‘Que sera, sera’

PINOY KASI


‘Que sera, sera’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:49am (Mla time) 05/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I’m sure many of you know the song. Hear the music now? Let’s begin: “When I was just a little girl (OK, so if you’re a guy then change the lyrics)/ I asked my mother / What will I be?/ Will I be pretty?/ Will I be rich?/ Here’s what she said to me.”

Do I hear you humming now? “Que sera, sera./ Whatever will be, will be./ The future’s not ours to see./ Que sera, sera./ What will be, will be.”

Legend has it that when Doris Day first heard the song, her reaction was that it was a “forgettable children’s song.” Eventually, she recorded the song for Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” The song won an Oscar for best original song.

My parents tell me I loved the song when I was a child, oblivious, of course, of the lyrics and content to repeat “que sera, sera.” Children love the song because it is catchy, while adults, well, it is a sticky tune -- you hear the first two lines and you hum along, and again, and again, but it isn’t irritating like many other glue-y songs.

Hebrew, English and Tagalog

The other day “Que sera, sera” returned to haunt me when I got a DVD film, which opened and ended with the song. It was a film entitled “Paper Dolls” and the cover showed what looked like a showgirl, all decked out in costume ready to dance. No, it wasn’t some adaptation of “Dream Girls”; rather unexpectedly, it was a documentary about Filipinos in Tel Aviv, made by an Israeli, Tomer Heymann. The back cover said the film ran 80 minutes, in color, widescreen, in Hebrew, English and Tagalog with English subtitles.

I don’t remember reading about the film here in the Philippines, but I may have just missed it. On the other hand, I would have thought that if the film had made it here, it would have attracted more attention in the media, including rave reviews.

The film is about a group of Filipino “bakla” [gay men], living and working in Tel Aviv as caregivers. Yes, it is a true story, with Heymann following them around as they care for their wards, all elderly men, and making the oddest of couples (imagine them walking around in semi-drag, dressed like women as the bakla are over here, while wheeling around their elderly wards in the B’nei Brak district of Tel Aviv, an Orthodox Jewish section with very conservative residents).

We learn that these Filipinos were undocumented, meaning illegal, workers, but then after the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising), the Israeli government found themselves lacking laborers, and relaxed their immigration rules. The Filipino “bakla” were able to get jobs as caregivers, and by Israeli laws, could stay for as long as their employers would vouch for them.

The main characters in this real-world drama are Cheska (originally Francisco), Sally (Salvador), Jan (Troan Jacob), Giorgi (Eduardo) and Chiqui. All are in their 30s. All have lived in the Middle East for several years.

As their stories unfold, we are reminded that there are Filipinos who go overseas not just for economic reasons but also because they’re sexual refugees, people unable to find acceptance from their own families back home. They venture overseas, hoping to find a new life, sometimes even risking it by going to places that may seem even more inhospitable.

In Israel, this motley band of adventurers end up as caregivers by day, but occasionally launch night performances as female impersonators or drag queens. The caregivers are, to put it politely, on the matronly side, so their shows border on parody. Heymann introduces them to a nightclub owner, and for their audition number, they perform the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila,” yes, another sticky song that means “Let us rejoice.” But the nightclub owner wants them to pretend to be Japanese geisha. They quit.

The drag shows become almost incidental. What we see are the bonds the caregivers build with their elderly patients. We are reminded of the difficulties of caregiving, with one of the Paper Dolls describing how her ward, who has Alzheimer’s, was constantly wandering off. What makes their work even more valiant is the way they adjust to cultures so different from our own, sometimes almost outrageously. There is one scene that left me partly in shock: an orthodox Jewish old man devoutly praying, apparently oblivious to the Filipino caregiver at his side, headphones on, singing away a bit too loudly -- inside a synagogue.

Throughout the film, we hear the “bading” [gay men] speaking in Hebrew. I have no way of telling how good they are at it, but they seem to be comfortable and articulate.

Sally is something else. She is the most endearing among the Paper Dolls. Caring for Haim, an elderly man with throat cancer who has lost his voice, Sally has learned to read Hebrew so she can figure out Haim’s written instructions. Not only that, because Haim wanted her to learn more Hebrew, he had her reading aloud the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, which she does quite well.

The documentary reveals the difficult life of the Paper Dolls: cramped living quarters, fears of police raids, fears of terrorist bombs. There is one scene showing the chaotic aftermath of a bombing: The authorities call on everyone to seek medical help and not to worry about being arrested. The authorities know the area is full of illegal migrants, including the Filipinos.

One of the Paper Dolls talks, too, about missing her mother, bringing home the message that we export Filipinos to care for other nations’ elderly, at the cost of being separated from their own elderly.

And yes, there is discrimination, even in cosmopolitan Tel-Aviv. We hear an Israeli taxi driver calling them perverse, even as he describes his own trip to the Philippines where he could pick up sex workers for a few dollars.

Half-Jewish, half-Filipino

The warm moments come, unexpectedly, from the elderly patients. Early on, Haim’s kindness and good heart show. He says that he hired Sally as a man, but it’s become inconsequential that she didn’t quite prove to be as manly as he had expected.

I want you to watch the film to appreciate how Sally and the other Paper Doll, find their place. I don’t want to give you the ending except to say that eventually, they go on to Britain, still caring for the elderly.

In a talk show interview, Heymann recalls, with amusement, how Chiqui was beginning to feel she had found her place, describing herself as “half-Jewish, half-Filipino,” again oblivious to the realities of politics and citizenship in Israel, or of Jewishness.

And yet when you think about it, the Paper Dolls’ situation is probably only more dramatic than that of most other Filipinos. Given our age of diaspora, what is the Philippines for us? What does being a Filipino mean?

The Paper Dolls become Filipino icons in the way we all are liminal -- never home, never away from home. Maybe, too, “Que sera sera” is appropriate, almost an anthem for us. There’s irony in the way we actually face so many choices now of where we can live, where we can work, and yet we make our choices, sighing, “Que sera sera.”

'Ganda'

PINOY KASI


‘Ganda’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:57am (Mla time) 05/02/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The other week, I agreed to an electronic interview (i.e., by e-mail) with Ruel de Vera about Filipino concepts of beauty, parts of which he used for an article, titled “Beauty Slip,” in last week’s Sunday Inquirer Magazine. Reading through the article got me thinking more about “ganda” as a Filipino keyword, a keyword being a term that’s used often in conversations and which carries many meanings that apply to different aspects of our lives.

At first blush, ganda deals with aesthetics, with what’s beautiful. Like the English “beautiful,” ganda is used to describe nature (including flora and fauna), cultural objects such as paintings and sculpture, jewelry, clothing and of course human beings.

As with “beautiful,” the aesthetic meaning of “ganda” tends to be associated with the female. We do not describe a handsome man as “maganda,” although, curiously, Sofronio Calderon’s Diccionario Ingles-Español-Tagalog, published in 1915, translates “handsome” as “maganda, mainam, marikit,” exactly the same terms for “beautiful.” Today, we reserve “maganda” for a woman, but vestiges of the past are still with us in the way we describe both women and men as having “magandang mukha,” which I’ll tentatively translate as a “nice face.”

Good face, good day

There are important differences in the ways “ganda” and “magandang mukha” are used. The exclamation “Ganda!” tends to be a spur-of-the-moment evaluation of women, often drawing from clear social norms such as the color and smoothness of the skin, a certain height, body conformation, even the way the person carries herself. To say someone has a “magandang mukha,” on the other hand, evaluates the way different characteristics in the person converge to leave an impact on the person. There can still be an aesthetic component, but the emphasis is not so much on outstanding characteristics than in the way the features blend together harmoniously, interacting with the person’s demeanor and personality.

Ultimately, the face is evaluated as being good. Something’s lost in the translation “good face,” but really that’s what “magandang mukha” is. We apply the adjective to a face that makes us feel, well, good because we feel the person, too, radiates niceness and goodness. It’s the adjective a parent will apply, approvingly, to someone courting his or her child.

