Hello my dear Hivers of the 
Today I want to share a monsoon memory I have as my entry for this week's challenge. So, here it goes!
Almost every year there is a big flood in our town. It's actually affecting almost all of the towns in our province. Since the monsoon comes every year, the possibility of having a big flood is extremely high.
Last year, the flood surprisingly skipped us despite the moonsoon. The most recent big flood we had was in year 2023. I was still assigned to another municipality back then. It's two towns away from ours.
The monsoon starts around the "ber" months. Basically from September to March. Back in 2023, the rainy season started on October. The flood does not occur immediately. The water rises slowly as the rainy days continue. The water from the different river channels, from our town and from other provinces including the river near our house goes to the bigger river few kilometers from our barangay.
When the water gets to the bigger river, the water from that river goes back to the channel rivers which causes the big flood. Aside from the rain water collected, the contributing factor that causes the big flood is the water coming from the dams from the neighboring provinces. Because of too much water, the dam could not hold the volume of water so it has to be decreased to accommodate the new water from the rain.
The water that's release is going to the big river we have here in our town. Increasing the volume of water yet again. That's why the water increases spreading throughout our town and to the neighboring towns.
During that time, to be able to go to my stationed school, I have to go through our town proper to the next town which is heavily flooded.
In our town, I have to ride three (3) gakit or a floater made of bamboos and woods. Each asks about 50 pesos per ride. So going to my station costs me more than usual. My 1 hour and 30 minutes travel time became almost 3 hours.
Going to my stationed school on the other hand has become easier and faster. I said that because the pumpboat ride has become faster because everything is surrounded by water. The travel time is shortened as we need not follow the river as the water rose really high. It even reached the two storey classrooms we have.
This is how our school looks before the flood. It's design is really for possible flooding because it's also near the river. It is two storey in design. The foundation is one storey high, the classrooms are in the second floor.
But during this flood, even the black board in our classrooms were reached by the flood. When the continuous rained happened back then, my co-teacher bravely asks assistance from the municipal rescuers to save important things and school properties.
Good thing the rescuers responded immediately. This is how high the water is in our school back then. The people of the community evacuated to the town proper and stayed in the evacuation center.
This happened around January and the water went down around the month of March. You can do the math as to how long the flood took place. When the water went down this is the view that's laid for us.
Many teaching materials were wet. Some school files cannot be used anymore. Boxes of bond papers are no longer usable. Books, tables and chairs were damaged. Our classrooms became more brittle and rotten. I thinks it needs a major repair. If possible new classroom construction should be done.
To my knowledge until now, no repair was done to my previous classroom. This flooding is not new to me and to all the residents of our province, but everytime it happens the struggles feel different and new.
I just hope this flood skips us again this year. So no one is going to go through another flooding struggles, specially the farmers who have already planted their crops.
That's all for today. Thanks for reading my monsoon challenge entry. Til my next post!
Note: Lead photo is edited in Canva.