Araw ng Kagitingan

(Day of Valor)

The taciturn Bengali asked me what “Baguio” meant and I couldn’t answer so I asked the gentleman that served our food.  I hid my ignorance by being ”pa-cute” and said aloud that my history teachers would kill me, and sure enough, everyone in the table laughed.

In another occasion, the pretty Burmese girl asked me about the Bataan Death March during World War II and again, I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer.  I was so disappointed with myself, I didn’t bother making pa-cute. 

I recently visited a beautiful, rich country, whose citizens are simply brimming with pride over their heritage.  I got a sense of how much they loved their country by how much they knew of its history.  I felt guilt, perhaps, shame, too, because I now realize that I might have taken my country, my beloved Philippines, for granted.

It’s true what some people say, only when in distant shores would one truly appreciate one’s country.  The beatiful, rich country would have been perfect were it not for the hotel concierge that had uttered a racist remark against me (another post, perhaps).  The episode got me thinking — the beautiful, rich country had beautiful warm people, but really, there is no place like home.

(Manila, Manila, I will keep coming back to you, my Manila…)

Aherm…

And so I promised myself, when I get back, I’ll love my beloved Philippines more (I’ll discover what that means as I go along). 

But for starters, I’ll try to read up on the Bataan Death March and honor the prisoners of war, Filipinos and non-Filipinos, who perished. 

In April 1942, the US-Filipino forces surrendered the Bataan Peninsula to the Japanese.  On April 9, around 75,000 Filipino and American POWs were forced to walk around 90 kilometers from Mariveles, Bataan to San Fernando, Pampanga, and were then transported by train to Camp O’ Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.  Only around 55,000 survived.  The rest either escaped or died on the way due to dehydration, starvation, disease, abuse and other manner of atrocities committed by the then enemy.

 (For more: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/55717/Bataan-Death-March)

HR day!

I was part of a group that went on an educational trip in a mountainous area up north. In the hilly part of the barangay we visited, somebody hang a police line/yellow tape across a narrow dirt path, effectively preventing us from proceeding to our destination where our lunch was waiting. A few feet from the yellow tape, men with dour faces were in line apparently waiting for the order to bodily drive us away. The Company’s men said that because we failed to “coordinate” with the Company, we could not pass. If they were to let us through, they would surely bear the brunt of the Company’s ire.

After about half an hour of “negotiations”, they allowed us to pass. The “negotiations” were in reality, a demeaning act of begging the Company to permit us, Filipino citizens, to use the barangay road, which predated even the Company’s existence and operations in the area. We were also allowed to pass only if we walked in pairs and only if escorted by the burly men with dour faces, courtesy of the Company.

In a country where the citizens are reduced to begging a powerful corporation to be allowed passage and use a road that belonged to them in the first place, there is great cause to continue to celebrate Human Rights Day.