Readers, friends, countrymen, lend me your eyes momentarily – for Daily Laborer has misplaced his eyes – and read this, if to dry your rainy mood.
It was at La Trinidad, Benguet, one afternoon three weeks’ ago, on the forehead of Mount Yangbew that Daily Laborer last saw the rising of the sun. The sun, an orb of molten gold, cast its receding light at Mount Yanbew, its beams slowly swallowed by meandering clouds.
Mr. Sun kissed goodbye to the boughs and needles of the remaining Benguet pine stands, mixed it with his smile and laughed away the remaining season of summer. Now pine trees and other shrubs, feeling the change in temperature hunkered and waited.
Even the wandering schoolboy accompanied with his faithful dog that Daily Laborer saw awhile back romping around the mountain sensed the change, called his dog and they hurried home.
The changing shades of the season were beginning to be felt.
Thereafter, the sky’s blue face always became shrouded with inky clouds every afternoon, a portent of things to come. Above, the sky was troubled. Dark clouds gathered in ominous blotches. Then the rains began their journey downward.
It was wet season starting slowly. First, came the rains in drizzles. Later in slanting rapidity in the afternoons. Then, in constant downpours that lasted through evenings.
At this time of the rains to many folks in the highlands and lowlands, everything appears watery, dull and lifeless. As Romello Busag, a driver from La Trinidad, Benguet, dryly commented, “Maka-uma daytoy a todo. Madi metten nga sumardeng.”
Then in the middle of last week of July, typhoon Egay made its unwelcome entry by raging into the Cordillera highlands, followed later by typhoon Falcon. And the roses, other flowers and highland vegetables – pride of Benguet’s cutflower and vegetable industry – wept under the rains, struggled to compensate but most gave up the ghost.
Such can be reflected by 110,086 hectares laid to waste in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and an estimated Php879,937,984.24 in damages while road networks and infrastructure destroyed reached up to Php529,946,323.24.
Rains pay no favorites, inundating poor and prosperous neighborhoods in the barangays alike.
Humans are subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very conditions of nature throwing at us its raging hell, and yet, as if nature has not sown enough trouble for us, we add grief to grief by our cruel treatment of nature.
Typhoons, particularly super typhoons are sobering reminders to Filipinos that we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action. While scientists have yet to exactly pin down the red line between global warming and killer typhoons, climate change is, however, their indication that it makes storms more deadly. In short, climate change, which is human-induced, has something to do with dangerous weather disturbances.
And the Southwest monsoon made things more difficult by refusing to let up for the many days. To many highlanders and lowlanders, the monsoon season was witching time for everyone, where even wandering spirits (dagidaiy inmuna-en nga napan ken dagiti adda pa laeng ditoy rabaw ti daga a pada tayo) walking this earth could hardly catch a sound sleep from the rains pitter-patter. It has dumped rain in Cordillera and the lowlands for days on end.
Many passengers riding public conveyances wear a frown on their faces because of the rains. But then, Daily Laborer, in riding on a jeep last week, happened to spot a teenage girl who did not forget the habit of smiling, even when her rubber shoes were soaking wet. And the Daily Laborer wondered, “Wouldn’t we want to have a soul like hers?” It’s just as easy as getting into the habit of smiling at the rain.
We had been born, or at least nursed within Cordillera’s bosom mountains where the winds whistle across its grand mountains and shrill cries of the birds echo across the sky, sounds that impress themselves upon our recollection. Such, surely was the character of that teen-age girl with her soaked rubber shoes.
Remembering that rain-drenched teenager reminded Daily Laborer of how there lies in the depth of her heart the dream of her youth, which neither the rains can extinguish, with her feelings subdued and softened, unlike the raging of the storm.
Rain is a blessing and a curse. Life on earth is dependent on this liquid blessing poured by the clouds. But rains, accompanied by typhoons bring destruction. Daily Laborer laughingly reminds all and sundry that Mama Nature has her own way of stamping down her declaration when she gets mad.
