Caring Hearts

Caring Hearts

By Maurice Malanes

Pioneers of Baguio City would always tell about how during the good old days they didn’t have to lock their doors when they would leave their houses. The same was true with their vehicles when they parked them anywhere downtown.

So during those days, residents of this northern Philippine city, which American colonialists designed in 1909, didn’t have to install iron grills for their windows and double and triple locks for their doors. Car alarms were unheard of then.

Not anymore. Your house may have iron grills and steel gates but robbers always find ways to break in and take anything they can get.

While walking along Session Road or at the public market, you have to always be on guard against the quick and long hands of pickpockets who prey on your cell phones and wallets. And when they hold you up with a knife or gun poked into your neck, you have to give your beloved mobile phone or wallet because these people, who made thievery their industry, are ready to kill. After the horrifying experience of being held up, you would still thank the heavens that at least your life was spared.

So one indicator of Baguio’s “progress” over the years is that now, unlike before, houses are installed with window grills, steel gates, and burglar alarms for those who can afford. This is good for the steel industry because of the high demand for iron bars. But this is of course bad for the environment because, as in mining gold or copper, mountains are scraped and rivers and springs are contaminated in the process of mining iron ores.

Old-timers also relate that at the heart of the Baguio public market was an island planted to various ornamental plants with varied flowers. They say the market then was so clean and orderly that it was among the city’s tourists’ attractions. They now feel sorry over how the market has deteriorated over the years. They note that meat is now sold in the midst of a dry goods section. The market, they say, is now literally messed up.

As Baguio commemorates its centennial founding anniversary on 1 September 2009, an appointed centennial commission has proposed to publish a book about the city we all love. The book seeks to look at how Baguio fared after a century since its founding on 1 September 1909. But how does it differ from other Baguio history books already written?

The book can be guided by the Baguio centennial commemoration theme, which revolves around the “culture of caring,” says Dr. Ronald Paraan of the centennial commission. From the early days, caring for Baguio was a way of life. Be it in the field of politics and governance, culture, business, health and sanitation, education, and environment, the centennial book thus seeks to trace and examine how the “culture of caring” evolved and flourished and how it deteriorated and how it can be revived.

American planner Daniel Burnham may not have foreseen that the city he originally designed for 25,000 would grow into 250,000 or 300,000. But somewhere along the history of the city’s leadership, some people at City Hall were said to have deliberately encouraged squatters to get considerable slices of the city’s lands. This certainly has helped swell the city’s population, which in turn has benefited politicians during elections.

So somewhere along the line the culture of caring has been lost in the bad policies forged at or good policies un-implemented by City Hall or in the inability or inadequacy of political leaders to effectively govern and manage a city, which demands love and care plus management and planning skills. The culture of caring gradually disappeared as vested interests prevailed over concern for the city’s common good.

Time was when the original Ibaloi settlers of what was then Kafagway had such a strong sense of community so much so that they would commonly partake of the meat of cattle a family slaughtered during a religious festivity. Each one was also his brother’s keeper and so one could ask a neighbor, for example, to look after his cow or carabao (water buffalo). Houses then were not also fenced off because there was no need to. Farms maybe fenced off but the fence was intended for animals.

So in terms of culture and behavior, the proposed book on the centennial of Baguio may try to see how caring as a way of life has gradually disappeared as Baguio lost its sense of community.

From the lowest to the highest level, the culture of caring has practically vanished. Someone builds his house at the upper part of a road without being bothered whether water runoff from his roof’s gutter or waste water from his laundry and kitchen pour into the path of those below the road. We take a bath daily and deodorize our armpits but we throw our garbage in our neighbor’s yard.

Something is also amiss at the upper level. A former volunteer of a clean and green brigade, for example, complained about her group’s difficulty in sponsoring a concert whose proceeds the volunteers should use for their clean and green drive. Officials reportedly demanded exorbitant SOPs (under-the-table ‘standard operation payments’) so the volunteers behind the clean-and-green brigade ended up not raising enough funds for their cause.