Last week I wrote, too, about how the most homely “askal” (street dog) can be “ganda,” too. “Ganda” here is not the opposite of “pangit” (ugly) but of “masama” (bad) -- “masamang mukha” being a face that causes disease, warning you of malice and ill will.

I’ve sometimes been asked why we greet people with “magandang araw,” because it seems to translate, awkwardly, into “beautiful day.” But “maganda” actually conveys wishes for a good day, as the Cebuanos do with “maayo” (or, sometimes simply “ayo”). “Maganda” then isn’t beautiful in a literal meteorological way; a rainy day can still be a very good day, depending on the company we have, on how the day’s events unfold. Our day is made good by the laughter of children in the morning, by that phone call, or e-mail, from overseas. Eventually, when a good day does seem certain, we begin to radiate it in our faces: yes, “maganda ang mukha.”

“Ganda,” limited to facial aesthetics, is superficial and fleeting, as we all too often find in our celebrities, including our politicians. The cosmetics, the cosmetic surgery, succeed in projecting some semblance of “ganda,” but only for the moment. The veneer wears off easily when the person doesn’t have the inner spirit that projects “maganda.” It’s not surprising that “maganda,” used to describe “loob” (our inner self), takes on many different meanings. Returning to Calderon’s 1915 dictionary, we find “magandang-loob” appearing all throughout the dictionary, to mean everything from amiable to charitable to good-natured. All said, it again boils down to goodness, but one that can be seen, felt and, most importantly, shared.

Singing out ‘ganda’

Perhaps because it is so richly emotive, “ganda” takes on musical qualities, a word that is literally sung out. It can be a quick “ganda” that we mutter to ourselves after a job well done: a meal, a painting, even a column (followed by shame when I realize my immodesty). Other times, our voices are pitched as we sing out a delighted “ganda,” often replicated “ganda-ganda” when we get an unexpected treat, an object, an act, or, we turn a bend on a road, a hidden landscape. The “ganda” here often leads to a kiss, an embrace, sometimes even tears, when we are moved by the person giving the treat, as we are moved by the giver’s “magandang loob.”

There’s “ganda,” too, the “da” stretched out with awe and respect for enduring beauty, as in Ricky Reyes’ billboards featuring Gloria Romero: “Ang Ganda ni Lola.” We do that all the time for our own “lola” [grandmothers] and “nanay” [mothers] and daughters and nieces and friends.

Beware, though: A stretched “ganda” can drip as well with sarcasm. The “da” is stretched, but we sing it out in a deadpan tone to convey the feeling that the person only thinks she’s “ganda,” but has no right to feel that way. The judgment is passed not so much on aesthetic grounds because the person may be physically attractive but is perceived to be undeserving of “ganda” because of reckless audacity, because of trying too hard with the cosmetics, with the clothing and jewelry, with the Botox. (For those who are not quite updated, Botox is a medical treatment that uses small amounts of bacterial toxins to paralyze the muscles. The effect? No wrinkles, and a peculiar frozen smile that elicits the Botox “ganda.”)

That Botox “ganda” indicts insincerity, but at times it can also be a reprimand, for a botched or mediocre job, often with an order to have it repeated. The Botox “ganda” is gendered, not quite in the domain of macho men, who express their displeasure by a volley of curses and expletives. The “ganda”-as-rebuke is an art mastered by the more flamboyant of gay males, and of middle-aged women (a.k.a. “matronas”), a concession to the norm of diplomacy without compromising on repugnance. I will never forget the way a gay “matronic” friend once got a restaurant bill that was completely in error. He looked at the bill, slowly lifted his eyes toward the waiter, crumpled the bill with one hand and went: “Ganda. Ulitin mo.” [“Beautiful. Do it again.”] The correct bill was delivered within minutes.

It’s curious that Imelda Marcos constantly speaks of “the true, the good and the beautiful,” but rarely uses the Tagalog “ganda.” It is a more powerful word in its connotations of the true and the good, and more.

Exercise your judgment of “ganda” this election time. Look closely at the candidates and ask yourselves if they have “magandang mukha.” The best spin doctors and speech writers can’t quite deliver a “magandang mukha” overnight. “Magandang mukha” comes from the inner spirit -- “magandang loob” -- one that is cultivated through the years, through a good (in the sense of ethical) life. It is also through living that good life that one learns to detect “maganda,” not just in people’s faces but in all who surround us, in all of nature.

'Askal'

PINOY KASI


‘Askal’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 02:09am (Mla time) 04/27/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Funny how Filipinos idolize human “mestizos” [of mixed blood] but have the opposite attitude when it comes to dogs, taking a condescending view of the “native” dog, the mixed breed, the mongrel. “Native” determines the fate of these dogs, which are considered good only when they’re barking and guarding the house, but are otherwise kept out of sight, out of mind, forbidden from entering the house, unwashed except when it rains and fed, if lucky, with scraps.

Purebreds get names like Princess, while the native dogs go nameless, or by monikers like Whitie, Blackie, Brownie, with the owners oblivious to the racist connotations. In other instances, the dogs’ names became political barometers. For example, as Ferdinand Marcos’ popularity sank, the number of native dogs called Makoy increased.

I grew up with several generations of dachshunds and knew little about native dogs until vet school, where we would get quite a few of them at the University of the Philippines’ animal clinic. We were required to identify the patient’s breed on their records and we’d scribble “mixed.”

We’d encounter them, too, in droves, when we conducted rabies vaccination campaigns. Owners, if you could call them that, would watch in amusement in an instance of reverse class snobbery: I’m sure they derived immense pleasure seeing middle-class kids running around in the heat trying to wrestle down the “native” dogs and quickly jabbing them with the vaccine before we’d get bitten. “Hey,” women would sometimes challenge us in Filipino, “Can you vaccinate my husband as well so he won’t go ‘ulol’ [mad]?” referring not to the usual madness of a rabid dog but of a philanderer.

Friends

I could understand why the street dogs were so difficult. As puppies, they would reciprocate the attention and affection humans -- usually children -- gave them. But as they grew older, they’d be exiled outdoors, chained, cursed, kicked, beaten. To survive, they learned to keep a safe distance from humans.

But at the university clinic, I saw another aspect of the “askal” [a contraction of “asong kalye,” or street dog]. The ones we saw had owners from poor communities, who clearly loved and cared for the dogs and were willing to use part of their meager budgets for an ailing dog. The dogs would come in, often without a leash, limping behind their owners. They were easy to deal with; it was almost as if they understood we were trying to do something for them.

Later, working in rural areas and spending several weeks at a time in communities, I found it actually easy to strike up friendships with the native dogs. For all the human cruelty they experienced, Bantay seemed to be able to sense quickly when there was a gentler, kinder human. Rural people were always surprised when they’d see native dogs sitting next to me and allowing me to stroke them. “Amoy aso kasi” [“I smell like a dog],” I’d say in jest.

Sometimes I’d worry for the dogs, wishing I could teach them to be even more distrustful of the kindness that humans occasional exhibit. One time in Kalinga, many years back, I saw a man calling out to one of his dogs, which responded immediately, running to its owner, tail furiously wagging away. I did not eat lunch that day, sad and angered at the brazen betrayal of friendship.

Sinag and Britney

The native dog is changing. Drive through the streets and you see more of them carrying evidence of “aristocratic” parents: dachshunds and boxers and pugs and Rottweilers and pit bulls. Purebreds have found their way into poorer communities, occasional strays from subdivisions, but in many cases, actually being raised there in the slums. Pit bulls are popular, since they are used for dog fights. Other poor families raise purebreds, in the most cramped quarters, to sell. “Better than a piggery,” one dog breeder in a slum area told me.

The term “askal” reflects a more benign view of the dogs. “Askal” could almost pass as a breed in itself, the way it sounds like Alsatian (better known as the German Shepherd).

