Habagat (The Southwest Monsoon) - Kiara Fufunan
- Wild Writer
- 2 days ago
- 13 min read
July 16, 2025: Cebu City, Cebu Island, Philippines
My mother tells me to kiss the ground when we exit the plane. She’s only half joking. Our flight featured a 10-foot drop that had the aunties around me screaming in their seats. My palms are still red from when I grasped the armrests for dear life.
It’s been almost ten years since I last went to the Philippines. This time around, I’m visiting both of my parents’ hometowns, island-hopping by rickety planes around Visayas and Mindanao, the two southernmost regions of the archipelago. Though our flight went on as planned, several others had been cancelled due to the monsoon rains.
My mother raves about all the water sports we’ll do at each island — parasailing, jetskiing, snorkeling. I humor her, though I know we’re both doomed if we take off our lifejackets.
Only half listening, I turn towards the sky. The clouds look as if they’re about to burst.
“Kikay,” my mother calls out. It’s her nickname for me. I always loved the sound of it, like the chatter of geckos at night. At first I thought it was a play on my name, but she chose it for my state of being. Kikay is a girl who takes hours to get ready, who buys frilly little swimsuits just to sit on the sand. Someone like you, she said. I don’t disagree.
A gust of air, and my earrings rattle like windchimes. We hurry out of the airport and into our hotel. Then, our first destination: the mall.
We’re here to buy wetshoes for our upcoming water sports, though we linger for the air conditioning that grants us reprieve from the tropical climate. My mother remarks on how the place has basically tripled in size.
When she was about my age, she left her small hometown and traveled nearly 200 miles to study nursing here in Cebu City. She arrived at the height of the “Ceboom” in the 90s, when the skyline expanded with towering high-rises. Cebu City is growing even still, with tech and tourists like myself. The sprawling 7-floor mall now has a string of high-end stores that we stop to browse.
Again, she talks about parasailing with a glint in her eye. She’s the kind of person who would be excited to sail without being able to save herself. Someone who moved alone to a new city not once, but twice.
In 1998, my mother left Cebu City to work in Chicago. My father, who had been introduced to her by a mutual friend, fell in love with her over landline and flew across the Pacific to be with her. They built a home on the west side of Chicago, where I grew up surrounded by high-rises — not unlike the ones here in Cebu City.
My parents seem confident that I will finally learn to swim on this trip, but I’m not so certain. I ignore the pit in my stomach by looking at the fine blouses on display. My mother follows my gaze and smiles.
“I used to dress like that when I was your age,” she says, smoothing out the silky wrinkles with her hand. They’re the same size as mine, but softer, despite her twelve-hour shifts at the hospital. Though she traded out the glitzy tops and platform sandals I loved when I was younger, I think she still looks just as glamorous in her jumpsuit and practical sneakers.
It seems, along with her inability to swim, I inherited her fashion taste. I try to take on her bravery too.
July 17, 2025: Moalboal, Cebu Island, Philippines
Habagat, the southwest monsoon, hauls moisture-laden air from the Indian Ocean to the Philippine archipelago. It looms over me now, holding its breath, waiting for landfall.
3
I stand on the shores of Moalboal, some 57 miles from Cebu City. Typhoons and tourists alike have trampled the coral reefs. To avoid further damage, we’re advised to rinse off our sunscreen before heading into the ocean.
I had spent the better part of the day attempting to tread water. Still, I couldn’t mimic my father’s movements, his limbs twisting and turning underneath the surface. I thrashed around until my muscles couldn't bear it and dragged myself out of the ocean, my teeth grinding down bits of sand and water burning my sinuses.
My father told me not to panic; the water would help me stay afloat. But I didn’t listen. How could an ocean hold me?
Once the air grew too heavy, my family retreated to the cabana. I try my luck outside and stroll down the shore. It’s nothing like the sand I’m familiar with, truckfuls imported from Indiana to Chicago. It isn’t even sand — not yet. Shells, sharp enough to break skin. Coral so intact it might have been alive the other day. I silently thank my mother for the wetshoes.
