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Monday, July 21, 2003
Editorial: Vida
Life is a young girl leaving her bed on a Saturday morning to welcome visitors who have come to see her school’s new computers.
After the heavy rains of the previous days, there is still a knee-high lake of stagnant water blocking the entrance of the Subangdaku National High School (SNHS).
Vida Llevares, Regina Cuizon and the other senior volunteers know how to skirt this. They enter by climbing up and down two ladders reclining against the perimeter wall separating the campus and Sitio Pinahagbong.
Sitio residents left the ladders there for the convenience of SNHS teachers and students. Though Pinahagbong gained notoriety as the site of the Bacolod massacre in June 2002, and the settlement is squatting on the school’s road right-of-way, both Vida and Regina appreciate the helpfulness of their neighbors.
The youngsters are no strangers to gratitude. The entire senior year, composed of 132 students clustered into two sections named Humility and Prudence, benefit from seven sets of licensed computers and printers donated by the Aboitiz Group Foundation Inc. (Agfi), Microsoft and Lexmark.
Aside from the five other units due for delivery this year, the Technology and Livelihood Education classes can look forward to the Encarta encyclopedia being uploaded in their units by August.
This is no small thing for Vida and Regina, not only because they have been encouraged by their mentors to explore the Internet for information and research assignments.
The SNHS has virtually no other learning resource facility. According to Rogelio I. Garbo, teacher-in-charge, his 14 fellow teachers have their hands full handling SNHS’ 769 students. Since no teacher can be spared to manage their library, students may only use this during noon. Regina also observes that research is difficult when the books are insufficient.
Though the mention of Vaness brings out wide grins from them, the girls are rarely able to be home in time to catch the Meteor Garden series. To clean the toilets, they have to fetch water from the cistern or buy a pail of water at 50 centavos or a peso from Pinahagbong residents. The water from the school’s lone poso can be used only for the plants. Students have to buy ice-water from the canteen.
The Sangguniang Kabataan-donated wooden basketball ring has long rotted away, and their school stage-cum-lobby is sometimes flooded. But Vida and Regina say that these don’t prevent them from practicing with their guitars or singing songs during breaktime.
Asked if they both look forward to moving on after their senior year, both girls say in unison that their school may lack facilities but their training here is good. Regina, who once studied in a private school, said she liked how her teachers molded them to become well-rounded persons: “open, confident, not shy.”
The scarcity of the school’s facilities has egged the faculty and the parents’ association to link with institutions. The materials for their temporary perimeter fence were donated by Metaphil, a division of the Aboitiz Construction Group Inc. The P3,500 labor cost was partly shouldered by Kimwa Construction (P1,000), the North Bus Terminal (P1,000) and Mandaue City Councilor Carlo Fortuna (P200).
The labor cost deficit was solved the usual way inadequacies are solved at SNHS, according to Garbo, “with kuot sa bulsa and tapal (teachers and parents’ initiative).”
If Vida and Regina are familiar with gratitude at a young age, it is because they know their education comes not just from their own sacrifice. Regina wants to become a nurse, perhaps work in an aunt’s nursing home in Chicago, to help her parents with her four younger siblings.
Vida, who’s keen about being accepted in the University of the Philippines’ journalism program, has no plans of leaving the country. This three-year member of the Laya ministry, a sub-committee of the Youths for Christ, believes that her country is calling for her to stay and share her talents.
“Dinhi ra ko (I am staying),” vows this girl-woman whose name evokes the promise of rain-drizzled mornings in a sunken sitio plagued by flooding, squatting and many trapped dreams.
(July 21, 2003 issue)
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