On government and the poor

I had a thought-provoking and a long lunch with two beautiful fellow educators a few days ago. Jhanina and Dawn are new in the office. They accompany one another during the break hours but they like to be on their own when they are in trying times of paper deadlines. Over lunch, I couldn’t help but just watch and listen to them talking about their anthropological observations in Filipino people and in our government. Dawn is just my age while Jhanina is five years younger than us. They are close friends and I love watching them how they try to contradict each other’s ideas.

Dawn’s sister is working in government medical services. She agreed that there are really many things not good in our politics. She believes that the Philippine government is not totally a foolish one for not giving good services, especially in reaching out to the poor based on her sister’s experiences when going to urban places in Cebu City. They have gone to many barangays to supervise a monthly 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program), a program of the Philippine government under the DSWD in order to help eradicate extreme poverty in the Philippines by investing in health and education according to its objective. The team will not promptly give the allocated budget to the registered members. To instill in them the idea of progress, they would also educate the family about financial literacy, small business, and agriculture, weighing of newborn children, family planning, parenthood seminar for those who are in early pregnancy, to mention a few. The sad thing is when they come back for a visit and follow up the next month there seems to be no change or development to most 4Ps beneficiaries. Some parents chose to buy new toys for their children, new trending clothes, gadgets, furniture, and other material things which are very far from their basic needs. In my mind, maybe those families depend on the monthly budget from the government that’s why they don’t fear losing money because they have something good to wait for the following month.

Some family also decline the offer of small business and agriculture because it takes sacrifice and time. For them, they cannot run a small sari-sari store; they might just use the earnings for daily consumption. Some also refuse the idea of planting vegetable plants and seeds because they don’t have enough space at home. They don’t even have backyards. Some teenage parents are also not responsible enough to bring their children to a barangay clinic for a free health check-up. No wonder maybe that’s one of the reasons why there are malnourished children. There are also some parents who, although they are at their right age, are not be serious about family planning. They will only laugh when they are asked if they can still feed and send the sixth child in the family to school.

Dawn said she thinks we cannot blame the whole poverty issue on our government. Many of the poor Filipinos can’t even be so serious about making a change in themselves first because they want immediate money on hand. That is all they know.

“Our local government has truly done its part in reaching out to the poor through 4Ps and other free services and consultations. There are just many poor Filipinos in different barangays who choose not to change for the good of themselves. It’s their choice,” Dawn said.

I couldn't believe Dawn had thought about this. I rarely saw her talk much in the office. But listening to her and her sister’s story made me think of my neighbors and relatives in the barangay where I live. There are lots of them and I’m a bit afraid their family is growing.

Jhanina rebutted by sharing some theories and discussions from her masteral class in Social Science. She said “We cannot also blame the whole poverty on the poor citizens. Their kind of thinking and their way of living is wired for survival alone. If we are to compare a middle class’ and a lower class’ way of thinking, much to say, they work differently. The middle class perhaps only thinks how to pursue a career and passion, live a decent and beautiful lifestyle, appreciate different arts, cultures, and go travel, and many more. While the lower class perhaps thinks only how to survive a day: where to go and earn money, what to do to earn money, how to celebrate even in a small amount of money and the common one is how to have instant money to pause for once from the ticking clock of poverty.”

Jhanina recalled the study about the Sentinelese. This is the indigenous people who inhabit the North Sentinel Island in India. This tribe is different from the other indigenous group. They would refuse any interaction from the outside world. They are even hostile and would kill anyone who landed on the island. For her "the mindset of some poor Filipinos can be compared like the Sentinelese’. They have their own world to rotate what they used to know in order to live. They are afraid, unwelcoming, and close-minded to any alien way that would change their living. However, lucky are those who have escaped from this."

Our way of thinking is also affected by social division. I remember my student Garfield in his reflection paper saying “Being rich is not a sin nor wrong; it’s not my fault neither to be able to get what I want. I was born privileged to have many things. Only that I just feel obligated to share what I have to the unprivileged people in society.”

I asked Jhanina if it’s wrong too for the poor Filipinos to think in a way they know. She was hesitant to say that what makes it wrong is if the poor Filipinos won’t strive for the better. She said that this is an interesting topic to study. I’ll have a better answer soon.

Edmer John Caballes

Cebu City