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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Nening’s hope for the New Year
By Leticia Suarez-Orendain
Community Force
The property is yet to be paid, the materials for the house are yet in a list, but already Esterlina “Nening” Bermudo is planning the areas of her house-to-be. It is her hope for a better life.
Nening, 47, articulates this hope. “Ako gyod ang mo-design. Himoan nako’g lugar ang akong special child (i.e. Benna Marie, 13) nga komportable siya. Naay play area. Naa sa sulod ang C.R. Naa koy prayer room, kwarto ug sala.”
Pagsabungan, Mandaue is Nening’s future address. Named after a national pastime, sabong or cockfight, the property will offer more than amusement for the 47-year-old woman.
It is her opportunity to start the New Year in a place where she hopes to plant vegetables and herbs in the backyard, and flowers in the front yard.
With her 40 square meters of hope (the size of the property), she is determined to make her plans stay afloat even in the sea of squalor in her present home in Sitio Tambis at the Umapad dumpsite in Mandaue city.
Nening is one of the 150 beneficiaries of the land acquisition project of People Who Care Foundation, Inc. (PWCFI).
The non-government organization (NGO) has been helping transform the residents at the dumpsite with its assistance program, such as day care/non-formal education, values formation (such as Bible studies), family counseling, skills training, dry-run of livelihood project and actual livelihood project.
This new project aims to move the beneficiaries to a better place and to get them back to the mainstream of society.
In that desert in Umapad (few plants can grow in the acidic soil), where the demise of a scavenger hardly gets noticed, Nening lives, eats and works. She started living here, among hundreds of others, in 1997.
Life wasn’t always in the dumps. She and her husband, Benedicto, worked in a basket-making factory that exported the products. The situation turned bad, and they had to move on.
Benedicto suggested they go back to the good earth, to his piece of land in his hometown, Mahagnaw, Compostela, Cebu.
“Lisod gihapon ang panguma. Batuon ang yuta, layo sab sa ospital, mga
tindahan. Kahibalo ko mohimog rehydration solution para sa diarrhea kay na-train man ko. Kon naay magdaot sa pamilya o naay silingan magkinahanglan, akong tabangan. Pero lisod gyod.”
To survive, she used every skill she had – basket-weaving, food vending, and accepting laundry. Her husband doubled as a driver and as a sample-maker of wicker items that exhibitors ordered from him. But the income was seasonal, and the need of their daughter was growing.
Nening’s story is of someone who has had some education (high school graduate) and school honors (valedictorian) that brought little payback because of poverty and lack of work opportunities.
She adds that she has always been interested in learning anything, from first aid measures to handicraft making. That’s why she speaks well, of course, also from that fact that the NGO trains their people in public speaking.
She spoke again of their hard times. She comes from Santander where life was also difficult. So, they decided to go back to the city.
The couple went to Umapad where they found work as scavengers. All they had was a cooking pot, a five-gallon water container and a few pieces of clothes.
They immediately set up home using scrap lumber and galvanized iron sheets they found in the area. A positive thinker, Nening decided to build a big house even if it was made of odd scraps.
In that depressing place, she became a testimony of God’s grace.
She has never heard of the Haitian proverb that says, “The poor share with the heart,” yet she shared much more.
Even if she was poor, she would take in newcomers and would provide them with temporary board and lodging. “Ganahan ko motabang sa uban.”
Soon, she became a referral for help. This is not the only point that differentiates her from the rest.
PWCFI says that they see her as a catalyst of change in the area, and already she has ignited a change of outlook in others.
The NGO says she has the inner fuel and the desire to help people and the vision to move out of the dumpsite.
“The poor have a history of having dreams but they are lost in the dumpsite. Someone has to put back that dream of having a family and life outside the dumpsite,” says Bayon Suico who does admin work in the NGO.
Of course, Nening is no saint even if she says she met the Lord in 2000. She is actually God’s work in progress.
Progress is what she hopes for in the here and now. In the first week of December, 75 beneficiaries, as the first batch in the lot acquisition project, received a piglet each from the NGO.
Nening says that they are to raise it and sell it so they can begin paying the property by installment by April, God willing.
She and the other beneficiaries also underwent livelihood training so that once they start living in Pagsabungan they will have alternative work away from the dumpsite.
“Karon kon ang tawo maligo sa buntag, inig adto sa pamasura, mahugaw na sad busa dili gyod tawhanon. Danghang langaw. Bisan unsaon og brush sa kamot, mabuling gyod. Busa excited ko, nalipay nga mabalhin ra sa kinabuhi nga tawhanon.”
Of the New Year, she says, “Gasa gikan sa Dios. Bagong panlantaw, mahayag nga kinabuhi. Tinuod gyod ang gisaad sa Dios nga magkinabuhi kitag madagayaon. Iyang gisaad nga dad-on niya ang iyang katawhan sa yutang gisaad. Pagla-om ang tinubdan.”
(December 28, 2004 issue)
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