My parents still have two venerably ancient dachshunds, but my own dogs are askal, something that happened accidentally. I was having an old house renovated and the construction workers took in two of the most malnourished, mangy puppies, pot-bellied from worms. I’ve learned this happens quite often in construction sites, the dogs meant to help guard the premises, sometimes raised with cats that come in to go after mice and rats. I de-wormed and bathed the pups, and I would play and go “kutchi-kutchi” whenever I’d visit. When the renovation was done, they left the pups, now spry adolescents, and before I could get them ligated, they produced more askal, of all sizes, shapes and colors.

I’ve come to confirm what I learned in genetics lectures: Askal are brighter and stronger than pedigreed dogs. “Purebred” simply means dogs were inbred to obtain a particular characteristic, for example, the long bodies of dachshunds, which made them ideal to hunt underground creatures. But all that inbreeding has produced many problems for the dogs: dachshunds, for example, are prone to back injuries and paralysis. The mixed breeds, our askal, are sturdier, quite resistant to diseases. I’ve lost count of the number of slum dogs I see with a distinctive twitching that tells me they’re survivors of distemper, a disease that almost always kills a purebred pup.

Askal are probably even better adapted to human populations, having learned to decipher the entire range of human neighbors, noble and ignoble. Because they’re so independent, askal will resist training; but with the right methods (chokers and force never work), they’ll learn quickly.

I still have Sinag and Tala, the original construction dogs, and Munggil and Britney and Tisay. Munggil got her name because she was the runt in the litter, her name meaning “tiny” in Bahasa Indonesia. But after I named her, she began to grow, and grow, almost with a vengeance, and is now the tallest, most elegant dog you can imagine. Britney, well, she was always being teased as plain and ugly, but I always argued that like humans, she has her own kind of “ganda” [beauty].

The five askal have free rein of the gardens and the house, occasionally becoming too comfortable, inviting themselves to sofas and beds. They’re alert watchdogs, but will quickly move into “welcome” mode when they know the visitors are all right.

Best of all, they’re incredibly good with children. It helps that they’re of a size that allows them to literally see eye to eye with toddlers, which undoubtedly helps with the bonding.

I worry that my two toddlers, growing up with these friendly askal, might end up thinking all dogs are as tame. When they’re older, I’ll explain why I pull them away when they approach dogs in the street. With time, they’ll be able to tell, as I have, if a dog is friendly.

Meanwhile, our askal are becoming so much a part of their childhood, and will someday help me to explain goodness and kindness, and the joys of being free-spirited and “ganda,” unencumbered by pedigrees and external appearances.

Why?

PINOY KASI


Why?
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:36am (Mla time) 04/25/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Even as a child, Remberto de la Paz (“Bobby” to friends) was said to have been the ever inquisitive one, always asking why and figuring out how to repair things. He would have wanted to become an engineer, but math was his Achilles’ heel so, coming from a family of physicians, he ended up in the University of the Philippines College of Medicine.

The why’s didn’t stop there but came to deal more with the state of the Philippines. It was the 1970s, the era of Ferdinand Marcos and martial law, and the health sector -- professionals and students -- were not spared by the social ferment. Which shouldn’t be surprising given the way social inequities are always amplified in the health sector, the poor dying of diseases that are both preventable and curable.

The rural areas were in particularly dire straits, with hundreds of municipalities having no physician. In the 1960s, there had been a massive brain drain of Filipino doctors and nurses, mostly going to the United States. Those who stayed on would practice in the cities.

Marcos’ health technocrats came up with a six-month rural service requirement for all medical graduates, hoping to provide far-flung areas with medical services, however temporary. There were also hopes that young idealistic physicians would end up staying on after their rural service.

But the program didn’t work out. If you had the connections, you could get assigned to a fairly urbanized “barrio” in the cities, sometimes even in Metro Manila. As for those who went out, there was a total mismatch between their medical training and the rural service. The medical curriculum was oriented to high-tech hospitals, but they were working in rural health units with few supplies beyond small kits of medicines marked “Medical Assistance for Rural Communities and Other Sectors” (MARCOS).

For most of the medical graduates, rural service was a nuisance, a requirement that they needed to get over with as soon as possible so they could leave for the States.

There were exceptions. The medical schools had their share of student activists who went out, even as students, to serve in urban slums and looked forward to rural service. And after doing their rural service, some were crazy enough to want to stay on.

In the 1970s, health activists had formed a national network of community-based health programs (CBHPs) mainly to serve rural areas. Bobby and his wife, Sylvia, also a doctor, eventually ended up working in one of these CBHPs, with an organization called AKAP, founded by TB specialist Dr. Mita Pardo de Tavera. I was also working with AKAP, and that was how I came to know Bobby and Sylvia.

The CBHPs believed that the solutions to health would come not from individual behavior change alone, but through community organizing so people could come up with collective solutions to their health problems. Dr. Tavera’s vision for TB control involved training of local health workers, some with hardly any formal education, to conduct health education classes, mobilize communities for BCG vaccinations, collect and examine sputum samples from people to check if they were infected with TB, and supervise patients with their anti-TB medication.

Bobby’s and Sylvia’s lives revolved around TB, but they knew, too, how the obstacles to TB control were often rooted in economics and politics. Patients couldn’t afford the TB medicines, so AKAP provided them for free, but we found out that some of the patients were selling the medicines so they could feed their families. We ended up having to check their urine for an orange tinge, proof that they were taking their rifampicin, the most expensive medicine in their treatment.

There were other people asking why as well: Why were these UP medical graduates working in godforsaken, “NPA-infested” Samar province, rather than in the States? The heat was on, and eventually the couple had to move from Gandara, one of the poorest towns in Samar, to the capital Catbalogan, but continued to care for patients from several towns.

On April 23, 1982, late in the afternoon, a man walked into the De la Paz’s clinic, and fired away. A total of 11 bullets entered and exited Bobby’s body. The gunman was said to have threatened people who were watching: “Who else will help the people from the mountains?” He was referring to the NPA.

Word spread quickly, with at least 200 people rushing over to offer help. Twenty-nine people donated blood. Bobby lived long enough to see his mother, who flew in from Manila. He would have turned 30 on Sept. 11 that year.

Twenty-five years on, I still hear of health workers active in Samar and other places where the likes of Bobby had served. The other CBHP doctors are still around, scattered all over but most are still serving in their own ways, teaching in medical schools, doing private practice, even working through government. Our paths cross from time to time: Sylvia went on to train in obstetrics and was the one who attended my daughter Yna’s birth.

Changes have come all too slowly in the health system. The government now has a TB program very similar to what AKAP was doing in the 1980s, but many Filipinos still die of the disease. The rural service requirement for medical graduates has been abolished and the Department of Health came up with a voluntary Doctor to the Barrios program, but there are few takers.

A new wave of brain drain now plagues us, mainly of nurses, including doctors-turned-nurses. It’s mostly for economic reasons, but I hear more people talking of hopelessness and despair with the political situation here.

Bobby’s case has never been solved. Ironically, even without Marcos and martial law, we face a new round of assassinations of suspected leftists, and on a scale more vicious and bloody than we ever saw under Marcos. Medical Action Group (MAG), a human rights medical group formed after Bobby’s death, is holding a training workshop in forensics this week together with the Commission on Human Rights, specifically in response to this wave of killings.

Last year, Dr. Chandu Claver and his wife Alice, both active with the group Bayan and with community health programs, were shot in Tabuk, Kalinga. Alice died from her bullet wounds. The Clavers’ assailants remain at large.

What would Bobby have done if he had lived? I suspect he would have gone for postgraduate training in medical bioengineering and continued finding ways to serve the poor. But wherever he might have ended up, I have a strong feeling he would have continued to ask why, perhaps with greater urgency than he had back in medical school and in Samar.

* * *

Health Action for Human Rights will sponsor a forum on April 26, Thursday, at 4 p.m., at the Philippine General Hospital Emergency Room complex, with lectures on “The Current Human Rights Situation” and “The Alston Report.”

If you want more information on the life of Bobby de la Paz, look up an excellent biography written by Dulce Festin Baybay in the anthology “Six Young Filipino Heroes,” edited by Asuncion David Maramba.

