On the night of 6 September 1995 at around 7:30, people in Allah Valley heard a loud bang in the direction of the peak of Parker Volcano. Little did that know it was the beginning of a nightmare for those living in the barangays along Allah River.

The Global Volcanism Network Bulletin v. 20, no.9, September 1995 reports:

The overflow of Maughan Lake, the crater lake at Parker Volcano, followed heavy rains associated with a passing typhoon and caused flash flodding in NW-flank Allah River, which drains the crater Lake from 1,000 m. down to 540 m. elevation (Barangay New Dumangas, T’boli, South Cotabato Province). Below this point it was transformed into a sheetwash. The floods killed more than 60 people, destroyed 300 homes and nine bridges, and displaced 50,000 people…

The numberof casualties and extent of damage to properties were unimpressive, even neglible, compared to the past calamities like the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in Luzon and Typhoon Uring in Ormoc. This must be very reason why a few days after being the center of media coverage, we never heard of the tradegy again. It can also be noted that only one barangay, New Dumangas, was mentioned in the news.

Most often, the misfortunes of unknown people in unknown places are never recorded.. Considered minor events, they are soon forgotten, except by those most directly affected by the micro-disaster.

The flash flood took place five years ago, but I am still haunted by the faces of the women whom I met the day after the flood. Deeply etched on their faces were the burden and pain of what they had gone through. The experiences stored in their memory, as well as, in their body are precisely what have remained with them when everything else is gone: home, land, properties. But the “official story: of disasters generally overlooks women’s experiences as victims as well as responders (Enarson and Morrow 1997).

This paper therefore aims to make space and give voice to these women so their experiences are heard and known. This will as well give them the much-needed opportunity to find meanings in their experiences as part of their life and eventually to be able to form out of theses experiences a cohesive whole. As Portelli (1998) writes “What is really important is that memory is not a passive depository of facts, but an action process of creation of meanings.”

Women are caregivers and attend to most of the household chores. In the rural areas, they work in the fields along with men. Thus women experiences are valuable to understand better households and communities hit by disaster (Enarson and Morrow 1997, 116).

This paper is also an appeal to concerned government officials, as well as, concerned men and women to see the plight of micro-disaster people, to be part of their stories and empower them to rise above their present predicament.

Barangay Colongulo, The Site

Colongulo was once home for the T’bolis ruled by Datu Dianon. The abundance of cogon grass, which the T’bolis call “colon” and lemon grass, which they call “gob”, gave the place its name Colongulo, also spelled Colongolo. It is one of the barangays of Surallah, a first class municipality in South Cotabato, the breadbasket of the south. (See map on the PDF Form, Page 2)

In 1949, the first batch of Christian settlers arrived in Colongulo when it was still a sitio of Barangay Centrala. They won the goodwill of ‘Datu Dianon and the other datus of the surrounding sitios of Ela, Mahe, Lamtangan and Colombarinong and were allowed to make Colongulo their home.

The second batch of settlers mostly from Antique came in 1953. This explains why Colongulo is predominantly Antiqueno. What became of the datus is not known, but the present Colongulo does not have any of its original T’boli inhabitants.

Traversing the length of . Barangay Colongulo, Allah River is the source of water for the irrigation system, bringing prosperity to the fast growing agricultural barangay. Until September 1995.

Being There

Initially my purpose in conducting interviews in Colongulo was solely to comply with the requirements for my course in Anthropology of Map showing Colongulo and the other barangays of Surallah.
Development. I stayed there on 27 and 28 January 2001, armed with a tape recorder and photos, which I had taken of the place the day after the flash flood in September 1995. I found myself more of a pilgrim than a researcher. I had come again to the place I knew as a teenager. One thing I have in common with people: we have the remembrance of the Colongulo of old.

I interviewed seven women although I had planned originally to interview only five. The narration of the experiences gave structure not only to the experiences but also to the research encounter (Becker 1997). Thus, the two other women who happened to be there during the interview shared their story spontaneously when they heard the narration of the others. I chose the women randomly as to their availability and willingness to be interviewed. Their ages ranged from 34 to 64 years old. Two men in their 60s, husbands of two of the women, and two men in their 30s were also present during the interviews. They corroborated the stories of the women.

