Iisang bangka
Peterson Poon, one of the smartest students I have ever taught, had this on his mind last Saturday: “Everyone’s ‘sad’ when people are wet and suffering. How come nobody’s ‘sad’ when people are dry and suffering?”
These were just one of the many “Ondoy” posts that flooded my Facebook last weekend. Ordinarily, news of typhoons and floods would fill my feed with wishes for suspension of classes. This time, it was deluged at first, by personal experiences of the so-called “epic flood,” and then by calls to donation, assistance and volunteerism. Once in a while, the insightful ones would inject their personal commentaries about nature, the government and the spirit of the Filipino people.
Typhoons regularly hit the country. But, as made evident from news coverage, there was something very different about this storm. For one, it gravely affected Metro Manila and not the provinces. Second, the floods reached the residences and confines of the affluent as well as the poor: Greenhills, Corinthian Gardens, Valle Verde, Katipunan, etc. The news did not show destroyed shanties and straw huts. Rather, it was videos of condominiums and upscale houses submerged in flood. It would not have been unusual to see Quiapo underpass turned into a swimming pool. It was a shock when we saw Ayala and the rest of Makati underwater.
Events such as these would serve as grim but perfect examples of the need for solidarity when I was a Filipino teacher at Xavier School. To teach Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ‘70, I had to connect these literary works with our current situation of the country’s progress to achieve social justice. The last time I was able to tap into my students’ rare interest in social issues was after the controversial quip about the ineptitude of Filipino doctors on Desperate Housewives. My students excitedly asked for my reaction to the incident. I think they were expecting to hear Rizal’s anti-imperialist condemnation. Instead, I used Rizal’s self-criticism and suggested that we should reflect on America’s view of the Filipino; that is, until the country becomes untangled by corruption, other nations will continue to regard us as a fraudulent people of a fraudulent society.
A TV celebrity last Sunday said, “In times like these, there are no rich or poor.” I agree with the sprit of message but as Peterson’s post implicitly reminds us, this is and should not only be true “in times like these.” As long as we distinguish ourselves as “rich and poor,” these artificial divisions will prevent us from seeing the truth that we are all in the same boat. Fr. John Caroll, S.J. once quoted Abraham Lincoln who famously said, “a nation cannot survive half-slave and half-free.” Fr. Caroll adds, “the Philippines cannot survive 20-percent secure and 80-percent insecure.” The videos of luxurious vehicles being tossed around like matchbox cars and two-story houses swamped with mud should be enough proof of the fact that it only takes a Signal 1 typhoon to tear down this imaginary socio-economic divide between rich and poor; from there, we must realize that we can only face our problems as one country.
Of all the posts I read last weekend, it was only that of another former student of mine, Brent Ong, that I will mention: “Hope that next time, it doesn’t have to take a massive typhoon to bring people together to help one another.”