UP’s sunflowers

PINOY KASI


UP’s sunflowers
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 02:40am (Mla time) 04/20/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- There’s an event-filled weekend coming up, with Earth Day on the 22nd and several schools, notably the University of the Philippines (UP), holding their graduation exercises.

The graduating students at UP in Diliman, Quezon City, and their families are in for a treat, with sunflowers blooming all along University Avenue, the main road that brings you into the campus from Commonwealth Avenue and Quezon Memorial Circle.

The sunflowers are planted only in the summer, timed to bloom around the third weekend of April, when the different colleges hold their recognition ceremonies on a Saturday, culminating in one grand university commencement exercise the following day.

I have to hand it to UP’s seasoned gardeners, who have perfected their schedules for the sunflowers, planting them in a way that they bloom right in time for the graduation ceremonies. That’s why it’s important for you to catch the sunflowers, which will stay on one or two weeks after the commencement exercises. As the flowers droop and wilt, the gardeners will step in to uproot the plants and harvest the sunflower heads for the seeds.

Teaching plants

These plants are more than beautiful ornamentals. They’re in a way teacher plants, offering many lessons about nature, so appropriate for Earth Day.

We could start with its botanical aspects. The sunflower is intriguing in that its attractive yellow flowers aren’t quite flowers. The plant belongs to the family Compositae, so called because its members have composite flowers. What you see are golden heads with more than a thousand small, individual florets.

Let me confuse you some more: When the mature florets mature, they take on a different appearance and people tend to call them sunflower seeds. Not quite correct again. The mature florets are actually fruits (achenes), and the seeds are actually inside, covered by an inedible husk.

The scientific name for sunflowers is Helianthus, from “Helios,” the Greek god of the sun, and “anthos” for flower. The plants are heliotropic, meaning they track the sun’s movements. When you visit the sunflowers, look for the buds or immature heads, which start the day facing east, where the sun rises, and then follows the sun’s rays through the day moving to the west. After the sun sets though, the buds turn eastward again, waiting for the sun to rise the next day.

The heliotropism itself is an adaptation for survival, the plant maximizing sunlight. Not only that, their flower heads become five-star resorts that attract insects, who fly in and land to sunbathe and play (smile), all to the advantage again of the plant since the insects help pollinate.

The sunflowers’ heliotropism provides a case study for those interested in fluid mechanics. There’s a small plant “muscle” involved and a fine regulation of potassium exchange that allows this heliotropism. Once the flower head blooms, it can no longer move with the sun’s rays—“paralyzed” in an eastward direction.

The sunflower has been studied by chemists and agronomists and a host of other researchers because it has so many uses. The sunflower seeds are used as a snack food, while the plant itself yields sunflower oil, animal feed, various industrial chemicals and, lately, it’s even been formulated into a biofuel, a substitute for gasoline.

If your interest is mathematics, the sunflowers provide an example of Fibonacci numbers. I won’t go into details about these numbers except to say that they follow a certain formula. The sunflower’s florets are arranged in a spiral, usually 34 in one direction and 55 in the other. Other Fibonacci numerical patterns are found throughout nature, from the branching of some trees to the curves of waves.

The sunflowers are for our artists as well. Vincent Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings were intended to decorate a room for his friend and fellow impressionist Paul Gauguin. I don’t know if they ever really ended up decorating Gauguin’s room, considering that the two’s short stay together was, to say the least, turbulent.

Historians should look, too, into the sunflowers. They were originally cultivated in the Americas, but were eventually introduced to the rest of the world by explorers and colonizers. I suspect they came to the Philippines through the galleon trade.

Watching the sunflowers thrive so well in UP and knowing of their many uses make me wonder why they aren’t cultivated more widely. Even without economic considerations, they are dramatic ornamentals: a few stalks are enough to provide a heartwarming accent for a city backyard garden.

And here’s an idea for UP with its centennial coming up next year. Maybe we can have special sunflower fields in all campuses, spinning off all kinds of other products from colorful postcards to packets of seeds, certified to be authentic UP.

Earth Day, Book Day

Those who won’t be at UP for its Earth Day graduation have a choice of other activities. Over at the Sidcor Sunday Flea Market at the Lung Center, there will be a special Earth Day affair called “Baga’t Hangin Musikahan 2007,” to include a concert from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. with performing groups like Orange & Lemons, Pinikpikan, Brownman Revival, Akafellas, Paolo Santos, Aiza Seguerra, Lou Bonnevie and her band, and hey, the Singing Doctors of the Lung Center. Besides singing, the Lung Center will also offer free pulmonary work-ups, and lectures on alternative fuels. The concert is free, sponsored by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. There’s also an on-the-spot poster contest on the theme “Give your lungs a chance” at 7:30. So, go, go enjoy the flea market ... and all the bonus events.

At the other end of Metro Manila, at the Cultural Center, the environmental group Haribon is organizing Sibol 2007 with several activities, mainly art and multi-media exhibits and a showing of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s documentary about global warming. The activities go through the entire day but the film showing is from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Dream Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The weekend has still another unexpected treat. Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish cultural center, will celebrate International Book Day on Saturday, with an entire day of activities from 10 a.m. 11 p.m., including, hold your breath, concerts, film showings, wine and cheese tasting, Latin dancing, photo and declamation contests, a book market, even free Spanish lessons! Instituto Cervantes is on 855 T.M. Kalaw St. in Ermita, Manila. Visit the website (www.manila.cervantes.es) for more information or call +632 5261482 to 85.

The International Day of the Book is actually April 23, but Instituto Cervantes wisely thought of celebrating it this Saturday. The Spaniards started it all, marking Miguel Cervantes’ death anniversary. In Catalonia, people would give each other a rose in exchange for a book. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, the government celebrates by giving schoolchildren a token that can be used toward buying a book.

Don’t forget your hats, sunglasses and sun block this weekend. And here’s hoping that in a few years, Earth Day and the International Day of the Book will be in the consciousness of every Filipino.

Boxing’s other faces

PINOY KASI


Boxing’s other faces
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:05am (Mla time) 04/18/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Manny Pacquiao’s victory last Sunday came only two weeks after another Filipino boxer, Angelito Sisnorio, was killed by a brain hemorrhage sustained during a boxing match in Thailand, where he was pitted against flyweight champion Chatchai Sasakul.

Pacquiao’s victory might make us forget, too quickly, Sisnorio’s death. Yes, the Games and Amusements Board has since banned Filipino boxers from going to Thailand and there was some outrage expressed, with Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad writing an article with the title, “Did they have to deal with savage Thailand?” Trinidad exposed a racket in Thailand: “Saturday night fights featuring hapless Filipino pugs against rising or established Thai boxers have been regular dinner fare in Bangkok.” Not only that, Trinidad said, some fights are rigged, with Filipino boxers “advised” to intentionally lose a match.

I can believe Trinidad’s claims, and will give my reasons shortly. But I did want to write, too, about the need to ask ourselves some tough questions about the many faces of boxing, other than that of the victorious Pacquiao.

Paid gore

Last year, during a visit to Thailand, I picked up a magazine in a rural market newsstand. The magazine happened to be displayed with its back cover facing me, and it caught my eye because it showed a Thai boxer with a bloodied face, his eyes wide open with pain and with fear. There were blood stains as well in different parts of his body and the Thai captions were printed in a way that made it look like it was dripping blood, much like you see in the titles of horror movies. Inside the magazine, there were more photographs of this type, including the boxer on the back page shown during the match taking blows from his opponent.

I bought the magazine and showed it later to O’ong Maryono, an Indonesian martial arts expert who currently lives in Thailand. O’ong shook his head sadly and explained that this happens very often in Thai boxing, with people paid to both inflict and receive such injuries.

I was shocked, having thought of muay Thai or Thai boxing as a sport that had become refined through the years. Two years ago, Discovery Channel featured a documentary on muay Thai showing how it had become almost an art. I had also read books with detailed descriptions of the rituals and rules that accompany muay Thai, with boxers actually praying before each match.

