WHEN Typhoon Ondoy (international codename: Ketsana) struck on September 26 last year, Regino Pagtama Jr. was with some teachers on training at the Marikina Elementary School (MES) where he is the principal. When they saw the water rising rapidly that Saturday morning, the teachers cancelled the training and hurried home. Reggie, as he is more popularly known, was worried; if the MES could be inundated that fast, he thought, what would happen to his own school located just beside the Marikina River? The river had become swollen from the continuous rains of the previous day.

Assistant principal Rose Publico felt just as concerned when she saw how, within 30 minutes, the water rose to the second level of her home located just across the school. Trapped, her family managed to escape through a window and clamber up the third floor of a neighboring unit. The current was strong and a rescue boat proved useless after it was punctured in the floating debris. People considered themselves lucky to get to higher ground and stayed there.

The typhoon’s devastation left Marikina and other low-lying areas submerged for days, but the teachers didn’t have the luxury of cleaning up their place. It took a visit from Brahma Kumaris, a UN-affiliated non-government organization, for them to realize that self-care was something that this service profession should never neglect.

“If we don’t care for ourselves, how can we care for others?” asked Sister Becky Ortega, BK’s Makati coordinator.

This was farthest from Reggies’s mind that morning when he surveyed the devastation wrought by Ondoy: mud at least a foot deep covered everything, even the schoolbuilding’s second floor. The computers, school books, equipment, desks and TV set were in disarray but the principal could not ask the teachers for help. Most of them were stranded in their flooded homes, facing the same situation. Reggie decided to seek his siblings’ help to clean up his home while he worked single-handedly to restore a semblance of order in the school. No help came until five days later when a TV crew arrived to interview him, took footage of the destruction and aired these on national television. The firemen came later to hose down the mud, followed by other volunteers and students from as far as Nueva Ecija.

Introduced to Reggie, Sister Becky realized how much BK could help and quickly mobilized its resources. It wasn’t long before cash and material donations poured in from BK students and friends, as well as its international office in London. For several weeks, the different BK centers in Makati, Quezon City, and Manila became receiving and repacking hubs for such donations as mats, pillows, bedsheets, towels, and cleaning materials. BK students themselves helped pack and distribute the items to some affected schools in Marikina and Quezon City.

BK volunteers also helped clean up the schools, scrubbing walls, tables and chairs. Aside from sharing packed vegetarian lunches, they also took time to listen to tales of heroism and sacrifice from the teachers and fellow volunteers.

“It was heartening to be asked how we were at that point when we were so depressed,” said Reggie. The simple storytelling lifted the feeling of gloom and doom that was fast enveloping them, he added.

On December 4 and 5, nine weeks after Ondoy, a group of 38 teachers, parents, barangay (village) councilors and a janitor trooped to the Center for Spiritual Learning, the BK retreat center in Tagaytay City, to get their much-needed but long delayed internal rehabilitation.

“We need to move on so we don’t get stuck with Ondoy,” explained Sister Becky at the start of the program, adding that sorrow and pain must be released lest they make us ill. The two-day retreat aimed to equip the participants with inner peace and spiritual power to help them cope with the difficulties and pressures resulting from the typhoon’s destructive force.

“We need to nourish not just our bodies but our minds as well,” Sister Becky added. This was one area sorely neglected by the teachers, the group found out, in one of their exercises during the retreat.

While most participants listed doing some exercises, indulging in sports or leisure activities like swimming, bowling or dancing, and grooming themselves, only a handful prayed or talked to God. Others listed socializing with friends and watching movies or television shows as their way of coping.

The BK retreat dwelled on the need for a healthy self that is “at peace, strong and happy, with a mind that is clear, creative, tranquil and alert, and a body that is disease-free, strong and balanced. Relationships must be harmonious, truthful and love-filled.”

A change in thought patterns can help achieve this, said BK meditator Sister Rose. “Everything begins in the mind,” she added.

The retreat focused on how to develop positive thoughts and how to craft creative solutions rather than blaming others. One should also dwell on uplifting messages that are based on the now rather than the past, and on values like patience, tolerance, trust and forgiveness, according to the retreat coordinators who taught the participants how to meditate and concentrate on positive thoughts.

Sister Becky defined ALGAE, as “non-physical diseases” that make a person unhealthy in body, mind and spirit. The acronym stands for anger, lust, greed, attachment and ego.

One game that the participants enjoyed involved passing on an eraser to the next person, while looking at him or her as if he or she were the most beautiful or handsome person on earth. Another game had each of the participants tell his or her partner how much they were appreciated and admired. The game illustrated how easy it is to look at the good qualities of the other in a relationship.

“Pure feelings and good wishes come when we see each other as beautiful souls,” said Sister Rajni, the BK coordinator for the Philippines and Japan.

The lesson was one that the participants seemed eager to practice. One teacher vowed that she would now treat her pupils “with more sweetness.” Another, a teacher for the past 37 years, said that it was the first time that she realized that “what’s in control should not be the body but the soul.” •