Prodigal

GOING BACK TO THEIR ROOTS Students are now forced to do something against their want

FORMER MAYOR OF MAGPET, NORTH COTABATO, the late Rolando Pelonio, once challenged a graduating class of Magpet National High School to consider going back to their roots after they have completed their college degrees (that is, if they have stayed away from unwanted pregnancy and the Middle East), and, as much as possible, using these degrees for the benefit of the municipality. 

In an impassioned commencement speech delivered under a makeshift stage, the burly mayor reiterated these lines over and over again as if there was urgency at every pause, so much so that his equally burly voice resonates like a campaign ad, trying to convince an impressionable electorate.

The municipality was already feeling the effects of this new wave of disappearances with most of its resources, especially the graduating kind, are constantly being lured into thinking that there are greener pastures across the Kabacan river, away from the bucolic scenes of Magpet. 

Of course, the resurgence of graduates choosing to work abroad, to labor somewhere else and stay deliberately away from their homegrown ways has become a  trend, not only in Magpet, but in the whole abroad-induced, dollar-spirited Philippine workforce.

And it sounds so pathetic that most of these graduates are coaxed into believing that by taking a domestic view of a contemporary need, such as in choosing a teaching career over a caregiving contract outside of the country, that such a move is considered inferior. No wonder there are a lot more students cramping themselves in these short, vocational courses than going the distance of academic ones because it promises to deliver more goods and in so short a time. 

This, however, is how the system works now, and this system, if not considered cautiously, will eventually create a new kind of dilemma that would constipate the employment process in this country.

Although I still find it hard that most of those who have taken the road out of the country, the road normally traveled so far, are only doing it out of having no choice at all, that because of the unequal distribution of wealth, the proliferation of graft and malpractices in almost all Philippine offices and the presence of this unmitigated poverty across the land, that the mere act of sticking ones head across the border and into the firing lines of those Arab nations or the isolation of a freezing temperature in Canada, that an ordinary student, recently graduated, could actually make any difference at all.

But what can a graduate fresh out of college do? Out of necessity, out of taking a chance just to alleviate oneself from the calculating effects of scarcity and financial need, that he would be forced to suffer, so he can save enough money? 

It is almost messianic to think about it, that the sacrilegious nature of this system means that you can only be saved if you can actually leap, not of your faith, but from something familiar, such as your roots and your municipality, in order to give way to something foreign, such as your prestige and your portable equipment. Although other state colleges and universities are now offering business-related courses to somehow curb these incessant fleeing of manpower, even then the impact of this resource migration is trembling constantly in that burdened scales.

The choice still hangs precariously in the balance. In cases like these, we tend to blame, initially, the institutions that have the capacity to nurture these types of need, such as TESDA and other finishing schools that offers a fast and short way out of this root canal of giving back something for the community, when much of its culpability can only be confined within the framework of securing "easy money".

A study conducted just recently revealed that a number of parents are actually discouraging their children from pursuing a career in education because it somehow lags behind in the monetary ratings and instead they pampered them to take a closer look at these transient courses, even if it means wiping the shit out from that foreign ass, because out of that same ass the floodgates of heaven will pour out, straight down, from the revenues of Bangko Sentral to the avenues of every relative.

Why would I go back to my beloved municipality, when until now I’m still hearing the same old promises of the sun, the moon, the stars, the bridge, the basketball court, the road signs, the waiting shed and even that white elephant? Why would I go back to my Alma Mater, when I might be repeating the same old practices again of entering 5-6, ukay-ukay, lotto, and pyramiding all in front of my students? Why indeed would I go back to my hometown, when I might be trudging the same old padrino system, the same old paternal bigotry, and that same old political immunity again?

This probably comes close to why this country always feels slighted, almost to the point of inferiority complex, as it learns to fight its way through its social and economic concerns, because most, if not all, of our sensible and utilitarian resources, are not only getting out of the kitchen, but all the way through outside the equatorial right of the archipelago. 

What remains in us are “con artists”, those who would rather stay and improvise a way through either by means of simply trying to survive the rising cost of electricity bills or by means of simply trying to mock us with fluctuating power lines simply because the whole nation is in dearth of sensible and utilitarian people to lodge a complaint and protest. It seems there is a grand scheme to always entice the impressionable and the ambitious to go out of the country or go somewhere else, so that the impregnable and the equally ambitious can move on, as always, into a smooth transition from democracy to a dictatorship?

But I still think that the late mayor’s plea is as urgent now as it was then. Although it is quite imposing to come home from abroad with all the signature items attached to your body, the reality remains that no matter how hard you earned your money and your newly-acquired pomp, your country is tragically losing its money and its pomp faster than your earnings and enhancements in life could. 

It is at the expense of your country that you were able to buy a piece of land, put up a nice house, and have an even nicer reputation, with all due respects to the struggles you have gone through away from home. But that is another story. 

I just hope that this singular act of prodigality will have its own grip in saving the community where it belonged, and where it should benefit from one of its own. Only with a passionate sense of commitment and service that a homegrown talent can actually face the challenges put up by the community he once breathed, grew up, and interacted with.

The disparity between choosing to go back and learning to move on is just a matter of having that indispensable transparency of how things work, especially in having a system that is open to both criticism and change, so as not to confuse the returning alumnus as far as his standing and his would-be contributions to the community are concerned. As much as we painstakingly recruit him back to the fold and yet we remain staunch in our ill-tempered preservation of unwanted interests amid face value politics, that these graduates will, in no time, pack their bags, leave the country and never to return again.

Like when a native is estranged in his own land, chances are, the estrangement comes as an annulment: first, its passiveness to its relationship with the community; then, its promiscuity apart from any domestic touch; and lastly, its breaking point from all attachments, it's home.