Revisited by hurricane

Louisiana and neighboring states have been battered by a category one hurricane. This has been downgraded to a storm. But the threat is not the winds. It is that about 24 hours of hovering in the area, it has poured torrential rains on the area, including New Orleans.

Although not as devastating at Hurricane Katrina, nevertheless it still caused havoc on the city which has been repaired after seven years with billions of dollars spent by the Federal government.

Several families had to be rescued by choppers. Many of them from the rooftops and attics of their houses.

I wonder what’s left of New Orleans and the surrounding areas.

I remember New Orleans. That was a city whose Latin Quarters I had gone through with the jazz bands beckoning me inside. But the priest who was with me at the time pulled me back and deprived me of the chance to see the other side of the bars.

I remember that during my entire one week stay in that city, I was staying at the Bishops’ residence in Baton Rouge. That’s quite far. But driving to New Orleans was a thrilling experience.

The beautiful thing of my experience was that there were several Filipino priests with the Baton Rouge Bishop. And he gave me a promise to fulfill – to recruit Pilipino priests to come to the place and offer their services to the diocese.

Since I was using a black leather jacket which looked more like a clerical garb, I was often mistaken for a clergyman.

There was the funny incident with a Maltese missionary who had just come back from the Caribbean. He asked me to join him in his room. He made arrangements for me to be comfortable. Later, he knelt down before my seat and asked me to confess him.

In New Orleans, I managed to track down a former classmate at the Sacred Heart Seminary. He was the lat Fr. Bruno Arcenas. He was a priest hated by most of my classmates.

But Bruno and I hit it off. After years of what he had done to me, I had already forgiven him. But the others had not. Still, I managed to hit it off with Bruno. But I got rebuffed when my invitation for him to take lunch with me was met with apologies that, as a priest he was only earning a meager amount.

I had not intended to let him pay for our lunch, but he was so vociferous in begging because of lack of funds that I never pursued the invitation.

Anyway, I enjoyed my New Orleans stay. And I can just wonder what the Mardi Gras is going to be this time. I suppose there will still be that memorable spectacle. But most likely it will be subdued and not as raucous as it used to be – a spectacle.

***

President Benigno Aquino III now sees that his daang matuwid still has to register with the personnel of the Immigration Bureau.

It seems now that a ranking BI official had facilitated the exit from the country though the NAIA I of Palawan former Governor Joel Reyes and his brother, they fled to Vietnam recently.

The two BI officials – Rodelio Udarde and Wesleyer Guiterrez – reportedly helped the fugitive brothers.

Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacieda said the two BI personnel should be sacked for their part in the exit of the two local government officials.

The departure to Vietnam of the Reyeses is problematic because the former governor reportedly used the name of a Chinese national with a faded photograph to exit from airport. Actually it was former Solicitor General Frank Chavez and the whistleblower, who exposed how the Reyes brothers escaped to Ho Chi Minh City on board Cebu Pacific Flight 751.

The Philippine government has asked Vietnam to verify the whereabouts of the Reyes who reportedly had boarded another flight out of Ho Chi Minh City for a still unknown destination.

It’s not only the Reyes brothers who are still missing. Among the high profile fugitive from justice are Maj. Gen. Jovito Palaparan, businessman Delfin Lee and several other prominent persons.

Palaparan is still believed to be in the country according to the National Bureau of Investigation. And so with Lee.

That problem with such high profile fugitives still around, public confidence in the government and in the country’s police forces is difficult to be recovered. Now, with BI officials found in connivance with the Reyes brothers in their exit from the country, the problem has become compounded.*

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