The clean and green volunteer brigade and other well-meaning groups care for Baguio and they are among the sources of hope for the future of this almost a century-old city. Unfortunately, those who are supposed to help nurture the caring hearts of these volunteer groups apparently have lost any sense of caring. But let’s hope the tribe of those with strong and big hearts for others increases so we can regain the culture of caring and strong sense of community that Baguio has long been known for.

Ending up in the Streets

Ending up in the Streets

By Maurice Malanes

We passed by them everyday. Positioned along sidewalks from Session and Harrison Roads to Lakandula, Lapu-lapu and other backstreets and alleys, including overpasses, sidewalk vendors are now all over the city. Thus, we sometimes get the impression that there are more sidewalk vendors than buyers.

These sidewalk vendors in recent years have given Session Road, which used to be free of obstructions, a tiangge (flea market) atmosphere. And when we see members of the police ‘demolition team’ come running after these sidewalk vendors, we tend to be unsympathetic because we are convinced that these vendors, as tourism and other local authorities claim, are indeed “eyesores.” But as in beauty, perceiving them as eyesores largely depends on the eye of the beholder. Those who consider sidewalk vendors as eyesores definitely include big business people, says Dr. Yeoh Seng Guan.

Dismissing sidewalk vendors as eyesores and thus ‘cleaning’ or clearing them up as though they were dirt cannot help stop their proliferation, Dr.Guan points. Their proliferation only shows the inadequacy of the country’s leaders to give better economic opportunities for citizens, he adds.

A professor from the Malaysian branch of the Australian-run Monash University, Dr. Guan has produced Sidewalk Capitalism: Being a Street Vendor in Baguio City, Philippines, an hour documentary about the lives, suffering and hope of Baguio’s sidewalk vendors. Dr. Guan, or Daniel to friends, invited the public, including the sidewalk vendors interviewed for the documentary, for a premier screening of the film at the UP-Baguio last May 15.

Through the documentary, we learn that Baguio is one of the most preferred cities for street vendors because of its relatively ‘lax’ laws on sidewalk peddling. Baguio’s mountain climate is also attractive to migrants, many of whom end up as street peddlers. We also learn that more and more Muslim traders from Mindanao are coming to Baguio to escape the conflict in southern Philippines. That they come to do business here only proves that business and conflict don’t mix unless perhaps one is engaged in gunrunning or manufacturing guns.

Through the documentary we also learn that not a few pregnant Igorot women have miscarried their babies after members of the police ‘demolition team’ allegedly kicked and punched them as they ran for their lives. The documentary also tells about a farmer from Pangasinan who was forced to come to Baguio because the small farmland he used to rent could not provide for his family. He now sells iced products (iced drop, iced buko and ice cream) in the morning and balut (almost hatched duck eggs) and itlog pugo (quail eggs) in the afternoon until late in the evening.

Through the documentary we meet Nora Carreon, 64, who since 1986 has been peddling candies, cookies and other goodies at a small space beside the Baguio Chinese Patriotic School. A former office worker in Manila, Carreon and her family came to Baguio shortly after the EDSA I “People Power” revolt. She tried applying for any office work in the city but both government and private outfits turned her down for a common reason: She was too old to do office work. “I had no other choice but find income in the streets,” she says. And from peddling candies and other goodies, she was able to get her children through college.

The documentary also features two articulate sisters who speak English well because they happened to be college students who quit school after their family met some financial difficulties. The two sisters, who used to attend the UP-Visayas in Cebu City, are now part of Baguio’s growing army of sidewalk vendors. They say they are not ashamed of plying their wares in the streets because “this (sidewalk vending) is better than stealing or some other indecent jobs.” They now form part of what economists call the underground or informal economy, so-called because it is not counted under the country’s Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product.

