The Day the Sun Disappeared

Most of my life in the Philippines was spent in the northern province of Luzon. A little mission center called Bagabag is the location of most of my memory.

This is where I started out the day the sun disappeared.

We had moved to Manila several years before so that my dad could take the position of Director of Aviation for the Philippine branch of our mission.

On this day, however, we were ending a short visit to Bagabag. We had been there to retrieve the last of our things that had been there in storage before leaving for the States in a few days.

I awoke that morning to a small earthquake. These weren't uncommon in this area. The Philippine Islands are located on what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire - an area known for earthquakes and volcanic activity. The earthquake was enough to wake me up; the roosters and chickens talking loudly outside my window were enough to keep me from going back to sleep.

So, I decided to get out of bed and take a walk around the center that up until the last few years had been my home since birth. I visited my beloved school - all white with orange trim and orange doors. The bamboo grove. A walk down the road outside the house that used to be mine but now belonged to someone else. Down across the bridge over the pond. A short climb up one of my favorite guava trees to see if there happened to be any early breakfast to be found. Up the ramp behind the publishing building. Through the library (breathing in deeply to somehow cement that smell in my memory). Through the auditorium. Down into the Mathew Miller Memorial - a community play center that bore the name of my brother who had passed away years earlier. A small stop to run my fingers over his name on the plaque on the wall. Somehow saying goodbye to this place felt like saying goodbye to him all over again.

A walk beside the tennis courts and into the pool to dip my bare foot into the water. I wanted to climb up to the top diving board and jump in, but it was far too cold that morning. Throught the common yards between the old guesthouse and Uncle Dick's house - always keeping a careful eye to the trees as the workmen used to like to pick coconuts at that time of the day and sometimes they weren't careful where they dropped them. Then a cut back through Aunt Kioko's yard to the circle. A walk through the circle. Fond glances at the Green's house, Aunt Jo's house, the Pugyao's old house. A short swing on the rope swing. Then over to the hangar picking some leaves from the tamarind tree in the hangar yard and stuffing them into my mouth. Somehow the sourness of the leaves as I bit into them fit the mood of the day. I stopped outside the door of the hangar where all the mechanics were already at work. I had heard the plane take off about 20 minutes earlier, so I knew that there were lots of people that had been up since before dawn there to make that happen. The pungent smell of grease, cleaning solvent, av-gas, and metal sunk deeply into my soul. I have always loved that smell. Then a slow walk down the yard between the accounting building and the workshop. A short detour to the nursery play-yard to swing on the swing one last time. To look at the huge tree that had grown around another tree so that the leaves at the top were a mixed lot of two different varieties. Then finally to the mailroom to leave my last letters for the people that I had loved for so long - those that I wasn't sure I would ever see again in this life.

I opened the screen door and let it slam behind me. Another thing that would stay etched in my memory for life. I walked to the center mail boxes and dispersed my letters appropriately. I had laid the last letter carefully in it's box when it happened. A sound that I will never forget as long as I live. Loud as an explosion. A clap of thunder that seemed to come from within the deepest parts of the earth. The room shook again. I was scared. I couldn't move for some time. I had experienced earthquakes before, and as far as that went, this was a mild one. But the sound. I had never heard a sound like that before. It had sinister tones.

I found my feet and started to run.

I ran all the way to where I knew my dad was packing the van for the long trip back to Manila - covering the distance in what I know was record time. As I ran, people were coming out of their houses in their night clothes, bewildered as to what had just happened. I kept running. I reached the van and couldn't find my dad anywhere. The whole guesthouse was empty, so I ran again. I ran to the hangar since all the news of the outside world came to the small radio hut that sat right behind it. As I got there, I saw that most of the center was also there or just arriving. We waited. I found my family and just stood there.

"Where were you?" the question from my mom.

"Dropping off my letters." was all I could reply.

Then we saw the radio opperator come running across the little field that stood between the radio hut and the hangar.

Obvious concern on her face, she gasped, "Mount Pinatubo has just erupted. They expect it to blow again, but they don't know when. All we know is that those of you leaving for Manila today need to leave immediately. Oh, and there is a strong typhoon supposed to make land fall about noon today, so you will want to be over the mountain pass before then, or you may encounter landslides."

