Traffic nightmare

Although, I do not have work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I still have to set my bedside alarm clock at exactly 4:00 in the morning so I could wake up early, do my hygiene rituals, water the plants, walk the dog, brew coffee, grab a pan de sal, and drive my daughter to school for her class at nine in the morning. I have to force myself to do this to avoid being caught in the traffic jam which begins to build up at around six in the morning.

We live in Consolacion and the two access roads to our subdivision are now being fixed. At certain points, they have become bottlenecks, with cars, trucks, jeepneys, tricycles and the usual swarm of motorcycles all trying to compete with you in the single lane that is allowed.

On the first day of school this semester, I made the wrong move of leaving the house at past six in the morning and this resulted in our being stuck in the road for about an hour and a half. I realized what a big difference a few minutes would have made if we just woke up even earlier and did our rounds a bit faster. So now, I make sure we hit the road before six.

Yet a lot of people think the same so at that early, the road is already filled with all sorts of vehicles and traffic enforcers already start to appear at certain intersections. Still, it’s good to be able to keep going, no matter how slow, rather than be stuck.

I always worry about running out of gas while you’re in the middle of traffic for hours so I make sure I had my tank refilled to maximum. And there’s a small metal jerry can at the trunk in case I conk out and have to fetch gas at the nearest station. I don’t want to worsen the situation by being another cause of a major road block.

When I reach the university before seven, I immediately head back home this time negotiating a much denser traffic and with more jams along the way. So, sometimes, I just prefer to park at the still empty parking space next to our college building and stay at the office to resume my sleep in the couch.

Then I go home at around ten, when traffic is getting lighter again. I reach home at around 11 or 12 just in time for lunch. I realize that I have not done much between meals but drive a lot and doze off a little. That’s how I lose my mornings to traffic jams. The nightly ride back home is another story.

It never occurred to me that I would be living such a life, a kind of Kafkaesque existence. Many years ago, I first had a taste of traffic disaster in Manila when my daughter was still three years old. We were vacationing with my wife’s relatives in Cavite. They work in Manila but lived in a subdivision in Trece Martirez. That’s already how far urban sprawl had pushed suburbia up there.

We had to join them commute in their car all the way to Manila so we had to follow their usual strict schedule, which was to wake up at 4:00 in the morning, have a quick breakfast, and start the long drive to the metropolis that took about four to five hours.

We dropped off somewhere and bid them goodbye as we had to visit our other relatives somewhere. I could imagine them picking up their kids again and going back home, taking another long ride at night, when traffic was even worse. They had to have dinner in the car with food grabbed at some fastfood drive-through along the way. There was simply no time to cook dinner at home.

Reaching home at past midnight, they must have been so exhausted and would have no time to do homework or watch TV. Everyone would just gladly hit the sack and make the most of the four hours of sleep before waking up again to hit the road for another long day.

I think of all those long hours wasted, the impact of stress on health and family relationship, and other existential issues that come as a result of suburban commuting, and promised myself never to work or live in Metro Manila. I could never imagine myself going through that kind of life.

But it seems that that nightmare has come to us here in Cebu. I wake up feeling like a cockroach in some odd novel.