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 |   The simplicity of my day to day. |
Words 511 Prompt 2. Sept 2. Tell us about an earthshaking Life-or-Death situation in your life. What happened, how did it change you, if at all? My husband and I were travelling in the Philippines. We’d spent time in the capital Manila and were going to take a short flight to the island of Cebu. There had been talk of a Hurricane approaching for several days, but when I called the airport on the morning of our flight I was told there had been few cancellations and our flight was definitely departing on time. When we entered the terminal it was obvious many flights had in fact been cancelled but ours wasn’t one of them. So we checked in and waited nervously as the light outside darkened to almost black. People were leaving in droves and yet the light on the departure board was still lit up and saying ‘Cebu departure. On Time.’ We queued up to board the plane. By this time the wind was at a fever pitch, the rain almost horizontal. The big glass door to the tarmac was being manned by two people attempting to stop it flinging open in the wind. We were escorted to the small plane in twos and threes by the airport staff. The rain was torrential. At last the plane was full and we nervously awaited take off. Some passengers were praying. Other than whispered prayers there was no sound. We asked the stewards if it was safe to fly in this weather and they simply smiled serenely. At last the captain made the wise call to abandon ship, so to speak, and we all traipsed off and made the treacherous return to the terminal. By this time it was obvious we were in danger if we made an attempt to leave the terminal, but soon there were very few people left. We were given a ticket to fly for the following day, so we left our luggage at the airport and left. My husband, John, went looking for a taxi, I sheltered in a shop outside the airport terminal attempting to keep out of the way of flying missiles and sheets of tin, which were threatening to slice off my head. At last John turned up with a driver. We asked him to take us to a place of safety. We were dropped off at what seemed to be a hotel and we breathed a sigh of relief. The place had no power or water because of the storm and were given a candle to take to our windowless room. There we stayed, hunkered down whilst a hurricane roared overhead. We learned later, the place was actually a brothel. The following morning we left after a nightmare night and taxied to the airport. The destruction was mind blowing. Huge billboards lay across cars, power lines were down and roads flooded. Our flight was rescheduled for later that day and eventually we made it out to Cebu. There had been hundreds of deaths we later heard on the news and we were very lucky not to be one of the statistics. |
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