Wednesday, February 23, 2011

CYCLE OF LIFE

Miss-UNDERSTOOD, Miss-GUIDED

Cycle of Life

   Poverty is not only limited now to lack of basic needs such as Food, Shelter and Clothing. This time, it includes lack of healthcare, clean water, education and nutrition. The human needs is also evolving just like technology. Human mind is so intelligent, a gadget so new could be obsolete in just a few days with a better, sronger and faster upgrade. Philippines has 93 million more or less in population and majority of the population is under the poverty line. Where the definition of poverty has a lot of meaning from different individuals, scholars or organization, one thing is sure, poverty do not satisfies an individual and occurs in all countries.

  Poverty is one big problem of any society. Young as early as days old can feel this and is obvious for the things surrounding him. For every adult, it's a nightmare, like a dream without hope, darkness around, misery or even as simply like a dizziness with only faith and no cure. The blaming game is just a natural act but the result is nonetheless the same. Filipino family loves to be with their children. Dependent children to their parents is not an issue unlike in western countries. There is nothing wrong in love. What is wrong is a lack of knowledge due to poverty and the capacity to think the difference between right and wrong.

 Luningning Bere is dark with short black flip away hair. She looks stronger than any housekeeper because of her masculine body built, harsh voice and 140 pounds in body mass weight. She is forty years old from  Barangay Basiad, Sta Elena, Camarinez Norte who is Elementary graduate with nine siblings. Her mother is a housewife while the father is a fisherman same as her husband. She have Nine Children too ages are 24,22,19,16,14,13,12,10 and 1 yr old. Her reason why applying as a housekeeper is to help her husband to buy new “lambat” because from her, if the “lambat” is new, it catches more fishes. While in Camarinez Norte, she was helping her husband by way of selling the fishes , “nilalako sa bahay bahay”.

   Her husband  who is forty four years old is also an elementary graduate, she married Luningning when she was still sixteen years old and she said, she was in love. The situation of her husband parents are the same as her parents. The mother is a housewife while the father is a farmer. As a fisherman, average income per day is 200.00 pesos. Luningning doesn’t have any regrets for having nine children and she stopped because her doctor told her that “manipis na ang bahay bata” so she needs to stop giving birth. They don’t use any condoms and pills because of her varicose veins, that’s what her doctor told her. As a housekeeper, her monthly salary is 2,500.00 pesos, she left all her children to her mother to take care with a consent of her husband. Two of her children are married already and lives with their husband.  The means of living of her son in laws are also fishing and her daughters are also a stay home wife. Three of her children graduated in high school. She practice her rights to vote last May 2010 election, she voted for Pnoy for president, only Mirriam Santiago for senator and for vice president, she don’t remember.

   This is the cycle of life which when I attended the planning session at Philippines for center and population development (PCPD) was one of the topic and facts. It is very hard to break the cycle because of population. Usually whatever is the work of the parents, possible that will be the work also of the children. With nine children and the source of income is very limited, what quality of life do you think Luningning can give to her love ones? She said she is happy. Does happiness is enough?. 

   With poverty all arond the world not only in the philippines, with so much wealth, financial stability and great minds from first class countries, does distribution is the problem? For every change there is resistance and culture in the philippines will be the same in this lifetime. With the majority of the population under the poverty line, political will reform might be the answer. With the executive power and connections with different organizations, utopia can be achieve if not now, one step at a time in the future. The next generation will benefit on this. there might not have one single "Luningning" again with nine kids and poor, which her name could be translated in english as "ray of light."

1 comment:

  1. I love this article. Sana nababasa rin ito ng ating mga kababayan na walang totally internet access para matulungan natin silang maimulat ang kanilang mga kaisapan na malaman ang halaga ng edukasyon sa isang tao. Para mahadlangan ang tinatawag na 'life cycle ng kahirapan' ng sagayon unti-unting mag karoon ng pagbabago sa bawat pamilya ng mamamayang pilipino.

    xx

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