The first time I went into the deep ocean I was eight years old, on a snorkeling trip in Florida with my family. I had begged them to let me stay on the shore, to no avail. I hated the feeling of weightlessness that comes with swimming, of losing the comfort of solid earth between my feet. Most of all, I hated that swimming never came naturally to me. I had an inkling that the ocean could sense my fear and swallow me whole.
Though my parents and brother gazed in awe at the vibrant reef fish, the fifty-foot gap between me and the seafloor shot fear through my lungs. Vertigo warped my vision and dragged me down to the reef. My father lifted me up to the surface right away, but I refused to look down at the water, for fear that I might feel that sinking sensation again.
I cry now like I did back then, tears mingling with saltwater, rain rolling down my shoulders, until I can’t tell what came above and what came from below.
July 19, 2025: Cebu City, Cebu Island, Philippines
The rain makes an ocean right in the heart of the city. It bashes holes into the pavement and levels the curb. The roads heave under the weight of all the water.
Motorcycles spit out black smoke into the night. Cars speed past us with empty seats, hoping to beat the rush hour traffic. Palm trees bend until they’re ready to snap, and my own hair whips around my face. We’re two miles out from the coast, but I swear I could have mistaken the sound of the rain for the crash of waves on sand.
A tourist takes a few cautious steps outside with an umbrella, then hurries back inside once its flimsy wires flip up in the wind. I laugh, though I would have made the same mistake if my parents didn’t warn me beforehand. We’re two fish out of water, the tourist and I.
Around us, other locals crowd the designated pick-up area, plastic covers draped over their shopping bags. Through the storm, I hear laughter. Music blasts from waterlogged phones. I can’t tell if the locals are just acclimated to the rain like my parents, or if they’re also trying to calm their nerves like me.
An hour passes, and my hair is plastered on my neck and my favorite blouse is soaked through. Everything in me wants to run for shelter. But my parents stand their ground, waving down taxis that don’t spare us a second thought. I swallow my fear and join them.
The downpour continues on, uncaring that we’re ankle-deep in rain. But this is just the monsoon — right?
When we finally climb into the back seat of a taxi, I ask this question aloud to my father. “Is this what it’s always like?” I say. “Habagat?”
My father shakes his head and lets out an incredulous laugh.
“I’ve never seen rain like this before,” he says. “Nothing like this.”
July 22, 2025: Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines
When the storm ended, it left my thoughts a swirling mess. The feeling of unease followed me south from Visayas to Mindanao.
Dr. Nathaniel Servando, the chief of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), notes that rising temperatures are causing heavier rainfall, affecting a broader area than usual.
“Even the southern portion of the country—Mindanao—has started to be affected by tropical cyclones. In the past, we never raised storm wind signals even in the Davao Region.
5
This is one of the clear manifestations of the effects of climate change,” he said.
Yet, last week’s storm seems to have bypassed Dapitan, a coastal town just an hour west from my mother’s ancestral home in Dipolog. Both towns have a population that’s just a small fraction of Cebu City’s, but everything feels bigger here. The plants grow lush and wild, reaching slowly for the ocean.
From 1892 to 1896, Philippine hero José Rizal was exiled to Dapitan for fighting against the Spanish government’s exploitation of the country's people and resources. During his exile, he wrote, “I am closer to Nature; I constantly hear the song of the sea, the murmur of the leaves, and I see the continuous fluttering of the palms stirred by the breeze.” Walking down the beaten path outside his shrine, I see why he wrote them.
Rizal spent his 4 years in Dapitan stewarding the land. He planted trees, drained the swamps to ward off mosquitoes, and built an aqueduct to provide the town with clean water from a mountain stream. His museum still houses much of his original writings and research. Even the shell specimens that he collected remain on display in wide glass cases.
Amihan, the gentle breeze of the northeast, won’t come until November. But I feel her presence here now, in the sway of the bamboo trees bending closer to the ground. The soil beneath my feet is dappled with the light pouring down from the canopy. I resist the urge to stick my hands in it.