The magazine I got showed another side to Thai boxing, one of bloodthirsty spectacle with ties to syndicates and paid gore.

I was disturbed mainly because all that lust for blood seemed to go against the perception of Thailand as a gentle Buddhist country that eschews violence of any kind. But then as a social scientist, I should know better. In many parts of Asia, you will find the gentlest people, overly concerned about maintaining smooth interpersonal relations. Yet, beneath the surface, there may be simmering tensions and conflicts in values.

Many Thais themselves object to the transformation of Thai boxing into a gladiator sport, but acknowledge that it reflects a disturbing side of the Thai psyche, one that occasionally erupts in the political arena. Thai history has its share of extreme violence even up to fairly recent history. There was for example the “Thammasat Massacre” of 1976, when Right-wing paramilitary forces fired at a pro-democracy rally near Thammasat University. Officially, 46 people were killed, but the death toll may have been higher. The brutality went beyond the killings, with bodies mutilated.

And us?

I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the way we lash out at other cultures and fail to see how we, too, may have a similar “underside” to our culture. If Thai brutality seems to contradict Buddhism, we shouldn’t forget that we, too, have cultural behaviors that run against Christian compassion.

I’d start with our brutality to animals, from dog-eating to cockfighting to the “killing me softly” way of slaughtering chickens and ducks in parts of the Cordillera region, the hapless birds slowly beaten to death.

I was once traveling with a foreigner out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and she had to be the one to point out to me, in disgust, a poster showing horsefights in Bukidnon province. The posters were from the Department of Tourism, and apparently we don’t think twice about how such photographs drive away, rather than attract, tourists and project us as a sadistic people.

And you know what? It seems the Thais are kindred spirits for some of this sadism with animals. When police raided a dogfight recently in Antipolo City, they found Thai visitors who had flown in just for those fights.

All that I’ve just described gives the context to our love of boxing. We forget that this sport leaves many casualties. We forget that Sisnorio had once been a youth boxing champion, and world-class, too. When he died in Thailand, he was only 24. Boxing careers are short, moments of glory too brief. Last year, the University of the Philippines anthropology department hosted a Japanese sociology student who had first acquired an interest in Filipino boxers because there were a few older ones who were in Japan. He followed their trail back here, to find more of these older boxers, some living in past glory, but none in wealth.

We forget, too, the power relations behind international boxing. It’s not a coincidence that the bouts involve Third World boxers, fighting in a ring in the United States. Soon, we hear, they will bring these fights to China, with their new rich eager to pay to watch. We forget that Filipino boxers end up in Thailand, paid to lose, because Thailand is richer than we are.

Call me a wimp, but I’m unable to feel jubilation watching two people pummel each other. I cringe when thinking of a Filipino being battered, and I grieved after seeing the photograph of Sisnorio’s home in Koronadal. The caption described it accurately as a “shack,” reminding us that so many boxers come from impoverished backgrounds, with few options in life for upward social mobility.

I’d ask, too, if I’m being unpatriotic in being unable to feel national pride watching a Filipino emerge victorious from having beaten up a Mexican. Sure, the bouts are monitored carefully, boxers matched kilo for kilo, given regulation gloves and play by all kinds of rules -- a far cry from the debacles in Thailand’s rigged fights. But just how civilized can boxing ever become?

All said, I worry about how the glorification of boxing seeps into our national psyche, to the point where urban poor communities have street boxing matches involving children, with crowds cheering them on and placing bets. How honest are we in explaining to children what a boxer’s road to success and glory might entail, and the chances they’ll ever make it?

Phantom voters, phantom genders

PINOY KASI


Phantom voters, phantom genders
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:17am (Mla time) 04/13/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Danton Remoto and thousands of other Filipinos are fuming mad at Ben Abalos and the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Beyond the computer snafus and printing fiascoes, beyond the questions about whether they can count or not, Comelec officials are coming under fire now about the way they accredit party lists. While approving the applications of groups with the most obscure of constituencies (some nothing more than relatives of big shots), the Comelec has turned down the application of Ang Ladlad, which Remoto founded and which wants to give a voice to Filipino LGBTs (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered).

The Comelec claims Ang Ladlad is a party of “phantom voters.” Hmmm, phantom voters? I thought of the comic books of my youth and that hunk running around in skin-tight leotards and an eye mask, but the Comelec means something else: it claims that Ang Ladlad’s constituencies are unreal, are phantasms.

This reminds us that beyond the issue of party-list representation, Philippine society still has serious hang-ups about genders, an issue I’ve brought up in several columns.

Pink vote

The Comelec represents the gender ostriches, the ones who would like to think the world only has two genders and any claims to the contrary can’t be true. The LGBTs are mere phantoms lurking in the night.

Yet, we know there are many Filipinos who do recognize the other genders and are terrified, thinking we face an epidemic of “sexual perverts.” I am not exaggerating the fears here. I have been getting reports about a former Department of Health employee who goes around lecturing in different cities claiming that there is a global conspiracy, headed by the United States, to control population. According to this imaginative woman, this involves imposing family planning—and promoting homosexuality!

We’ll never really have reliable figures about the size of the LGBT constituency. We hear 10 percent cited quite often, based on the Kinsey survey in the United States back in the 1950s but that survey was problematic and only asked about male homosexual experience. Other more recent surveys in different countries give figures hovering between 4 percent and 6 percent. In the last Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study of the University of the Philippines, 15.1 percent of males and 3.6 percent of females said they had same-sex sex (sorry for the awkward terminology).

But surveys are always difficult to conduct when it comes to asking people for personal disclosure on sensitive issues, which means the tendency is for the statistics to under-represent reality.

Ang Ladlad has sent out a text message calling for a show of force: “On Friday the 13th (I think that’s supposed to sound ominous), 10 a.m., gays and lesbians will rally in front of the Comelec to show we are not the phantom, but the opera. Pls wear pink, white or come in costume. And join us in a show of the Pink Vote.”

Hidden genders

I’m sure the event will be well attended, but there might be almost as many media people (some themselves LGBT) as “phantom” voters. The problem again is that the rally is public and many LGBTs are not about to come out yet.

We need to go back in history to understand how we’ve progressed -- or regressed with gender rights. In the past, we had “lalaki” [male] and “babae” [female] and an occasional “bakla” [gay] who would get beaten up. But even amid that repression, there were already quite a few courageous “bakla” who were quite open about it. Philippine society responded by allowing certain occupational niches for the “bakla,” particularly hairdressing, dress designing, doing the laundry (yes, “bakla” used to be “lavanderas” [laundrywomen]!). Besides “bakla,” there were other words used, notably “binabae,” “biniboy’’ and “syoki.” All these terms reflected not so much sexual orientation than a concept of an effeminate male, “binabae” meaning “like a woman,” “biniboy” being a contraction of “binibini” [miss] and “boy” while “syoki” came from the Hokkien Chinese word that means weak-spirited.

With time, those terms have become almost extinct, perhaps emblematic of the way the “weak-spirited” stereotype has been challenged. It’s inevitable, as a global movement grows around the rights of sexual minorities. In the 1950s, “gay” was a term used to refer to the underground male homosexual culture; by the 1970s, thousands of women and men were marching in the streets proclaiming Gay Pride and protesting social discrimination. Filipinos were swept up by this growing awareness of the need to fight social prejudice and bigotry.

Pepper Boys

Many gains have been made to advance gender rights, of women, and of the LGBT. By and large though, gender discrimination remains prevalent, forcing many LGBTs to remain in the shadows. There’s a class factor to all this. In the past, the ones who dared to come out -- as captured in the term “ladlad” (to shed one’s cape) -- were mainly from the low-income groups. Now, more upper-class Filipinos are coming out, but still with trepidation because of the fear of being disowned, of bringing “shame” to the family name, of losing one’s job.

