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Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Dacawi: Christmas and the art of karate
By Ramon Dacawi
"KARATE ne sente nashi". It's in Japanese and it means "Karate has no offense". It's the guidepost of practitioners of traditional karate as developed and handed down by Master Gichin Funakoshi, the Father of Modern Karate.
It may appear a non sequitor, but I juxtaposed it last week with a parody-Charity may begin at home but it has no boundaries.
That was after students of a top traditional karate school in Southern Germany reached out last Wednesday to boost the fighting chances of four toddlers confined at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
The babies, aged between two to six months, are all battling sepsis, a toxic condition caused by multiplication of bacteria and their products and their absorption into the bloodstream.
Three of them have also been diagnosed for pneumonia, one very severe--Earldesten Medrano of Wangal, La Trinidad, Benguet; Sharmaine Langawen of Yagyagan, Tuba, Benguet; and Dianne Kay Pilagan of Mankayan, Benguet.
The fourth, three-month old Abegail Binwag, also has urinary tract infection. She is a granddaughter of Pablo Binwag, the diminutive miner from Philex who led his team in rescuing two survivors entombed alive for two weeks when the Hyatt Terraces Hotel collapsed during the July 16, 1990 killer earthquake here.
Compounding the infant's woes is another commonality--irregular medication dosage--according to Dr. Ferdinand Ganggangan of the pedia ward and the under-five clinic.
"Their charts reflect lapses in medicine dosage, which only renders the previous intakes ineffective," he said. "This reveals one thing--that their parents can not afford the medicines needed to maintain the treatment course."
As he wrote anew the prescriptions, Dr. Ganggangan explained that the government medical center could not provide all the needed dosage, given its limited budget and the big number of charity cases it handles.
As some of the medicines were not readily available, Julian Chees, the German karate students' representative, rushed from one drugstore to another to complete the medical purchase totaling P16,000.
Dr. Ganggangan, who had to rest after a 24-hour duty, asked the nurses on duty to guide Chees in delivering the medicines to the patients' parents and relatives on the watch.
The support came from Chees' students under Shoshin (The Beginners Mind), a traditional karate school he established in Wuerzburg, Germany where the fourth dan Igorot martial arts teacher and former world champion has settled with his family.
"It's done," the 48-year-old Chees said in a text message to Renate Doth, one of his advanced students and treasurer of Shoshin Kinderhelp, the humanitarian arm of the karate school.
Doth, a 51-year-old advertising designer, who received her blackbelt last year visited to Baguio City in 2003 with fellow martial artists Sofia Mavrohdodis, Alexandra Zgraja and Dr. Martina Scherbet.
Baguio folksinger Conrad Marzan arranged Chees's tie-up with the BGHMC pedia ward through Dr. Ganggangan. Last night, Marzan and other musicians mounted "Pasko na Cynthia Ko," a dinner concert at the Aling Nenang's Restaurant for Cynthia Miguel, a 36-year-old nurse afflicted with cancer.
It's the second mission for Chees, who recently arrived to visit his mother and relatives from Maligcong, Bontoc, Mountain Province and renew ties with his own teachers, sixth dan blackbelt Kunio Sasaki and fourth dan blackbelt Edgar Kapawen of the Japan Karate Association.
Last December, Chees, who steered the German national karate team to numerous victories in international competitions, motored to Banaue, Ifugao to hand over P70,000 his students raised for two families who lost their homes and two kids in a landslide above the Banaue Rice Terraces.
In another development, Claire Piluden, a native Cordilleran working as a nurse in Memphis, Tennessee, recently sent US$100 for Crisly Anayasan, a 13-year-old boy from San Carlos Heights who was born with a life-threatening heart defect.
Piluden earlier sent P7,500 through her husband, Julius Ventura, after learning of the boy's plight through a news article posted by Jerry Mayona on the www.baguiocity.com website. With support from Mayor Braulio Yaranon, the boy's mother Emilia is working his surgery as a charity case at the Philippine Heart Center.
Also apparently unaffected by donor fatigue, a mother of two from La Trinidad, Benguet recently sent P6,000 for four-year-old Tofi Estepa who is suffering from brain cancer. It was the third donation this year from the anonymous Samaritan who works as a domestic help in Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, more children patients at the BGHMC await other Samaritans. People who can and want to help but can not visit the pedia ward may get in touch through e-mail address bghmcpedia@hotmail.com or telefax number (074) 444-8299. Others who would like to support Tofi or Crisly can ring landline number (074) 442-2502 or text their message to cellular phone number 09154052129.
Charity may begin at home but it doesn't end there. In the same vein, the meaning of the Holy Infant's birth is not confined to this Christmas season.
(December 27, 2005 issue)
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