Sunday, May 11, 2008 Estremera: Wandering thoughts By Stella A. Estremera Spiders Web
THE place was alive with chants and shouts and everyday noises in a busy mountain neighborhood, which means voices are cranked up louder than your mom would allow at home -- set at a volume that can be heard on the next atoll.
There was celebration, there was excitement. The natives proudly donned their costumes and dance as my friend and I went round taking photos. Red was the prevalent color. The women wore red, the men had red accents, the soil was red. There was so much red around me, even my point and shoot camera suddenly splashed in a lot of red in its tone. It was vibrant with life, with odors, and that feeling of resignation to poverty.
"Ay-aaaay! Kalisud ning kinabuhi sa pobre," a woman chanted in between similar chants in their dialect that I couldn't understand. Chanting, I learned, is a way of communicating among these people. They don't directly state they are poor, they don't say their problems, they chant about these and it's up to the listener to respond and sit down with the person.
It was before 7 a.m. and the place was filled with the smoke from the makeshift kitchens at the back of the small huts assigned for each barangay. The wood fires all had cooking pots boiling, rice was cooking. Nothing else. Breakfast for them will be steaming rice, and maybe a can of sardines. Others, just rice. That by itself was already a treat. Its not the season of harvest and hundreds of families has not tasted rice since the last harvest.
The people would beam as the camera focused on them, the adults smiling with their betel-stained teeth, the young ones reluctant but would break out in giggles and grins upon being shown the digital images of themselves in the LCD display. Thank God for technology, it makes establishing rapport with young ones easier.
Children walked around, licking on multi-colored ice drops that are fast melting. Violet, fuchsia, yellow. The ice drop makers in these parts apparently like them in the most unadulterated shade. Food coloring straight from the bottle. Just like the red dresses that just about everyone is wearing. Basic colors, no sub hues, no shades.
More work awaited though and I had to leave to drive on to my next meeting. Too tired, I dozed off as we traveled on to the place another friend wanted me to see. I awoke to well-manicured lawns, glass houses that show off the magnificent mountain views all around, and concrete roads rolling with the terrain, all in subdued tones with just the greens of nature as the highlights. Glaring reds do not have any place here, except in the form of flowers. It was a shock to see because the last time I was appreciating my surroundings, poverty was written in every scene I was looking at. The stark difference from where I came from to where I have just arrived hit me as soon as I opened my eyes, and thus the sadness, the awe and a lot of other emotions too mixed up, what was left was resignation.
The pick-up moved on and dream houses flashed by. But for every dream mountain mansion that I glanced at, the image of a toddler licking on a violet ice drop with dribbles of the melting colored ice mixing with mucus below her nose is super-imposed.
The feeling that popped up was not pity but resignation. Like them whom I spent the morning with, there's so little I can do. And then I gave out a cough and recalled that the people were all hoping I had some cough medicines with me. I didn't and much as you remember the risk you were running by mingling and talking with them as they coughed and spat, you didn't have the heart to take out the alcogel in your bag to wash your hands with. Thus I caught their cough. Tough. But I just have to grin and bear it. At least I am now downtown and have the means to buy cough syrup...