The shifts in gender labels actually reflect this paranoia. I hear people differentiating themselves as “discreet gays” from “parloristas” [beauty parlor attendants], a reference made with the kind of derision that accompanies “palengkera,” referring to a loud, lower-class woman market vendor.

The need to be discreet has given rise to the gender category “paminta,” which gives a new meaning to Spice Boys. “Paminta” means pepper, but the word is derived from “pa-mhin.” Further translation: “mhin” means “men” and “pa-mhin” means trying to be masculine, as society requires men to be. To be “paminta” is an attempt to escape society’s homophobic radar screens or sometimes even “gay-dar” (the radar screens of other gay men).

There’s more. Some of the Pepper Boys do a good job of it, and are called “pamintang buo” (whole pepper); others fail miserably and are mocked as “pamintang durog” (ground pepper).

“Discreetness” has become an obsession, sometimes a desperate attempt at camouflage. It’s not surprising then that even the English word “bisexual” has mutated in the Philippines to mean a “discreet gay” who insists on clinging to the last vestiges of acceptable sexuality, meaning having some kind of attraction for women. I once interviewed a Pepper Boy who said he was bisexual, but it turned out that in his 30-plus years of existence he only had one tryst with a woman, way back in his youth, when his macho “barkada” [gang of buddies] forced him to have sex in a brothel.

Filipino hidden gender categories go beyond sexual orientation; they speak of a liminal and, yes, phantom-ic, existence that is always in danger of becoming even more oppressive as religious conservatives go on the offensive like what they are doing now.

Phantom genders, phantom voters: there’s a sizeable constituency out there. And the Comelec, by denying representation to LGBTs, makes a travesty of the party-list system.

'Matona'

PINOY KASI


‘Matona’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 11:35pm (Mla time) 04/10/2007

A friend of mine sent a text message last week, complaining that it was already April and she still didn’t know what a “matona” was.

“Matona”? I thought it was some abbreviated text-message word, and then I remembered that I had mentioned it in one of my columns, about emerging genders in the Philippines, together with a promise to describe those categories. I wrote, then, that genders are social constructs that expand the biological “male” and “female.” They are created and defined differently, from one society to another.

I also did that column, concerned that people were equating gender with sexual orientation, which should not be the case. To give an example, I described the “manang” as a gender construct. The term used to refer, with respect, to older women, but has since evolved to refer now to older women (and lately, to men as well) who tend to be dour and humorless, constantly poking into other people’s affairs (sexual and non-sexual) and passing judgment with all the self-righteousness they can muster. We can see here that “manang” has nothing to do with sexual orientation, but it does pick out some attributes around “maleness” and “femaleness” to label people.

Changing times

Once we’re assigned to one gender category, most of us conform to society’s expectations about what we can -- and can’t -- be, what we can -- and can’t -- do. When someone proclaims, “Lalaki ako” [literally, “I am a man”] he is saying many other things, for example, “I can swear any time I want to, and go out and stay out late.” “Lalaki ako” also negates many other behaviors, for example, “I will not cry in public.” These are all very culture-specific; in many societies, the equivalent of “lalaki” [man] does not forbid the person from showing his emotions in public, for example.

We learn our gender roles from a very early age. I was watching a grandfather chiding his wife the other day for allowing their infant grandson to play with a hair brush. That, he felt, was “pambabae” -- behavior of a girl! Gender is taught and incorporated into our very core of being, into our bodies, all the way up to the way we hold the newspaper, and cross our legs, as we read my column.

Yet, powerful as gender may be, societies are constantly revising these categories and definitions. All this does not happen whimsically. The gender categories are responses to the times, to changes in economic structures, political systems. Often enough, the new categories are in a way “secessions” of people who feel “trapped” by the norms and who dare to defy the norms.

This takes me to the focus of today’s column: the “matona.” Last semester I asked my students in a course on gender and sexuality to pick out and define new gender categories in the Philippines. One student wrote about the “matona.” a term I hadn’t been aware of until I read it in the student’s paper.

When I asked other students in the University of the Philippines about the “matona,” most were unaware of the term, but when I checked with an urban poor community in Quezon City, it sparked off a long discussion. Almost as if it had been scripted, just as we were discussing the “matona,” a motorcycle came into the street where we were. As the driver got off, taking off her helmet, my friends pointed to her and said, “Ayan, ayan [There, there]. Matona.”

People in the community explained that “matona” is a feminine derivation of “maton,” or hoodlum. But we have to be careful about the word “hoodlum” here, which tends to have connotations of delinquency, even criminality. People use the term “matona” with different tones. It can be tongue-in-cheek, it can be part mockery, but the tone is never totally negative. In fact, the term is sometimes used almost affectionately.

It’s also interesting that people distinguish between two types of “matona.” There’s the “matonang tibo,” which refers to a tough lesbian, what they would call in the West a “butch lesbian.” This seems to be used almost interchangeably with an older word, “tomboy.”

More intriguing is that there’s the almost redundant term “matonang babae,” who is not necessarily lesbian. “Lumalaban siya,” my urban poor friends told me, meaning she fights back, or she fights for her rights. Often, they explained, these are women who have been abused, even raped, and who are now fighting back.

‘Matona,’ Madonna

I suspect the “matona” ties into changing women’s roles, in the urban poor context. The life of a woman in an urban poor community is tough. Besides dealing with poverty, many women in the slums have been abused, battered and abandoned by their fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers. In response, many have learned to be quite independent and now show this independence with a “masculinization” of their body movements, their clothing, their speech, even their occupations.

There is a sharp class angle to this use of “matona.” Among the upper classes in the Philippines, an assertive woman is, well, an assertive woman. It’s becoming almost a norm, with women occupying many senior positions in universities and corporations.

Among our lower classes, assertiveness may not be as acceptable. No doubt, our lower-class women have always been strong, taking on many responsibilities that men have abdicated, but they had to do this with meekness and patience as is expected of being “babae.” Today’s urban poor women are changing, thanks in part to the influence of community organizing and women’s groups. Urban poor women are asking questions, speaking out and, yes, fighting back.

In rural areas, assertive women would be called, contemptuously, “agresibo,” or even risk being labeled as “aswang” (loosely translated, a witch) and getting marginalized. Today, urban poor communities are more philosophical about it. “Matona” reflects some ambivalence, a feeling that the assertive woman is “different,” and yet accepting that, yes, maybe it’s a good thing for women to move on from the old Madonna stereotypes (a la docile Virgin Mary) to, yes, Madonna the singer, the borderline dominatrix.

It will be interesting to see what happens to this word, but what’s more important is to see how the word evolves in relation to the changing status of women not just in urban poor communities but in the Philippines in general. Those developments will give the context to the way “matona” is used -- whether tongue-in-cheek as it is being used today, falling into disuse maybe because it becomes irrelevant, or, who knows, turning into a badge or honor, maybe even turned into a song like that one about the Waray-Waray woman. That last term, too, is a gender category, something I can discuss in future columns as I deal with the other fascinating genders we have in the Philippines.

Fasting and abstinence

PINOY KASI


Fasting and abstinence
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:12am (Mla time) 04/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Older Filipinos will remember when Catholics had to abstain from meat all throughout Lent. But if that seemed excessively strict, we shouldn’t forget that early Christians not only abstained but fasted, throughout most of Lent.

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has modified the rules around fasting and abstinence. In 1966, Pope Paul VI issued “Paenitimini” or the Apostolic Constitution on Penance which reorganized these rules, while explaining the reasons for the revisions.

I’ve been using the word “rules” but that probably is too strong a term. “Paenitimini” left it to local bishops’ conferences to thresh out more specific guidelines on fasting and abstinence, depending on local situations. And while the Catholic Church today still considers the “substantial observance” of fasting and abstinence as an obligation, there is more emphasis today on the rationale and spirit behind these penitential practices.

I thought it’d be useful then to look first at what’s “required” and then go back to the meaning of Lenten penance itself, especially in our Filipino context.

Whale and turtle?

