Cala/Manila

Buntis

When we first moved to this house, our landlords gave us a few tips about the neighborhood: there’s a man who hawks fresh vegetables on the street everyday, there are lots of good little restaurants to try nearby, the sun shines in through the front window and reflects off the car hood at a certain time of the day.

And then there’s “Buntis” — she’s a helpful one who will willingly take things we don’t need off our hands. It’s not really her name, of course, but what the neighborhoodbcalls her because everyone has gotten so used to her being pregnant so often. The nickname has stuck.

She pushes a kariton (makeshift cart/trolley made of scrap wood and other materials used to gather junk), sometimes with a kid or two riding inside with the gathered cardboard, plastic, paper, even trash. It’s a sad reminder of what people do to survive and feed their families.

Then one day she asked me if I still had my old crib. Sometime ago, I was looking for someone who would put it to good use, since Matthew remains an only child and the crib was taking up space. I had no plans to get pregnant again at that point, and if so, I plan to do things differently. 

The crib had been passed on to a helper’s young daughter who had gotten pregnant (unplanned, so her dad told us). I gave them our crib and any other baby item I had left over.

The day Buntis came by and asked for the crib was a few weeks after that. And I asked her, Why? Was she pregnant?

Yes, she was.

She was expecting baby number 8. Buntis was, in fact, pregnant again.

She happily went her way after I told her that the crib was already gone, to gather more junk — to do what she had to do to feed her growing family.

Going in circles

I didn’t think it would be so, and at times I still deny it, but motherhood has made me question everything I thought to be right and I let it turn my life inside out, upside down and spin 180 degrees around.

And I’m still spinning, whether it be through momentum, choice and even indecision. I am turning myself, my world, my ideas over and around knowing that this circling makes everything so tenuous and fleeting — all perspectives, ideas, decisions, direction — they are all still flying through the air and I am trying to predict where they will all land and if and when and where, hopefully they all land in place.

For now: patience and faith. And knowing that my why, for now, is enough.

A day at the zoo

A couple of days after Christmas, I took Matthew to the zoo. We answered the call of Arriane who was promoting an outreach/thanksgiving event organized by the group I’M (Inspire Me) that had planned to take 70 children from the Virlanie Foundation to the Manila Zoo.

It sounded like a lot of fun. But moreso, it felt like a great way to end the year with my son who I am slowly trying to unshield from the realities of the world while keeping within the framework of childish innocence. 

We were assigned to one child partner/ward. Here are Matthew, 6, with Nash who is 7. His parents work at Virlanie.

He started off very quiet and shy, but as the boys bonded (despite language differences), the day just kept on getting better.

No matter what our circumstances are as a family, we try to make Matthew feel happy, protected and, I guess, a bit spoiled. Just like most parents, I imagine. I think we are doing a pretty good job (thank you, relatives and friends, who amp the spoiling so wonderfully with presents). But still, we don’t want him to grow up greedy and have been trying to instill the values of compassion and gratitude. This is not easy for a child who is developmentally somewhat still at a stage of the “me, myself, and I”. But we start now or regret it later.

I think the zoo expedition was so successful that we had a couple of memorable highlights I will remember for a long time.

At the end of the day, Matthew started to cry when I told him that dad was coming to pick us up and that we had to say goodbye to Nash soon. ”I thought he was coming home with us.” 

See, there really is a flipside in life, my little one. The number of toys you may receive will never amount to a shared moment with a friend. There are no barriers here.

Secondly, after we’ve bid our goodbyes, wiped the boy’s tears away, and ended our day on a happier note, he recapped to his dad, “I was the richest kid there!” It sounds shocking to hear, but from a six-year-old’s mouth, I trust that it was not bragging but an unfiltered declaration of a stupendous realization. Incidentally, he was the only child volunteer — he probably put two and two together as well.

What a far cry from a couple of week’s ago. (“My friend has more toys than me. I want that big spaceship. I wish we live in our older, bigger house. I want a lot of money so we can buy a lot of things.”)

It would seem, that in our efforts to make another child’s day brighter, we were the ones who got the best rewards of all.

And we are grateful.

“If we want to be generous, we can be.”

I’ve recently committed to an organization whose cause is very close to my heart:children, literacy and education.

To put it simply, Sambat Trust aims to “establish primary school libraries, provide teacher training and support families so that children are not forced to drop out of school.” 

The founder, Anthony Mariano, is a Filipino based in England. Yes, he is running this continents away. His parents are Filipinos who immigrated just as Martial Law was being laid down. His story recounts a visit with him mom, who sadly notices that things had not changed in decades.

For many, the state of impoverished children in this country is so common, it has numbed people to either helplessness or, worse, apathy.

But as Anthony quotes from Andre Comte-Spomville (who he was reading at the time that his eyes opened to the plight of the children), “If we want to be generous, we can be.”

Let’s be generous.

I like how Sambat Trust quantifies the progress that they make. When we give, we also want to know that it is not lost in some abstract place, some volunteer’s vacuum.

Which means:

As of November 2011, Sambat Trust has established 5 primary school libraries, delivered over 17,500 children’s books, granted 38 scholarships, trained 60 teachers; over 2,230 children now have access to a functional school library in the Philippines.

It’s more than a good start.

Know more. Visit the website.