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Monday, January 16, 2006
Dacawi: Amazing grace
By Ramon Dacawi
NOTWITHSTANDING his last name, Charles Stevens Madrigal is far from being well-to-do. To pursue a course in computer technology, the 24-year-old orphan works in a restaurant in Laguna. The other week, he offered to buy a plane ticket for an eight-year-old boy who wanted to be reunited with his mother.
Airport officials took the boy into custody after he sneaked into Gate 16 of the departure area of Terminal 1 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia). He spoke Cebuano, had a few pesos in his pocket and was badly in need of clothes and a bath, according to a news report from Rainier Allan Ronda of The Philippine Star.
The kid, whose identity was initially withheld, wanted to catch a plane ride to Surigao del Norte where he thought could find his mother, the report said.
"I was just moved by the boy's courage in his quest to be with his mom," Ronda quoted Madrigal as saying. "Nakaka-relate ako sa kanya. Just let me know if the child's background is established so I can extend help for his trip back home."
Madrigal knows how it is to be alone. He lost his mother and father when he was seven.
Baguio radio journalist Tinong Lardizabal filled me in on the developments. (I owe Tinong one for shedding his blood when my late elder brother Danilo was battling aplastic anemia last year.).
"I saw the TV footage about the boy's reunion with his mother," Tinong said. "She lives in Metro Manila and saw her son through the television coverage of the kid at the airport terminal. The boy apparently had been wandering for four years."
It will be a deep honor to meet Madrigal. I understand it takes one to know one, Still, I sometimes wonder why single mother and laundry woman Basilisa Aguilar did what she did. Three years ago, she dropped her work to seek help for Corazon Tagulino, a homeless widow and her ailing 12-year-old son Manuel.
"Kawawa naman itong mag-ina," Aguilar replied when asked why she had to knock on doors on behalf of people she hardly knew. I almost fell off my seat hearing it from one who has been to Calvary and never left.
Before she met Aguilar, Tagulino and her son had never slept on a bed for five years. Rain or shine, their refuge was a portion of a sidewalk beside the Rizal Monument here.
She had attached a yellow canvas to the upper end of a railing for their roof. The lower portion of the sheet covered the pavement. She placed a cartoon sheet on top of the canvas, into which she and her son crawled in for the night.
Corazon was originally from Maasin, Leyte. She lost her husband, a construction worker, when Manuel was still a baby. To raise her son alone, she tried but failed to land a domestic helper's job abroad.
When Manuel was four, he fell from a flight of stairs, head first. He survived but was never the same after that. He's now 15 and his medical condition continues to deteriorate, with his limbs in atrophy.
Dr. Divina Martin-Hernandez, a neurologist here who has been silently attending to the boy's medical free of charge, diagnosed it as "autism, progressive mental retardation and frequent, poorly controlled generalized tonic-clonic seizures (mainly due to noncompliance to anti-epileptic medications)".
With nothing to survive on in Leyte, Corazon found her way Baguio in search of a sister. She rented a room but was ejected when she could not pay. Her earnings as a laundry woman were hardly enough for food and Manuel's medications.
She moved to the side of the monument where she continues to sell candies, cigarettes and junk food. As Manuel is hyperactive, she leashes him on the waist and ties the other end to the sidewalk railing.
The mother-and-son's plight galvanized the resolve of Samaritans to build them a home. Baby Belasano, another widow and laundry woman with her own child to raise, offered the only remaining space of her small lot in Irisan.
Engineer Rolly Bautista of A-Theanna Construction provided P3,000 seed fund. Pony boys at the Wright Park produced hollow blocks. Retired jail warden Eulogio Wigwigan offered a door while carpenter Tony Eulin built a door frame. Forester Manny Pogeyed produced a window. Regional director Helen Tibaldo of the Philippine Information Agency provided GI sheets for the roofing.
Swanny Dicang bought steel bars and cement while the City Social Welfare Office headed by Betty Fangasan contributed P5,000 to complete the materials aside from food for the workers. The Cordillera Career Development College added a door bolt.
Irisan residents led by Purok 14 leader Saturnino Calag built the eight-by-10-feet home. The Manila Times regional bureau, led by Thom Picaña, teamed up with residents in preparing the inauguration set just before Christmas the other year.
I wished Basilisa were there when the mother and child moved in to their home. At the time she was searching for Samaritans who could help build a home for Corazon, Basilisa had just lost her own.
Years back, a nun had a shanty built for Aguilar's family on a private lot a stone's throw from The Presidential Mansion and the Senate President's summer residence. The landowner had allowed their occupancy, provided they would vacate once he was ready to develop the area. They did, despite her children's medical conditions.
Aguilar's trials have been unending. Abandoned by her husband in Davao, she found her way to Baguio with a group of girlie entertainers whose clothes she washed.
Her son Anthony, who never saw his father, has been bed-ridden for years. He was walking home from construction work one night when a still unknown gunman shot him. The bullet lodged into his spinal column, leaving him paralyzed for life. His wife later left him. She later returned once and took away their daughter.
Her daughter Katherine was also abandoned by her husband. Poverty took its toll on her heart, which enlarged and weakened. Gangrene also affected Kathy's feet and had to be amputated just below the knees. Her condition did not prevent her from inching her way to offices, offering manicure services to be able to raise her own daughter.
Last year, Kathy met and fell in love with Samuel Nang-is, an electric lineman from Beckel, La Trinidad. City Hall workers and journalist friends stood by them during their civil wedding. They clapped when Sammy swept her off her feet and carried her to the reception.
Last week, Kathy was bleeding and was rushed to the hospital. She had a miscarriage.-(e-mail rdacawi@yahoo.com or ecowalker.mondax@gmail.com for comments)
(January 16, 2006 issue)
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