Christmas twigs and milk

Unlike his counterparts in America, Mang Boy lives about 200 meters from the sea. He probably has never seen snow. He walks around in shorts and a white sando about two sizes too tight for him. He is brown from the face down to his feet. The only patch of white in his body comes from his hair betraying his age.

He has a slight limp and from the looks of it his beer drinking days if not rum, has contributed severely to his probable diabetes or maybe just gout.

While his beer belly may earn him distrust if not contempt, he is respected it not feared by the people who work for him. He decides on all the prices. THAT tells everybody who the boss is!

Here on the service road of Roxas blvd., where street urchins and impoverished people mingle with Sunday strollers across the street, right on the side of the road, no roof, no walls, no sign, Mang Boy boldly if not cautiously displays his version of Christmas trees. Here under the tropical sun he competes with the malls hoping to sell you one of his Christmas trees.

The Christmas trees are not green they’re — brown then painted white. They’re not pine trees, heck! They’re not even asian pine trees. They’re TWIGS. Dried up branches painstakingly nailed together on a main branch.

It requires some effort to draw a Christmassy feeling as you stare at the leafless, lifeless "trees". Visually the best I could come up were the Birch trees in Connecticut during the dead of winter.

But here in the dusty asphalt it is a purpose, a sense of mission and perhaps a few lessons to be learned if not relearned, that brings us. Twenty years ago we came here to buy a "Christmas tree". My wife who was my "girlfriend" back then had just arrived from Holland. To her the White wood Christmas trees were "different".

We did that for a number of years until the "practical" and the "reusable" and finally the "Real" came to play. From our TWIG Christmas trees, we evolved to the reusable, storable, dependable imitation plastic Christmas tree.

In the last three years we turned to some real Scandinavian sort of trees both ones we got to plant in Lipa to commemorate our daughter’s first Christmas, and the one planted by a dear Aunt who visited from Holland before she died.

But this year, we found ourselves looking back. The first thought was that by buying a TWIG CHRISTMAS TREE we would actually be helping people earn a living. If many more people choose to do the same thing we could assure a wonderful Christmas.

Then the thought evolved. Here was a situation where Filipinos gathered broken trees and branches thereby helping to reduce litter in the boulevard. For 20 plus years they must have collected enough to put up a mini park or forest.

They then took what would have been litter and recycled. Then they created work by making TWIG CHRISTMAS TREES. Then they became ENTREPRENEURS by selling them. Then they contributed to our individual experiences and perhaps collective memory of Christmases gone by.

We went, a family of three, with one mission. To buy a TWIG CHRISTMAS TREE and perhaps help give someone a living. I went with a sense of purpose: To buy and show others that we could make a difference.

The experience has taught me that Entrepreneurs are not about language and skills or sophistication. It is about making something special even from litter. It is about defying the standards set by people too snobbish to give you a second look.

It reawakened the challenge on how to make these special trees even more wonderful and memorable come Christmas. I also realized that even with Christmas trees, we automatically buy by convenience and not wisdom.

Even in America, Canada or Europe, it is not the tree that makes it special. It is the family that chose which tree, it is the family that dressed up the tree, it is the family that placed the gifts under the tree. It is about the wishes and the carols. It is about the Christ.

Would you rather be "PLASTIC" or REAL?

* * *

Speaking of mission and purpose. We recently began giving away a couple of bicycles to students in a far flung barangay. To be honest, I simply thought of it in terms of efficiency. Walking simply ate up too much time in the province where homes, stores, schools are quite far apart.

But after seeing its effect on the lives of the students, I find myself scrounging around for unused, unwanted, even damaged bikes we could repair and give away.

It dawned upon me how much more productive and motivated these students become just from owning their own bikes. For starters they cover more distances faster minus the exhaustion. This gives them more time at home for work, study and play.

When they bike to and from school, they are less exhausted. If they’re really poor and only get to eat two meals a day, the bike reduces their energy use. Walking to schools works up quite an appetite considering they have to walk anything from 3 to 5 kilometers one way. No wonder many kids simply drop out to work for food!

Finally, actual ownership of something they could only dream of clearly revives if not births a sense of the possible.

Just in case you’ve been wondering how you could do something for others, why not look in your kitchen, your closet, your garage or just about anywhere you’re likely to have things lying around or in a pile.

In my journeys I found a family who couldn’t afford a mattress, I met a man who had the same shoe size I had. Someone just wanted a few packs of hybrid Japanese sweet corn seeds. In the most malaria infested areas I’ve worked in, people couldn’t afford a P300 mosquito net.

Look in the medicine box, in the pantry and in your ref. How many times have you had to throw away expired medicines, expired food? How long are you going to keep all the STUFF you haven’t read, haven’t worn, haven’t used?

How many watches can you possibly wear? And how many times are you going to kid yourself about becoming more generous, about helping others?

How about now?!!!

* * *

First they made us think they cared, then when we got smarter they convinced us that we needed to care for our children because they might not have the advantage, then they made it appear that they shared the view that breastfeeding was good.

Now that the government finally decided to stop accommodating the formula milk manufacturers, they have the audacity to say that the REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES may not know what it’s doing!

The recent statements issued by some guy representing US interest in the formula milk market can be summarized as LAZINESS. Like many "no choice" product manufacturers, the formula milk people sat on their fat behinds counting money. All they cared about was keeping their Pediatric accomplices fed and happy.

Now that the government said enough with your illusory promises of higher IQs, mental advantages, feasting on the Filipinos’ height disadvantage, some messianic salesman tells OUR government that its policy might send confusing signals to INVESTORS.

Excuse me Joe Shmoe, as they say if I got a dollar for every so-called would be US investor you guys talked about, this country’s president wouldn’t need ten minutes with your soon to be ex-president.

At the end of the day, The World Health Organization decided to put its money where the milk manufacturers had their mouth. Now, there is apparently serious activity to get Media to counter or pressure government to compromise.

After years of making money from formula milk commercials, let us all pray that the owners of the TV, radio stations, specially senior columnists won’t cave n to these media manipulators.