Comfort and tribulation always go together

Remember the play Jesus Christ, Superstar, when Jesus requests His Father to spare Him from His forthcoming “tribulations”? It’s a word we hardly use in everyday conversation.

For example, what tribulations did Manileños suffer as a result of the Chinese revolt, rendering them homeless? In 1571, the Spaniards returned, the natives set fire to the town, leveling it to the ground, while the people fled to Tondo and neighboring towns. Soliman gathered together a considerable force of Tagalog warriors to expel the invaders. However, the Filipinos were defeated, the Spanish conquered the “City of Soliman.” Policy changes came about with the new dispensation, which angered the Chinese. They lost their free trade, suffered commercial restrictions and the laws forced them to pay tribute to Spain. Chinese revolt occurred when a force of some 3,000 men and 62 Chinese warships under the command of Limasawa attacked but suffered defeats. This caused them to set fire to Quiapo and Tondo in 1602. What tribulations did Manila residents endure from being injured and the loss of their homes? 

You may be interested in the origin of the word “tribulation,” which means trouble, problems, hardship, misery, difficulty, distress, ordeals, pain, and suffering. The origin of the word “tribulation” lies in this. When Rome ruled the world, grain was a precious commodity. Across the sheaves of cut grain, the Romans pulled a cart that had rollers instead of wheels. Sharp stones and rough bits of iron were attached to these rollers to separate the husks form the grain. This cart was called a tribulum, where the word “tribulation” came from as a fitting expression for how troubles grind us and put us under pressure. 

Every day for me, it’s been like passing through the eye of a needle. My tribulation is searching for a site to transfer a government school. The once lush greenery of Fort Bonifacio has now been overtaken by a concrete jungle of buildings. The seven-hectare site where our college is located is no exception. Modernity and business ventures have taken over the residence of public safety instructions and the love of preserving heritage and culture. The National Historical Institute requires 50 years to declare a property a national heritage to merit a historical marker. Ours is 42 years old. The National Police College is of old wood and will be leveled to the ground. There’s been a year-long sigh of lamentations from employees. They feel like flood-stricken residents (some are typhoon victims actually). Everyone must endure being victims of these times for varied reasons. As hours close in on us we must move on and find happiness and workloads at least all together even if it’s elsewhere.

I remember that in the late 1990s in Tarlac, there were many victims that were dislocated by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. I embarked on several projects as governor to save people from mendicancy and remind them of their dignity. I organized emergency programs such as Food for Work for my constituents to participate in the digging, dredging and widening of canals buried under lahar. They worked and we paid. The Anti-Mendicancy Task Force provided support services to beggars, mostly Aetas along the lahar-ravaged Bamban-Mabalacat Road, to buy the wild orchids they sold and we gave them vegetable seeds to plant. 

Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation provided financial support for medical, burial, housing and transportation needs. sTing-napay became a mainstay. It was a supplemental feeding program to improve nutritional level of second and third-degree malnourished preschool children. Pandesal was distributed three times a week for years. The Bantay Bata was organized wherein abused children needing protective custody were placed in a home for girls and boys until such time that members of their family were assessed to take custody of them. 

Counseling at the Health Department was so sad. I sat through half-day sessions where Bamban residents related their stories of sitting on rooftops and tree branches for weeks and searching for loved ones. Productivity Skills and Capability Building provided training skills for women in the use of sewing machines. All these activities were coordinated with Jun Paras of the Red Cross and Donna Dacayanan of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the latter having been devolved to the local government unit. Looking forward, Elsa Gamueta, Baby Antonio and myself had stopped beggars and would-be thieves by giving them livelihood.

All these programs were supervised by Gloria Arroyo when she was a senator, with the Mt. Pinatubo commission. 

You may find beggars increasing in number and even children wandering around Pasig, Marikina and Cainta, going from car to car looking for attention and money, their homes consumed by floods and mud. Why did this happen in Pasig, Marikina and Cainta and even in far Cotabato? 

