It was our last day at the Gawad Kalinga Brookside site in Bagong Silangan, Quezon City. We were hosting a party for the residents of Santa Klara Street, a simple lunch, with parlor games mostly for the kids. In the middle of a game, this time for the mothers, it started raining, and so we retreated to the house of Ate Jen, the street?s resident organizer.

We ate, made fun of soaps and told stories while waiting for the rain to stop. Then the flooding started.

At first the one-foot deep flood seemed like nothing more than dirty water where the kids played with the bullfrogs, where sand and gravel mixed with canal water. We continued eating, thinking the flood was no big deal. And at that point, it really wasn?t.

The water started to rise, first by a few centimeters, slowly rising above our knees. We placed our bags on top of the refrigerator, hoping it would be safe there, but within seconds, water from outside came pouring in, and swept the refrigerator onto the ground. It floated like a leaf. A classmate was able to grab our bags. I found my slippers floating nearby.

As the flood kept rising, I stood on a chair. By this time the water was already waist-deep. A classmate was hyperventilating, another was panicking, another was crying. I remained quiet, wondering how I would die. Never did I imagine it would be by drowning.

I didn?t realize the gravity of the situation until my dad and sister called. It felt like it was my last phone call. I started crying, hardly able to force words out of my mouth. And my phone kept going off and on, off and on.

I don?t remember how long it took, but some residents started to open the roof. They talked to us asking how they could help get us out of there. We decided to go out through a window, and the residents pulled us on to the roof.

From there we saw the torrent carrying a lot of things from pieces of furniture to stereo sets and dead rats. We thanked God that we weren?t down there anymore. No matter how hard it was raining, we were too high up for the water to reach us, we thought.

Up on the roof, I saw many people on top of their houses too to escape the flood. Ate Jen was up there crying. And then it hit me: The flood had taken away their homes, and it almost took away their lives. Luckily for us students, we had our parents to fetch us from the site and get us out of there. The residents of GK Brookside had nowhere to go.

My thoughts went back to the party we were having earlier, the games we organized for the children, the food we shared with them. We never knew it would end this way.

I sat on the roof under the hard rain, trying to compose myself. I realized the residents needed to contact family members still at work and so I lent some of them my phone.

Our ordeal ended when help arrived. The residents helped us get down. Kuya Zaldy even joked, ?Balik kayo dito, ha?? [?You?ll come back, won?t you??]

I replied, ?Opo, kuya, babalik kami. Maraming salamat po.? [?Yes, sir, we will return. Many thanks.?]

When we got back to firm ground, a TV reporter asked me what we students from the University of the Philippines were doing in that place. I gave her my answer, but I had to repeat it because the camera wasn?t on yet.

When a classmate called for us to gather, I left the reporter, not really wanting to answer any more questions but wishing to call for help for the residents there. But I knew I would have a hard time doing that without crying in front of the camera.

I had entered Santa Klara Street in a good mood, carrying a box of empanadas. The last memory I wanted was of happy kids enjoying their meal and playing games. I didn?t want to leave the place thinking I almost drowned there, that so many properties were lost and that so many residents had no idea how they would rebuild their homes. As visitors it was easy for us to leave. The residents of Santa Klara had no other choice but to stay.

Katrina Raymundo, 18, is a Broadcast Communication student at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.