Youngblood : Marikina shoes, Batangas brews
Rene B. Borromeo
Inquirer News Service
ONE day, I found myself explaining to my girlfriend the functional necessity of foreign debt and government red tape and corruption. I decided to talk about such stuff to avoid answering a question put up by her parents: Would I accept some old shoes to add to my collection consisting of one pair of rubber sneakers for casual wear and a pair of Doc Martens bought from the "ukay-ukay" [rummage sale of foreign-made used clothes] for formal occasions? She had explained that they were wondering what I was wearing to my meetings with government officials and representatives of international institutions.
Being happy with two pairs of shoes was a nugget of wisdom I got from my father. He used to tell me that I needed only two pairs for as long as I took good care of them and kept them clean. I, of course, followed the first part of his advice and promptly forgot the second (parents can only do so much for the education of their children). Wearing shoes was already a great paradigm shift for me, and keeping them clean needed another lifetime of childhood conditioning.
I used to prefer sandals over shoes. Sandals were more comfortable to wear during marches to denounce almost everybody and everything. Quite often, the targets of such protests were the World Bank and the government, whose representatives I have been meeting lately, prompting my girlfriend's parents to offer me those old shoes. That offer prompted me to start my lecture on foreign debt and government red tape and corruption.
Without foreign debts, I told her, the road going to the Marikina River Banks, where we once drank beer with our friends, would not be there. Likewise, we would not have a port in Batangas where we had boarded a boat to Mindoro to meet her beloved Mangyans.
She agreed, but quickly pointed out that I used to argue that foreign debts were the cause of our nation's woes. And they came with a lot of political cost, she added, sounding like I used to.
I could not remember any imperialist maneuvers in any of the meetings I had attended recently. But I did recall that the World Bank insisted that those who had to be resettled in Marikina be paid their due, and that the Japan Bank for International Cooperation insisted that 90 percent of families to be resettled in Batangas be assured of employment. That's my job, I told her.
I used to demand the same things in the streets, shouting and frothing in the mouth, but the power was there all along. Now I get to do my advocacy in an air-conditioned room that serves free snacks. And advocacy is seldom needed: Philippine laws require that its people and the environment be taken care of. I almost kicked my own butt for knowing all this just recently, after nearly getting skin cancer from all the sun I got marching in the streets.
Then my girlfriend shifted her attention to government officials. She thought it queer when I told her government officials, like other people, are basically good. We just hate them because they are victims of bureaucracy -- and unfortunately we cannot do without it. I cannot wait for the know-it-alls, who keep on blabbering that things should be this way and that, to get into power and start institutionalizing processes to deliver their vision, only to find themselves suddenly wallowing in the same mess. Our government is far from a Utopia (if there ever existed one) but it has a process of cleansing itself.
But surely corruption is intrinsically evil, my girlfriend protested.
In reply, I told her that some of our country's best and brightest are in the government service and they are getting paid less than their counterparts in the private sector, in some kind of economic redistribution.
She told me she was beginning to believe that I was taking opium-the one that Karl Marx had warned about-or that I was taking too much caffeine from all those Batangas brews.
I pointed out to her that she must have noted undertones of sarcasm in the words I said. After all, I was once the king of cynicism (which is probably genetic) and maybe I was just trying to convince myself about what I said. Nonetheless, I have long been cured of the Superman syndrome. I cannot save the world. I am here primarily to exist. I just take small pinches of the human abstractions of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of men whenever I can.
My girlfriend and I are struggling to maintain a long-distance relationship. She sends me notices about job openings in the metropolis. And she's helping me save for a new pair of shoes.
Rene B. Borromeo, 29, is a project manager in an environmental management consulting firm based in Los Baños, Laguna.
