Poverty has indeed afflicted our society in graver ways. This evening as I was lining up for the jeepney ride home, a young girl perhaps 8 years old, relatively clean and decent looking went to every person on the line, sang a Christmas song and unabashedly asked for money. She was alone yet she was persistent.
A similar case is seen outside SM. As one alights from the tricycle groups of boys would immediately sing to you Christmas carols and ask for money usually even before you get the chance to pay the driver. Thus some end up giving them the loose change.
This kind of scenario was basically absent or not that prominent in Naga City last year. I only experienced this in Naga this year. In Manila I was used to persistent beggars. But in Naga, no.
Which led me to wonder, how high did the incidence of poverty rose in our country? With PNoy’s program of ensuring a tuwid na daan, is he really sacrificing too much the livelihood of the people? I hope he realizes the other great problems of this country and starts really acting on them in a capacity that is felt positively. I hope the increase in credit rating of our country rubs off it’s effects in ways we, the common people could readily feel. Otherwise, the country may cease to care what kind of a daan it is so long as their stomachs are filled.
In the Philippines, the issue of passing a law about reproductive health has caused such a stir that mass demonstrations have been staged by those pro and against it; where even a famous boxing champ is pitted against a famous international singer due to their opposing beliefs in the issue. As I watched GMA News TV’s Grand Debate which pooled together veterans in the issue to discuss the various factors of the bill and its impact to the society, I can’t help but think of how naive the country is to the real problems we face now.
Yes it is true that corruption is a larger problem, but overpopulation is a ballooning problem too. With the government’s lack of fund and inability to really eradicate poverty in the nation, it cannot hope to merely focus on one problem without solving another. We can see how hard the current administration’s efforts are now at eradicating corruption – there are all these issues of never heard anomalies in various government offices – but just the same, corruption is not the only problem to be solved.
Still for me, the RH bill seeks not only to eradicate poverty and solve overpopulation but also to educate the people about reproduction. Yes there are contentions that educating the young may make them more curious about sex and lead to ultimately more unwanted pregnancies and the dissolution of the value of purity and abstinence before marriage but with the current trend in our media now where sex scenes remain common even in soap operas, who will then be the educator of the young masses? With parents becoming too timid themselves and at a loss on how to teach their kids sex education, then where would the kids learn? From experience? From their peers? From the media? I then believe that proper sex education should be taught at schools where kids now a days primarily get their education. And then what about the values of abstinence and purity? Then the school, together with the home and the Church should be the one to teach and advocate it. It is not wrong to teach children about sex in a language they can understand, what is wrong and ultimately misleading is to leave them blind about the whole issue and allow them to fend for themselves with regards to the matter.
I had always wanted to take a picnic in the UP sunken garden. The wide expanse of the grassy field and the majestic narra trees surrounding it, have their aesthetic appeal to my gustatory senses. This is a wish that thanks to my busy UP schedule, I wasn’t able to really fulfill. And so during my recent UP visit, wherein I had time in my hands, I opted to eat my lunch at one of the benches facing the sunken garden.
UP Sunken Garden (source: ChrisVillarin.com)
I was enjoying my bolognese pasta and chicken, the breeze softly blowing, when all of a sudden two pitiful impoverished kids went near me. They were insisting that I give them my food! Can’t they see that I am not yet finished? Sometimes, I swear that the beggars of the UP community have a certain attitude already – demanding that you hand over your unfinished food because they are hungry and poor to buy any for themselves. Not that I disagree with that but whatever happened to basic courtesy? And what irked me more was that their mother was just in the vicinity. I came to the rash conclusion that she instigated her kids to come near me, disturb my peaceful lunch, and beg their way to my pocket!
I scurried the kids away. I am not normally heartless to the less fortunate citizens of this country but at that point, I had no intentions of being compassionate. Having successfully ignored and driven the kids away, another kid, a much younger one and more pitiful looking came to me. He was the younger brother of the two and I think the mother, seeing that the two older kids didn’t succeed thought she can appeal to the compassionate nature of my heart by sending her youngest kid. And it was harder to get that kid off. So I simply ignored him. Since the youngest had no intentions of leaving me, the two older kids went back and resumed their begging. So now I had three kids, begging in front of me, while I was finishing my lunch. It was even worse than eating at the window table of a restaurant and having street kids stare at you from outside! To get rid of them, I hissed that I was almost mad and they wouldn’t like to see me get mad. That got them to stop and scurry away. No doubt, they, and the people who could witness us, thought of me as a very heartless bitch.
