One survivor in the Cagayan de Oro floods who may seemed like a fool to many told his story to friends.
Few days before the floods Manong Apiong who also lived near the river banks, but had died long ago appeared to him in a dream and told him that "heavy rains will come to irrigate the land. And since there are too many of us here, nature finds it no longer sustainable. And that is why please excuse me may I have the way". end of dream.
Refresh your memory...
In high school some years back we read a story in Greek myth about Alpheus, the river god son of Kronos. Kronos son of Uranus and Gaea who deposed his father and married his sister Rhea Kronos had 3,000 siblings yet all of them he swallowed as they were born. But Zeus tricked him to swallow a potion to disgorge all his offsprings. Kronos then was deposed by his son Zeus, who threw him to Tartarus with all the Titans.
Thus, Manong Apiong could be Alpheus the river god? who chased his love Arethusa until she jump into the sea only to surface again from the ground as a well. Alpheus in his journey met the king who asked him to clean his stables that housed a thousand cattles that was left uncleaned for 30 years. But the king will only pay Alpheus if he could finish the cleaning in one day. Alpheus then asked the help of Hercules, and Hercules then succeeded in rerouting the river Alpheus to the king's stables that the cleaning job was done in one day. But Hercules did not accept the payment from Alpheus. End of myth.
Let me go back to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan after typhoon Sendong's swath that brought the disaster almost beyond proportion. Today, it is indeed and truly a Herculean job to restore everything to order and bring people's lives back to normal.
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