Industries under the informal economy are unregistered and are thus considered illegal. But as the country is unable to provide jobs and other economic opportunities for its labor force, more and more Filipinos are either leaving for overseas jobs or ending up as street vendors. A law bans vending goods on sidewalks. But chasing the sidewalk vendors obviously could not stop people from displaying and selling their goods once members of the demolition team are gone. No wonder sidewalk peddlers have designed collapsible display platforms, which they easily fold once the demolition team approaches.

Retired Prof. Ben Tapang says the informal economy comprises a significant part of many Third World economies. He says as much as 40 percent of all economic activities in the Third World, including the Philippines, belong to the informal sector. One factor that pushes people to the informal sector, says the UP economics professor, is the tedious bureaucratic process of registering a business, which includes 15 steps that usually take six months to one year to complete.

We passed by them everyday and even the media rarely get their stories. For many of us even in the media, sidewalk vendors are simply ordinary part of Baguio’s cityscape. So it took a visiting Malaysian professor, who is one of the 2005-2006 fellows of the Japan-based and Nippon Foundation-supported Asian Public Intellectuals, to bring to us the stories of our brothers and sisters who eke out a living in the streets. Like you and me, the street vendors also have dreams, the most common of which is not only to eat three decent meals a day but to also send their children to school so they hopefully won’t end up in the streets.

lemongrass tea

lemongrass tea

Lotus Flower in Murky Waters

By Maurice Malanes

Once in a while we get to read something spiritually uplifting from the papers. One such article was headlined, “Poor Mom with Rich Heart Adopts Unwanted Baby.” The article by Christian Esguerra of the Philippine Daily Inquirer is like a blooming lotus flower amid murky waters or a rainbow in summer.

Such story, which looks like those the Reader’s Digest publishes, is a break from the usual stories of conflict, scandal, crime, corruption, and violence of your favorite newspaper.

Accompanied by a photo of a smiling mother raising her grinning bubbly adopted child, the story indeed was about love and hope. The photo caption says it all: “THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR LOVE: Though she lives in a 15-sq.m. corner in Vitas, Tondo and survives on P50 a day, Salvacion Ruiz, who has two other children, adopted Sandin Lee when he was abandoned by his mother.” Poor in things material, the mother has the rich heart of a Mother Teresa. The unwanted child needs all the love he needs. And this gives us hope that the child will grow up to be a responsible citizen because Salavacion is there to raise and guide him.

Studies have shown that unloved children and those with unhappy childhood often turn out to be maladjusted persons when they grow up. Worse, they can become part of society’s dregs. Showered with his adoptive mother’s love, over a year-old Sandin Lee will be part of society’s asset someday.

The stories of conflict, scandal, crime, violence, and corruption that the media churn out daily reflect social realities. And there’s no question that the media should report about these. Many people, however, feel fed up by too much of the same menu of news day in and day out 365 days a year. Some don’t even read the papers anymore or listen to news on radio or television. They prefer something more entertaining like FM music or fashion shows on Cable TV. No wonder many cable TV stations have come out with what is now called “infotainment,” or information that entertains rather than informs.

But life is not 100 percent entertainment. We still need to be informed and enlightened. We need basic information to keep us abreast of what’s happening around us. Otherwise, we will wake up one day as surprised as Rip Van Winkle over how the world has changed and we are not aware of it.

The media cannot gloss over conflict and crime. But there’s a growing call for media to also report or write about crimes and conflict from the perspective of a peace correspondent. A peace correspondent doesn’t only write about conflicts; he also probes and reports about how people are embarking on certain initiatives to help resolve conflicts. The same holds true with crimes. The peace correspondent also looks into how various sectors are seeking to institute measures to prevent or stop crimes.

The peace correspondent always looks into possibilities of hope and love. So he can do a story about a hardened criminal who turned his back on his wicked ways and became a pastor or a psychological and spiritual counselor or teacer, for example. This is certainly a story that is as inspiring as the poor mom with a rich heart who adopted an unwanted child.

