WE HAVE just ended the celebration of Tourism Month (September) with activities anchored on theme “Tourism for Sustainable Development.” We could only sustain the good things we have established in tourism if we have ways of preventing them from falling, collapsing, or giving away.
The heavy downpour in the evening of September 22 was anti-tourism.
Someone could attribute that to climate change or that could be the act of nature “that could not be prevented.” That could be correct again but it appears to be a shallow excuse. Our engineers could have checked our drainage system first. If the drainage is small, this “naughty floodwater” will always stay on the surface.
In our urban areas, the malls have made rivers and streams smaller.
Again, the “naughty floodwater” will go to the slopes where most of our “squatting brothers” reside. We cannot just drive them to the “evacuation center” for “compliance.” The malls and other high-rise structures are well elevated. Our main roads become the “canals of Venice.” This could be another sustainable tourist attraction during flood season.
Not all passenger vehicles have modern terminals. In small terminals, there are small eateries where some passengers eat while waiting for their jeepneys to leave. How does the smell of urine irritate tourists and even regular passengers? We would like to request our tourism officers, health officers, and some city officials to make a familiarization tour in these areas. The smell of urine there has been sustained. Could that be a part of our “Experience the Philippines” program?
I am not much of a “street bug.” I am more of a “laundry man.” My fellow SunStar columnist Carlos Legaspi Jr. has his observation that in the local scene, criminality has grown out of proportion. (I still have to know what is proportionate.) He believes “that we have them all”… drugs, snatching, hold-up, robbery, theft, swindling, among others. If all of these have been for so long, then… they are sustainable.
Last week, I was with the group of 57 graduating tourism students from Centro Escolar University of Makati. They were amused to see “Badjao tourists” roaming in Bacolod streets. Some are very young mothers carrying an infant. We have a group of “Badjao musicians” playing their own Christmas drum beat to fascinate jeepney passengers caught unaware by the instant traffic congestion in the tourism strip of Bacolod.
My tourism officer friend said that the Badjaos have the schedule of all festivals in Negros. They are always added to the tourist arrival of any town and city celebrating its own festival. They are there to represent the cultural aspect of the celebration as the official representatives of the indigenous people. At night time, they converge in one place as one “big happy family.” They sleep with their mates “to sustain” the existence of their tribe. What they left behind is hazardous to health.
Our tourists around town are welcomed by “accommodating stray dogs” that spread their “own excrement” in the middle of the streets as if they are regular employees of Department of Public Works and Highways. They sustain their activity if the LGU veterinarian is just there in his office scratching balls. To maintain their own species, they just do the “doogie do” even in public that caused embarrassment to Christian human beings. Dogs are just maintaining sustainably their own sustainability.
Our tourists are expected to experience the Philippines as advertised… “groups of paradise islands in the Pacific”! Yes… but the top stories in the paradise islands as read in the local and national papers are about rape, killing, sexual crime, proliferation of drugs, and our president is fond of speaking “foreign language.” That could be cute if our tourists do not have the interpreter. Carajo! Cabron! Caramba! Joder! Relampago! Blame the Spaniards for teaching us their words. Filipinos simply sustain them in their own “mother tongue,” including our president.
For the mile travelers, we have the public toilets that could sustain tolerance. Our public toilets in the Philippines are always rated “VDH”… very dirty and horrible (flush knob is not functioning, faucet has been stolen, water does not drop, and for almost a year the sign “out of order” has been sustained). I hope that the tourism program implementers of our Tourism Month Celebration are aware of what we are sustaining based on the theme.
If something goes wrong, we can always blame “climate change,” the tattoo of Vice Mayor Paul Duterte, the hairstyle of Senator Trillanes, the mouth of Senator Gordon, the defeat of Pambansang Kamao Manny Pacquiao, the sexual look of Ellen Adarna, or the canine devotion of General “Bato.” Someone has to sustain the blame. That is very tourism!