Holy Week
There’s not much throng of humanity evident in University of
San Carlos, which today is hosting a symposium with Jun Lozada, as much it was
in the South Bus terminal, Monday being the first day of the Holy Week. Among
the faceless crowd in the terminal one could see the upbeat readiness to long hours of the trip back home, people towing people and slinging their dusty
travel bags like crosses on their shoulders. The receding hairlines of fathers,
the brothers jittery in looking forward to a hot coffee brewed from burnt corn kernels
and a hero’s welcome who braved the big city to pursue the impossible. Toddlers
hurry in their small steps clinging to their mother’s grip or skirt, or are
cranky on the way to be crammed into the buses. Mothers issuing directives to
her brood, and shooting past other mothers to the gates of the terminal.
I ride my way to work everyday passing by this terminal which
for me today has not only become the meeting-point of people moving outward
from, or into, the city. The terminal – the subject of verbal brawl with the
lady-governor and the mayor whenever political arrogance is mistaken for public
service and publicity is needed to steer the issues away from South Reclamation
Project, CICC and expensive lampposts - has become host to millions of dreams fulfilled
piecemeal in construction sites of uptown buildings, cash registers of department
stores, and empty bottles of beer in dimly lighted brothels.
Each of them plods through with a narrative of that simple dream
that takes off from and touches down in here, the terminal, the convergence of
fated brethren whose grimy face and eyes gleam in wishful reverie at the
vaguest streak of hope. Away from the muddy farms and the bleating goats and
the merciless sun beating down on the crops, and out in the metropolis that brims
wide of opportunities that heed no weather or tempest, each retreats back
to where their stories started. The shack perched precariously on the hillside,
the beasts grazing on the pasture at the foot of the mountain, the patch of the
forest to be torched to the ground for clearing and coal.
The sojourn back home is thus, for a moment may be a pause,
but in reality the missing bead strung into the thread of destiny. It is decreed by capitalism that they embark in this exodus rich enough to afford the bus and small presents to expectant relatives, but poor enough to make them keep coming back to the city. It is a life denied
of democratic access to wealth and education necessary to step on the next rung
of economic mobility. It is the circle of needs and income, the content of daily struggle and strife, that perpetuates their poverty and increases their ignorance. And the city eats them alive - flesh, blood and sinews - all over again when they make the return trip and delve the pits with their sweat, punch the keys on cash registers, and dance naked on the table.
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