Roots
Dam here and there
By Marifi Jara
QUELIMANE, Mozambique–On the road in Malawi for the most part of October 9 and 10, I was out of touch with news back home, and the rest of the world. Last I saw on October 8 was a BBC report on television about the huge devastation from a typhoon in Japan. Recent images of the havoc in Metro Manila flashed through my mind. I whispered a prayer for friends and family back there whom I knew were still in the midst of putting their lives back to as normal as it used to be. Then just as we passed through the border between Malawi and Mozambique in the town of Milange on the 10th, text messages started trickling in, asking about my parents back in Pangasinan. Huh? My heart started beating double time as I tried to contact my family.
It was a relief to immediately receive a text reply from my mother that they are safe and well, although San Fabian was among the badly hit areas by Typhoon Pepeng. The five-hour trip mostly through rough roads between Milange and our home here in Quelimane proved more excruciating than usual, what with the torment of wanting to find out exactly what happened, how the situation is and not having the means to. Texting or calling was not an option as mobile phone network was unavailable most of the way. The unpaved road was not easy to navigate and the ride was painfully bumpy. I now imagine that many of the roads in the province have become just like that.
I have since heard from fellow Pangasinenses here in Quelimane that their families in Lingayen and Dagupan are also ok despite damages and losses to property.
And the total losses and damages to Pangasinan from that great flood are staggering. And it’s not just the typhoon that we have to blame. We got people in authority who need to take responsibility and owe up to the errors.
The story of officials being more concerned about income from generating power supply from a hydroelectric facility than the destruction of communities with the sudden release of water from the dam is one that is familiar to Mozambicans, particularly in the province of Zambezia where Quelimane is. There was, too, a great flood that hit here in early 2008 and that was not just nature’s doing.
Typhoons, they are of nature and we can respect nature and its temperaments. But flooding from dams, they are of people and reparations have to be made by people who knowingly unleash destruction to other people.
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