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Sunday, March 19, 2006
Dacawi: Quotable Peppot
By Ramon Dacawi
Benchwarmer
"CHILDREN are reminders from God that the world must go on."
THE line is from the late Baguio boy and journalist Jose Nicolas "Peppot" Lambinicio Ilagan. It has become the guidepost of volunteers guiding children in their exploration of what remains of Baguio's watersheds under the eco-walk program.
Whether it was a Peppot original or not, it sets the proper perspective for understanding "sustainable development", that big phrase you always find in any plan for environmental programs nowadays. He made the statement in 1992, the year eco-walk was born. That was the year world leaders launched "sustainable development" in the Rio Summit as the key to saving nature, the earth and the human race from our own greed.
Make use of the earth's resources without compromising the needs of the future, the Rio definition pointed out. Still, the world's leaders started on the wrong foot. Kids, who had their own version of the summit and, eventually, of the blueprint for "sustainable development" called "Agenda 21", had to lobby to be heard in the forum. Adults practically did not give them a voice.
Like in the Rio Summit, world leaders capped succeeding forums by inking treaties committing shared power and responsibility towards sustainability. They turned out to be more of form than substance, as an exasperated Mikhail Gorbachev noted when he keynoted the second World Urban Forum in September 2004 in Barcelona, Spain.
"Enough is enough," Gorbachev, now the head of Green Cross, an international group at the forefront of hands-on environmental programs, pointed out. Juxtapose that statement with Peppot's view of children and we can be closer to the ground, right on track towards an amorphous thing called sustainable development.
"Care for the elderly, for they are rarer and it takes longer before you can have them than children."
Peppot knowingly offered that advice to the grandchildren of Ama Poschor, his hospital roommate while both were slipping away about this time three years ago. It jolted the boys, who were a little weary watching over the old man, back to their sense of responsibility towards roots and family. They grinned sheepishly over the gentle reminder, an anecdote told and retold to lighten up the wake for the gentle patriarch from Barlig, Mountain Province.
If Peppot knew then his time was almost up, he never showed it. People who came by his bedside to comfort him and wife Laarni ended up being the comforted by his sensitivity, wit and humor intelligence that he shared and which never failed him till the end.
"Even when he was in extreme pain, he tried not to show it, for my sake," Laarni later noted wiping her eyes.
Peppot married Laarni, his fellow journalist about half his age, when he was 50. Early on, Peppot helped Laarni understand and accept the probability of her having to eventually raise their children by her own.
The marriage freed Peppot from occasional ribbings over his extended bachelorhood. During a picnic at the Wright Park, the other guys extended the jest too far and fell silent, guilty of insensitivity, when we saw him weep. They now turn to Domcie Cimatu, Peppot's bosom buddy, or Jonathan Llanes, who claims he's more
years to enjoy his blessed singleness, if not single blessedness.
The couple's romance brought them to Sagada, Peppot's second home and refuge, where he wrote love notes and, previously, poems about our student activism years, and, yes, letters to colleague Freddie Mayo in New York. They took that long walk to and from Tinoc, Ifugao, officially for news coverage of then Gen. Renato de Villa's pre-presidential campaign visit. The pair was unmindful of 12-hour long hike (one way), even as the rest were smarting over my getting a helicopter seat for the trip and scooping their coverage.
She bore him two fine, good-looking sons - Sam-ang Nicolas and Talek Jose. The kids are exhibiting early signs of intellectual precocity. Sam-ang's report card in nursery school was reflective of Peppot's own when he breezed through his schooling at the top of his class. Except in GMRC (Good Manners and Right Conduct), Laarni qualified. We learned that the kid, probably bored yet curious, had taken the liberty of unwrapping and enjoying his teacher's packed lunch.
In the elementary grades, Peppot and classmates ventured into that once forested area where the NBI and the city's social welfare offices now stand. They gathered a mound of dry pine needles that they set into a bonfire. The blaze suddenly went out control. Then city councilor Bert Floresca, who was passing by, saw them courageously fighting the blaze.
"He asked if we were boy scouts and we answered 'Yes, sir'," Peppot recalled. "He then took our names, saying he would have us commended for a good turn he believed we did that day."
Peppot, who passed on last Friday three years ago, delighted us with his parody of epigrams: "He who makes love on hill is not on level." "Where the broom
does not reach, the dust will not vanish." He must still be coining one-liners up there.
(March 19, 2006 issue)
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