Sunday, February 8, 2009

Dumaguete Flooded... with Flood Stories

This Sunday morning started early for me. First to church, then to the hospital for rounds and then to the palengke for marketing. And everywhere I went, there was only one topic that dominated every conversation. Dumaguete is currently flooded with stories about yesterday's flood.

Movement in the market place was a kind of slow today because everybody, sellers and buyers alike, had a story to tell, so every commercial transaction was interspersed with baha anecdotes. The butcher would hold the cleaver in mid-air as he told how the pigs in the ihawan and lechonan were floating in the flood. When a customer asked how much a kilo of cabbage cost it took a while for the tindera to reply because she was in the middle of telling her story to her fellow tindera about how her neighbor's house was swept away into the Banica River. The chicken supplier lamented that water had entered their manokan and swept away the collective iti of their chickens, the iti or chicken droppings that was supposed to be sold as organic fertilizer. And someone was saying their septic tank overflowed and out came a horde of cockroaches and little mice scampering in all directions.

I wanted to linger and listen to the many stories being told. But I had to hurry with marketing because my siblings are coming over for lunch so we could exchange flood stories as well.


Here's a video from the GMA News Network:





And here are links to other stories about the Dumaguete flood:

Roads into rivers

Dumaguete villages flooded

And the wall came tumbling down

Flood pics from around the city

More Dumaguete flood pics


Update: 10:35 pm

Ellyn just came home. Crying. Her seven year old cousin drowned in the Banica River last night and the child's body was found only this morning downstream from their makeshift shanty, which itself was washed away in yesterday's flood.




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