Itsy-bitsy spider went up the water sprout...

For two weeks prior to these last two days, the rain had been falling at around four to five o’ clock. After the first week where rain relentlessly fell everyday on five o’ clock, it was obvious that the leaders of the country had resorted to cloud seeding (scattering truck loads of salt in the atmosphere to make the clouds heavier, thus making it rain) to remedy the on-going problem of drought. Sadly, that proved to be a futile attempt to raise the water levels of the dam. Fortunately, a typhoon started to form just outside the country’s area of responsibility.

Point three (.3) meters. That is how much the dam apparently collected after the downpour today. We weren’t directly hit by the typhoon so I believe that that is the reason why the storm had seemingly no effect. True enough, the rain did not last as long as the typhoons that ravaged the Philippines the previous year. Reports say that it’ll take three more typhoons to resolve the current water shortage. Preferably, the typhoons should take the example of this last one and avoid directly landing on the country’s shores but when have typhoons acted on what we ‘preferred’?

Looking at our current situation, people will starve if another storm doesn’t come. But then again, when a typhoon does come and enters Philippine waters, what’s stopping it from rampaging through a city? We’ve been so worked up on wishing for it to rain while we never thought about what will happen if rain does come. I can’t help but think that people have forgotten the effects of typhoons like Milenyo. I don’t want to believe that the country men who were killed by storms like those have already been overlooked. Hopefully, I’m wrong and people do remember.

Still, the fact remains that we desperately need the water and I’m sure people desperately don’t want to die. What in the world are we going to do then? If it doesn’t rain, we starve. If it does rain, we’ll have to endure a battery of fierce merciless winds and waist-high floods. We won’t have electricity to comfort ourselves at home. Other than that, the crops—the reason why we wanted rain in the first place—would eventually die when the storm pulls up their roots. Either way we go, we’re dead.

I don’t mean to be pessimistic. Everything I said is true whether we like it or not. The reason I’m blabbering away like this is to ask all of us a question: “What the hell are we doing?” We all know these things as a fact. It has been repeated over and over during the past years. Even so, we haven’t come up with a solution to deal with these things. People leave the country exactly because of this! I beseech all of us to build a better today and tomorrow or else, we’re doomed.