Without the storm, I hear the forest with sudden clarity. A butterfly flaps its wings to take flight. Water from the mountain stream trickles down split bamboo halves — a remnant of Rizal’s gravity-fed aqueduct. How many storms has this bamboo weathered? As I rest on the path, I feel the last of my fears leave my body, and something else takes its place. A feeling I can’t quite name yet, flowing and fluttering within me.
The ocean, for the first time since I arrived, is still. Startlingly, it reminds me of Chicago, with its concrete ledge sitting right next to the water. I wonder what it might be like to swim its depths.
6
July 29, 2025: Iloilo, Panay Island, Philippines
My father, jack of all trades, was a logger in his youth. Armed with flimsy goggles and a gasoline chainsaw, he felled mahogany trees for their hardwood. The machine tore out half his hearing and cleaved the forest.
“I regret it,” he said. “Of course I do. But I didn’t have any money.”
The work put him through carpentry school for a year. He slept in his classroom atop two wooden planks, waking with the sunrise to build furniture. When the money ran out, he followed his older sisters out of the country.
He usually tells me this story in the car, driving me to school and himself to the dialysis clinic to care for patients. Now we’re in the back of my uncle’s van in their hometown, craning our necks to look at the roadside trees.
Before he left for the States, he went back to his father’s plot of land and planted a row of mahogany.
“I’ll take you there,” he said, “when we go back home.”
But when the monsoon came, it shut down the whole city. Though my relatives and their neighbors were thankfully unscathed, the Iloilo City Council declared a state of calamity, citing heightened impacts from the recent tropical cyclones. Dozens of flights were canceled, and all classes and government work were suspended. Nearly 45,000 people were exposed to the storm that washed away the small path we might have taken to reach the forest.
I try to imagine that hidden patch of trees, the only ones in the area that haven’t been cut down. I picture the creek that flowed until there weren’t enough roots left to keep it from collapsing. I picture sprawling trunks and spearhead leaves stretching towards the sky. And up in the clouds, clusters of seeds hanging from branches. The monsoon winds would send them spinning down like little pinwheels.
I try to imagine, then, a clear day in my grandfather’s forest. Do the leaves let in much light? Is the soil cool or dry to the touch? My imagination runs short.
“Your trees, what are they like?” I remember to shout so he can hear me.
He laughs. “Big.”
August 3, 2025: Boracay Island, Philippines
My second swimming lesson comes on a clear day. The air is dry and the clouds above us have thinned into little wisps.
Though my father grew up in a landlocked town, he was only a 4-hour car ride from the famous beaches of Boracay. Like Cebu City, Boracay has also expanded in the last few decades — though perhaps not for the locals. Millions of tourists flock to Boracay’s shores every year to swim and litter on the sand, to the point where the government had to shut down the island in 2018 for a six-month rehabilitation period. Now, Boracay feels beautiful but sterile. I don’t realize that I’ve only been hearing English spoken around me until my father tries to haggle with a saleswoman in their native dialect.
For my swimming lesson, my father and uncle take me on a short boat ride out to one of the smaller islands. My mother, weary from traveling, stayed behind in the hotel.
The sand here is pure white, made from crushed corals and puka shells. I lower myself down into the water, flailing when I realize I can’t touch the bottom. I lunge for the bamboo poles extending from either side of the boat.
My uncle watches me clinging to the katig like a cat stuck in a tree. Laughing, he throws a life jacket overboard and quickly follows suit. When he emerges, both him and the life jacket are several feet away from me.
“Come swim up to here,” he says. “Kick from your core and remember to breathe.”
I blink at him. So the swimming lesson is just… to swim? My uncle, clearly a fan of immersive learning, simply nods.
“You already know how to swim. I’ve seen you. Just trust yourself.”
I sigh. I can do a rudimentary front crawl, sure, but not for long. Fear and fatigue have always caused me to falter. But my uncle is waiting for me, so I push my doubts aside.
I reluctantly push off of the katig and paddle my way over. The salt water no longer stings my sinuses, and I find that the ocean does hold me, gently, until I am up and out of the water.
Even with no bamboo to grasp, I feel strong and weightless. It’s the same feeling that I felt back in Dapitan, not fluttering anymore but coursing through me. My heart races. It’s terrifying, but also thrilling.
