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This entry consists of two parts. The first part is my column today in Manila Standard Today; the second is the full text of an e-mail forwarded by my brother-in-law, Buddy.

First, the column.

Conversation with the househelp

WOW Philippines describes the province of Zamboanga Sibugay as “blessed with an impressive range of excellent tourist destinations—interesting mountain formations, picture-perfect waterfalls, caves in which dwell thousands of bats as well as stalactites, hot springs, white sand beaches, and fish and sea snake sanctuaries.”

Wikipedia describes Roseller Lim as a “4th class municipality in the province of Zamboanga Sibugay, Philippines. According to the 2000 census, it has a population of 34,152 people in 6,478 households.”

Our househelp, Jen, comes from Barangay San Jose in Roseller Lim. Yesterday morning as I was cooking lunch, she was hanging out in the kitchen as usual (she wants to learn how to cook) while keeping an eye on the washing machine right outside the kitchen door. She was telling me about a call she got from her mother recently about how much the price of rice in Zamboanga had risen. I told her it was a nationwide problem and that, in fact, many say that the whole of Asia may be facing famine.

I was thinking how lucky those in the rural areas were with the available land where they can easily plant vegetables and ward off starvation. Although Jen’s parents had asked her for money in the past, there was never any talk about not having enough to eat. Jen had often talked about how her mother planted kamoteng-kahoy to augment the family’s food supply. Rhetorically, I asked Jen about that.

“But they plant, don’t they?”

She said they did. But it is summer and water is scarce. I paused from turning the tokwa squares in the hot oil.

“You have tap water, right?”

No, she said. It is a mountainous area and they get water by placing bamboo poles in mountain streams so that water would trickle down. During summer when the streams turn practically dry, they are able to collect very little water to sustain planting vegetables.

I was taken aback. I know that many rural areas in the country do not have electricity but I thought that, at the very least, they would have deep wells even if residents have to pull out buckets of water manually. But relying on mountain streams for water supply? I offered to write about it, hoping that some government official would take notice.

Encouraged, Jen went on talking about their life in San Jose. She told me about her cousins and the other young people in the town who take up smoking, drinking tuba and engaging in sabong (cockfight) at an early age. If they weren’t playing sabong, she said, they would be playing tong-its. She told me about one cousin who had not finished high school, was currently without regular income, but who got married anyway. She told me about her two youngest siblings who had to walk to school for two hours to enroll because a tricycle ride was thirty pesos and her parents couldn’t afford the fare. That’s how far the nearest school was.

It was nearly noon and I could feel the beads of perspiration trickling down my back. My head was reeling but I wasn’t sure if it was from the heat or from the feeling of depression. My intention in offering to write about the plight of Jen’s hometown was to have the local government officials take notice and action. But after hearing about the lifestyle of the people there, I wasn’t sure what to do.

Yes, the government should provide for the basic needs of the residents—water, electricity and schools. But re-orienting the lifestyle of the people is not something that the government can do alone.

All right, perhaps, that there are too many young people out of school has a lot to do with the fact that the nearest school is two hours away by foot. But what kind of mentality breeds the attitude that not being in school, or having no regular job, means the best way to pass the time is to play sabong or tong-its?

Is it hopelessness? Laziness? Apathy? Or is it a misplaced reliance on government? If your family faces starvation, are you going to wait for the government’s ration of rice and water? Wouldn’t you take the initiative and find alternative means and sources to ensure your family’s survival?

Sometimes I think that civilization has made us soft. If we were living in the state of nature where man’s instinct for survival guides his every thought and every move, these people might have found a way to solve the water problem.

- oOo -

That column was submitted yesterday afternoon and printed last night. When I opened my private e-mail account a few minutes ago, there was a forwarded e-mail from Buddy about how our attitude affects our capacity to succeed and rise above poverty. I don’t know the author. It doesn’t really matter who he is. It’s the substance of the e-mail, which I found so closely related with the column, that matters.

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