The women’s narratives are quoted verbatim from the Ilonggo transcription of the interviews. Sentiments are social realities that provide valuable data for what people want for themselves, as “feelings are facts”. Thus, the feelings of the women as they call to memory and analyze what happened to them serve as the building blocks of their narratives.

Memories

One of the women I interviewed was a schoolmate who recalled with nostalgia:
The shape of the river was so beautiful. Its crystal water and the big boulders lining the banks made it an ideal place for swimming and picnics. There were a lot of fruit trees, rich rice fields…

The photos, which I showed to the interviewees, elicited mixed emotions. There was the excitement of recalling where the houses once stood, the bumper crops they enjoyed, the neighbors they treated as brothers/sisters and their luck to own lands near the river. Adelina, choking with emotions pointed out in the photos her lost house saying:

We had a house here. It was about half kilometer away from the dam. With one and a half hectares of irrigated land, we had more than enough. We still had savings.

Automatically the photos led them to the narration of what actually took place on the night of the flash flood. Aurora had this to say of her experience:

We had a fishpond, which had been pawned to us by Mr. Bernal. We were about to harvest in a few days time when the flood washed it all away. Four of us, all fishpond owners, suffered the same fate. Along with our fishpond was our rice field.

Aurora must have wanted to hide her pain as she punctuated her sentences with uneasy laughter. She kept on stroking the hair of her daughter on her lap, who was just four months old during the flash flood. Her narration above reveals the relative prosperity she and her family enjoyed, thus it explains how the experience must have deeply affected them. She continued her story:

It was drizzling like any other day. My husband, a barangay councilor, was having a drink with his friends after a day’s work of repairing our house. The wife of one of the men came to fetch him as the water level of the river was rising up fast. He and my husband wasted no time. They immediately went out to wake the people up. They warned them not to sleep but to keep watch of the riverbank.

The moon was bright and people started running frantically to the higher grounds. That was around 7:45 pm. Fear seized us. We did not want to leave our house but we felt the danger of the water that was already sweeping away our neighbor’s house. The river was a raging torrent. Our driver took the children and me to my mother’s house which was on the safer side of the barangay. We evacuated there, and my sister’s family, who came from the other side of the irrigation lining, joined us. The water in the irrigation canal overflowed and washed out some of the houses. We spent a sleepless night…

The following day, we went back to see our house that was still standing but the house we had near the fishpond was completely gone. Good, we did not sleep there as we used to do.

Our dog drowned, as my husband was busy waking up people. He was not able to see his farm before the flood. Big fishes swam out from our fishpond. We really lost everything.

Aurora’s family suffered maximum damage in terms of loss of source of livelihood as the flood occurred when both the fishpond and the rice field were about to be harvested.

When I interviewed Flora, her husband Jose and her two sons were looking at the photos. Flora kept sighing, feeling their great loss. She kept on enumerating the names of the people who owned the houses and lands that had become just heaps of sand in the photos. While the experience was in a sense personal, the story telling and story sharing made it communal (Alejo 2000, 149).

Flora narrated:
It was a Wednesday night. The rain was pouring. We were watching TV and we were not aware of what was happening. At first it was just a drizzle, so we continued watching TV until 10:00 pm.

Barangay Councilor Soliva was on a tricycle informing everyone that the water already covered the bridge.

Her husband Jose interjected:
Our house cannot be seen here in the photos but it was exactly towards this side. There were many houses, mostly of the Pentecostals. Among them was the house of the son in-law of Tay Mamer. This one was the farm and house of Dr. Habaluyas. She was staying there. (Jose pointing at Remedios who happened to be there in their house during the interview.)

Of course, we were very scared as (the radio station) DHKR was warning us to take precautions. The following day Noli de Castro came here on his way to Lake Maughan. My sons were tending our carabaos when they overheard his plan of crossing to Lake Maughan.

Jose’s face beamed with pride when he mentioned Noli de Castro’s visit. It seemed that a visit of a known person somehow assuaged his desire to escape momentarily from reality.

I never expected to meet Remedios there. She shared her own experiences:
I was the caretaker of Dr. Habaluyas’s property. I stayed in her farmhouse that was in an “island-island”. I was too afraid because my aged mother was with me. She could not walk, so my son, who was a bachelor, carried her across to the other side of the river. I could not cry because of my intense fear.

