It's been raining every day since we got back to Manila. It hardly ever stops, and sometimes it's so heavy it seems as if I'm standing next to a tropical waterfall. No wonder then that the city is flooding--they say 50% of Metro Manila is under water. We've been watching the news, which broadcasts images of streets turned into frothing rivers and laborers picking their way through thigh-high waters. Everything--the water, the sky, the homes--is that same muddy olive color. Earl's office is closed. Chris's cousin Allen's restaurant is closed. Government offices are closed. Private offices are closed. The rain keeps coming. They say it will stop on Thursday. Meanwhile we're stuck in Manila because the airport, too, is closed [this turned out later to be false information].
I've been sick the past few days--racked with fever, chills, muscle aches, phlegm-coated lungs. I wake up in the middle of the night with the delirious thought that some pernicious force is using my body to construct houses or to relieve the discomfort of old, wealthy Filipinos, because why else is my body so tired and sore, and why is there no end to or pause in the pain? This theory sounded perfectly reasonable in my head, but when I tried to explain it outloud to Chris, the right words weren't there, I only had a feeling and a picture in my mind, and everything shriveled up under that tone of mild bemusement Chris usually reserves for when he thinks I'm sleep-talking.
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