What are the “rules” today? All healthy Catholics aged 18 to 59 are obligated to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. All kinds of exemptions are possible, for example for people who are traveling, or students. (I was thinking in particular of Filipino students, whose final examinations are appropriately timed during Lent.)

Catholic fasting pales in comparison with the Muslims’ Ramadan, where the faithful fast for an entire month, meaning no food or water from sunrise to sunset. The Catholic fast simply states that there should be “no full meal” during the day. Snacks, or if we prefer the more solemn sounding “collations,” are allowed.

Besides fasting, Catholics aged 14 and above have to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent. It’s interesting though that the rules issued by the Catholic Church also point out that all Fridays of the year, except for those on which a solemnity (holy day) falls, are days of penance and so voluntary abstinence is suggested.

Vegetarians would cringe on how “meat” is defined. Fish is allowed. So are eggs and dairy products. And lard and margarine. And “meat juices,” for example, chicken broth and consommé.

The circuitous rules here have led to all kinds of questions: Would whale meat be “meat”? (Whales are mammals, not fish, so...) What about turtles and frogs and insects? One article in the American Catholic website suggests that the best guide is to follow custom, whatever the local tradition is. I’m not sure how helpful that rule is, considering how, in so many Asian countries, we eat anything that moves.

Public penance

I was just so amazed at the kinds of discussions around fasting and abstinence in different publications and on the Internet, especially when it comes to interpreting the rules, such as when a “collation” or snack would be most appropriate.

Lost in the quibbling is a reflection on what penance means. This, of course, varies from one culture to another. Filipinos use the Spanish-derived word “penitensiya,” with rather severe connotations. Even today, there are areas in the Philippines where older Filipinos will try to get people not just to fast and abstain from meat but also to refrain from talking, laughing, even bathing (on Good Friday). Then, too, there are the extreme penitential modes like flagellation and crucifixions.

Rightly so, Lent and Holy Week should be a time for penance but serious questions have been raised about severe self-mortification. We forget that fasting is not meant to punish the body; instead, it is meant as an aid to prayer and spirituality. Emptying the body makes room for the less mundane. The hunger that comes with fasting is also a powerful metaphor for our hunger for spirituality. With that in mind, it’s easier to understand why we have Eucharistic fasting, the requirement that one should refrain from taking food and water an hour before communion.

There’s more to penance. Pope Paul VI’s “Paenitimini” reminds us that there is a “continuous need of conversion and renewal, a renewal which must be implemented not only interiorly and individually but also externally and socially.”

In that context, fasting and abstinence from meat are therefore not simply pathways to personal sanctity but also a way of expressing our solidarity with the poor, sharing their hunger and their usually meatless meals. One theologian notes, wryly: “Avoiding meat while eating lobster misses the point.” Isaiah (58:3-8) is more indignant, attacking the hypocrisy that may accompany religious fasting. To give just one excerpt: “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

The whole idea then of social penance is to make up for our collective failings. Besides fasting and abstinence, there are other ways of doing penance, including prayers and charity work. We might do well to popularize a practice called “Scrutinies,” where entire communities or parishes come together for a kind of collective examination of conscience, not to ferret out sinners in our midst but to think of the times we shirked away from social responsibilities, and what we might want to do about it.

Changing times

When the Catholic Church “relaxed” its rules on abstinence, no longer requiring meatless Fridays throughout the year, New Yorker magazine came out with a cartoon showing Satan pointing to multitudes of people burning in hell and saying: “Now what do we do with them?” Presumably, the burning souls were Catholics who had eaten meat on a Friday when it was still considered a mortal sin.

Times do change and everywhere religions are moving toward an emphasis on substance rather than form, conscience rather than rules. Holy Week in the past was severely ascetic, but I wonder how much it contributed to our “holiness” as individuals or as a nation.

Today, we may be swinging to the other extreme, with Holy Week simply seen as time for a vacation, for Boracay and Baguio and Hong Kong or for staying home to watch a stack of DVDs, including some X-rated ones.

There is value in going back and rediscovering the value of self-denial. I’m amused to find these days people paying exorbitant fees to stay in expensive spas where they are forced to fast and abstain from all kinds of meat (including whales and turtles and...) so they can become healthier. Wise women and men of different faiths figured long ago that penance, without whips and chains, made us healthier both in body and in spirit. That’s something to reflect on this Holy Week as we do penance, individually or collectively, through fasting and abstinence or through good work.

(The full text of “Paenitimini” can be found on www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19660217_paenitemini_en.html.)

Much, little

PINOY KASI


Much, little
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:47am (Mla time) 03/30/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- An American friend of mine, railing about our poor sense of time, finally exclaimed: “Even your roosters can’t get their crowing right.”

I was tempted to agree, having tossed and turned through the night because of neighbors who keep battalions of fighting cocks that ti-ti-la-ok at 2 or 3 in the morning, rather than around sunrise. But you know, I suspect their crowing time is actually an adaptation to us humans. The birds stir when there’s movement in households, and that can start very early in the morning.

It’s not just farmers and rural people who start their day early. Our urban areas buzz with activity long before the sun rises. How early? Go to any of our wet markets and you’ll find vendors coming in with their fish, meat, vegetables and fruits at 3 or 4 a.m. And if you think that’s early, many of them have already gone to their suppliers, who start even earlier.

Dawn to dusk

The middle class thinks the poor are indolent, but try visiting the slums and you’ll be amazed at the work that goes on, way before dawn and long after dusk. I’ll describe the working activities in a typical day, pieced together from my field notes:

At 6 a.m., the "sari-sari stores" [neighborhood variety stores] are already open. Sometimes even earlier than that, you’ll find parents bringing their children to school. They do this because it takes so long to commute to the schools, and also because they will have to rush off to work right after.

A few sari-sari stores have tables in front to serve breakfast. I’m always amazed at how many people buy their breakfast, mostly younger ones, migrants from outside Manila who rent bed space inside the slums, and therefore cannot cook. There are also a few women, and men, who look like they are just about ready to turn in. “We’re classmates,” one woman once told me, laughing, and I knew she wasn’t referring to night school.

One time, at around 6:30 in the morning, I saw an ambulant vendor coming around with caged birds. I asked who would buy birds this early. It turned out he was there to collect from one of the slum dwellers, who had bought some birds on credit a few days earlier. “If you don’t come this early, they go off to work and you can’t collect,” he said.

Other ambulant vendors come later in the day, selling an incredible variety of goods, from fruits to plastic pots and pans, from ice cream to guitars, from plants to kapok pillows.

The day wears on with the sari-sari stores and the ambulant vendors. Admittedly, it isn’t hard manual labor, but it is time intensive. Toward the afternoon, the streets become even more congested as people come out to put up stalls selling “dirty food” like fish balls, barbecue, fruit juices. Their buyers are students coming out of school, and the occasional office worker on the way home.

After dusk, some of these sidewalk vendors, who live in the slums anyway, just stay on, hoping to catch the last few office workers on their way home—or one of the “classmates” going off to work.

Oh, and who can forget? Between 9 and 10 at night, the lonely cry of one last ambulant vendor: “Balut ... balut.” The sari-sari stores stay open, too, offering tonic drinks to go with the balut.

At least

So much time goes into all these activities, but the earnings are meager. One vendor once complained to me that although she only charges P5 for a cup of rice, there had been people asking if they could buy just half a cup. But, she sighed, at least she earned some money each day. “At least” is a translation here, expressed in different ways in Filipino, mainly “buti na lang” [thank goodness], “sa awa ng Diyos” [in God’s mercy].

One reader, Enteng Vicente, alerted me a few weeks back to an article by Ninotchka Rosca in the Inquirer, in which she refers to our frequent use of the term “at least” and how she sees this as a “cop-out” mentality. She talks about Filipino-Americans working 18/7 (18 hours a day, 7 days a week) for a pittance, but who will be contented: At least we have a job. Here at home, Filipinos have to put in so much more, for much less.

