i was watching Maalaala Mo Kaya earlier tonight and it was strange because i cried towards the end of the episode. i don’t know what made me cry. maybe because the drunkard, abusive father asked for forgiveness from his son he banished more than 15 years ago or because of the plight of the letter sender’s family.

he was a sakada from negros.

i remember joel abong. he was a sakada child whose emaciated body was plastered all over the newspaper’s front page (and for the life of me i cannot remember what newspaper was that because i’m not sure if it was right before or after EDSA I). joel abong became a symbol of poverty and helplessness. he was dying of hunger — and so were hundreds of other sakadas.

little did i know that this child — skin and bones and all — would haunt me for eternity.

my mother always showed me the picture of joel abong whenever i threw tantrums and didn’t want to eat. i was really a picky eater then. she often reminded me that i was fortunate that i had something to fill me up whereas joel abong did not. my nanny, yaya, caretaker what-have-you (i don’t know what to call her) then told me i would become like joel abong if i didn’t eat whatever that was on the table.

because of that i could not forget that image. nor his name.

and his memory was again resurrected in my head when i watched MKK tonight. two of the letter sender’s siblings died of hunger and neglect. they died because of their parent’s ignorance and their situation was further aggravated by their father’s abusive nature and irresponsibility.

but then i think the hacienderos are more to blame. i am now being political here.

anyway, when MKK showed the ashen corpse of the letter sender’s youngest sibling, the image of joel abong suddenly flashed through my mind. no, they didn’t look alike but their lasting impression on me was the same: it was that of horror.

i’m horrified that somebody could just die like that. i’m angry that a child could die like that.

our housekeeper asked me (she was watching MKK with me earlier when we were having dinner) if it’s true that such things happen. yes, i said to her. it happens everyday.

–

i remember my friend of so many years (we’ve been classmates since gradeschool until college) had a nervous breakdown about 6 years ago. she was working for a USAID project and part of her job was going around the country, going to the most depressed places you could think of, and see the areas that needed “development”.

she met a family from basilan who cut and gathered firewood for a living. all of the children had to work alongside their parents day in and day out so that they could earn a maximum of P250 a day. collectively. for a day’s work each of them only earned P50.

in contrast, her bosses — the project consultants — were earning at least P350,000 a month. she complained that some of them weren’t even reporting to the office and weren’t doing any work at all since most of the “work” just piled up on her. she said these people were just milking the project of those much-needed dollars. she knew they weren’t doing anything much to help solve the problem and all of what they were producing were papers, recommendations — those sort of stuff that wouldn’t put food in those wood gatherer’s stomachs.

she could not reconcile these facts of life. she was questioning whether there were any sense at all in these projects. she asked me, why can’t the US government or some multilateral or bilateral donor just use the P350,000 a month paid to those “consultants” to help the wood gatherers and their kind she encountered instead?

she was so distraught and disillusioned, which i think contributed to her breakdown. she suddenly resigned from her high-paying job (at that time) and wandered around for a while until she found herself again.

i couldn’t blame her. i, too, would get depressed with that kind of work.

i once worked as a research assistant in one “development” consulting firm that bids for ADB and WB projects. early on i already got the feeling that none of those consultants were really sincere in helping people get out of poverty. one glance at their compensation packages (yes, i’ve seen some project proposals with figures in them) was enough to convince me that it was all a farce.

and once again — i have to admit it — my father was right all along.

—

i cannot find much about joel abong, let alone the haunting photo, here in the Internet. except probably for the info about this guy who was, unfortunately, also named joel abong from cavite that google found in friendster, nothing was said about this sakada child.

or about the sakadas of the 80s for that matter. they are now forgotten.

but i will never forget that photo. that image will still haunt me. probably until i die.