THE STORY OF FIVE MONTHS - A PERSPECTIVE AFTER 31 YEARS (8)

CHAPTER 8

I Walked Miles for a Dream

In so short a time, we had become part of the community. We had learned to speak a little of their language. The children would laugh at us if we mispronounce the words. We had carried babies and children in our arms and shoulders. The girls became mother confessors. The young lads would pop out from the window of the clinic and would say hello. Some would sheepishly come near me and tell me about boy things. I could just laugh. 

At girl’s front, the female doctors had their "girl" talks. They whisper and laugh together. During siesta hours they were taught to sing native songs. But what caught me were songs about the need for war and eventually I heard them humming the song “Internazionale”. Unknowingly, the girls were being taught revolutionary songs and learning that, I had to admonish them because we might be branded although I think we had been branded from the start. 

At the cooking front, Rizel took a large cookie can and converted it into an oven. Soon we were making bread for our consumption. The banana bread we did was awesome. Then as we are invited into different celebrations, we were given a share of our meat viand. We preserve them using soy, salt and sugar and put it above the cooking place. The heat and smoke will preserve our meat. Sometimes, we dry our meat under the sun. We either had sun-baked "tapa" or smoke -filled tapa. We have to adapt to the absence of electricity. 

We had our continuing health care training. We presented to them herbal medications that had medicinal properties. We taught them how to make calamansi-ginger-tamarind cough syrup. Then we taught them how to make ointments for the herbs with known medicinal properties on the skin. And lastly, we introduced soap making by incorporating the herbs in the soap. We also taught them First Aid and how to form Emergency Response Teams. And most importantly, teaching them the danger signs of diseases. 

Some medicinal plants that were made into soap for various uses - guava as antibacterial and cleansing agent; Acapulko as an antifungal agent and tomato as a soothing agent for the skin. 

Our daily lives were peppered with the goodness of the people of Gawaan and the outlying areas. I was invited to talk to the graduating class on career choices. Knowing fully-well that I am talking to folks in the mountain areas, I was probably expected to talk about careers concerning the land. Besides the school was the Balbalan Agro-Industrial School. But instead I told them of a story. 

“The story was that of a young boy who once wrote he wants to become a doctor as his ambition in life. When the teacher read what he wrote, he called the boy and told the boy that when you dream, dream practical. Dream something within your reach. Dreaming to be a doctor will just be a fantasy. The young boy fully grasped what the teacher was saying. So in the next years that came, he just wrote, I want to be somebody. When this young boy graduated from high school, he sought to enter the best school in the country. His mother said, if you will enter that school I may never send you to college. But this young man persisted. He passed the entrance examinations, he passed a scholarship that gave him full tuition fee, books, allowances and miscellaneous. He was admitted into a scholarship to the course BS Biology. Probably you do know what I am pointing out. BS Biology is a pre-medical course. And when he finished the course, he was on top of his class. His scholarship continued until the College of Medicine. Was it destiny? 

To some it is destiny. But for me it was through LFHH. It is because there are little things that we do not see.

  1. Love. Love for becoming a doctor. Love for the sciences. Love for humanity. Love for his parent. Love for what you are doing. If you do not love people, you will never become a good doctor. It is in the patients where your power emanates. You treat them and they give you their whole being not only their physical body. 

2.      Faith. Faith in yourself. Faith in the people who loves you. Faith in the people who have faith in you. And most of all, faith in God. In every undertaking. In every choice you make, have faith in Him. 

3.      Hope. Hope is an optimistic attitude of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes related to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large. Hope is positive. We may fail today but since there is hope, we yearn for a better tomorrow. 

4.      Honor. We must live with honor. Do not forget the people whom you think you have given honor to. For they should be the ones to be honor. The fifth commandment says Honor thy Father and thy Mother. We should do just that. Parents sacrifice a lot for their children. I have known parents who persevere to good of their children. Look back and honor your educators for they have molded you part of what you have become.  

And lastly, study. Study the people you looked up to. How they had become what they are now. And you will find that it is not destiny that brought them there. It is Love, Faith, Hope and Honor.”

I saw radiance in the faces of the students. I saw tears welling up on the eyes of the teachers. I diverged from my talk it’s because in the little time I had been there, I had heard of stories triumphs amidst sacrifices, failures, pain, and bitterness. They led simple lives, but we are human after all going through the same processes of human emotions.

Note:

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