Then Remedios stopped for a while as if trying to recapture the intensity of that experience or she might have been trying to avoid feeling the pain of the experience as she changed the flow of her narration:
It is good if you can interview Manang Ena because her house was completely destroyed by the water It will really be a good interview because as- she got down from her house, it was swept away by a strong current.

As Remedios grappled with her emotions, Flora volunteered to tell her own story:
Kumare, we were still lucky because the irrigation canal was not overflowing yet at that time. But were it not for Unyok we could have not survived. His son is married to my daughter. They slept in our house that night…after helping us, he left his family with us and went to help his own parents. According to him, there was already water in the house when he arrived. They were able to save some of their things. Unyok was our hero.

We carried nothing When we came back to find what we could retrieve, our sack of rice was already fermented. We ran off only to save our three carabaos and ourselves. We left behind our pigs. Our neighbors promised to look after our house. All our clothes were put on top of a cabinet, and actually after a week, we got them while we were in the evacuation camp in the town proper.

As if to lighten the emotionally charged moment, Jose told an anecdote:
When my brother went out to see the extent of the flood, he said that he saw a bamboo house that got caught among the branches of a fallen tree. It was funny, as inside the house was a whole family! I did not know from where they were carried away by the flood but one thing was sure, they just woke up from sleep.

Remedios was already calm when she continued recounting her experiences. Like the other interviewees, she relativized her experience by comparing it with the more difficult situations of other people:
Kumare Conching was really pitiful. She was weeping while she was briskly making openings through the mud dikes of the rice paddies for the water to pass through. In between her sobs she kept on saying that her rice field was to be harvested the following day. We had to literally pull her away so she would leave her field immediately as the water was rising.

We did not pack our things anymore for there was water all over the place. The water level was already more than the height of the carabao. When I mounted it to cross the river, it had to swim.

One of Ate Sally’s carabaos survived the flood. We found it a day after the flood, still tied to a tree with its snout buried in the mud. It was truly a blessing to have survived because if it had been freed, it would have died.

Having said that Remedios must have regained her momentum:
There were trucks sent by the mayor for those who wanted to evacuate to town. Since I was with my grandchildren, we decided to wait for the dawn in the waiting shed.

There were many people along the roadside. They stocked all that they had saved of their houses: galvanized iron, pieces of wood… Some purposely destroyed their houses before the flood would wash them away. The roof of our house was made of cogon grass so we did not take anything. We just left.

In the afternoon of the same day, we went to the evacuation center in the town proper. DSWD and some volunteers distributed food and canned goods. Since our farm was located across Allah River, we lost a number of the few personal belongings which we had saved because we kept transferring from one place to another.

When I was leaving the house Jose showed me their cooking stove made of clay that was just outside their house:
We had this in our former house, this very same cooking stove.

Flora accompanied me to the house of Ena who was just too willing to tell her own experience about the flash flood:
Our house was near the river at the side of the road. When it started to drizzle we did not have the slightest idea that the water would rise. I only commented to my husband that there was a foul smell coming from the river.

We were here (pointing at the picture), a little further, about half a kilometer from the dam. We just got down from our house when it was swept away and I heard our neighbor shouting that the water had already reached the road. By then the water was up to our waistline… we got out from there as fast as we could…

Ena gave more details about what happened before they fled from their house:
I was with my grandchildren at that time. Imagine, there were six of theml I woke them up and I told them to cover their heads with blankets. The youngest of them who was about a little more than one year old shared the umbrella with me. We ran to a higher ground towards the direction of Pingoy’s house. The wind and rain were so strong that we could not go straight. We had to duck from time to time while running. It was already five in the morning when we reached his house. There were just the two of us, my husband and I, with six children… Their parents were also working in the mountain so we looked after their schooling.

It was good our neighbor warned us. We left our house at around 11:45 pm. It was not yet 12 midnight when our house was carried away by the flood. You can’t imagine how strong the current was.

My daughter in Manila never thought we would still be alive. The following day, I went to town and called her up. She told me she kept on crying when she heard the news from the radio. She did not expect we would be saved, knowing that the small children were with us. The eldest was only nine years old. We left everything.

Looking in the direction of the river, she held back her tears as she said:
The difficulty that we had to go through…it was really very, very difficult. It was providential that two of our neighbors helped us carry our grandchildren across the river.

This forms part of her previous narrative, which she added to complete the story of how they fled their house.

