THE AIRPORT EXPERIENCE Me, my husband, three kids, Mama Belen, Dada and Epin started walking from our residence to the airport on November 12, 2013 -day 4 after Yolanda. We were amidst a lot of people walking the same way, a lot of cars passed by some have enough space to accommodate hitch hikers, some even with red plates, but no one even offered a ride knowing that we have three kids with us. That is with the exception of Dra. Penalosa who offered us a ride from San Jose Proper up to the airport. My sincerest gratitude to her. We arrived at the airport at about 9am feeling very hopeful that we could get a flight to Cebu on the same day. After seeing the devastated view of Tacloban along the way, I felt like just moving on without ever looking back. The airport was a wreck, the floor was muddy and smelt bad, the chairs were broken but the waiting passenger just sat down anyway. We kept waiting and waiting and waiting. The weather was not really good, Zoraida was also coming so the supposed last flight- our flight was cancelled. We had to stay in the airport overnight, our feet soaked in mud, without even a decent seat or food. The children were tired and restless but we tried to comfort them. At night it was very windy and cold because of the storm Zoraida, the airport facing the sea. We turned ourselves into human blankets for the children. But there were those who were even in a worse condition than us, 3 old paralytics, new born babies, wounded, sick enduring the cold, dark night at that airport. On the other hand, there were the soldiers assigned in the same airport, early on they prepared their barracks. They had tents to protect them from the cold, they had food and medicine only for themselves. No one even offered the elderly paralytics to just stay in their barracks for the night. No one even offered food or water at least. Are they really soldiers, what were they there for? You wont even see them organize the queuing of passenger or assisting anyone. This is one thing I realized, now a days we are too busy fulfilling our assigned tasks, sometimes we forget to feel the sufferings around us. And that includes all of us in one way or another. Or maybe Yolanda is just a wake up call for us so we will go back to being humans, not robots, not animals, not insensitive beings . . . . . .
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 03:52:59 +0000
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