MY wife and our
two-year-old son Nathaniel just came out of a children’s party at Jollibee
along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City. It was the first week of August of 1999.
The gray cloudy sky, cool heavy wind, and low rumble in mid-afternoon presaged
rain.
“It looks like
rain, do you have umbrella?” asked Weng, my wife’s officemate and the mother of
the birthday girl.
“No it won’t rain,”
I replied as if I was that day’s weatherman.
“Yes, we have an
umbrella,” my wife countered.
Instead of going
home to Malate, Manila, we proceeded to Uncle Rolly’s house in Quezon
City. My uncle, my mother’s youngest brother, had been asking us to visit them
if we have time. So here now, we have this spare time after the party. My wife
and I were also eager to see my uncle’s two lovely kids. It would only take one
jeepney ride from Jollibee to his place in Project 3 anyway, and we might reach
the place before the rain. If it would rain at all.
We arrived at my
uncle’s rented studio-type apartment just in time for dinner and the drizzle.
Nathaniel had fun playing with my uncle’s precocious children, Jap-Jap, 3, and
Paula, 2. I think it was around 7 p.m. when the drizzle gained up strength,
followed by wild gusts of wind. The strong rain grew even stronger, and it fell
without letup for another hour.
I wouldn’t want to
stay very late at night with my baby away from the safety of our home. My
uncle would love to accommodate us, if we like to stay through the night, but
when we decided to go home no matter what, he only allowed us to leave when the
rain had stopped.
After more than an
hour of continuous rain, the sky became quiet but the cold stormy breeze still
lingered in the air. We waited for another hour without rain then we went out
the house, bidding my uncle and his family goodbye. At the street corner, we
caught a jeepney going to Quiapo. It’s almost 10 in the evening.
While our jeepney
was traversing the busy street of Kamuning, the rain fell, this time harder and
more fearsome. The rain drummed on the roof of the vehicle. The roads
were covered with rain water in a short period of time. The traffic came at
slow. We waited patiently amidst drastic rain, cool wind, and darkness.
The driver made a
shortcut to minor streets, yet we were still trapped along with other vehicles
trying to evade the floods. Suddenly, we came to a dead stop, and he told us
that it was very dangerous to drive any further. “I’m sorry, but you have to
get out and walk,” he said, pointing out the sudden lull from the rain.
My family went out
of the vehicle, and walked until we reached a corner of the road where we could
see passenger jeepneys passing by. It’s not yet midnight, I thought we’d have
no trouble getting a ride. After we waited in the corner for a while, a jeepney
with only a few passengers pulled up and the driver asked where we were going.
“Quiapo,” I said. He told us that with the floods, he was not sure if he could
make it until that place, but he could just try.
So we hopped in. A
big portion of Quezon Avenue ahead of us was already submerged with
floodwaters. The driver made a shortcut to the road parallel to the main
thoroughfare until we reach Sampaloc district in Manila.
The weather turned
nasty in a split second. It began to rain again drastically. Our travel had
become a long and tortuous wading through the flooded streets. Floods were
nothing new to this densely-packed part of the city. Being drivers and
commuters, living under the mercy of floodwaters during the rainy season, meant
developing survival skills and prayerful spirit worthy of a survivalist.
The driver, just
like the first one, saw the danger ahead and said that he wouldn’t want to push
his luck. That means, we have to be on our own, go down the road, and
brave that super-filthy flood with my small child in my arms. Wading
through flood waters is dangerous. Flood water can contain hundreds of
different chemicals, along with bacteria and other microorganisms that can
cause disease and infection. And there’s that open manhole waiting for its
victim. But I have no choice.
We joined the
remaining passengers as they alighted from the vehicle and went to the
direction of España Blvd. There’s only a drizzle now, so my family had to
huddle in my wife’s small umbrella as we groped our way to the nearest
shed.
Good thing, the
drizzle stopped after about 15 minutes, giving us the chance to go on with the
trek. Fortunately, the flood along the side of the street was only
just as high as my ankle. From Dapitan Street, we waded toward the
direction of an intersection going to España Blvd. I could see some
vehicles traversing the street toward Quiapo. So I rather take my chances than
have my family spend the night in the middle of the floodwaters.
The cold, dark
night stretched dauntingly ahead. We were stranded at the corner of Blumentritt
and España. We stayed in the corner, with Nathaniel in my arms,
seemed heavier than before. There were only a few public vehicles braving
the floodwater but none had stopped to take us in. Tricycle and pedicab
drivers, taking advantage of the flood, offered their services to stranded
commuters; while some men pushed stranded vehicles to higher grounds, for a
fee, of course.
Then a dark blue
SUV passed by with steady speed at first, but slowed down in front of us, then
he stopped two or three meters away. Perhapsthe driver changed his mind to move
on, then he backtracked very slowly. It stopped in front of us, and the driver
slid down his tinted window.
“Where are you
going?” asked the driver, a young man about thirty.
My wife told him we
were waiting for a ride going to Malate.
“I am going to that
direction, why don’t you hop in before it would rain again, well, if it’s OK
with you?” he said. His welcoming smile eased my apprehension of a stranger.
“I happened to see
your young child, so I thought, he badly needs to be at home at this time,” he
continued when we were already inside his vehicle, with our soaked pants and a
dripping umbrella. My child was now asleep in my lap.
The driver went on
with his friendly chatter. He was on a hurry (yet he found time to stop and
pick us up in the flood) to fetch his boss from an important meeting in a place
near the US Embassy along Roxas Boulevard, and his boss might be worried by
now. Just like the previous jeepney drivers, he made every shortcut that he
would find, but unlike them, he didn’t stop at all.
As the SUV
negotiated the swirling waters, I suddenly found myself praying to God and all
the saints: to keep the car from conking out, and let us make it to higher
ground. The speed was moderate and steady, and murky flood started creeping
into the car. But the driver wasn’t worried at all. He told me that he’d used
to this kind of flood and he had a full trust with his vehicle.
We reached the end
of España, and there’s no more flood after the next street going all the
way to the underpass connecting Quiapo. I knew that our ordeal was about to the
end. We went ahead with normal speed going to Lawton, then to Roxas Blvd until
we reached Kalaw Street.
We alighted, and
thanked the man profusely. But our angel shrugged off our profuse thanks, and
refused to accept any payment. In our haste to go home, we forgot to get his
name. But I watched the car sped away, sending him a prayer for him to reach
his boss safely and to his family after his work was done.
Whoever he is, I’m
very thankful for all his effort. He went out of his way to help my family in a
desperate situation, and perhaps, his only motivation is to help or to do an
act of kindness when opportunity so provides. That man has done a very
honorable act.
We made it safely
home. We were blessed that August night in España to meet a nameless
angel in the road. He saved us, especially my child, from spending the night in
a flooded street.
