50,812 meals — this is the total number of hot meals Tuloy! PH volunteers, led by chef Waya Araos-Wijangco, were able to prepare and serve victims of intense southwest monsoon (habagat) rains and the wrath of typhoons “Dante” and “Emong.”

This record number of meals was achieved over a period of five days, at the height of the torrential rains that flooded the streets and forced residents of low-lying, flood-prone areas to flee their homes and head for evacuation centers out of fear for their lives and safety. Despite how prepared their local government units (LGUs) may be for such disasters, they are cold, scared and hungry.

Chef Waya has done it several times before. Organized community kitchens to feed the hungry, no, not after the victims had been given the go signal to go back home, but during their period of uncertainty, while they sit quietly in a corner of the evacuation center, suspended in time, not knowing what the future would bring.

Chef Waya had been there, done that; and yet when another devastation comes, she would heed the call for help and do it again. Before anyone knew it, she would already be organizing another community kitchen to feed the hungry.

And she did it again. On 22 July, just when the Southwest Monsoon was beating down Metro Manila and its surrounding areas and then expanding its devastation to the whole of Luzon and parts of the Visayas, chef Waya headed for Trining’s Kitchen Stories in Marikina City and stood beside chef Jayson Gaspar Maulit and his staff to start a community kitchen.

She began making calls and sounding off needs for donation and for volunteers, and doing the same on social media. It did not take long for sacks of rice, truckloads of canned goods, noodles, fresh poultry and meats, aromatics, seasonings, even kitchen gadgets, pots and pans, to arrive. Volunteers, too, started arriving. And before long, Trining’s was churning out thousands of hot meals and dispatching them where they were needed.

Despite fighting their own battles with floods and mud and leaving their families at home for hours on end, the kitchen staff and volunteers kept up their energy and continued to work day in and day out to feed the hungry. It went on for five days, with Dante and Emong collaborating with the Southwest Monsoon to bring more rains — and floods — to this part of the country as they cooked and packed and distributed food to evacuation centers and devastated communities in Marikina, Pasig, San Mateo, Montalban and Quezon City.

Thank God, chef Waya’s reputation precedes her. She needed only to say “Donations for cooked rice needed” so the kitchen could concentrate on preparing the viands — and donations came pouring in. She asked for proteins; and meats, fish, seafood arrived.

Boxes of canned goods steadily streamed in. She called for aromatics and seasonings and she got what she asked for. Restaurants and food companies sent in their products to feed not just the people in the evacuation centers but also the chefs, cooks and volunteers.

But the relief operations at Trining’s experienced its own share of challenges. On July 26, Tuloy! PH’s last day of operations, a power outage occurred. The electrical wires in front of the restaurant tripped and burned, and there was no power. Chef Waya called for emergency lights and generators, and she got power stations capable of sustaining operations for hours. Meralco got their act together and fixed the problem, and soon, it was back to normal.

At the end of the day, the five-day community kitchen led by chefs Waya and Jayson successfully turned out a total of 50,812 meals. What a feat! Applause to the team!