Blog Action Day: Look at the Positive

Here's my 2 cents worth to Blog Action Day 2008.

All we see are sugarcane everywhere. We are in Negros, sugarcane country, and we are driving along a two-lane highway, one lane going north, the other going south. I'm hitching a ride with an uncle and his wife and we're heading to my grandmothers' wake. We had a pleasant ride for some twenty minutes or so when my uncle suddenly calls my aunt's attention.

"Look at that, oh."
"Yeah. That's why I want to bring the kids here again."

I squirm in my seat, uncomfortable that I get to be the witness of this conversation. I look ahead and see what they see, "karga-tapas" guys or sugarcane field workers cutting and cleaning the sugarcane and loading them in batches on a waiting truck. This part of harvesting sugarcane is a very labor-intensive process and there could be several people working on a portion of a field at one time. Here, in front of us, are several people on each side of the , highway, working the field and clearing out patches in a (I'm sure) systematic manner here and there.

"You see, Rizza, sometimes we forget." My aunt tells me.

Maybe... Sometimes we forget what other people's lives are like, we forget what we're working for.

At another time, while traveling on the same stretch of highway, this same aunt tells me that she likes Filipino houses. Specifically, the houses and huts of the ordinary people. She says "they're just simple, from simple and native materials, but they have a certain grace to them." I wanted to grin so wide at that point, if I just could.

The story does not always have to be so grim and it doesn't always have to be about blaming someone. There are those who might live in poverty or in the edges of poverty, yet who still have a certain grace in the way they live. In our travels, let's invite everyone to look at the positive side of things.