46664

Say “four, double six, six, four” and remember.

46664 was Nelson Mandela’s prison number when he was in prison for 27 years on Robben Island, off Cape Town in South Africa. He was prisoner number 466, imprisoned in 1964. Like other prisoners, he was referred to not by his name but by his prison number. Mandela was 46664.

Tomorrow, July 18, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, freedom fighter and former president of South Africa, turns 90. He has been feted by artists and celebrities as well as people from all walks of life in the past weeks. The gathering of people was not just about him and his favorite causes but also about us, about this world we all hope could be a better place. After all, this man is the quintessential symbol of Everyhumanbeing’s quest for what is good—freedom, justice, equality, peace, prosperity for all. His personal suffering and triumph may not be every one’s lot but they had an impact on every citizen of this planet whether we felt it or not.

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Rampant crime in the country’s NGO capital

Women working and living in the so-called NGO capital of the Philippines are up in arms because of the rampant criminality in the area.

Quezon City’s Teacher’s Village East and West and Barangays Central and Pinyahan and neighboring areas, home to dozens of national and international NGOs (non-government organizations), is a prime spot for criminals who prey mostly on women walking the streets to and from their offices or homes. This area is right behind Quezon City Hall!

Almost every female NGO worker in this prime address has a crime story to tell about herself, her co-employees, friends or neighbors. Cell phone and bag snatching, hold-ups, break-ins, carnapping, name it. Not a few had had not one, but several encounters with criminal elements in this Quezon City area. The perpetrators are mostly on motorcycles.

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Faint church presence in sea tragedy

I thought about this over and over.

I would probably be excoriated for saying this but I wish the zeal and over-eagerness of the nuns, priests and brothers who were falling all over themselves to support, surround and sustain (for weeks and months) NBN-ZTE whistleblower Rodolfo Lozada Jr. were also seen in the aftermath of the recent sea tragedy that claimed more than 700 lives.

Falling all over themselves, translated in Filipino, is nagkakandarapa.

I didn’t see that same zeal in the wake of the sinking of the Princess of the Stars and I felt let down. I thought the Catholic Church as an institution and as represented by its consecrated members (the clergy, the religious priests, nuns and brothers) was generally lukewarm to the victims and the bereaved after the sinking of the Princess of the Stars.

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Remembering heroism aboard MV Cassandra

Sister, a sister calling

A master, her master and mine!—

And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling;

The rash smart sloggering brine

Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;

Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine

Ears, and the call of the tall nun

To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm’s brawling.

Those lines are from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Wreck of the Deutschland” (first published in 1918), a very long and difficult poem dedicated to the German Franciscan nuns who died in a shipwreck during a storm that lashed at the North Sea. The nuns left Germany because of anti-Catholicism.

With the sinking of Sulpicio Lines’ Princess of the Stars during the weekend at the height of typhoon Frank, we are, once again, in a recall mode. A list of past sea disasters and staggering numbers of dead are again brought out for us to behold and shudder at.

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Dying Filipino caregiver in Canada is being kicked out

In my column last week on “Caregiver” the movie, I ended by saying the movie should have a sequel. Well, it’s that column piece that is having a sequel. And this is for Filipino caregiver Juana Tejada. Juana de la Cruz, the EveryOFW.

I now step aside to project the myriad voices raised on her behalf. First, let me quote portions of a stinging column piece (“Our nanny state, save for nannies,” June 11) written by Joe Fiorito for Canada’s The Star.

“Corey Glass may get to stay. He is the American deserter—call him a war resister; better still, call him a conscientious objector—who came to our country to avoid the war in Iraq.

“All parties in the House of Commons approved a motion last week urging the government to allow him and others like him to remain in Canada as permanent residents. The vote was 137-110 in favor. If the motion is not binding, it has moral force.

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‘Caregiver’

Today, the 110th anniversary of our independence, it behooves us to remember the millions of Filipinos toiling in foreign lands so that their loved ones back home could have a better life. Who would have imagined 110 years ago that there would be a diaspora and that Filipino workers—professionals, skilled, unskilled—would populate every nook and cranny of this world?

So much Filipino blood, sweat and tears have been shed on foreign shores. Someday, we hope to see a reversal of fortune and Filipinos will be on the top of the heap in their adopted countries and on top of the world back home.

The other day I watched Chito Rono’s “Caregiver” (from Star Cinema), the Sharon Cuneta starrer on the life and work of a Filipino caregiver and other caregivers in London. I could nitpick on a few things but on the whole, the movie was a great tribute to the overseas Filipino workers (OFW), the caregivers in particular. I definitely recommend it for viewing and I hope many Filipinos abroad would get to watch it.

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“Poor” grade for government’s asset reform

“Poor.” This was the dismal grade for the implementation of asset reform laws intended to benefit farmers, indigenous communities, the fisherfolk and the urban poor.

In this season when the country is suffering from a crisis in food security, comes the information that those who belong to the mentioned sectors, with the exception of the urban poor, are mostly food producers. Asset reform in these sectors has been slow. No wonder!