The same holds true about other themes such as corruption and thievery and all their other faces and forms. There are corrupt people and thieves of all kinds and they should be exposed and laid bare by media. But another way of looking at these is finding other stories of people who made integrity and honesty part of their way of life. Through this, other people can at least see that there’s still a way out of the rut we are all in and that there’s hope after all for this country of our sorrows.

In recent years, the editors of the Inquirer advised their correspondents to also write about “positive” stories. The Inquirer now highlights on the front page of its Sunday issue what it calls “positive Sunday” features such as the story of that man who seeks to plant at least a million trees in the next few years. Once in a while the paper also features a positive story on weekdays but it makes sure it has one or two positive stories on Sundays.

Yes, we also need something positive in our front pages, if only to remind us that the spirit of goodness has not yet been defeated by the spirit of darkness.

Strange Truth

Strange Truth

By Maurice Malanes

In one of our English subjects in college, our teacher assigned us to write an essay around the topic “truth is stranger than fiction.” I don’t remember articulating well the topic, which at that time was quite unclear to me. But I remember having said that fiction could be better understood than all the treatises that sought to explain the truth.

This brings us to a now controversial work of fiction – The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which has been made into a movie. The former public school teacher author himself stresses that his book is fiction. The only things he claims to be factual are “the Priory of Sion, a secret society founded in 1099; the Opus Dei, a deeply devout Catholic sect that has just built a US$47 million national headquarters at 243 Lexington Ave., New York; and all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals.”

Other than these, the rest of the book is fiction. This means, or we assume, that the rest of the book is a product of the author’s imagination.

But why has the book created so much controversy and reaction from various sectors? Why do such groups like the Philippine Alliance Against Pornography want President Arroyo to ban the film version of the novel? These groups have their reasons. One is the novel’s claim that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and even had children with her, including the Merovingian kings of France. Another is about the fabled Holy Grail, which, the novel says, was actually Magdalene, not the chalice used in the Last Supper, and that Magdalene’s womb served as the “chalice” from which the royal blood of Jesus flowed forth in posterity.

All these, says Brown, is fiction. But why have the book and its film version invited so intense reactions that some want to suppress the screening of the film later this month?

I like the cool reaction of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. The Bishops Conference spokesperson Monsignor Pedro Quitorio said: “If the faith of the people is strong, it would not be destroyed by one novel. Both the book and the movie are presented the way it should be – a fiction – so the people must not be afraid.”

To Quitorio, the more people, be they critics or supporters, talk about the book and the movie, the more the book and movie would sell.

But if fiction, like any other art, imitates life, Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” reflects one fact of life – that life itself, as we know it, still has a lot of mysteries, which we must keep on discovering as we keep on learning. In the process, we can discover and learn new truths, thereby further strengthening our faith rather than undermining it as some would fear. That’s one of the strengths of fiction – to lead us to the truth.

That’s one reason why we prefer to read fiction rather than some voluminous jargon-laden documents of the UN or some other government bureaucracy, which lull us to sleep after a couple of pages. Novels, on the other hand, can keep us awake and we keep on reading and before we know it the roosters are already crowing after we have been reading for six straight hours after 10 in the evening.

And fiction can move us to tears or can make us laugh as we are held in suspense for every twist and irony along the way. One novel that was so powerful it made me cry and laugh and think was “Kite Runner,” the first novel of Afghan author Khaled Hosseini. As it tells about love, honor, guilt, fear and redemption, the novel also tells about the contemporary history of Afghanistan.

And that’s the strange thing about fiction. Through fiction, we can appreciate better all great themes of life – be it faith, love, justice, freedom, hope, and salvation. These themes come to life as they are acted by both the protagonists and antagonists in a story of fiction.

Small wonder the story-telling techniques of fiction are being adopted now by journalism.

