Lessons from Lola Basyang

Most people below 50 probably don’t even know who or what Lola Basyang is or was. Frankly I myself am not sure if she was a mythical character born out of radio drama programs or Philippine literature.

I do know that her name is etched upon our memory as the consummate storyteller who told stories as only a grandmother could and still leave behind lessons that stay with us for life.

This week we were reminded of Lola Basyang but this time in the form of a typhoon. Much like the “Basyang” of old, this typhoon also left us her share of lessons about nature and about human nature.

The first lesson I learned is that we need to establish or practice an annual ritual of preparing for the rainy season. Anyone who has lived abroad particularly in western countries with four distinct seasons can tell you that they follow “rituals” or practices in preparation for the changes in season and weather.

Some families and towns even follow established checklists of things that you need to have, to buy or to gather. There are checklists for things to be serviced, replaced or put through maintenance checks before winter. They “winterize” cars, they do “Spring cleaning” etc.

Perhaps it’s about time that legislators legislate or make such a week the official time of the year when the government and private sectors are officially advised to observe the coming of the rainy season. If families followed this practice, they would be safer during typhoons.

During such a week, government agencies, companies, hospitals, schools, barangays and villages would be mandated to ACTIVELY engage all their employees or constituents in participating in awareness programs and physical preparation for the rainy season.

Take for instance the metro-wide blackout. This happens almost without fail annually. Meralco often blames accumulated dirt or debris that causes “short-circuiting” in their power lines on the first rain of the season. So why aren’t they required to do a “spring cleaning” before the rainy season?

During typhoons we always hear of numerous electric posts falling or breaking and yet no one has asked just how often or regular does Meralco check and replace their posts. Do they have a “shelf life” where posts are automatically replaced or is it on a “need to do because it broke” basis?

Why has no one ever done anything to force Meralco to cough up the money to bury their cables deep into the ground where no one with a shovel can steal it! Typhoons are an annual event in the Philippines and metro-wide black outs are becoming a yearly curse. Meralco must be forced to change their system because it is not environmentally friendly and certainly an “unfriend” to consumers.

How many other companies or government agencies are unprepared or unresponsive to the need for an annual program or ritual?  

Before you even say this is an over kill, try reviewing all the whinings that government officials and media people make every year about the lack of preparedness or lack of communication about weather developments etc.

With all their equipment and sophistication, The United States of America still CANNOT accurately predict the outcome of any hurricane or storm as shown with Hurricane Katrina. Anyone who wants a perfect forecast for a perfect storm can ask for an appointment with God.

What we can do to a degree of perfection is to be prepared as best we can.

I only heard and listened to one weather report from PAG-ASA and that was enough. They said the storm was going to be fast and would make landfall by midnight. So we brought out the candles, the flashlights, the box of batteries and our trustee kerosene lamps and LPG lamps.

Then we charged all extra car batteries, made sure we had gasoline in the cars and all the necessary food and water. We charged phones, computers, IPods and gathered up all our battery-operated transistor radios. In short we got ready and were prepared.

The next lesson I realized was about “Vigilance”.

Call me crazy, but when I learned that typhoon “Basyang” would hit at midnight, I decided that all able-bodied men in the house would stay up all night. Because we stayed up we averted water damage on wooden floors, we were able to secure things that would or could have flown off and hurt others, we were able to clear driveways so that everyone had immediate exits in an emergency.

Because we were prepared, we were ready, because we were vigilant we minimized damage, loss and risk.

The most striking lesson we relearned from “Basyang” is how little you need in life and how much you can get rid of or would be willing to live without.

It took Meralco 33 hours to restore power to our street and this is the third time in a row that our street was always last to get power back in our barangay. Thanks to this little discomfort, we realized we can go without air-con, TV or cable. On the other hand I thank the people at Manila Water, Globe and PLDT because they have proven to be more reliable. Maybe because they made investments rather than arguments.