The Philippine Asset Reform Report Card (PARRC) Project gave the dismal grade of “poor” after conducting a survey that involved “the largest samples studied to date of beneficiaries in the four asset reform programs.” The Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Area (Phildhrra) spearheaded the survey project.

Here is the State of the Nation for you. The survey hopes to put asset reform in the nation’s development agenda. I hope government officials in the executive and legislative branches would take a long, hard look at the survey results. They know how to interpret facts and figures and read the signs of the times. (A number of them also know how to be makapal and act as endorsers in product ads and advocacies. These ads may have worked for name and face recall but none of these politicians will get my vote.)

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Gross national happiness

One often hears a Filipino or oneself saying, or chirping, “Mababaw lang ang kaligayahan ko.” When translated literally, it almost sounds like “My joy is shallow” when what it really means is “It takes so little to make me happy.” It, in fact, suggests that there is a deeper, fuller joy than what is apparently caused by that “little”.

There’s been much ado about the recent research findings that challenge the so-called Easterlin Paradox that has long been held—that happiness does not necessarily increase with income. That is, after a point of satiation has been achieved.

Now come the new research findings from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business showing “a clear positive link” between wealth and “subjective well-being” based on global surveys.

They show that the facts about income and happiness turn out to be much simpler than first realized. Namely:1) rich people are happier than poor people. 2) richer countries are happier than poor countries, 3)as countries get richer they tend to be happier.

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Unsafe in banks

It was one for Truman Capote. The bank robbery in Laguna last Friday morning that killed 10 was one for the books. Nothing like that had ever happened in this country. I am not talking about the swiftness, the amount of money taken or the daring. I am talking about the naked cruelty of those who planned and carried it out.

They didn’t just take the money and run. They made sure no one saw or recognized their faces and lived to tell story. They made the bank employees lie face down on the floor and fired at them one by one, execution style. They had planned it that way. Who were they? What kind of men were these?

One bishop compared them to animals. Unfair to animals! Animals are good creatures, true to their essence and have no evil human attributes.

Whenever I am in a bank waiting in line to do a transaction, a scenario always crosses my mind—a bank robbery unfolding before my eyes. And what do I do next, where do no crouch and how do I stay cool? Should I keep my eyes shut but my ears alert to the sounds and my nose keen to the scents? Should I play dead or feign a heart attack?

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Maytime

What’s May without the Flores de Mayo and the Santacruzan? What’s life without the childhood memories of May, of blazing summers and sudden downpours, of food and fiestas, of beaches and rivers and flowers and songs?

I know there will always be endless debates about the excessiveness in fiestas which are mostly celebrated in May. And there’s the churchy part that could also spark debates but most people choose to bask in its saccharine, flowery feel because it’s related to faith and worship and God and us. Or so we think.

Recently the Santacruzan, the Maytime procession that usually features celebs representing icons in biblical and Catholic Christian history, had its share of questions when Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales frowned upon and wished to ban Santacruzans that feature male gays dressed as female saints and the like. A church-related event was not going to be done this way, he said.

Many in the gay community raised a howl, saying this was a form of discrimination against them. Why, they said, also want to be part of the religious festivities and they are also children of God.

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Rice notes

I texted my good friends Sr. Isyang and Sr. Emma whose Susi Foundation serves farmers’ rice cooperatives in Southern Luzon to ask if there are extraordinary stories in their area related to the current global and local rice price crisis. These award-winning nuns-turned-farmers have been working in a farm setting in Quezon for the last 30 years.

Sr. Isyang texted a reply: “Effect of high rice prices here is families spend less on merienda, parties & other nonessential expense. Dey can still eat 3x a day, rural kc. Small rice mills have less stocks coz of cost. Less going 2 cockpits of those saving 4 food. No xtra-ord stories.”

Our common friend Ika Laurel Loewen who was based in Germany for a long time is back for good to produce food and give hope through her little farm in Barangay Laurel in Tagkawayan, Quezon. (She was my former schoolmate at St. Scho who later left for Spain to study and then settled in the land of Beethoven.) This great-grandniece of national hero Jose Rizal has named her little place “Mi Retiro”. Sure, it’s a place for rest but definitely not for retirement especially when there is a food crisis.

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No to FIELDS of hybrid rice

Hybrid does not necessarily mean more and better.

During this time when a global food crisis is upon us and the world’s impoverished population has to deal with food scarcity, a variety of solutions have been thrust upon us. But questions regarding the soundness of some of these solutions have to be raised.

The presidential fiat on the implementation of FIELDS has to face questions coming from civil society groups, among them, Centro Saka, concerned and alarmed over the aggressive promotion of hybrid rice. Centro Saka is a policy research and advocacy non-government organization. It is the secretariat to the National Rice Farmers Council, a loose coalition of small farmers organization nationwide formed in 2003 during the National Rice Farmers Summit.

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