Bagio, Typhoon, Hurricane. Same windy and wet animal.

October 11, 2011

 After washing my clothes yesterday in the late morning, my wife informed me that a "bagio", typhoon, was on the way. A couple of hours later, the relentless rain came with a furry. It has rained for the past two days straight. A couple of times it petered out to nothing more than a mist, but it never quit completely, and mist turned to heavy rain once again.

The Philippines gets an average of 25 typhoons a year. Our island of Cebu is sandwiched between bigger islands on either side of us. Most of the weather comes from the West, where Negros Island shoots skyward with its mountainous interior, keeping us safe from the kind of waves that would otherwise pound our coast and wash away the bamboo houses that stand on the sea wall or tempt fate by hanging out over the ocean, on pilings of wood or concrete.

In the cities, rain flows into garbage-clogged sewers, backing up into the concrete and tarmac streets, where it can't be absorbed by the ground. Overflowing rivers add to the melee. People are stranded. Some drown. Many are homeless. Not a pretty sight.

But here "in the Province", meaning anywhere outside the city, the water simply flows out to the sea.

My clothes are still hanging - and still wet - in various places around the outside of the house, under the shelter of the overhanging roof. If the rain doesn't let up soon, my clothes will grow mold. We don't own a dryer and there isn't a commercial laundry anywhere in town. If you own clothes, you dry them on a line. It's part of living here. If mold and mildew take up quarters on your shirts and undies, you just wash them again and pray for sunshine.

Two years ago, seven typhoons piled up on the backs of each other. The rain was extremely heavy and the wind blew hard... for two weeks solid. Trees were knocked down. A couple of houses got washed out to sea. Emelie and I were renting a place a couple miles south of here, right on the ocean. We didn't have a problem.

Typhoons might seem like something that occupies a spot near the top of a list of "cons" for living here. Not so, really. Since we don't get flooded, the typhoon spits and blows like a toothless old man who can't bite.