Two smiles and a sigh on a Saburday night

I listened to the discussion of municipal and barangay officials from Sulu and Tawi-Tawi who had come to study successful coastal resource management initiatives in Cebu. They were arguing over the sharing of income from use of marine protected areas (i.e., snorkelling in Hilutongan), an example of nature-based tourism. Some batted for more share going to barangay LGUs than to the municipal government; others were pushing for more benefits going to peoples' organizations. They also had a lot to say over the roles of barangay, municipal and provincial LGUs. I smiled. Given the impassioned discourse, who would have thought that two months ago, a number of the participants wanted nothing to do with the protection, conservation, rehabilitation, sustainable use and management of their coastal resources?

Reading the news I sighed at the suicide of Mariannet Amper, a 12 year old girl from Davao who took her life out of despair over her family's poverty. She wrote her wishes down (jobs for her parents, a school bag and a bike) but did not send them to the "Wish ko Lang" television program. TV host Vicky Morales said it right, if only government had allocated its budget better, then perhaps there wouldn't be as many people turning to mass media for respite. The fact that poor Filipinos now regard and flock to television programs ("Wowowee"is another example) as if these are government social welfare programs/agencies is a damning indictment of government's deplorable performance in service delivery. And media could also be culpable for encouraging this type of response. There was an article last week laying part of the blame on the seeming Filipino apathy to large scale graft and corruption right on the doorstep of media: by not being rigorous in their analysis, etc. I wonder if the same connection can be made with the TV shows that prey on the economic vulnerability of people. Look at "Wowowee;" it pretends to help people in need and yet it degrades them by forcing them to go through hoops and perform ridiculous antics on camera. In this case, media seems to have shirked from its role of helping the poor understand why there is mass poverty and what needs to be done to address it, now. I think it was a local social realist painter who coined the term "kinaka-wowowee" -- a play at "kinakawawa." The poor have become pawns in the the ratings war among the networks.

Heading back I looked up and saw Orion, Sirius, Procyon, Taurus and Gemini: my star guides. I smiled. Perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps I am not that lost. There might be long stretches of terra incognita and more spaces marked "here there be monsters" within me, but my sky markers remain constant. Tonight I'll go skywalking.