If adorned in bright green and sunshine, she would suddenly call her clouds and spew us tons of water to remind us what mortals we are, by nature. And what mortals we ought to be, by grace.
That we for granted nature, and instead monkey with it, the consequences come back to claw at us. We abuse nature, instead of protecting it, the result is change in climate conditions. Unfortunately, we deserve what we do.
If rains can still make some folks smile despite the hardship, it makes others pensive as well. Daily Laborer remembers that time way back in December of 2017 when after a heavy downpour as he was making his way at Bokawkan Road, Baguio City, chanced upon a boy’s jacket, wet, sorry-looking, worn out and thrown at the garbage pile near where the Blessed Association of Retired Persons (BARP) Foundation and Multi-Purpose Cooperative building now stands.
Somebody must have just tossed the jacket there, who decided he/she no longer had any use for it. About the size fit for a pickaninny of five or six-year-old kid, the wet jacket was colored red. It was torn in places. Daily Laborer discerned the biggest rip running jaggedly at the collar down the elbow.
And Daily Laborer had that feeling the jacket was last used as a rag to wipe things with, then unceremoniously discarded. For it laid unattractively among the smelly odds and ends of the garbage pile, wet, cold, limp and lifeless, an addendum to the garbage awaiting transport by Baguio City’s General Services Division.
That rainy day, Daily Laborer wondered what exactly about the jacket that touched him so and made him pensive. And it came to him. . .
It was a jacket that had surely been worn by – like Daily Laborer – a poor man’s son or daughter; else it would have not been so frayed and tattered. It had certainly seen much use during sunny and rainy days for that child-owner of the jacket. The jacket had seen better times or worn for cold, rainy days.
Daily Laborer preferred to believe the child’s parents must have purchased the jacket at Baguio City’s “wag-wagan” section, parents who could hardly buy new clothing for themselves on meager pay.
It must have cost the parents quite a sum to acquire that jacket. But to them, no matter. Given to their child as a present, it would ward off the cold, rain and keep their sibling warm. And although the parents may have never admitted it, the jacket they bought was a size too big for their child.
And Daily Laborer remembered that he had a feeling the child’s face lighted up when the jacket was given to him/her, as he stood there at Bokawkan staring at the jacket while the rains lashed at his face.
Daily Laborer wondered about that boy or girl who owned that jacket. The kid would have grown now, he mused, and wondered more where all the years went since that child wore that jacket for the last time.
Daily Laborer had a feeling that somehow he may have spotted such a child, somewhere back, in the same likeness of him, in rubber shoes, T-shirt and jacket – as the child trekked to grade school.
He had a feeling the jacket was held together by a safety pin where two buttons have popped off and the child had a hurt look –in the likeness of him – and reminded the child of overcast sky and rainy days.
Perhaps, Daily Laborer may have seen this child boarding a passenger jeep for La Trinidad, or to Baguio City. The child would surely be a grown-up now. He would have wanted to approach this grown-up and ask how things are going and if he/she feels the economic pinch, too?
Daily Laborer would have wanted to talk with this grown-up about his/her parents. Would they still be alive? If so, would they remember the time they bought that jacket for their child.
A scene floated to Daily Laborer. About mothers. Eternally patient, kind and understanding. Folding a jacket away in mothballs in a clothes chest after her first son had worn it, and repairing it again so another son may have use for it. For such a mother can’t simply discard an heirloom as tattered a jacket.
Then Daily Laborer made an unconscious tribute to that thrown jacket by nodding at it then wended his way down Bokawkan Road as the rains started easing up. An hour later, some rays of the sun were able to penetrate the receding clouds and the weariness of rainy drudgery lifted.
There are a few, it may be safely assumed, who have not at times felt weary of the rains in complete seclusion. But without indulging in fretful complaint, they still can wish for means of rendering rainy days not irksome or monotonous.
That during rainy times, these folks eagerly catch at whatever wears the appearance of a novel pleasure to a wet spell.