Back in April 2021, as part of the application process for a PhD post, we were asked to develop different materials that can show how we plan to use storytelling and other creative methods to elicit narratives of living with drought and flood. At that time, I was still working with several indigenous communities in the Philippines. As part of our work, we always talked about the impending development plans to build a dam, and how this might affect their living streams of water. They were particularly concerned about potential of extensive flooding, and on top of it all, they were mad that they would lose their ancestral domains. I used our interactions and conversations as inspirations to write a short story. I envisaged this short story as a prompt for facilitating futures storytelling sessions. This story uses fictional names and events, and I was just creating imaginaries of “what might be” in a drought-stricken world.

The story goes like this:

“Believe me, I dreamed of a drought,” Mang Tino announced in their regular farmers’ association meeting. He was so convinced of the dream he had that he was compelled to share it, but no one in the group believed. Around 25-30 farmers were gathered in a small hall made of nipa where they held almost all community gatherings.

“What is a drought?” one of the young members asked in confusion. “I would like to believe you as the association’s president, but I cannot force myself to believe without understanding what it is.” In this particular landscape, no one knew about drought, as it was a foreign concept, and a language introduced by migrants who claimed to have experienced the worst droughts in the world. In fact, it was also Mang Tino’s first time to encounter the word; but it lingered so vividly in his dreams that it became impossible to forget.

Mang Tino tried to explain what he saw in his dreams, what he heard, and most especially what he felt. He used these experiences to define what he called drought. “Perhaps, we can think of it as an intense, and longer summer.” With this, he got the group to listen, and to ask more questions. The farmers were concerned about their crops, and families. Irrigation had always been inadequate during summers, and with a prolonged, and worse summer, their harvest was sure to fail.

“That does sound terrible for us. But what are you implying? What can we do?”

“We can sleep, and wake up when the drought is over,” Mang Tino declared in the middle of their conversations. He felt almost foolish saying this, but nothing seemed to make sense for them, anyway.

Some of the members laughed, and left the meeting hall. Those who believed Mang Tino, because of his authority and experience in farming, stayed. They didn’t understand any of Mang Tino’s claims, but they thought it would be worth considering in case that a drought really came. The small group who stayed agreed to sleep on the onset of the drought.

“We will know when the drought has started when the roselle flowers start to wither,” Solenad broke her silence.

After three months, Solned found herself knocking on doors, announcing that the roselle flowers had withered. “It’s time for the long slumber!”

Not everyone slept. But those who believed, and slept had no idea where their slumber would take them, nor how long their slumber would be. The only certainty they held was that their bodies would awaken as soon as the drought had ended.

The drought lasted for 20 years. Marcelino was the first to wake up. He had forgotten how long he was sleeping, and why he slept in the first place. His body ached, and everything felt different. He went out of his nipa house, and found a strange man carrying a bottle of water passing by.

“Excuse me, what year is it?”

The man looked at him with confusion, but still replied, “It is 2041.”

“And why are you carrying water in a bottle? We drink straight from the streams.”

(Untitled story by Heidi Mendoza, 2021)

Fast forward to today, some time around November 2023. I just finished coding the storytelling sessions I conducted in Belén, Iquitos City, Perú. And while I was reflecting on some of my initial findings, I was reminded of this story about Mang Tino. The stories I listened to in Belén were of course different, but it was surprising for me to observe several similarities. The community members in Belén live with constant dry-wet transitions (called vaciante or the emptying of the river, and creciente or the rising of river waters). Hence, asking questions about “drought” or simply using the word “drought” did not make sense; it did not facilitate conversations. So we had to talk to different community members to understand how we can better frame our questions, and to understand what makes sense for the communities.

Another striking similarity is that community members in Belén recalled that several years ago, they could drink water straight from the river. However, as the landscape and the community changed over time, they needed to buy water from their neighbors.

While these stories of living with(out) waters is not new, and is in fact the maddening reality for most rural communities, I wonder how I would have changed the story prompt had I known I would be working in the Peruvian Amazons. I wonder how valuable it is to allow people and communities to de-restrict themselves from owning their future(s), and writing/telling stories that matter to them. Perhaps by deconstructing time as a linear unfolding of events, we can better make sense of the complexities we face. Maybe, we can make sense of our past(s) and present(s) by first telling a story of a future that scares, inspires, or challenges us.

I keep this story of Mang Tino close to my heart. It is a reminder that I carry their stories with me, and while I engage in different research questions, maybe I can also bring their imaginaries together. After all, the future is here, today; it is just not equally distributed.

Maybe the story is no fiction at all. If it were, why does it feel so real?