Involvement: On its beauty and its best

We wander and we love that. It may get us farther but it also brings us closer to ourselves.

Community organizing was the one of the exciting task I have delved myself into. It was on 2003, when my immersion program brought me to a remote barangay in Bicol, Philippines. The community is located 42.8 km from the capital city where the organization I was belong held their pastoral office. It’s a distant place of 2.5 hours ride of 3 transport modes. When you are in province, 2.5 hours is a long ride. And from there starts the 5 km trail down on rivers, streams, and through its uphill forests. Agriculture is the primary industry that kept its people busy. They woke up 4 o’clock in the morning to start their endeavor onto their farm fields, copra production, and abacca weaving. Equipped with limited information which our coordinator had shared with us, we went our way to the area. And knowing little of the place we are going to adds up to the excitement of another adventure far from home and that'll last to six months.

The primary goal was for us to have a deep community involvement in a way of pastoral development. Our presence was coordinated to the local parochial community as part of the standard procedure who permitted us to do our immersion. It was through their assistance that venture our way to local households which became our foster families. But not all of us went to the same house; five of us were given a different home assignments. Others six young fellows were in another barangay. Here, a household across a suburb is your neighbor.

Each of us was given a weekly budget of P2,000.00. I bought from these 5 kilos of rice, canned goods, instant noodles and other personal utilities. These are what I shared with the family I live with for they cannot afford to have an extra budget for someone else. I can tell that they not even have enough for themselves. I also save budget for the fare and other expenses which I might be needing on my stay. Importantly, I need to be accountable with every cents entrusted to me. It must be spent wisely and properly and every spending has to be taken into account. I was assigned to a family of four. The children were ages of 10 and the younger was 7. Their parents were in their early 40s. I was 19 years old then, so instead of addressing them father and mother, it fitted to call them Kuya (older brother) and Ate (older sister) and I am happy to have siblings too. They live in shanty house in suburb. No electricity and water services. Imagine what more you cannot do when you don’t have these two commodities. What lighted the house is a gasera (kerosene lamp) that cannot be kept burning overnight. For if you do, you are wasting one of the precious commodity these people have, or worst, you might burn the house down. The water supply came from a deep well. I know you have heard classic stories about this kind of water supply, I will leave it to your imagination for now. And imagine a toilet without a water source, not tiled but wooden. No flush but it went through and you can even smell what they have discharged a week ago. Night came and it's sleeping time. In the city, I usually go to bed an hour before midnight, but here they sleep an hour after sunset. Day light is not a kind of saving to them, it is far more important than that - it serves as their functional light to do more, because when the sun goes down everything goes dark too. I have been into a familiar situation, I am a product of the countryside too. I have roamed around trees and rivers, valley and fountains. Farm fields had been my playground where I get my inspirations of forms and colors, lines and shapes, lights and emotions. That first night, I believed, I have slept quite well and came prepared for the next day.

As a community organizer, it is necessary to know the people of the community. So I have tried one of the government’s been doing for a long time – census – the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information. How I have done that? How come these people entrusted their identity to someone they saw the first time? Even a phone application needed the user’s permit to access vital information. And I can even hardly speak their dialect. By the way, Philippines has approximately 175 dialects, and 12 of them are in the region I was back then. Though my father came from the same region, but not on this specific town, where dialects also vary, me and my siblings were born and raised from different region with different dialect. Funny it may sounds, but I have experienced what a language barrier is in my own country. Often, I have heard my father conversed familiar dialect with his siblings whenever they have gatherings. So I guess I do have another strength of which I can call as my hearing aid – for I cannot formally speak the dialect, but if it sounded familiar to me, amazingly my tongue follows.

Where does great foundation begins, it is at home. So I started the day with greetings within my new family. It was a nice feeling woking up in a household so simple - so basic that you can even hardly realized that day had gone by and I became involved dynamically. New family, new culture, new lifestyle. Conversely, there are two words that are so effective when use, the Po and Opo – they are distinctly Filipino ways of showing respect to one's elders. The "po" is usually affixed to the end of sentences or phrases when one is addressing someone older. This is not only for elderly, for it simply a word of respect which can be address to persons younger and older than you. These words too, have deep dialects translations around the Philippines. I was so equipped with these words when I went from house-to-house, and that day on forward my Kuya accompanied and introduced me to the people he knew. Days went by and I eventually made it on my own. I have gained the trust of these people as they let me in their home, conversing with their native tongue (not as fluent though), eat what they eat, and do what they do.