Have you ever been to a Filipino family's house? Take a look in the kitchen. I bet you will find a whole bunch of canned goods around as well as instant noodles. If it was in the Philippines, that would mean sardines or tuna. It's abroad, it would be lucheon meat, SPAM or corned beef. You might be lucky or unlucky to see the occasional canned squid or lechon paksiw (roasted suckling pork stew). I wonder if they still sell the latter?
The reasoning is quite simple and actually very sound. It's all about being prepared for natural disasters. If you look even further, there would probably be flashlights (torches for you British readers), spare batteries and candles. I would mention lighters and matches, but that would be a given. Any family that has grown up with the number of typhoons we went through, you would be remiss not to take precautions.
It doesn't mean you can truly be prepared for what comes. There are two things that you look out for, the wind and the rain. The wind is unpredictable. It's not just the speed, but it's the sudden changes of speed and direction that can be worrying. When you are in the eye of the typhoon, it is when it is most scary. It is completely calm. It might even be sunny for a while. But when you look up and the clouds begin to gather, it is the silence that is most troubling. Because when the wind begins to pick up, it doesn't stop. It keeps going on and on until it literally screams. There were moments when growing up in the farm where the sound of the wind was eerie. At night you prayed for morning to come. In the day time, you closed your eyes as you saw buildings and other structures torn apart bit by bit.
What was scarier, seeing the aftermath or seeing it happen right in front of you? One of the first typhoons I went through I remember peering out the window with my cousin Nati. We were living in a flat in the suburbs back then. We were watching this small wind mill over at a nearby house. We looked on fascinated as every couple of minutes, a fan would start dropping off. We started making a game of it as to how long it would take for the next to go. Only one was left in the end, still spinning on it's lonesome. At the end of every storm, we would pile into the jeep and go for a drive around town to see the aftermath. I remember being in shock to see my school after one particularly strong typhoon and find half of the trees uprooted. A century of living nature, gone. Still we would ride on. Morbid curiosity, I know.
Then there is the rain. Sometimes you may wish for stronger winds and less rain, because while it may sting, it would be less damaging to the crops. We did and still do reside on a farm remember? But when it just rained, it seemed to go on forever. My dad got so tired of the flooding that would happen, he raised the foundation of the family home to what most people thought ludicrous proportions. No one laughed later on when the floods began to go higher and higher. So much so that during the worst of the floods, our house would resemble a small island in the middle. Little wonder that some of the people would take refuge in our house at times.
I was reminiscing with my brother several days ago over one occasion. We decided to make the most of the waterlogged area around us and went on to make a raft. We got some bamboo and tied it all together, got a long pole and made like a gondola. We took to the flooded outskirts, moving steadily along. That was until a section of the raft started coming apart at the seams. My brother yelled at me to grab the section and keep it together. I did the first thing that came to mind.
I jumped off the raft and waded home, leaving my brother with the sinking raft.
He dragged the remains back to the homestead, only to find my dad waiting for him. I duly popped up behind my dad feigning ignorance. My dad duly laid into us for doing something very irresponsible and dangerous. He would have grounded us, but since we were stuck at home and there was no electricity, it would have been a moot point.
We woke up the next day, the house still surrounded by high waters. We looked for our dad as he seemed to be missing. After a while, he came around... on a raft of his own making. He had taken some banana plant stalks, tied them together, then nailed a sheet of plywood on top for a platform. He had taken his raft for a spin all morning, even going to the local bakery to pick up some freshly baked bread.
We still got a lecture on proper raft construction.
But we did go for a ride later.