Viola, a spinster in her thirties, did not heed the flood warning. Confident that their house was on a safer ground and that the flood was just one of the usual floods that affected the barangay, she opted to stay home when everybody else ran away:
I stayed home because of our sow that was giving birth. I thought it would be just like any other flood in the past… I did not know it was that serious.

A six-year-old boy, Narciso, died. His thirty-year-old mother up to now has not recovered from a nervous breakdown.. That night, like any other night, his father was in a house across the river with his friends drinking and watching TV. When the flood came, Narciso’s mother mounted their carabao single-handedly with the two of them, the other still an infant, and crossed the river. Narciso, who was seated behind his mother, lost his grip as his mother held on to the mount and the other child… She became crazy forrshe could not forget the boy’s voice calling out to her for help. And she could not do anything.

This was the first time I heard that somebody died in Colongulo. The other women whom I interviewed confirmed this to be true. In the municipal record, three very short paragraphs mention the flood but not of any mortality. The record merely says, “though no human life was lost, properties were greatly damaged.”

Noemi, Viola’s sister, had her own remembrance of the flood. We ran and we saw the water overflowing from the irrigation canal. I went back home to get my manicure set for I was thinking more about our future. It was only on the following day that I was able to cry for I was too nervous then to remember to cry.

Rosalie, a hardworking farmer in her forties, told this story:

Eleven o’clock in the evening… somebody shouted outside our house. I thought it was a drunk. It never crossed my mind that the flood was coming. The bridge collapsed and we had to evacuate. Four days before that, one of my children was discharged from the hospital for flu. My other two children were also down with the flu so when we ran, I covered them with blankets, the only things we were able to save and, of course, a small bag where I kept my money. We even left the feeding bottle of my youngest daughter, and in the middle of the night, she started crying for it.

I was very afraid of the water. Another thing was Papang and Mamang did not know anything I looked for them among the milling crowd but I did not find them. I convinced my husband to accompany me to look for them and get milk for my baby.

I found my old parents hiding inside the house for they thought there was trouble outside as they saw people running, and they heard gunfire. Somebody fired shots for people to get out of their houses. Actually when I called for my parents to get out, it took them sometime to open the door. My father’s blood pressure shot up when I told him about the flood. He could not walk so I had to drag him out of the house…

That was four o’clock in the morning. Our house was not swept away by the flood yet so we went back to put all our clothes in the sacks. We did not have our carabaos as we left them with a caretaker in another farm so we had to carry everything on our heads. I tell you, what you cannot carry, you will carry.

It was only at three o’clock in the afternoon when our house finally fell into the water. I could not bear to watch it…it was too painful. My husband watched, but later confessed to me that when the house was falling, something seemed to pierce his heart. And when our house touched the water, his tears welled up in his eyes.

The Causes of the Flood

When asked about the cause of the flood the women said that the reasons given were mere speculations. Some reasons appeared plausible, others not. They seemed to be evading to answer the question directly, but eventually they expressed what they felt and thought about it.

Rosalie said:
They said it was an explosion. It started raining at around nine o’clock in the evening, but at eleven o’clock, it was already flooded. Only two hours of rain, we already had the flood Before, it would rain for one whole day, but we never had this big flood. It was really the biggest so far.

Jose offered an explanation:
We saw the wooden bridge along the road give way, and the debris was carried by the water current behind the darn, causing an overstop, and delivering a massive flow downstream. Of course, the water really came from Lake Maughan that is why there was a flash flood. They said dynamites were used in the explosion because they wanted to get gold underneath the lake. Very old lakes yield gold. There was a case filed by the provincial government but nothing came out of it.

Aurora was non-committal in her answer. Maybe it was because she is the wife of the present barangay captain:
I don’t know what caused the flood. They said Lake Maughan only overflowed.

The narratives of the two women showed that the impact of the flood was sudden for those whose houses were in close proximity to the irrigation dam, and gradual for those whose houses were far from the dam. This latter was the case of Rosalie whose house was about four kilometers away from the dam. She said:
Almost all of the people in the barangay evacuated. The spread of the flood was not really so sudden, it was a bit gradual. Otherwise, many would have died. I do not know what it was.

On the other hand, Flora whose house was a few meters away from the dam had a different experience:
When we went out of the house, we immediately saw the sheets of water rushing from upstream down below.

Flora’s experience was shared by the other women as gleaned from their narratives.