That was all the news that she had. All that she could get from the local news radio broadcast. I doubt that anyone really knew what had just happened. If we had, we would never have left. We didn't know that we were in for one of the longest and most dangerous journeys of our lives.

*************

The journey through the mountain pass happened without incident. We made it to the town just at the bottom of the far side of the mountain and had to find a place to stop for lunch. We had left in such a hurry from Bagabag that we didn't have time to pack any food except for a few little snacks of fruit and crackers.

We found a small restaurant open, piled out of the van and sat down inside. As we exhaled the breath that we had been holding the whole way over the mountain, we heard the sky let loose. Blizzard-like rain came down in sheets instantly soaking everything. I had lived through many a typhoon, but I hadn't seen rain like this before. It was a furious rain - mad that it had to share it's day with a puny volcano. But for us, it meant that there was no going back. Only those with a death wish would try to navagate the mountain pass in rain like that. We couldn't go back to Bagabag, no matter what lay ahead of us. We had to go on.

Not only was it raining, the sky was getting darker and darker by the second. It was only noon, but it felt more like about 4pm. By 3pm, it was black as midnight. The sun had dissappeared.

Lunch was almost silent. My dad and one of the translators talked quietly at the head of the table. Our aggitated waiter stood nervously beside us making sure to get us whatever we needed; except water.

"No water" he would say time after time.

No one understood why he kept saying that. Finally our Philippino translator had a quick discussion with him in Tagalog and then hurried and knelt beside my dad.

"Do you think we should try to capture some of this rain?" someone asked.

"We don't have anything to catch it in"

"Maybe they have something here"

Another Tagalog conversation.

"They won't let us have anything."

So, my dad went and spoke to the waiter. Tagalog back and forth. Negotiations didn't seem to be going in our favor.

"He said that we would have to pay. 500 pesos for a Skyflakes tin, but if what he said is true, that won't even get us half way there."

I didn't understand what was so important about the water and why he wouldn't even sell us any. But ,I also knew that something heavy was happening, so I kept my mouth shut.

It wasn't long into our continued journey until I found out.

As we drove at a snail's pace down the road that would take us just miles from the same volcano that had made it's outcry that morning, it all became clear to me. We were doing our best to navigate since the rain had covered the road in about 8 inches of water. The rice terraces to either side of the road were completely lost to sight. As I looked out the window, I realized that we seemed to be in a lake that was miles and miles wide. Everything was under water. Local villagers were lining up at the edge of the road to signal to drivers where not to go, but there were sink holes and pot holes that could plunge a lowstrung car into water over the engine. Everyone would push the car out of the way, and the occupants of that car would climb into the next likely vehicle, and then the line would start again. Little boys were out in the water - chest deep - picking up the drowned rats. They had hundreds of them. They would throw them up onto the rooves of their flooded houses and then go out again.

That's when it started

We were doing our best to not make the same mistakes as the car in front of us when we noticed the tiny pieces of coarse grey rock falling onto the windshield. Click. Click-click. Just a few for now, but as we inched along, more and more.

"What is that?" The question from all of us who hadn't been enlightened back at the restaurant.

"Ash from the volcano" The tightlipped answer from the navigators in the front.

The debris got finer and finer until it was like a soft dust (but mixed with the rain, it became a sticky mud). The windshield wipers did nothing to clear the fine dust from the front. They simply smeared it so that the windshield looked like it had been painted over with grey paint.

The road suddenly came up out of the water, and we were able to start moving a little faster.

But then the ash started to fall harder.

It soon became hard to tell that we were in the middle of a typhoon. The rain had been soaked up by the ash before it hit the ground, so all that was falling on our van was wet ash. Caked inches high on the roof, smeared all over the windshield so that we couldn't see anything, we were forced to stop.

The men got out of the van, had a little conversation with a family at the side of the road, forked over what looked to be a hefty amount of cash, grabbed a 5 gallon bucket of water and climbed back inside.

"Let's hope this gets us to Manila. We don't have any more money."

My dad was driving. He had driven the whole way which somehow made me feel much safer. He is the best bush pilot I know, and I have deep trust for his instincts in nature. Although driving is not the same as flying, I somehow felt better knowing that he had the wheel.

