How it is…

Because I was trying to help my sister to come up with a good story for a TV program, I was able to do a sort of background study on certain people we (not only I!) thought would be good for a story. So this isn’t just an assignment for one of my college classes. J

There was one person we really wanted to help, but at the moment, we still do not know if the program approved the story. Anyway, his name is Venancio Cuaresma. He lives in a hut by a river in General Santos City, Philippines. The location has no electricity.

Venancio lives with his wife, Veronica, and three of six children. One of his children died, and the other two are in Manila, working. But unfortunately, his two daughters in Manila were not able to give them enough money to support the rest of the family. Venancio said that in two years, his daughters could only send them money once. In addition to that, the only means of communication Venancio has with his daughters is through the mobile phone of his relative.

Nancy, the eldest among the six children, is living in with her fiancé (technically, we can’t say ‘her husband’ as they are not married), and she wants to go home to General Santos City to spend Father’s Day with Venancio. But then, her salary as a nanny is not enough to buy her a ticket back home.

Times in the Philippines are difficult these days. Prices of basic commodities are fluctuating: rice, oil, and even water. But despite this circumstance, Venancio is still able to provide for his family by picking up garbage. He earns around fifty to seventy pesos a day, which is really below the minimum income a Filipino needs. His wife also helps by washing clothes where she earns one hundred to one hundred fifty pesos a day. What they earn is only enough for them to buy rice. (Rice amounts to eighteen to forty pesos per kilo in the Philippines.) They have malunggay or horse radish as viand, but if they cannot find one in their surroundings, they buy salt; sometimes, they don’t eat. They do not know other ways of earning money since they only finished fourth and third grade, respectively. Picking garbage and washing clothes are not stable jobs. Furthermore, they too get sick!

Venancio is suffering from diabetes for more or less than ten years, while his wife has asthma. When they get sick, they rely on the health care center of their barangay, but probably because of their age, they opt to stay in their house to rest and drink plenty of water instead.

But come to think of it, because of their work, they were still able to send their three children to school; the oldest is already in third year high school, and the other two, in elementary. However, they are not able to pay the school in full, therefore, their debts have accumulated and they are not sure if they can still send their children to school this coming school year.

Other than these predicaments, they live in a hazardous area. When it rains hard, the water level of the river goes up until it floods the area. The Cuaresma family has already been a victim of this in year 2000. Even when the rain is not strong, they still get wet inside their house, because their ceiling is not strong enough to hold the water out. These five people live in a small nipa hut.

My brother asked Veronica, the wife, what she would do if she won the lotto and she said she would fix their house and start a small business like “bote-bakal”. (They would buy glass or metal from people to sell). And they wish to have a bicycle.

We do not earn as much as other people do, especially now that we lost our father. But then, we are hopeful that someday, help will come to Venancio’s family. (Yes! I really do hope the program would help.) On the contrary, they may not be helped as well, since they are not the only family suffering in the country. Perhaps there is a family suffering more than Venancio’s. But then, I live by the motto of my club in high school. (CSC, that is. You can read the story on one of my blog entries at www.exeic.wordpress.com). “You’ll never know what little act of kindness can bring about.” And maybe, just maybe, by publishing this story, someone can help me help Venancio and his family.

It is better to be feared than to be loved.

Photo courtesy of (http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/a/a2/Edsa2001.jpg)

“This house believes that it is better to be feared than to be loved.”

I graduated high school thinking that it was better to be loved than to be feared, because if you were loved, it only means that your ideas coincide with others. They are in agreement of what you are doing, sometimes, they neglect thinking about your decisions and ideas just because they love you. Thus, creating a utopian world. But then, we all know that pleasing everybody is impossible. Others may agree, or disagree with you. Sometimes, they may even fear you.

In the Philippine Society, there are two types of people who make changes: there are those who are radical, and those who would like to follow a process. Radical people usually pertain to those who are young, running naked, creating noise pollution, rallying, protesting, and etcetera, just so they can have the change they want as fast as they can while the problem is still at hand. On the other hand, those who follow a process want change, but they make sure that they follow a procedure, intently. The procedure may include going to discussions, talks, negotiations, hearings, and etcetera.

The people usually fear radicals because they can become so aggressive and they might not fit the cultural frame, perhaps even the traditional, the people have gotten used to as opposed to those who are following a process. It is a fact that the Filipinos are conservative people, and they may see the ways of the radicals as too hostile.

But let us see this situation in perspective. For example, the problem of the Philippines: rice shortage. In addition to that, they have growing problems on schools with insufficient chairs for its students, people who are undeniably jobless and environmental issues. So if everything went into a process, how long must we all wait?

The radical way of doing things is through solving problems by helping raise awareness, which is a sort of enzyme that they produce to catalyze change and make groups function and look into the problem, and eventually solve it as soon as possible. They do not wait for things to be carried to congress or the senate. They almost instantaneously work because they can tap into the consciousness of the ordinary citizens.

With rice shortage, they make people aware that rice is slowly depleting, therefore they have given the people the idea that rice must be conserved, despite the government saying that there is no such problem in the country. The radicals were able to share their ideas that rice hoarders were present in the Philippines and these hoarders were part of the reason there is a so-called “rice shortage in the country”. Because of this, investigations were done and people started thinking on what to do. And we owe all these to the radicals.

With schools that need chairs for its students, the radicals have done their part, and they have been able to successfully tap into non-government organizations, which helped them with their predicament.

With jobless people, they made not only the government agencies aware, but also private-owned companies, that there are still professionals left jobless. Therefore, they catalyzed these groups to join job fairs in search of employees to suit their needs.

Lastly, regarding environment issues. An endangered whale may have been stuck and injured in the Philippines seas. We must also put into consideration that this kind of problem is of global concern; therefore, the international spotlight might just be in our country. So, must we wait for a process to be finished to have a solution? Or must we act right away amidst the newsy international spotlight, in order to save the dying creature?

Think about it. The radical people can be you, who want change just like anyone in this world, but they want the change that they can see almost instantaneously. Solving the problem while it is still at hand! While it is still on going, not while it is getting bigger. Or would you prefer to be the one who follows a process and wait until all the problems of society pile up?