For a Filipino who has spent most of his life submerged in water, it seems that the cries of discontent heard all throughout Louisiana and Mississippi are too pathetic and inutile. It’s Schadenfreude — sour grapes fulfilled — at its best, I guess: look at what we have to bear for eternity, USA!
I do feel the pain of the many displaced and homeless people in that part of the world. I live in Meycauayan, Bulacan, where the slightest rains or the unpredicatable high tides can cause massive floodings. When I was around 10, floodwaters unexpectedly rose so fast that my usually dry barrio became a sea of murky water within minutes. We lost sacks of rice, an antique carpet, an old TV set and many books to the flood. Our old doors were nearly pried from the hinges, and other furnitures, nearly dilapidated because of the salty water.
Likewise, some of my relatives live in Navotas, whose perpetual floodwaters parallel the town’s reputation as a leading seaport in Luzon. Many months ago, the province of Quezon, south of Manila, was nearly wiped out from the map because of the torrential downpours. This incident also calls to mind the tragedy in the province of Ormoc, where the typhoon brought about landslides that killed hundreds of people.
The thing that makes me uncomfortable now is the fact that these people in the States now feel the sheer hopelessness of the situation. To many, their houses, their possessions, their roads mean the the world to them, which is entirely understandable especially when one grew up esconced in the comforts of First World life.
But look at us, USA. Look at how we suffer perenially. Whereas yours is merely a glitch within a long period of contentment, ours is eternal damnation:
Whereas your immediate concern now is food, clothing and shelter, many a Filipino has the same concern the moment he first opens his eyes until the day he closes them permanently.
Whereas you wonder what has happened to your relatives in another part of town or your mothers who gave birth in cramped hosptals, we never cease to worry about ours who gamble with fate in Manila or abroad, who always have the risk of losing their lives in buses, trains, planes, boats and malls, who cannot even enter the hospital to give birth to their child.
Whereas you call on your Government to increase its efforts to provide emergency provisions, and medical and pharmaceutical assistance, we receive the fundamental necessities here only when there is an emergency; had there been none, there would be no help.
And then we look at these things in a global context: The people of Iraq continue to suffer, their faces gracing your daily fare as infotainment. The people in the Gaza Strip have spent all their faculties fighting over a limited patch of land. The people of Niger die because of hunger, paradoxically in the continent that boasts of natural resources beyond compare. In Asia, we hear of art looting in the temples of Cambodia. We hear of avian flu in China. We hear of poverty in India. Filipinos sell their even their very souls to unfair labor, to corruption, to prostitution, to crime just for a meager pittance. Peace in Mindanao has been so elusive that somehow one is forced to think that people inside and outside the Philippines benefit from the war and that they have connived to keep it going. Fuel prices surge up everyday, and someday we will all find ourselves waging battles just to keep our cars running.
And all the while, while the rest of the world suffers, the United States sows terror by resurrecting the specter of terrorism, a convenient scapegoat for all the sorrows of a modernized world. All the while, while the rest of the world suffers and despite the big fat lie about the weapons of mass destruction, the US continues to throw its weight around in the Middle East. All the while, while the rest of the world suffers, the US takes its reality shows to exotic Asia or to wild Africa and rakes in millions of dollars, then washes away any guilt by launching a pandemonium of a concert allegedly for the sake of the impoverished nations, or by producing TV commercials "…not asking for your money… but your voice," or by featuring snippets of a real-life drama that has been happening for ages under the heroic title of news feature or documentary.
And then, the hurricane struck, as if to remind everyone that no matter how great we envision our nations to be, there exist the Higher Powers that direct the whole universe. We then realize that for millions of people living amid the dearth of wealth around the globe, that singular hope of survival is the only treasure they got.
Such is the tragedy of life. Americans have to live it out only within several months. We are condemned to live it out throughout a lifetime. And that makes the tragedy all the more tragic. #
