My own Mang Pandoy

I took a cab home the other night following an after-work treat of suman sa lihiya and salabat at Café Adriatico with my Yangtze River sisterhood, the group that sailed down the fabled Yangtze River together a few years ago and forged a bond that neither time nor tide has severed.

My driver was a kindly, elderly man, father of six and grandfather of five. He takes the cab out three days a week, from six in the morning until 4:30 the next morning, or 22 and a half hours straight, stopping only for quick meals and even quicker bathroom and coffee breaks. His boundary is P1,500, and he spends about as much for fuel, in his case LPG at P31-plus a liter. He told me the boundary is higher because the cab is converted to LPG; gasoline cabs have a boundary of about P900, but fuel costs go up to P2,000 a day, so it all evens out.

Under this arrangement, he takes home an average of P500 to P600 a day. Sometimes he gets lucky, as when he was hired by four Korean tourists the other day for a trip out to Pagsanjan for a fixed rate of P3,500. They left at seven in the morning and were back at their Malate hotel by three in the afternoon, leaving him with a good half-day to continue his run.

That was a rare good day. Usually, the P500 he brings home is hardly enough to feed his family, which includes his wife, three children still in school (a girl in sixth grade and two boys in high school), a married daughter, her husband and three children who moved in with him since both adults are jobless. Occasionally a grandchild from another married daughter stays with them too. A son who is married lives on his own, since he and his wife both work.

In the old days, he says, he could make good money driving a taxi, taking home as much as P1,500 a day. Then he managed to save enough to buy a small house in Dasmariñas, Cavite, but a child fell critically ill so he had to sell the house to pay the medical bills. Now they live in a cramped rented place in Bacoor, and he reveals they are two months behind on the rent.

He is from Ilocos Norte, from the picturesque area of Pagudpud, a tourist mecca of pristine beaches, and Bangui, where one of the country’s two windfarms is located (the other is in Batanes). His mother, still hale and healthy, lives on their little farm, now tended to by his brother. His mother has been asking him to return; he admits he is sometimes tempted, since there they will at least have food to eat and a roof over their heads. His son likes the idea, but his wife, who is originally from the Visayas, has her family here in Manila, and so is not too enthusiastic about moving north.

But he is keeping that option open, for if circumstances in the big city become too untenable, he might just have to consider going back to the province. Maybe he can drive a bus plying the route to Laoag, he says, or drive for tourists, or maybe even drive a cab there too.

In this sense, he is still lucky, better off than many others who have no options, no fallback position, no Plan B when life becomes too difficult, when there is no work and no money and no food on the table.

In the last few months, driving home from work at night I see more and more people making waiting sheds, doorways and the sides of buildings, and one family on the bridge on P. Casal street near Malacañang, their home for the night. They lay out cartons or newspapers, cover themselves with a sheet or more newspapers, and bed down for the night. Where they take shelter when it rains I do not know. Whether they go to sleep on an empty or full stomach I can only guess. What they dream about I cannot begin to imagine.

Record GDP growth, windfall tax collections, billions in alleged investments mean nothing to my cab driver and the people sleeping on the sidewalks unless they translate into jobs that enable them to earn enough money to feed their families, provide education for their children, affordable medicine when they get sick. Politics and corruption eat away at our economy and drain the lifeblood from our people, turn every project into a scandal, every investment into an exercise in bukol and tongpats.

The sudden celebrity of Mang Pandoy, the pledges of assistance, the television show, in the end did not do him much good; he died a poor man, still the face of the poor Filipino. Similarly, one-time subsidies and lifeline programs sound good and make great photo-ops, but they do not really change the lives of the poor.

My cab driver does not want a subsidy or a dole-out; he wants to be able to earn enough from his 22 and a half hours of work to feed his family, pay his rent, see that his two sons get training in electronics and automotive repair (which they have shown aptitude for) and then get jobs. In other words, all he wants is a life of dignity, of honest labor, of fulfilling his role as father and provider, of fulfilling his potential as citizen, as Filipino. Why is it so hard for him to do so?