INSTILLING LOVE OF COUNTRY
By Wilhelmina S. Orozco 13 June 2012
I think that the best way to
make everyone love our country so that any ounce of greed would disappear in
our veins is to trace or copy the map. I have been doing this lately in order
to use the drawing as cover for my pamphlet, Mahilig Ka Ba sa Pulitika which I am writing for the urban poor
associations here. And now I gather that as I had gone from province to
province, from Batanes down to Bicol, then Negros ,
and then Zamboanga, my heart had felt so heavy that I had to stop for a while.
Why so? That is because
while tracing the outline of each province, images of our people crop up,
standing there, looking at me, set as they are in a farm background. As I am
residing here in MetroManila where all the amenities are for albeit a middle
class lifestyle for me exists, I began to feel that I was in a more
advantageous position than they are.
I cannot fathom until now
why the images persist. In every province, I seem to see them.
Actually I have gone to most
provinces in our country – Cagayan, Ilocos region, La Union, Isabela, Ifugao
where the Banaue rice terraces are, Kalinga-Apayao where I shot my first full length documentary Bodong starring Macliing, in Super 8mm the copy of which was lost in Tunis Festival by a pretentious filmmaker; Bontoc where the Sagada
caves are located; Benguet the vegetable cradle of the country, Nueva Ecija
where my mother hails from; Tarlac where our yayas Dedet and Heling of so many
decades were born and have retired; Pampanga, place of birth of my courageous
cousin-in-law who drew her scissors at a mistress of her husband now deceased
due to lung cancer; Bataan where I spent several days shooting a film as production designer of DUDURUGIN KITA NG BALA KO starring Lito Lapid, now a senator; Zambales where I visited Subic and swam in the waters that
reached out to China Sea, Bulacan where I used to drive to buy and eat mangoes
by caing with my mother way back in the 60’s; Laguna where my children Euge and
Dadai used to go to school from their paternal relatives’ residence, Quezon amd
Boac Marinduque where I helped conduct a seminar for rural folks way back in
the 80’s; Oriental Mindoro where I used to go monthly way back in the 90’s to
administer a pig-raising project for Makamasa under the sponsorship of Lauback
Literacy International now called ProLiteracy; Albay where my staff and I at
the National Manpower and Youth Council went to deliver career materials way
back in the 70’s, Samar where I reached Damar Island and swam in the clear
waters with white sands, Leyte where I also delivered career materials, Cebu
where my good friend Ms. Cuizon the beautiful writer resides; she took me in at
a time when I was asking for help to get away from an office guy who was
pressuring me to stay in the hotel with him saying we would have a sword
between us in bed, would you believe? and Negros Occidental, (I missed going to
Dumaguete because, from Cebu , I would have had
to cross the ocean, and from there cross mountains to get to my relatives in
Negros Occidental. Traveling singly is quite dangerous in those areas, I have
been told. On the other hand, Bacolod City is where I spent the best of my
childhood years and now my closest relatives are still there, Butch, Ate Dina,
Kuya Joe and their child Jojo and grandchildren) In Panay, I had gone to Iloilo
only, and had seen Guimaras while crossing from there to Bacolod, at one time.)
I have seen the Chocolate Hills of Bohol while
traveling alone which I would not advise
to any other woman. There is a mistaken notion that one is looking for hot
stuff when traveling so.
In Mindanao, I have seen Marawi, Lanao and its famous Maria Cristina Falls as I had to travel and meet the foreign pastor who was teaching Muslims literacy. My trip was under the National Manpower and Youth Council as I was then an audio-visual specialist; Zamboanga, again because of NMYC,
Cotabato , North where I passed through Sarangani and Kiamba way back in the
80’s when my alternative media friends and I were filming to come up with an
audio-visual presentation on Christian-Muslim reconciliation (by the way, the
nun who guided us got out of the convent) and South where Lake Sebu is and
where I filmed the T’boli people plus Ye Binto the brass wax sculptor and her
husband. This is also where I had recorded the jaw’s harp and songs of T’boli
children in pentatonic scale, with similar tunes (they call Tagasinolon) but
different wordings depending on the story they are narrating; Malaybalay, Bukidnon where I shot a documentary video of the Univ of Sto. Tomas Conservatory of Music Summer Camp and hwere I saw the famous fashion designer Gang Gomez turned monk with his swishing shirt; Davao City where
I did a video, Asian Women Speak Out, which is a coverage of the Asian women’s
conference then coordinated by Ging Deles and Pat Larenas (Ging Deles is the
peace commission adviser of PNoy now, and Pat was a former congresswoman),
among others. The conference was a preparation for the 1985 Celebration of the
UN Decade for Women International Conference to be held in Nairobi , Kenya
On my way to Surigao, where
my father hails from, I traveled from Cotabato City where my children were
vacationing with their father sometime in the 80’s, I passed by Misamis
Occidental and Oriental, and Agusan, I experienced very hot temperature in
Cagayan de Oro City, so as soon as I arrived back to Manila, I wrote then
Senator Aquilino Pimentel that the climate there was too hot due to
overlogging. There was one image of a girl child in Kidapawan where my bus
passed. She was carrying corn and was trying hard to sell to me. I told her I
would take her picture instead.
I like Mindanao
because of the varied scenery that can be seen there –we could easily reach the
beach and then go home, unlike here in MetroManila where you have to travel for
hours and even stay for overnight in order to enjoy the sea.
So Folks, until now, I still
love our country. In fact I have bought several maps already as I give away
most of them to kids in the elementary grades to make them familiar with every
province and its capital.
I think that the reason why
foreigners remain loyal to their own country is because they also have explored
it so much and in their schools, they always have a map to know its geography.
`By the way, I like that
subject geography way back in the grades. Our books then allowed us to get out
of common sights and learn about how other peoples live. In fact, some of my
books are still with me. The pictures there, although they are now passé, are
historical records of how our people had lived then.
Yes, with that knowledge of
geography comes history. Once, we go into a place, we always have that tendency
to ask, “When was this town founded? Who are the old families here?” And in so
many places then that I had visited, I would find traces of Spanish influence –
the houses, the government buildings and the churches. But I understand that these are mostly gone
now as the idea of “governance” to most local officials is to alter the
landscape and make it look like MetroManila with its skyscrapers and
criss-crossing cemented roads.
So, try it Folks; get a
piece of map and try tracing every province on a paper and you will see
yourself transformed, in terms of consciousness.
June 14, 2012
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