Feeling Asian

Feeling Asian

By Maurice Malanes

When the Hua Yang Nian Hua, a cultural group from the Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, performed at the Cultural Center for Arts auditorium of the Saint Louis University last week, I was not only thrilled. The show tickled my Asian consciousness.

The 45 college cultural performers, who were singers or dancers plus one English-speaking master of ceremonies, gave me a break from my Hollywood, Western pop-saturated cultural consciousness. Although the performers did mostly songs and dances of ethnic groups in mainland China, I didn’t feel Chinese at all. I felt Asian once again.

Whether the performers were dancing “The Fragrance from Milk,” “The Huge Rock,” “The Happy Prairie,” “The Descendants,” “The Rising Sun” or “Carrying the Lotus Roots,” one could not fail to note in their performance the harmonious mix of the grace and poetry and the soft and hard principle of Tai chi and Kung Fu. In fact, a young lady performed a martial arts dance with a thin sword and all of us in the audience were mesmerized with the way she jumped, tumbled and somersaulted in the air as though she had transcended gravity. While she exhibited speed and toughness, she also had poise, precision and grace, all of which were done with rhyme and rhythm.

Some of the dances were as old as 2,000 years and have been performed since the Han dynasty. But the cultural group has kept these dances alive, bringing to life on the stage part of China’s history.

The same could be said of the various folk songs the cultural performers rendered. Apart from singing songs of various Chinese ethnic minorities, they also sang contemporary songs, all of which were truly and distinctly Asian, at least in melody and nuance. Music themes such as love, pain and triumph over suffering are universal and are common to both East and West. But there’s something in the rendition, melody, rhythm and beat of a song that distinguishes it from the rest. That distinction was evident in the songs the Jinan University cultural performers rendered.

A lady player of a musical instrument, which resembles an accordion with an organ, also struck an intimate chord with the audience when she played “Planting Rice” or “Magtanim ay Di Biro,” the Filipino folk song many of us learned during grade school. Their choir also sang “Leron Leron Sinta”, another grade school song we almost forgot but which we came to appreciate again when it was rendered by an internationally acclaimed cultural group.

That Thursday evening with the Chinese cultural group was an affair to remember and also something to reflect on. Apart from being the biggest nation in the world, China has a 5,000-year civilization, which the many of us can learn from. Now joining the WTO-led market-oriented global economy, China has become the apple of the eyes of other countries seeking to invade the vast Chinese market. For its part, China has also started breaking into the global market, saturating even the US market with Chinese products, which range from Statue of Liberty and Elvis Presley memorabilia souvenir items to farm products such as grapes and apples.

For many countries, China is a country to watch in the 21^st century.

Unfortunately, the Philippines has yet to explore China as a major economic partner. The Philippines’ tourism industry, for example, can actually tap Chinese nationals, who are attracted by our sweet mangoes and beaches. With its rich culture and old civilization, China is a good partner for the Philippines in cultural tourism.

The cultural show at the SLU Cultural Center for Arts auditorium, for instance, should have been well-attended had the local government and the tourism department helped promote it. In fact, I came to know that there was such a cultural show only when hotelier Peter Ng called and sponsored tickets for me and a few other media representatives, who were able to leave the proof reading and other desk work for their weekly papers to watch the show.

Kathleen Okubo of the Baguio Midland Courier and Lyn Ramo of the Northern Dispatch were the only media colleagues who were able to watch the show. During that evening, all of us concluded that the show made us feel Asian again. Thanks to Peter Ng who made it a point that we should not fail to watch a rare performance, which all made our Thursday evening a memorable one.

We were quite envious though because Peter Ng and Dr. Charles Cheng, with their knowledge of the Mandarin language, could relate well with the beautiful performers after their presentation. That gave us an idea: we should start learning Mandarin, which may yet become one of the major international languages in the future as China joins the global economy and other international affairs. (Note: This was published as a regular column in the Cordillera Today, a weekly newspaper in Baguio City, Philippines)