Source: Pinggoy Danguilan's Multiply Site
But what can I do? I was really mad that the mother won’t try to device of some other way to feed her kids than have them begging for food from hapless students like me. (I am an official student since I’ve just enrolled.) I am also angry that there are poor people in this country – though I do not really know who to blame for that. And I am equally angry that no one is now allowed to enjoy one’s lunch or eat in the public spaces of UP without being pestered by these beggars. Not that I am being coñotic and mata pobre but then doesn’t anyone have the right to at least eat in peace while enjoying some scenery?
I know I really came out as harsh, evil and whatever that day. I finished the last morsel of my lunch in peace – the beggars long gone after giving up all hope of touching my compassionate cord. I fumed for a while over the incredulity of the situation, then rationalized the matter over and tucked it away in my mind to be pondered on for another point in time.
I have been doing charity work for the longest time I can remember – maybe it is not much but it is what I can do. I wonder now how long will charity work be needed in the country? How many more Filipinos would need to rely on charity for their survival? Will there never come a time when charity will be a somehow obsolete thing because everyone has learned to survive on their own means and resources? And because the government has learned that instead of providing charity to alleviate the dire situation of most citizens of this country, they’ve provided rewarding jobs and opportunities that would really build a nation up?
Outreach in Pampanga (UPCYM Caravan 2008)
Must the Philippines always rely on charity? What if charity grows tired and jaded? What would our country do?
In the five years that I’ve resided in Manila, I am thankful that I’ve never had the unfortunate experience of being face to face with crime. Perhaps the nearest thing I’ve witnessed to be criminal were the aftermath of a raid done by MMDA on Philcoa sidewalk vendors during one late night – and I was supposed to have been in the middle of the bustle if I had decided to make my purchase from those sidewalk vendors than brave the long line of the nearby Mercury Drug Grocery store.
Yet I’ve heard tales of my friends about how they’ve lost their cellphones to snatchers with the most horrific being one wherein they were attacked by muggers while aboard a UP-SM North jeep. I’ve read and heard of stories about students being shot while on campus, girls being raped and thrown in abandoned grassy creeks, of innocent students being mugged while crossing the overpass late at night and countless other horror stories of crime committed by the Manila criminal society. I have heard their stories, witnessed the telltale signs in their bodies and properties but I have never – for once in my entire life in Manila – encountered a single criminal soul. I have braved the twist and turns of the Binondo streets alone – a place I am utterly unfamiliar with – and though I have seen suspicious looking individuals, the most harrowing experience I could speak of were merely snide remarks and insults – nothing that is at all criminal and worthy of police attention.
Some might say I’m lucky. Some might say I’m fortunate. I say I am blessed and well-protected.
Yet the fact and reality of crime still remains in my consciousness and I forever remain vigilant about it. Even now that I live in the province, where one might argue the crime rate is relatively low compared to Manila, I am still on guard. For I’ve been told that criminals here are more aggressive – not really taking time to consider who it is they would rob or assault. I have a friend who told me he was mugged once and when he eventually gave up his cellphone, the mugger was disappointed with the cellphone’s model that the mugger even had the nerve to insult my friend. The cellphone was a very old and dilapidated Nokia 3315. That’s why if I was vigilant while I was in Manila, I am doubly so now that I am in Naga.
An article I read in Peyups.com today brought into mind the reality of the criminal society of the Philippines. There were times that this criminal society seemed to have existed, for me, in a fantasy world of evil since I have never really encountered any of their members. Yet that article, in a very well-written showcase of words, brought this reality into more detailed attention in my consciousness than all the newspaper articles I’ve read or the television news segments I’ve watched about the escapades of the criminal constituents of the country.
The article had greatly captured the feelings of one who’ve had one too many brushed up with Manila’s ruffians that fear had forever been instilled in her heart and in her mind. And the greatest part of the article was the author’s stand on why such things happen in our country and why they will forever remain part of our society.
Poverty.
The affliction that has been afflicting us since the dawn of time; since we’ve become slaves of colonizers and neo-colonizers alike; since we’ve lost all sense of self-identity and have become enamored with the culture of foreigners.
Poverty.
We’ve been its slave for decades now, maybe even centuries. Thousands of politicians, from the smallest barangay captain to the highest position on the land, the President, had attempted to alleviate it, but to no avail.
Poverty.
The root of all evil and all other afflictions in our country – malnutrition, overpopulation, unemployment, illiteracy, pollution, and most of all CRIME.
When will we ever solve this one? When will we ever be rid of it?