No one knows how long it took to turn the sea into land, pushing Manila Bay where it is today. For Manila or residents near Laguna de Bay to be so brave to live by the water, we can presume that after hundreds of years, deposits of soil from the upper valleys had filed to form ground. 

Grounds formed at the mouth of the river. It was called the delta in the Pasig River. In fact, it became the City of Manila, which was not even on solid ground. Manila is barely above sea level till today and all esteros emptied out to Manila Bay from the Pasig River. Manila went underwater during high tide and during the monsoon rains and metamorphosed into small islands with rivulets, another name for esteros, which led to Pasig, Marikina and Cainta. Esteros then were used for commercial purposes and convenient transportation on boats.   

At the close of the Spanish era in 1898, an extensive network of esteros ran through the urban districts of Binondo, Sta. Cruz, Quiapo and San Miguel. They penetrated rural Tondo and the esteros were used as waterways to go to Manila Bay and Sampaloc in the north. Paco in the south had the Estero de Pandacan, which was the only significant tributary from the south bank.

The Estero de Vitas in the north and the Estero Tripa de Gallina in the south joined Parañaque River, which drained directly into Manila Bay. The Pasig River connected with the Marikina River in the northeast and Laguna Lake via Napindan River in Marikina and Pasig River at Taguig in the southern part of the Manila Bay emptied through Pasig River.

The esteros of Manila interconnected and reached all the way to the river estuaries of Bulacan and Pampanga where Tagalog or Taga ilog dwellers lived by the river. The Taga-ilogs and the Kapampangans from “pampang” or riverbank of the Pampanga River Delta owned bancas and cascoes for trading goods with the Manileños using the esteros. To this day Pampanga goes continuously under water in spite of dikes built in early 1996.

Cemented roads and houses built on top of the esteros blocked the water exit into Manila Bay. All esteros have been curtailed and diminished in length owing to illegal claims or giving way to roads and buildings.

Through time the esteros have undergone physical transformation but have missed out sadly in retaining their most basic function of providing their ultimate purpose — drainage of excess water be it from Laguna de Bay to Pasig river to Manila Bay. Vanished due to the ills of improper urban planning and undisciplined residents, the esteros could have been used to decongest road traffic, avoid floods, a tourist tour around the Manila, Bulacan and Pampanga. How beautiful that tour would have been!

Floods do not happen in Metro Manila alone. Simuay and Pagalugan Rivers overflow causing Maguindanao extensive damage. The homeland of the Maguindanao people is the basin of the Pulangi River (Rio Grande in Spanish accounts), which spills down the southern slopes of the Bukidnon massif in north central Mindanao, snaking south and west across low-lying mashy plains to Illana Bay. The word maguindanao, which means “to be inundated,” comes from the propensity of the Pulangi River to overflow its banks, making Maguindanaons victims forever!  

Several tributaries and estuaries are sources of floods. The Salimbao and Pollok Rivers and Simuay. The Allah River in South Cotabato snakes out to Liguasan Marsh, from its tributaries, the Sapakan, Tawiran and Bakat Rivers that go to Tamontaka River in the south of Maguindanao to the Salimbao-Pollok-Solons River northward. That water goes to the Pulangi River and outward to Illana Bay by the Subpangan area of Sultan Kudarat municipality. After all, Subpangan means the criss-crossing of bodies of water, routes and people, the Maguindanaoans, Manobos and Lumads.  

For now, a veil of sadness exists. Let it not be a tribulation that one could say, “Farewell, beloved country, dear Pearl of the Orient seas, our lost Eden...back to a sad and faded life...” as Jose Rizal wrote. 

When we experience tribulation, we desperately need someone who will comfort us. But comfort comes from acceptance, thus within us. How fortunate we are that we are alive to pray to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter who can bring us reassurance and consolation. 

We are of resilient and smiling people. The Roman farmer did not use his tribulum to destroy his grains but to refine it. God also uses our troubles to make us stronger for “tribulation produces perseverance.” The Apostle Paul wrote, “God comforts us in all tribulation.” Remember, comfort and tribulation always go together.