A Break from the Explore: 'This is for My Countrymen'

I was writing my next entry for my exploration, which I have begun the other day, and for the past few days I was excited to sit down and write more. I was even delighted making the two shifts from Filipino to English for the two entries on one topic. But as I sat today and tried to continue, I couldn’t. The turn of events in the recent past has bothered me. Death is never an easy thing, and just the other day, February 8, 2011, a former Chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Mr. Angelo Reyes, killed himself. No, I am not related to this man nor is he a friend. Yes, I have seen him a few times in rallies and in different affairs. But I do not know him, and yet his death hit me. And I know it hit many of us, if not all of us, Filipinos. For in his death, two tragic ends happened: an end to a man’s life, and an end to the shedding of some light that could have helped us know more about the truth, that could have helped us more get to the end of this…corruption.   

I am an idealist. I always have been, and I think will die as one. I belong to a family who never withheld the truth from us. And as a child, the stories told to me of life were no Roberto Benigni’s ‘Life is Beautiful’ or  Will Smith’s ‘Pursuit of Happyness’ version of the real one, they were never sugar-coated. They were always the harsh truth of what was really happening to our people: the deaths, the political killings, the oppression, and the corruption.  Although I had my fairy tales with me, I did go through the beauty of good stories, but I was also told the not so good ones. The sad part was that the not so good ones that were not of rainbows and butterflies were the true stories. Happy stories? Yes, there were lots. But the sad ones were numerous, too.

I was a silent child. And in my silence I think there were family members, and also classmates in school, who perceived me as someone who did not care much, or maybe even did not know much. I only did open my mouth to crack a joke, because that was when they listened. But when it was my serious side, I stuttered. So I had my imaginary friend, a maroon giraffe, who knew me well. And this may be the reason why I began to write. I had to let it be known somehow. How I truly felt. How maybe I did care. And how I wondered why a child like me rode a car, there were comforts; and how another child like me sat on his mother’s lap in a jeepney. Stories of the government and corruption were big stories, and I could not grasp them whole as to why those stories led to people sleeping in the streets, or inequality of comforts.

But as I got older, I understood more.  As a child, I would look out the window of the car I rode in and gathered stories and wonders on ‘why’.  As I looked out that window one day, I saw an old man that up to this day I remember. The hair on his head was all gray. He had a long beard and a mustache. He sat at the foot of a hotel—shirtless, dirty, and hungry. His ribs protruded and he was holding his tummy as he swayed back and forth. I was 10, if I am not mistaken, when I saw him, yet the image of him is still very clear to me. The whole scene of that moment never grew vague: The lavish façade of this hotel, with waterfalls that seemed to fall on this man who had nothing, not even decent clothes to wear.  The hotel was his backdrop. Its luxury seemed to overflow with such beauty, and yet in front of it was this man. A man trying to remove his desire for food by embracing his tummy, and maybe hoping that this might soothe him, even at least a little. But it did not seem like it. His face did not express it. His face expressed pain. And that was when I realized the irony, the wide disparity. I sat in the car thinking…why? And that’s when I understood a little more about corruption.

Fast forward to now, we have lost a soldier, and the country grieves this loss. We mourn, and we are shocked. But as we pray for his soul to find peace, let us not forget our other soldiers who have protected us and served us. Right now is the time that we protect them back. Right now is the time that they need us to fight for them. Right now is the time we pursue eroding those filthy hands that dipped their fingers and stole from our soldiers, leaving them in debt, in hardship, and plainly leaving them alone—unappreciated and uncared for.

We have fought this battle against corruption so many times and I wonder when flowers shall bloom and spread massively again. We are a happy race, but this is one problem we need to topple. It is not an easy task, but we have people, fellow Filipinos, who should also be given a chance to a better life. I am hoping that it will not be my whole life that our people shall fight for their right to comforts. I am hoping it will not be my whole life that our people will seek their share of convenience, of simply having a bed to sleep on, having a humble abode to call their own, having a life that they may call worth living.

The fight continues…


 'Bayan Ko' is like the 2nd national anthem of the Philippines. This song has been sung by the Filipino people in historical moments of the country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd-2lWx52R8