Slow Recovery

The people of Colongulo were affected by the flash flood in varying degrees but all the same they had to start all over again. The end of the flood was not the end of their suffering. It was just the beginning of another stage of their struggle for survival. Rosalie recalled the birth of the Core Shelter, a resettlement area where there are now around 92 families that have been given house and,lot:
Of course, the government knew that the flood destroyed our houses. A few days after the flood we put up first our temporary houses by the roadside_ On 28 September 1995, Pres. Ramos visited us, and there and then he donated an amount to purchase land for the construction of our houses. On 20 November 1995 the construction started.

According to Aurora:
The provincial government bought this land and constructed houses for us. Each lot is about 10 meters by 15 meters. Remedios had her apprehensions:

The case of this resettlement area is still going on because we do not have the title to the land yet. The former owner, Mr. Miranda, mortgaged this land to a certain Domingo Uy who showed a deed of sale and a title proving he is the owner. The provincial government has the money but does not know whom to pay. Because of this situation we do not feel secure, as we do not have the title to the land in our hands.

The governor assured us that eventually the land would be ours. While the case is going on we try to be patient and not panic as we have already invested some amount in the house.

The Core Shelter is government funded. We are around 92 families. We were given the first priority for our destroyed houses were right on the riverbanks. And then, there are 114 families that were given house and lot by the Seventh Day Adventists as second priority, for their former houses were in the danger zone and the flood also affected them.

Ena should have lived in one of the core shelters but, with the permission of concerned authorities, she swapped houses with her son who wanted to stay near the house of his in-laws. She said:
After the flood, my elder brother took us to barangay Centrala. For the sake of my grandchildren’s schooling, we stayed there for three months. I felt like an exile there as my friends were here. My son then told me to transfer as this has been given by the government. But we do not have the land title. We only have our number on the list. They said some have already sold their rights…

Resettlement policies were not laid down clearly as their main purpose was only to meet the dire need for immediate housing. Rosalie wanted to make her point so she added:
We felt very insecure when one day we heard over the radio about this land. It was mentioned that they would drive us out from here. Ah, if that happens then that will be the time that I will carry a gun. I will fight for our right to be here.

We have been here for several years now. If the government had not given us this land and house, then we would not have invested in improving the house. So far, this kind of news has stopped. Before, there was somebody who came here to monitor us because about half of the beneficiaries had sold their houses. I told them that they should only monitor those who sold their houses, as they were exactly the people whose houses were not destroyed; so they did not need these houses.

I do not know what the government will do about this. By the way, they coem here from time to time. I think they will give this to us. How can they take it back? But we do not have the title to the land. If this had been paid in cash, we would already have the certificate of ownership. Pres. Ramos gave a copy to our barangay captain. That was the only copy that was supposed to be xeroxed and given to us.

Actually we complained why Adventist Relief Agency (ADRA) I and II beneficiaries have certificates of ownership while Core Shelter beneficiaries do not. The Adventists turned over all the houses. In fact, there are no Adventists in that area. Most of them are Alliance, Catholic, Jehovah Witness, UCCP, and Protestant. We have so many religious dominations here. I am really wondering why it has become so. Before there were many more Catholics, but after the flood many changed religion.

Before that the Catholic chapel was here. But the one who donated it used the land as collateral in the bank, and he could not pay back the loan anymore. Then the chapel was demolished. . .

Aside from their insecurities because of the uncertain land tenure, they also face the challenge of finding sources of livelihood. Since most of them are experienced farmers and there is no more land to till, their problem of survival continues.

When we transferred here, I opened a sari-sari store as we also have  a tricycle. For several years we did not work in the farm. We started to farm again only last year but not int he same farm. That land now is useless. All farms that were affected by the floods are now covered with sand . . . They have become unproductive. Some people have planted them with vegetables. Big boulders are all over the farms. We really have to start from square one, as we have not recovered our capital.

Not all are as lucky as Aurora. Flora described what happened to  their farms:
Our lands have not recovered their fertility. When you plant rice, it gets buried in the sand. The soil does not seem to be sandy; it’s more like lahar. It smells of sulfur. We all own vast lands of sand and stones, really useless. Before we had irrigated fertile lands, but now we are harvesting stones.

