LAST month ended on a grand finale
with the celebration of the fiesta of
the Sto. Niqo de Tacloban. There was
a whole week of revelry, musical
presentations and the rituals of the Balyu-an and the Pintados.
Many Taclobanons came back for family reunions and renewal
of friendship ties.
Some members of my clan came home for a few days and
brought me great joy, especially because I was no longer
bothered with having to stay up late at night, cooking and
baking, and on fiesta day, doing all the endless preparations for
relatives and friends. These days, everything is so much easy
with catering services, fast food centers, and many children and
grandchildren pooling their resources. I am always just an
honored guest.
This happy time, however, was marred by the death of two
young persons, friends of my children. I knew them because
their parents were our friends.
One of them, a young dentist with a thriving practice and high
hopes of moving abroad, died suddenly. His whole family had
planned for a grand family reunion, so some of them had already
arrived before he died. The burial was set for July 1, a day after
the reunion.
So the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
But on June 30, the Seqor Sto. Niqo decided to touch a dear
friend of mine who was in the hospital, ''terminally ill'' it seemed.
I knew she had been fighting the Big C for several years and
had seen her or heard of her going places, especially to Sunday
Mass, looking healthy, beautiful and glowing as ever and
walking straight and firm. It was as if she had already won the
fight.
But we know what remissions are. On the feast day, the Sto.
Niqo must have taken a detour or stepped down from his
carriage, and went to her room to touch her. That night, the
miracle took place and the block in her intestine for which no
surgical intervention could be made anymore seemed to have
just dissipated into nothingness, leaving my friend very much
relieved.
The next day, she was allowed to leave the hospital. No more
dextrose bottles or whatever was necessary. Though still weak,
she can eat, walk slowly about the house, and talk and laugh in
that inimitable way which has never changed, even when she
was in her hospital bed. The healing was a miracle.
Each of us, too, is touched somehow in one way or another, that
is, if we believe in miracles. I do, and this is why I have so much
good news of this and that in Leyte.
Every Leyteqo, who is at least 40 years old, remembers that
since the '70s, June and July were always special because the
town fiesta is followed by the birthday on July 2 of the former
first lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos. This date saw the
launching of the nutrition program, the establishment of the
University of the Philippines in Tacloban, and the inauguration
of the People's Center and Library and the Sto. Niqo Shrine.
These have helped develop Leyte into a tourist destination.
We have benefited in some ways from all these. Today, Ms
Marcos is back in the country. Her friends in Leyte are still a
legion as shown by her election as congressman of the first
district in 1995.
July also saw the launching of the population program. July 11
was World Population Day, so I looked into the population
situation in Leyte, especially because the case of Ginger Spice
Geri Halliwell has been brought to my consciousness by my two
granddaughters who clip anything about their Spice idols.
When I asked them what they feel about Halliwell's new mission
of going worldwide to speak for women's rights, especially her
right over her body, they answered, ''No big deal.''
There was good news, however, from our director of population,
Leo Rama. In a phone interview, he said he could not give me
the exact statistics right then. But I told him that I believed more
in the science of approximation, so he said that in Leyte, the rate
of population growth is lower than the national figure of 2.3
percent.
We have only a 1.1-percent population growth rate in Leyte,
although he said this was not quite significant because we were
an out-migration area. Leyte's population is 1.4 million and the
1.1-percent growth figure still means a lot of bodies being added
daily.
Asked about the success of our information-education and
outreach programs, he said the rural folk accept the advocacy of
not marrying too young and not having many children. But
somehow, in practice, it is not followed.
I suggested that the act of acceptance is an intellectual one, but
when it comes to mating, nature just takes it course.
I reminded him of what the English essayist Francis Bacon said
that in hard times, when people were jobless and had no money,
there was always an increase in population. Let us be thankful
then for little blessings.
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