They spent the night in makeshift tents outside the house, she said.
But when the Magnitude 6.5 quake struck at 9:11 a.m. on Thursday, October 31, Songcolan’s house totally crumbled.
“Grabe. Hugno na gyud tanan” (It all collapsed).
“Sakit lagi sa akoa. Pero alangan muhilak ta nga wa na man gyud tay mahimo,” (It is so painful to me. But should I cry when we can’t do anything about it anymore?), she asked.
Songcolan, mother of six (three of them already married, she adds), told MindaNews she has left her fate to God. “Ang tanan naay plano ang Ginoo” (Everything is according to God’s plan), she said, tears welling in her eyes.
It wasn’t just Songcolan’s house that collapsed. Her neighbors’ too.
“Concrete ug dili concrete, hugno” (Concrete or not, they all collapsed), Arlene Lumayon said.
There was no time to grieve over their losses. They had to flee down the slippery, muddy road, some on foot, others on motorcycle.
Lumayon and neighbors arrived at 2 a.m. on Friday at the Malasila Elementary School. Late afternoon of Thursday, there were no evacuees in that campus, only in the Malasila National Technical and Vocational School.[]
By Friday noon, the school ground was filled with makeshift tents.
How long they will stay here, they do not now.
Up there in the mountains, many of them work as rubber tappers, paid on a 50-50 sharing basis.
Translated into pesos, a rubber tapper’s average delivery of 40 to 50 kilos of cup lump a week at 21 pesos per kilo before the quake was between 800 to 1000 pesos. The rubber tapper gets half of that amount or 400 to 500 pesos a week.
What livelihood awaits them here, the evacuees say they do not know.
Rosalia Aguana of Sitio Kawayanon, a 37- year old mother of four, said they experienced evacuating for a few days during the “gyera” (war) in their area between government forces and the New People’s Army. She reckons the period from 2015 to 2018.
“Mas maayo pa ang gyera” (War is better), she said, because they could evacuate and return home.||| pharmacy
