“Then and now, it is still the poor who bear the brunt.” One recalls a Grade One teacher who checked why a child was crouching below her desk. She didn’t want us to see her eat her breakfast of green papaya soaked in salt and vinegar.After two years of teaching high school in Dinagat Island I decided to go back to Cebu to find another job nearer my mother and siblings. We lost our father two years before in a political murder in Zamboanga del Sur where we were living at the time. We were settled with our grandfather in Cebu when I found the teaching job in Surigao.
When one year passed and me still jobless I enrolled in an electronics course at the former Cebu School of Arts and Trades. I had to scrimp on everything because for my expenses I relied on my mother, a public school teacher, and my grandfather who was a small-town councilor.
During lunchtime I would seek out a vacant room. I would go to a corner, arrange an armchair to face the wall, and proceed to arrange my food on the arm of the chair. The food which I prepared was almost always corn, fried sayote, and soup from the morning's inun-unan.
The first time I did that ritual I heard, halfway through my poor baon, noises from behind. When I turned to find out, I saw three other poor students arranging their food on the armchairs. Each was facing the other corners of the classroom. Great company!
I presume they are now better off than I am since I had a little hard time getting a good job after leaving CSAT while many of my classmates immediately made it to the big companies which were then sprouting up in the new Mactan Export Processing Zone.
