Myla Katzav

Baha is a famous outcry in the Philippines,  a country that experiences two "seasons: wet and dry.  These days, it has been raining, no, pouring in the Pinoyland and many households are under water attack.  In Israel, it only rains for a total of 2 weeks or a little more than that annually during winter.  And currently, it faces a huge problem with water scarcity that a household can be fined once they see an abnormal increase in water consumption. 

Yesterday morning, I read some comments from friends in Facebook about the downpour in Manila causing monstrous traffic jams and…..baha!!! Just reading about it made me miss rain so much and the sound of thunder. So, I placed a comment in my wall about this wishful thinking.

A little over 10 hours after making that "wish", we got a call from our neighbor saying our house has water all over….well, she could have just mentioned baha to me and I will get a better picture of it.  We rushed back home and as I entered the elevator, I already saw water in there and it scared the hell out of me.  I can just imagine myself slaving to clear the water until early morning and I wanted to run away!

As we opened the door to our apartment, there it was.  The whole house except for the bedrooms and the bathrooms was just wet…to my kids delight!!! I placed Ben in his chair and he was so happy to see me walk through water and making a splash.  Rachel was delighted to see the whole house a playwater ground.  She started to stomp on it making big splashes to my horror.  Just a few minutes after arriving and evaluating the extent of our domestic "calamity", our neighbors started entering our house with their cleaning paraphernalias to my amazement!  There were about 7 people helping us out clear the water and clean the floor and I havent met most of them and don’t know all of them at all.  So, my projected "slaving" time to clear and clean the house until past midnight was hugely decreased to just less than 2 hours. 

But the one that put a smile in all of us was little Rachel, who took the broom and started to push the water out of the house and did it very well that her cousins older than her started to join in and help.

Looking back, it wasn’t bad at all, in fact, I see it as a blessing in disguise.  We made new friends, our neighbors "knew" us finally. And our little Rachel proved that in times of discomfort, she can be counted on. I am so proud of her.