Flooding then and now
The Illustrated London News for Oct. 17, 1857 has a full spread where three out of four large illustrations that cover the page pertain to the Philippines. Most relevant to our experience with floods last Monday is one that depicts a flood in Manila. Women are drawn, quite sensually, wading in knee-deep floodwaters. Pouring rain emphasizes the silhouette of their bodies against their wet clothes. Not content with that, the artist drew a woman balancing an earthenware jar on her head with her left hand; she is probably a “lechera” or milk vendor. She has a cigarette in her mouth, her right hand lifting the hem of her skirt to reveal part of her very white legs. Across her is another woman, fully clothed, whose back is turned to the viewer. You can see her loose hair down to her waist; her head is covered by a small umbrella that protects the lighted cigarette in her lips from the rain. Everyone seems to take the “habagat” in stride, the legendary Filipino resilience on display with a banca overloaded with passengers.
Charles Wirgman was The Illustrated London News artist and correspondent who was sent to Asia in 1857 to cover the Second Opium War. He was in the Philippines from early July to mid-October of 1857, drawing and sketching what he found picturesque. Some of the many drawings and watercolors were engraved and used as illustrations for his dispatches.
A report dated Aug. 2, 1857, appears under the drawing of a flood captioned “Our Street at Manilla during a flood.” First, he said, “We are flourishing … and have by no means melted under the tropical sun, au contraire, we are as lively as ever.
“In the absence of exciting news, let me ask you,” he asked his readers, “did you ever complain of damp in England? If so, you labor under a great delusion; and if you would just step over here during our rain you would acknowledge yourself mistaken. You would probably find a nice little crop of mushrooms and other fungi growing upon the surface of your varnished boots and your dress-coat exhibiting a rather greenish hue, and emitting odours generally associated with your notions of a cellar near a river.
“Such are a few of the items connected with the rainy season in the tropics generally; but when you have rain descending in perpendicular torrents for ten days and nights without intermission, accompanied by crashing thunder, flashing forked lightning, and roaring winds, with the addition of a flood like that we had at Manilla at the beginning of July, you may say you have seen bad weather, and not till then.
“I shall never forget how the Indians enjoyed it, laughing all day up to their waists in water, and taking great pleasure in wetting any Chinamen that came near them. We used to swim in the streets; but it was a cold pastime. We sat at our window all day sketching: then a boatful of girls and men going to the cigar manufactory would pass; then another boat of Spaniards out for the day, wet through and shivering but supremely happy. Our house was in a miniature ocean, three feet of water in the shallowest places.
“We walked out to see what was doing, though minus shoes and stockings, and in quaint costumes; or we amused ourselves paddling canoes. We had an English neighbor opposite, and we used to call on each other in the water. But rain, like other things, comes to an end, and so our old sun came out in glorious blaze and turned our mud into dust in a very short time.”
Wirgman noted how our Filipino architecture adapted very well to our two seasons. Some say “wet” and “dry” while others will argue, especially in the “habagat” months from July and August, that our two seasons are best described as “wet” and “wetter”! Aside from his dispatch, he gives the background for the individual sketches:
“Our Street during the flood was sketched from our door in San Anton. You would not think it a street; the sketch shows what the nipa houses are like, built entirely of bamboo and leaves, and the rooms all being about eight or 10 feet above ground. This would be a good plan for huts in China for the troops; they are impervious to rain, which swells the leaves, so the more it rains the drier they keep. When the dwellers under tiled roofs had their rooms soaked the people under nipa were quite à l’abri; no one in the Philippines ever lives on the ground floor, so that fevers are, I may say, unknown.”
I remembered this image from The Illustrated London News as I drove to school last Monday. I missed my point-to-point bus waiting in vain for an announcement of class suspension. When I saw the Grab fare of over P800 (with a senior discount), I decided to brave the rain and flooding to meet my classes. I’m glad I did because 90 percent of my students turned up, all of us relieved and irritated that classes were suspended at noon, when all of us could have met online instead. When I got home, I searched for an online copy of The Illustrated London News and got the body for today’s column. It seems not much has changed in terms of our response to rain and floods since 1857. History forces us to ask when to ditch resilience and patience, get angry, and demand better.
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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net
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