I agree with the author of that Peyups.com article that it is not the criminal’s sole fault that they could not see that the people they are robbing or assaulting are themselves, struggling with their own kind of poverty or are themselves impoverished yet had merely chosen to alleviate their suffering through legitimate means. Indeed it is not those criminal’s fault that they had to turn into the illegal just to survive in this world. They are after all just by-products of an older generation of criminals who taught them the criminal way to survive in this jungle. Who knows if they could have been decent citizens of this land but because of the dire circumstances of their lives they’ve been forced to become hardened criminals.
Who indeed is to blame for all of this? Is it them? Is is the government? Or is it us, as a nation and as individuals?
We blame them because they don’t try to become decent. They don’t try to find decent jobs and earn decent living. They don’t try to reform. They don’t consider others’ situations or predicaments.
We blame the government because they corrupt what should have been public funds aimed at improving public lives. They do not stick true with their promises of better lives and improved conditions. They are just full of themselves and all they really care about is their own personal gain.
But then again how can a starving man with a starving family to feed even think of decency in the light of his grumbling stomach. For a lot of people morality or conscience is almost non-existent when faced with the reality of his harsh environment. And then how can politicians really carry out their idealistic reforms when by the time they assume office, even the most decent ones become swept away by the rampant corruption of their colleagues? You see corruption is so deeply rooted that even the most honest men become eventually snared into it.
And so we take a look at the real root of the situation – what have we made of ourselves as a nation, as citizens of this country? How do we really perceive our society? Hopeless? Beyond redemption? Destined for the pits? Something we would gladly forsake and leave given the opportunity to seek greener pastures?
What do we perceive of our race or our identity as Filipinos? Something to be proud of only when Manny Pacquiao wins a fight but something to totally despise of when we learned that we have yet slipped a notch higher in the world’s list of most corrupt nations or become part of the world’s most dangerous countries? Can we not have a better sense of patriotism or nationalism? One which would lead us to critically analyze our government officials or the people we elect into office? One which would make us vigilant of guarding the outcome of our votes – not just when they are being tallied but when they really materialize into the officials we’ve voted for and hoped to have their reforms and plans realized.
Yes, most if not all our politicians are trapo, but some of them I believe are just forced to be trapo because if they don’t then they wouldn’t really have any chance against their real trapo counterparts. And so in the end the choice is still left to us, to decide which of them we would really vote for – to discern which of them is really worthy of our hope.
And hopefully, the person we do elect into office, any of the public office that is, is someone who could, even for just a fraction, make us feel safe in this crime-ridden land due to impoverished lives.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a nobler reason why I chose to work in Bicol despite having been educated in Manila. A lot of people who’ve learned I studied in UP would ask me why I went back to Bicol to work. Their faces are lined with disbelief at what they think is a waste of education and opportunities on my part.
I would usually answer this people the most basic reason why I left Manila – I am sick and tired of living there. I have no intentions of facing the Manila rush hour traffic, of cramming myself in the sardine-pack railways just to get to work or of subjecting myself to the daily air and noise pollution of the Metro. For me the laid-back life of the province – the apparent ease of travel and the pristine atmosphere – outweighs far more the several thousand pesos difference in salary of an urban and rural job. This is my initial and heard of answer.
Naga City Public Market (source: www.naga.gov.ph)
My unheard of answer is one which might be bordering into the mean side. Most people who feign indignation at my by-passing opportunities of a Manila job are people who had never experienced life in Manila. To them, success equates living and working in the nation’s capital. They think highly of those who have been to Manila – those who’ve studied and worked there. Yet they themselves have had no experience of the hardships and turmoils behind the apparent prestige. They have no idea what it entails to work and reside in Manila. They have no idea that in order to get to work in time, one has to wake up really early in order to be travelling two hours before the supposed shift starts – and that travel involves several transfers of modes of transportation, committed in an atmosphere of exagerrated noise and stiffling smog. Exagerrated? Manila yuppies living far from their workplaces would agree with me. Why not live near the workplace, you may ask. Compare the rate of living spaces near your work location, say Makati, and a little bit farther, say UP Diliman, and you’d rather risk the commute than let all your hard earned salary go to your landlady. But then we all have our own priorities.
So in short, I do not want to face any of those circumstances when I have a much more appealing alternative here in the province. My workplace, admittedly is two towns and a city away from where I live, and sometimes I do have to ride four modes of transportation just to get there but then I am not exposed to excessive noise and stiffling smog. And thanks to our shuttle, the transportation is made so much more easier. Also travelling to work amidst a highway bordered with rice fields makes the full splendor of the star-filled skies a treat to the eyes – something I know I would never be able to witness if I live and work in Manila.
Plaza Rizal
I’ve come to realize all this things way back when I made the seemingly abrupt decision to uproot my urban life in exchange for a rural one. Today, I came across an article that also brought to mind another reason I have considered, though not so seriously, as to why I decided to spend the first years of my yuppie life in Bicol.
