by Armando Chavez (SF,
My ex-wife Boots Misa, told me the following story and it made my heart sink.
Her sister, Meg, an ophthalmologist with a small practice in Davao, was in a jeepney when a woman and a young boy of maybe, 8-9 years, got on at a stop in front of the regional hospital. The boy’s arm was in a cloth sling and he was whimpering, apparently in pain.
Being a doctor—and a bleeding heart by nature—Meg asked what happened to the boy. The mother answered that her son had broken his arm while playing. Meg, of course, saw that the boy was hurting so she asked what treatment the boy had received. The mother said that her son had received no treatment because they were being asked to pay 300 pesos which she did not have. So they turned around to head back home – no treatment, no cast, no medication. She was docilely and unprotestingly taking her little boy home with the broken arm and tears in his eyes. Oh, there must have been a few pained words of entreaty muttered, perhaps even a question or two mumbled to herself and to her god, but, in the end, a sigh of quiet surrender to being turned away for lack of 300 hundred little pesos.
I can almost hear this woman speaking in such a low, almost embarrassed tone, as she answered Meg’s questions. I’ve heard it before in the countless Filipino poor that I have had the opportunity to talk to. When they speak of their lot in life, they sound almost… apologetic – apologetic that they exist. Not angry, not sad, not bitter, just plain apologetic!
This woman, because she herself must have grown up in poverty, accepted whatever fate—or the government, threw her way. No money, well, suffer. If the boy is lucky, the bone will eventually heal and perhaps fuse at an angle that will earn him a nickname appropriate to his funny-angled arm. Or he might get gangrene and lose his arm altogether and earn himself an equally appropriate nickname.
Or he might die, for lack of 300 damned pesos, that little boy might die. Meg stopped the jeepney, fished out 300 pesos from her purse, gave it to the woman, and instructed her to go back to the hospital. It was 300 pesos she really needed. Her practice, after all, was not what one might consider flourishing. But nobody in her family had a broken arm at that time so she figured that the woman needed it more.
Meanwhile, back in the seats of power in Manila, the people who are entrusted with governing the country and looking after the welfare of irrepressible little boys with broken arms, are squabbling over 130 million dollars. I wonder–is there not one of them who cares?
(Editor’s note: Mr. Armando Chavez was a former classmate of the editor of Philippine Tribune. He now resides in San Francisco, California.)