Let it rain but don’t get wet existence of matriarchal culture in Barangay Daanghari, Navotas City and Barangay Maysilo, Malabon City and its effects to the people’s practices during disasters.

Abstract

Philippines is, no doubt, a country that faces numerous amount of calamities. Be it a landslide, earthquake or typhoon, Philippines has experienced it all. Due to the country’s location right beside the Pacific Ocean, among other natural calamities, it experiences an average of 20 typhoons per year. To an average Filipino, it is normal to encounter heavy rains during a sunny day and curse the heavens because you are stranded in a place due to the said weather. However, all my life I resided in Bulacan and have never had a grim experience during typhoons until that one day back in 2009 when typhoon Ondoy struck. I arrived early at my school, even though that it was a Saturday, to attend the last minute preparations for a competition with my choir happening later that day. Despite the fact that there had been news regarding an incoming typhoon, we decided to push through with the competition since we have been practicing for months. Minutes later after we got to the venue, it was announced that the competition was cancelled due to the bad weather. Luckily, one of our choir mates offered to give us a ride because her father was fetching her. However, when we got to EDSA all roadways are blocked because of tremendous flood. We ended up walking through the highway, where a lot of cars are trapped. Then we continued walking through ESDA until we got to Trinoma and separated ways. I met up with my mom in SM North where the ground floor was flooded and the electricity was down. There were absolutely no vehicles arriving at the mall so we decided to walk through North Avenue and finally, after a very long tiring day, caught a bus to ride home right around Elliptical Road. [Introduction]