That article is Ms. Carmen N. Pedrosa’s Sunday column in the Philippine Star (publised May 24, 2009) entitled Bicolanos ask: What now for greater autonomy? In it she confirmed what I’ve known since high school, that my hometown belongs to the poorest regions in the country. According to the article, 5M or more than 60% of the population barely manage a sustainable lifestyle. What I learned new though was the reason why.
I thought before that Bicol was poor because most of its work force goes out of the province and work in other more prestigious regions. Of course I cannot blame them because the work opportunities then in Bicol were really scarce. Economy was at a standstill and there seems to be no improvement or growth for any of the establishments in the area. Investors also seemed hard to get by. I believe I was already in middle elementary years when Jollibee opened and it was a long time after that before McDonalds opened. I’m 22 so you do the math when those fast food chains, which are said to be the indicators of development, came to Naga.
The First McDonald's in Naga
Yet Ms. Pedrosa’s article said that Bicol is indeed rich in resources, and by that standard alone, is a wealthy province. It afterall, powers the Luzon grid with electricity from the Tiwi and Bacon-Manito geothermal plants. Lamentable though is the fact that Bicolanos are charged some of the highest rates for electricity. Apparently the geothermal plants in Bicol feeds first the other parts of Luzon before servicing its local constituents and by that time, exorbitant rates are being charged already. Apparently, the public officials (here we go again) are not doing enough for the people they have vowed to serve.
Ms. Pedrosa and company went to Bicol to talk about Charter change to the constituents of Sorsogon. They were proposing the autonomy of Bicol. Based on what I understood, Bicol, under a changed constitution, can become an autonomous region, much like ARMM and CAR. Why the need for autonomy, I do not quite understand. Foreign to me still is the idea of federalism. I do know that federalism and autonomy somehow goes hand in hand but I am still at a lost how a federal region or state would indeed function. And again, the question of why? Yet amidst all this talk about federalism and autonomy, they realized that their group had to really hear out the sentiments of the people who were experiencing the poverty first-hand. The people who have more rights to demand what is it the region needs to alleviate poverty.
And I guess amidst all the replies they heard, the most poignat one came from the lady who prepared their food for them. This lady claimed that the best thing to do in the upcoming elections would be to boycott it, since she reasoned that why would she go through all the charade of elections when nothing really happens – we just go through the motions of the elections. We just change the faces in power but nothing really changes anywhere. I guess she has a point although admittedly I must say it is a bit flawed.
Indeed it is true that with the country’s history in bad politics and political reforms, the tendency to get jaded with elections and promise of national reformation is quite rampant. I mean we cannot really blame anyone but the officials who year in year out makes us hope in their empty promises. But then we must still realize that the capacity to change this nation still lies in our hands. If we would all stop believing that the country has a potencial to rise above its current state of despair, then in the end the losers will be just ourselves and our future generation. I say “our” so we could own this coming generation since they would consist our kids and grandkids.
As pathetic as the situation must be, we must still do our best to change it, in whatever ways we can. No matter if we sometimes doubt if the little things we do indeed has any impact to our country. These little things like simply following a NO LITTERING or NO PARKING sign, or crossing the street in the designated place, or waiting for a ride in the apportioned area – seemingly insignificant laws that everyone seems to be breaking without any penalty – if we do them even when no one seems to notice or we become the odd man out, would still carry a significant impact that may be at this point in time is still far fetched from the range of our consciousness.
I remember a favorite quote that runs like this:
When I was young I wanted to change the world.
As I grew older, I realized the world was too large to change so I decided to change my country.
When I got a little bit older, I realized it was hard to change my country so I decided to change my tow
When I grew older still, I realized I cannot change my town so I decided to change my family.
When I got older still I realized that I wasn’t able to change my family.
As I lay in my deathbed, I realized, if I had changed myself first, then I might have been able to change my family, then perhaps my town, then my country and eventually the world.
Bottomline is: change starts from within. If we want something to happen in our country, if we want the trapos to change their approach to public service, wouldn’t it be worhwhile if we examine our own backyard first? If we check our selves first and ascertain for sure that we are in no way similar to this trapos – albeit in a different plane and context.
So that before we poke at the speck in someone else’s eye, we first verify that there is no speck in our eye as well.
And by the way, I just want to mention that I am really proud of all the developments of Naga as a city, and Cam. Sur as a province. In the small time frame since the first Jollibee had been erected in the city of Naga up to the present time, Naga has become a top-rate city and Camarines Sur a favorite destination for tourists and investors a like. Kudos to ALL who made this possible – from the highest official to the humbles aide!