Some who used to receive regular salaries from the farm are now unemployed. Remedios lamented:

Habaluyas did not tell us to leave as caretaker of her land. She just told us that she could not afford anymore to pay us because the land does not yield anything. We were paid P500 per week for maintenance, and if we had worked in the farm, we were paid extra.

If there is an alternative place where we can work, we are ready to move out from here. What good is it to have a house when you have no source of livelihood? Before, all our needs came from the farm and we had enough.

Ena and her husband grew old in their former farm, and adjusting to their semi-retired existence in the resettlement area made them feel useless. Ena longed to go back:
My husband used to catch fish from our fishpond using a. hook. In just a few minutes he could fill up a cooking pot. Bananas were in abundance and we had a garden.

We are really in a bad time now…and we cannot do anything about it. Some of our friends tried to plow their fields again but they ended up working in another farm as daily-wage earners. Rice grows but does not bear grains even when you apply fertilizer. I do not know what disease it is!

What happened to us was most painful. We lost everything… nothing was left, not even a single dress. We had to start from zero.

We had been farming in that place since 1969. That is why I feel we are still evacuees here. We are already too old to go to other farms to work. My three daughters are in Manila working as sales ladies. They send us money for their children and for us. I have this sari-sari store to augment whatever we receive from them, even to provide fare for my grandchildren. We used to earn money on our own so I really feel useless just depending on my children’s salary.

Even Rosalie and her husband feel the pinch of impoverishment despite their having another piece of land outside Colongulo. Rosalie reiterated:
We really had to tighten our belt after the flood. Our land near the river was an irrigated first class farm, so it affected us not to be able to produce anymore from there. Maybe if you spend thousands of pesos, it can still be cleared of sand and stones. The bulldozer costs P280 per hour-for only ten hours you pay P2,800.00. And you need days to finish. How much would that cost? One thing you are not sure is whether the land underneath is still arable. If only our farm was not flooded…

We started from the very beginning again. For more than a year we did not have anything We exhausted all our savings. With all the expenses of my children in school, our daily food. Everyday we had to spend, no income, at all. We also consumed our reserved rice. We really had nothing. Good, my husband is a very hard-working man. He works really hard. When he finishes the work in our farm, he goes to plow in another farm to have extra money for my daughter’s daily bottle of coke.

Rosalie is a very enterprising and resourceful person so that even if they suffered economic setbacks,her family is still able to have their daily needs. She is proud of her accomplishment:
Most of the people here stay at home when there is no available work anywhere as farm work is also seasonal. I have my own project cow fattening. We first bought a cow. My husband suggested having somebody look after it but I insisted that I should be the one, as I did not have work to do. Then we bought another. In no time the cow gave birth, and then another. Whenever we need cash we simply sell a cow. Now I have eight cows. Two are pregnant.

In truth, people here indulge in gossip as in any barangay. They simply sit around and wait for the harvest of others to borrow money. You almost kill yourself working, while they do not do anything. I was not used to farm work but I learned. When it’s time to work you won’t find me here.

Since most people have unproductive land, they work somewhere for P100 per day which is not enough until they get another job. Some families send their daughters to work as housemaids in Manila, Marbel, Surallah or abroad.

Quo Vadis?

The exodus of the young people from Colongulo in search of employment deprives the place of more active and able-bodied members of the community. If the trend continues, social decay may set in. But if they do not leave, what chances do they have?

The now concrete highway from the town through Colongulo leading to Lake Sebu is a welcome sign of progress. It could have been a tremendous help in marketing their products. But with the vast farmlands still covered with sand and stones, where are the products that have to be transported on this road to the market?

It is ironic that the dam in the barangay does not irrigate the fields where nothing now grows except togon grass and weeds. Water in the irrigation canals is generated in the Colongulo dam, but what benefit do they get from the presence of the dam in their midst?

The resettlement area with its rows of houses has met the immediate need for shelter of the displaced flood victims. How can it province security and sustainability to its dwellers?

I do not have the answers to these questions. People know better what is best for them. They need the right projects and programs suited to their needs, a challenge indeed to our government and civic leaders.

This attempt to put in print the women stories is but a little effort. The enormous task is left undone. But I take comfort in Hastrup’s words: “Today, the responsibility for redressment lies not only with the local people, but also with the anthropological community, sharing their pain by studying it.” (Hastrup 1993).

The stories of these women give us a glimpse into the world of people in micro-disasters. There are many more out there. . .