Let me add my thoughts here. The “at least” syndrome goes with “bahala na,” often erroneously translated as fatalism. "Bahala na" is not at all passive; it’s an expression we use after we’ve done all we can, and that can be a lot. After all’s said and done, we then wait for the results, and when they come, we say “at least...” sometimes barely able to conceal our disappointment.

The roots of our “at least/buti na lang” syndrome go back to a feudal era, when we were taught to be content with whatever crumbs the "datu" [tribal chief], the "hacendero" [landlord], and later, the politician, throw to us. We accept the leftovers with gratitude, even seeing it as heaven-sent.

Paradox

Coping is fine, but I worry about how our national life has become one coping after another even as new, more serious problems arise, and in paradoxical ways.

“At least” distorts our sense of proportion. We have Filipinos giving up jobs here to earn $200 to $400 a month in war-torn countries, hardly much more than what they’d get here, but “at least” it’s abroad and “at least it’s dollars.”

Sometimes we get weary from having to do so much to get so little, which is why we become vulnerable to get-rich-quick scams: the latest search for Yamashita’s lost gold, the pyramiding scams, the politicians’ grand poverty eradication schemes.

And when good fortune comes around, we quickly squander the bounties: “At least we lived the good life, as one-day millionaires.”

“At least” can be dangerous in the way we suppress our frustration, too often, too long, until we run amok, berserk. The hostage-taking incident last Wednesday, and the frequent reports in the papers about people running amok, are classic sequelae to this “at least” mentality. Call him crazy, call him a publicity-seeker, Jun Ducat was really a more dramatic version of Juan de la Cruz, quietly bearing the pain until something snaps. In this day and age of extreme this and extreme that, hostage-taking is a grand performance, grand "diskarte," to make a point.

All for what? Ducat will fade from public memory by the weekend, another guy who did too much to get too little. The politicians win again, with their promises to do something. “At least” lulls us to accepting the system.

The corrupt, the venal, the greedy -- they know the Filipino. The drug industry knows it can get away with charging us some of the highest prices in the world. There are others -- the tobacco industry, the junk food manufacturers, the firms that pollute our rivers and our air—who know they can get away as well because even if we do occasionally complain and cry “Foul!” and pass new laws, we’ll eventually quiet down and simmer with our "at least."

The powerful know that for them, it takes so little to get away with so much in this country.

Summers of our lives

PINOY KASI


Summers of our lives
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:47am (Mla time) 03/28/2007

“Strawberry ... it all started out that summer in Cebu when Mr. Cuna (a family friend) realized I had never taken a soda, so he ordered a strawberry soda for me. It tasted like heaven and that was it, strawberry has always been special for me,” my sister said.

She and I were having dessert and I was getting my high on vanilla ice cream, which I, too, traced back to one summer, when I had to have my tonsils removed. Before the operation, I was forbidden from taking any ice cream, on the notion (unscientific it turns out) that it would aggravate my frequent bouts with tonsillitis. So, after the tonsillectomy, I got as a kind of ultimate reward the forbidden food of the gods: ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and really, I believe somewhere in our brains there’s a place for imprinting food memories -- vanilla for me, strawberry for my sister.

Blooms

Maybe in our brains, Filipino brains, we have a special storage area for summer memories. Think back now and I’m sure you can come up with a long list of events, places, faces, scents and tastes that you associate with some summer.

In temperate countries, the four seasons become evocative metaphors for life: spring with the wonders of new life, summer with the zest of youth, autumn with mellowing midlife and winter with the solitude and peace of old age.

What happens then in the Philippines, where we are told we only have the wet and dry seasons or, as Westerners mutter, tongue-in-cheek, no, the two seasons are hot and very hot?

Actually, we have more than two seasons. With age, you learn to tell the seasons, as you feel subtle but discernable changes in the colors of leaves, in the way they fall (yes, like autumn!), in the way the breeze stands still, or wafts in, or turns into "habagat," the monsoon. Even the rains vary in intensity, even in their smell, with the different seasons.

But yes, there is this distinct hot season we label tag-init. It’s not just a time of heat but of flowers and fiestas and, every few years, elections. Lush bougainvillea colors ambush us now at every corner, providing relief from our cities’ bleak and gray landscape. Over at University of the Philippines, Diliman, the gardeners have planted sunflowers and we expect them right in time for graduation in April. In the meantime, there’s enough of a spectacle with many of the trees on campus coming into bloom. The best, of course, is yet to come, perhaps in May, when the campus turns crimson with the fire trees.

Check your gardens and you’ll find wild lilies that have been lying dormant much of the year to store energy in underground bulbs until the summer heat convinces them to shoot out and unfurl their flowers.

And let’s not forget the orchids. My favorite is the "sanggumay," with the way its vines just hang there through most of the year – "simple lang" [it's simple], as we say in Filipino -- patiently waiting till summer comes along and then suddenly it’s like someone painted your garden while you were asleep.

Firsts

But the flowers of May (and April and March) only provide a backdrop to a highlight of summer: graduation exercises or, for preschool, moving up ceremonies. The preferred term is, of course, commencement exercises, with every other graduation speaker reminding the students this is not a time when we end school but commence, begin, life.

And our summers? Perhaps they don’t really end or begin anything. Summers connect, provide continuity for life. It’s a break before new graduates go to work. It’s a break, too, for those in schools, with summer workshops and camps offering an amazing variety of activities: dancing, painting, writing, swimming, drama -- why, one Buddhist temple in San Juan even offers meditation for children.

Summer’s an opportunity for travel, one of the most educational experiences one can have, whether learning about nature ... or strawberry sodas.

Summer’s a time for firsts. Maybe because more people are around at home, we think we’ve caught the baby’s first words, first steps.

Summer’s a time of adventure, of new experiences, of daring. Summer’s when boys become men, and I mean circumcision although in times past, there may have been other more risqué rites of passage.

Summer’s a time for first love (OK, and second and third) or of reviving first love. Oh, but don’t we ever learn? For some, summer, too, can be a time for heartbreak, an end to innocence, but never mind, all that, too, is part of life.

Intersecting

In midlife, summers become all the more important for reunions, for lives to intersect. My sister was here visiting from Canada. It was a time for her to look up relatives and friends and classmates, although I did notice that she didn’t have that many people her own age to meet up with because so many people of our generation have joined the Filipino diaspora.

“This is my sister,” I told other parents at my daughter Yna’s moving-up ceremony, “and she just flew in from Canada,” making it sound like she did just for Yna. But she was here for more. Although my sister’s younger, she’s now coping with an empty nest, her two children now living away from home because of school. So here she was to look into my own rather late parenting. We’d talk while I changed diapers, prepared milk, put away the toys, and she’d intervene from time to time, remembering how she handled her own children, including quick lessons on using sign language with children (the people who developed this program really should get a Nobel Peace Prize, considering how it has bridged the communication gap we have with babies).

This morning she came into my room to say goodbye. The baby was feeding but raised one hand to sign “bye-bye.” When she came in to kiss him, he feigned resistance, clearly wanting to use it as an excuse to cuddle up more closely to me.

Our family is not good with goodbyes, so we don’t usually tag along to the airport. I waved back at her, pretending to sign like the baby: “Go, go ... see you next summer.”

After she left, I suddenly remembered a poem she wrote years ago, about her son who never seemed content with all the hugging and snuggling from his mother. I, too, have to plead at times with my son when he wants to be carried: “You’re a big boy now.” But I anticipate, as my sister described in her poem, that someday, I’ll want to hug him and he’ll pull away, maybe even mildly protesting, “I’m a big boy now.”

I’d like to think that when the time comes, I’ll find comfort remembering our summers together, of his furious signing for more ice cream, of lullabies and lizards on the ceiling, of dogs romping in the garden, of the cat coming in at midnight. Actually, we don’t really remember things that happen when we’re very young, but we like to think we do because the best summer stories are those from our parents about what we did as babies and toddlers.

That’s how we all piece together our childhood -- and more. In the end, it isn’t so much whose summer it was, or the accuracy of the details, than the way we recall those many summers together, the summers of our lives.