Discriminating hospitality
Filipino culture provides warm hospitality. Nothing compares the quality of Filipino hospitality. As genial people, we go out of our way just to make sure we offer the best for our visitors.
We celebrate the comings of visitors. In rural areas, we don't want to disappoint them and so we prepare before their arrival. We offer the best of everything: room, blanket, food, chinawares, and many more. Even to the extent of compromising the conditions of the members of our family. Specifically like letting other members sleep in the living room as bedrooms are reserved for visitors for the entire duration of their stay.
And so if there is one thing that foreigners would usually comment about right after their visit in the Philippines, it would probably not be the food or the places they visited, but the hospitality of the people. It is hard to get rid of this trait though, as it has been part of our culture.
This is very much true when leaders of our neighboring countries visit our place for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings. We house them in first class accommodations-best hotels and resorts in town, best food, and making sure that lives are not threatened, and their itineraries are free from traffic. We do all these in the name of economic development. And if there's a race that is known for being so accepting and patient, it is we Filipinos.
But this should not be the case. Not to the point that the difference of treatment or condition is so obviously meant to favor to a certain group only. The case of our police personnel whose meals are of low quality is an indication of how we treat our fellowmen. Exposing them to heat, rain and the danger in the event of ensuring the security of foreign representative is more than risking their own lives that for the past days they are ubiquitous especially in areas of convergence for the delegates-in hotels and conventions centers.
These policemen when their twelve-hour duty is over, they go back to their places of accommodations-in first class hotels? Of course not! Reportedly, they are just sleeping in hammocks, in cardboard sheets or on the cold concrete floor of unfinished classrooms in public schools or barangay gym. To think that some of them are our visitors from other police units in other regions including Negros Oriental and Bohol.
This experience of our police personnel in Cebu is after all not an isolated case. The APEC in Boracay last May, as reported in the Panay News where cops securing the APEC guests, were starving. The Boracay experience should have made as lesson for the Cebu holding because for sure there is budget for this. This should have been looked into by the organizing groups. Or shall I say, it's another wakeup call to the police hierarchy to take care of those in the frontline while performing their critical task.
Development should be inclusive. It does not favor one over the other. The country's pursuit for national development should not put one sector in a disadvantaged situation while a few others would enjoy heavily from the fruits of development.
Despite all these, our policemen remain positive, surviving the entire duration of the summit. They took it as part of their job, their commitment to be of service to others. Such display of strength in character is visible during trying times. However, this could not be an excuse that we treat them differently, creating a stark contrast to what we offer to our visitors.
Hospitality should be non-discriminatory. And so regardless of race, belief and rank, it should be exercised with pureness of intention. We may appear excellent in the international spotlight but not in our very own Filipino eyes and heart.
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