nothing to receive such food aid and I thank the government for the food packs which is a great help for the families especially the poor and the needy including those that are trapped in their houses because of the more difficult way to travel in the flooded streets where even the paid service of transporting people with the use of
the "balsa" or DIY raft cannot be possible anymore until they are rescued by authorities with proper equipment like having a stable boat or better rafts to pick them up and given a shelter to one of the evacuation centers in our town which some are also experienced flooding but still can be used because of having a second floor where people stays until it is relatively safer to go back.
This problem about the flood will not be resolved if there is a concrete way to solve it once and for all. But the provincial government now had said that they are given (or will be given) approximately $31 million dollars in dollars equivalent more or less to solve the widespread flooding which now had been a record-breaking flooding event which no one expected because even most of the private subdivision in our town alone also went submerged and I guess that the property prices in some sections of these private subdivision areas will lower their asking prices. I guess that it is a good news for some people who want a place to live in with lower price but have a compromise of getting submerged in flood and I do not know if some people will prefer that and I guess that many won't.
Well nobody will ever want to live in an area where it is prone to flooding and by what I meant with the term flooding is a hip-level deep which if you are no vigilant enough to evacuate your vehicle, the flood level will render it useless not to mention damaging your home plus the major disruption on your life. That is why I was thinking before if I would leave this Barrio, then where else will I go? As a traditional citizen of my country we do not travel much but rather we just stay where we live because it is much "homier" in a place where people around knows your compared to living elsewhere where you will have to adjust to the local or provincial norms as well as the dialect spoken. But even if you are ok with the dialect spoken, it will still take ages to make your self comfortable with a different kind of people and environmental settings that you will have to cope.
I had lived in my grandmother's house for about four long months. Although it had made me preoccupied for a while by being an attendant to my grandmother's small but really productive store and meeting people who buys from my grandmother's small business (with debtor's included) it is still a lonely place for me because people are talking a dialect that I cannot understand. My cousins are fun to be with as well as my being with my Aunt and Uncle over there, my mind still tells me that I am not in my real home. But I was afraid to get back home all by myself which is why my supposed short vacation got longer until my Uncle told me that I can hitch a hike when his manager got scheduled to go to the capital Manila for business some reason.
Anyway, my wish was to finally solve this looming worse case scenario about the flooding problem in my province but I am not sure if it will get a clear resolution because some towns are coastal towns where even a full moon causes flooding in their area. It will be like trying to not get wet with your feet while standing on the beach scenario. Those towns have a network of waterways and small rivers that empties to the ocean. Our town also also is lower from the upper river coming from the provinces north of us, so if for example our province had completed the what I hope for, building of "mega-dikes", then it might cause our province to act like a very large dam because of those rivers coming from the north which have to go down to our river system before emptying their load of extra water to the ocean.
The dams in our province also have a contributing factor in flooding the province in general, so in the same case, the water could rise-up until it reaches the upper part of these dams. That is the way that I am thinking about it because if you think about it, the theory of building mega dikes might add to the problem because the normal flow of water will be suppressed while allowing the water from the upper river systems and dams to flow into my province. Well they have to make a careful study about making such decisions so that they (The provincial government) can calculate the benefits and potential consequences in solving a rather complicated problem particularly now that the effects of weather change or climate change is breaking records of higher than previous high levels and scope of the flood problem in my province alone to avoid a potential catastrophe that can happen if incompetent people will do the solving.
If the money will just be distributed to the town mayors of my province, then say goodbye to the thirty-one million dollars fund because nothing will happen but to make these politicians filthy rich while they get more handsome and beautiful for the eyes of the public or constituents which they serve because part of the money will just be given to people by maybe adding a one or few sardine cans in relief goods while most of the money will be pocketed by the politicians and their cronies, friends, and relatives. Well, I am saying it because the same senator told the public in our town that he had given large amounts of money for the province with the same hope of solving the said flood problem and the past town mayors has nothing to show for it, so the money just evaporated and got condensed into the pockets of you know who.
Senator Villanueva- "Where's the funds that I gave before?" Gone.
If hope that God-willing I will still live to see the result of this fund given by one of the best senators in my country to our provincial government, he didn't actually gave money but acted as a representative for our province to the national government to fund a lasting solution to this massive floods that devastated crops, properties, businesses, etc. and also caused human lives to pay for this tragedy that no one actually expected to happen until they experienced themselves the wrath of mother nature in this archipelago where I live. I hope that God would move and bless the hearts and minds of these political leaders to acquire more love for the well-being of their own constituents so that we can together live in peace without anymore worrying about our safety anymore when the monsoon unleashes again its power which I am in fact believing will happen again because of what humanity had done to our mother earth.
