THE years skip me now. So do the names of needy people that expatriate and forever Baguio Boy Freddie de Guzman helped, sending amounts to ease their financial distress and help them cope with their medical ailments.
I recall vividly how Freddie reached out to Mark Anthony Viray, then a 13-year-old son of a taxi driver. The kid succumbed to Hodgkin’s lymphoma while dreaming of one day becoming a pilot. For that, I regret having failed to follow up a request for the kid to ride an airplane before he died.
Whatever. What matters now is that some Baguio-Cordillera expatriates continue this often untold and unsung tradition of reconnecting, of reaching out to the sick and needy back home.
Take the case of former world Shotokan karate champion Julian Chees. A month back, he took a respite from his work as martial arts teacher in Germany to fulfill an annual pilgrimate of sorts for the ailing here and in Bontoc, Mt. Province.
I’ve been included in Julian’s list of beneficiaries since three years back, when the doctor told me my kidneys failed for having too much sugar even a haciendero can’t handle.
Since the diagnosis, my benefactors have turned legion. Among them are golfers, folksinger Conrad Marzan, his fellow expat band members, Joel Aliping, realtor Alex Bangsoy and wife Annabelle, general manager Gerry Verzosa and the board of the Benguet Electric Cooperative. Many others, including people you casually meet along Session, hand you support, without a word about who they are. In this, his latest homecoming, Chees used up P158,667.70 he and his students contributed for medicines of those hospitalized.
Television newscaster Dhobie de Guzman of ABS-CBN and I’ve discussed this practice of expats going home beyond the personal to and ease people’s suffering where they grew up in, beyond their relatives and loved ones.
What a beauty it would be if majority of “balikbayans” set aside one or two hundred dollars each time they come home to pay for a toddler’s medicine or a session of dialysis for a kidney patient.
Of course, you need not be a homecoming expatriate to be able to do that. A retired Baguio anthropology professor here read of dialysis patients needing help and responded, paying for their next two treatments at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
There’s also no age limit to reaching out. The son of bookseller Maricar Docyogen and the children of Alex and Annabelle Bangsoy called me up during their birthdays, saying they have cancelled the parties and would like to turn over the fund for the occasion to ailing kinds we wrote about in the local papers. If that’s not inspiration, I don’t know what is.
monaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.