“Good?” I ask.
“Better,” he says.
Afterwards, we rest on the boat. My father and uncle reminisce about playing in the creek near their childhood home. Then, my father tells me a story from his logger days.
When he was my age, he went into the forest with my uncle and grandfather to cut trees. They walked further than they usually did, past bamboo groves and creeping vines.
In the middle of a clearing was a fallen tree, brought down by a recent typhoon. When they approached, it stood bolt upright, as if snapped back into place. My grandfather turned tail and ran. My father and uncle followed suit. It was the work of a diwata, a spirit, angered by their presence. A warning.
My father dismisses his father’s paranoia as superstition, but I don’t doubt it for a second. I sensed something otherworldly in the storm in Cebu City, and in Rizal’s forest in Dapitan. Even now, in the white sand below us, made from the remnants of ancient shells.
As we take the boat back home, I watch the sea lighten, impossibly so, until it becomes the perfect shade between blue and green. I can’t wait to tell my mom all about it.
August 5, 2025: Boracay Island, Philippines
Habagat, the southwest monsoon, hauls moisture-laden air from the Indian Ocean to the Philippine archipelago. In November, Amihan will take its place, calming the waves with its gentle breeze.
The sea is still. I float on my back in the shallow end, letting the water cradle my face. With no waves and no storm to drown out my thoughts, my mind races.
In just a few days, we will board another rickety flight back home. Cebu City will continue stretching out its skyline. Time will continue to grind coral into sand. Habagat will rule one half of the year, and Amihan will rule the other.
I think of my father and his forest, the creek that once flowed, the tree that suddenly stood upright. I think of my mother, moving all by herself to Cebu City. She had cried for a month straight, missing her family and her home. When I moved from Chicago to California, I did the same.
I think of the calm that comes after a storm, as if the sea is holding its breath. I think of the quiet beauty of the ocean, and the strength it must have taken my parents to leave it. The same strength flows through me now, holding me afloat.
Then, another thought. What would happen if I went into the deep end right now?
Would the gap between me and the seafloor shoot fear through my lungs? Or could I reach the bottom, kiss the ground like my mother tells me to?
I bring myself upright in the water, let my feet touch the sand. I turn back to look at my parents sitting at the shore, watching the sunrise together.
“Kikay,” my mother greets me. I wave.
The sky is clear — for now. But the monsoon will return even heavier than before, leveling curbs and riling up waves in its wake. The sea could still swallow me whole.
That sinking feeling, that familiar fear rises in my throat, but I don’t run from it this time. Nor do I stifle it. Instead, I hold it close to me. My heart beats faster than rainfall.
I close my eyes. I take a breath.
And I dive.
References
Arceo, A. (2025, July 23). [walang pasok] class suspensions, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/philippines/class-suspensions-walang-pasok-july-23-2025/
Boquet, Y. (1970, January 1). A tropical archipelago. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51926-5_3#Sec2
De Vera-Ruiz, E. (2025, July 23). Is climate change changing rainfall patterns in the Philippines? Pagasa explains. Manila Bulletin.
https://mb.com.ph/2025/07/23/is-climate-change-changing-rainfall-patterns-in-the-philip pines-pagasa-explains
Doron, R. O. (2023, January 18). Eleventh Hour: Delikado, Jose Rizal, and the environment. The Climate Reality Project Philippines.
GMA Regional TV News. (2025, July 30). Iloilo City under State of calamity due to impact of enhanced “Habagat.” GMA Network.
https://www.gmanetwork.com/regionaltv/news/109415/iloilo-city-under-state-of-calamity -due-to-impact-of-enhanced-habagat/story/
Ponferrada, R. B. (2024). Reading Jose Rizal’s waterworks in Dapitan as alternative technology to water crisis mitigation. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Publications. https://www.academia.edu/119481541/Reading_Jose_Rizals_Waterworks_in_Dapitan_as AlternativeTechnology_to_Water_Crisis_Mitigation
Salcedo, M. J. (2025, July 22). List: Canceled flights on July 22 due to habagat, LPA Trough. Inquirer.
Comments