After many months, even years, it is as if the storm had just passed yesterday. Looking back within and after the beating of a storm’s eye,
Super Typhoon Rai or locally known ‘Odette’ is the strongest typhoon that struck in the year 2021, only a few days before Christmas Eve.
The Philippines is one of the countries most impacted by the climate crisis with an average of 20 typhoons crossing its islands annually.
The onslaught of super-typhoons in the Philippines have not only wreaked momentary physical destruction,
but cyclones of emotions within
a sea of compounding trauma and fear within coastal communities.
Who do they call on, when these storms have left their scars?
Who are
these “gods” in which they try to seek salvation?
Wrapped within their thoughts and tides that surround their home of an archipelago,
are
they survivors or mere victims of an insidious cyclic system amid the tides in which they depend on?
Coastal communities build and rebuild
after every passing of a storm, only to be capitalized by a recurring system of disaster and loss,
a creation of messianic myths upon their
respective leaders and corporations as their sole constituents,
indebted in these so-called gods with votes, debts, and loyalty, who “rebuild”
their homes.
These acts of god, these storms amid the climate crisis, where can they be summoned, and who holds them accountable?
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