The going was still slow. People were broken down everywhere on the side of the road. Many motorists were running out of gas since everything had been closed for miles and miles (or shall I say kilometers and kilometers). My dad would drive a few yards and then reach his hand out the window into the falling ash that bit at his hands like an assault of tiny grey bees to pour a tiny bit of our precious and pricey water onto the windshield to clear a space just big enough for him to see the road.

I looked out my window and in the distance could see Mount Pinatubo belching out its hate in ash and lightning. I didn't want to look at it because it scared me; but at the same time, all I could do was stare unbelieving as lightning lit up its enormous ash cloud in bright flares of angry light.

The mountain slowly got farther and farther away.

The ash-rain slowly diminished.

Finally the moisture in the ash disappeared and all that was falling was fine grey dust that resembled dirty snow.

As we approached Manila, the streets were bare. Other than the occasional moterist like ourselves, no one was on the streets. Even the gas stations and Sari-Sari stores were closed. We were a little afraid that we would run out of gas, but there was no traffic to slow us down.

After 14 or so hours, we drove into the Manila guest house. The van was on empty and still caked in about 7 or so inches of sticky ash. We were all hungry and tired and glad to be there. The housegirls at the guesthouse kindly made us a light dinner. This dinner, too, was silent. It was the kind of silence that speaks loudly to those that participate in it. It is the silence that speaks out of extreme physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. It is the silence that comes from going through something so big and so frightening that words are impossible. It is the silence that somehow says, "We're ok. We made it. I don't know how, but we made it."

***The erruption of Mount Pinatubo was one of the worst natural disasters the Philippines has ever known. Meteorologists say that it's effects on weather reached clear around the world.***

Enough to Chill Your Bones

I am sitting here today trying every trick I know to keep warm and save money all at the same time. I am not doing a very good job. I am freezing. My toes are numb, and the more I type, the colder my hands feel.

Something in this day reminds me of vacation. When I was young, we would take vacation in the beautiful mountain city of Baguio. There we would see things like pine trees and breath-taking views of the valley below. We would stay in this little house that we could rent for very cheap. It was a nice house, and there was a fireplace that my dad and I took pride in being able to heap with firewood and light. We would roast marshmellows and sit by it to keep warm.

Often the temperatures at the time of year that we usually visited Baguio would dip down into the low 50's and high 40's. That was downright arctic weather to us, and we always had to go and purchase some of the beautiful sweaters that the women would sell up by the mountain look-out. We would sometimes have to wear several of these sweaters at once if we decided to go for a hike or miniature golf or something of that sort.

The trails, although treaturous at times, were more beautiful than anything that I have ever seen. They were cut shallowly into the side of the mountain and just a slight turn of the head gave you an arial view that made suck in your breath and move closer to the side of the mountain so as not to go tumbling off and becoming part of the scenery yourself.

In the evening, we would sometimes go to Camp John Hay - an American military resort - and go bowling. I was terrible, but enjoyed myself immensely. One night during a stroke of athletic prowess, I even beat my brother. He later beat me - literally - in a pillow fight/wrestling match that we had back at the house. I had bruises for days, but I still had bragging rights.

We would eat breakfast on our last morning of vacation in one of the only 5 star hotels in the Philippines at that time. They had this buffet that offered things like apples, oranges (real oranges, not tangerines), bacon, ham, and other treats that we only got once a year. We would ride all the way up to the top of the hotel in the glass elevator, and then we would be on our way down the mountain. I remember going back to this hotel after the devestating earthquake. All that was left of it was a portion of the bottom few floors on one side and about half of the elevator shaft. We went almost a year and a half after the earthquake had happened, and there were still sheets tied together strung from the balcony of one of the higher remaining rooms. There was the feeling and smell of death there. I knew that most of the occupants of that hotel had not lived. They had either been buried as the building collapsed, or they had thrown themselves in fear over their balcony railings. The redish brown stains of their blood on the cement and debris were their legacy. An eerie goodbye to such fun and happy memories.

Baguio was one of my favorite places. However, the memory of the chill of the moist mountain air that would bite into your cheeks and the eerie last look at our favorite hang out are still enough to leave a chill in my bones.