No one in my family ever reached, let alone finished college. I am the only one in the family who finished my studies at the university of higher learning. In high school, I remained determined as ever to finish, notwithstanding the fact that life was harsh, the duties mundane - including running errands and performing as the erstwhile bookkeeper of the Mother Superior, Mother Johanna Vercruysee, to whom I had to always stay close by, as she would watch me like a hawk. I was practically required to park at a small table behind her office. I was resolved, that by hook or by crook, to finish my high school studies. Eventually I worked all over again to finish my studies at the university.
Lots of hard work, sacrifice and determination (uray-ac la a nabisbisinan piman ta awan met ti cabagiak a mayat a tumulong wenno macatulong caniac); I did it all because first and foremost I wanted to get out of poverty.
As I had been telling you, Manang Pat, myself, our youngest brother and sister were very young when we were orphaned. I first met my Mother Superior employer in Paco, Manila (she interviewed me and I answered her in a Carabao English telling her that I was an honor student and the first in Religion when I graduated in grade 6 and also told her that I really wanted to go to high school). A year later when she was assigned to be the Mother Superior in charge at St Augustine School in Tagudin she looked me up, and having found me, I quickly became her personal Girl Friday, her slave girl named Faustina.
Manang Pat at 15 years old was working at that same convent in Paco at the time. Not for long she found another job that gave her the nights off. She spent those free nights wisely, attending high school and earning herself a high school diploma. She eventually and fortunately found a very good Canadian Diplomat employer who helped her migrate to Canada. Manang Pat is our family pioneer who migrated to Canada and after not even seven months later I followed as a result of her petitioning me. Our youngest sister Delia followed me a year later and the rest is history. We thank our Manang Pat for her decisiveness, level-headedness and good heart.
I landed as an immigrant in Canada, couldn’t get a job teaching high school because I needed to study for a year at a Teacher’s College first in order to get certified to teach. But for another reason, and even though teaching was my first love, I had to find work right away to pay off my "fly now pay later" debt to the Canadian International Airline that flew me here. I found a job at the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada (USC - a non-denominational organization here in Ottawa that helps orphan kids, poor families, etc. all over the world, a subsidiary of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Having been orphaned at an early age, it was rather ironic that I would find work in the Foster Parent Plan Division of that organization and be a parent to orphan kids myself. Manang Pat also worked there at USC and our youngest sister, Delia still to this day works there too (she’ll be with them at USC for 30 years in 2 years).
My work schedule was heavy but at nights I continued my studies at the Technical College and on Saturdays for my Computer Science Degree. Three years and many hard-studying sleepless nights later, I became a Canadian citizen and that's when I was hired to work first as a Computer operator, then as a programmer and moved up - up from there at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Before I was accepted, my background in the Philippines was thoroughly investigated for a "Special Activity Clearance" (SAC). That was the time when Manong Rudy Lucero (who worked with the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation [NBI] told my folks about me). My folks thought I was in trouble because Manong Rudy did not bother to explain to them why I was being investigated.
I married late at 30. My chances of child bearing were well over by then because not only did I get busy establishing myself but also studying and working for my career. Add to those responsibilities the never ending aid and assistance I was expected to render for my family members back home – which I assiduously did. I helped send 18 nephews and nieces from four different families (two brothers and two sisters) to school. Many graduated from St Augustine School (SAS) and a few at Tagudin High School (TGHS) while some of them did not finish because school work was just too hard for them. I suspect that they did not have the academic skills, the acumen and the predisposition to hard work to finish school.
In hindsight I don’t totally understand why these kids, given the assistance they have been given could not persevere to finish their schooling. I am certain they never had to work as hard as I did, never had to walk to and from school as they always had tricycles or jeepneys to ride. They had much more than I had when I was going to school. Not a single one of them ever attended or finished college. A few started college but could not study hard enough (sayang laeng ti cuarta) to continue and to successfully graduate.
After I had been in Canada for only a few years, I had built two concrete houses for my two brothers and their families because when I left the Philippines they had only a "calapaw," a shack that was marmarpuog over their heads. One of the houses (my younger brother's) where I used to stay with a room reserved for me every time I went home burned down in 2006. What a terrible misfortune. Malas a biag! For this brother, I supported his five children because they lost their mother when they were all very young by a hit and run Partas bus in 1998 diay latta batog ti balayda a mismo. I adopted the 2nd eldest (a baby girl in 1983), brought her to Canada and she is the only one who is successful among all those cousins having earned a degree from Ottawa University, with a major in Economics, and is now independent and working in Montreal, Quebec as an Accountant Manager of a big company. I am so proud for her accomplishment. The thing that sort of disappoints me is that she never lifts a hand to help her siblings back home. She claims she does not know them even though I brought her home to be with them when she was yet young. She is happy with the fact that she had a good life growing up in Canada. I believe that she has totally forgotten that when she was 12 or 14 years old I brought her home so she could see the real hard life back home where she would have grown up – back where her siblings have to make a living.
We helped a few of those very same nieces whom we helped attend school to immigrate here in Canada. Some of them married young and with their own families now. My sisters and I expected that they would in turn help their families back home but how could they? They themselves are only working menial jobs bringing in minimum wages. I tried to encourage them to go back to school when they first arrived in Canada but they would not listen. In hindsight, they did not listen to us then when they were attending high school back in the Philippines, why should they listen to us now?
So now you can see more clearly what my life has been and continues to be. Until now I am still saddled with helping my family and a few non-immediate family members because they are very poor and don’t have any work to support themselves nor their families. Most of all there are these four little kids who were left behind by their 22-year old father who was addicted to shabu and who eventually committed suicide. This 22-year old was one of the those whom I had been paying in 2005 - 2006 to help out at my farm in Rosario but he never showed up for work in the farm according to his two cousins. He just took the money I paid without ever earning it and unbeknownst to me spent all that money for illicit drugs to feed his shabu addiction.
Brian and I would love nothing more than to help SAS Ai with the scholarship awards but at this time we cannot with a clear conscience sponsor a scholar right now. We will as soon as those two who are in college whom we are currently helping will finish (if I were still alive – but if not I will make sure that I will put one in my will). I have an account in the Philippines for my foundation.
There are times when I question God why I have had to go through so many difficult times. God has been good, that is for sure. He has taken good care of me and I am grateful. But why am I always being asked to help with money matters, money and more money by these members of my family.
I thought the property I bought in Rosario would serve as a gift for them to work for their own livelihood, thinking that I won't have to give them anymore money, or at least minimize their incessant begging for money. Would you believe that only three nephews wanted to work there? And now there is only one because the other two died. But how about the others? Do you think that they may want to earn their wages? That would be the ethical thing to do?
I don't have a child of my own. But am I being punished for not having a child of my own but being pestered incessantly by all these people who are asking for my help? I am not by any stretch of the imagination a rich and wealthy person? I ask myself sometimes if there is any justice in any of this? I ask God to have mercy on me and to not punish me for thinking such thoughts and for asking.
Lots of hard work, sacrifice and determination (uray-ac la a nabisbisinan piman ta awan met ti cabagiak a mayat a tumulong wenno macatulong caniac); I did it all because first and foremost I wanted to get out of poverty.
As I had been telling you, Manang Pat, myself, our youngest brother and sister were very young when we were orphaned. I first met my Mother Superior employer in Paco, Manila (she interviewed me and I answered her in a Carabao English telling her that I was an honor student and the first in Religion when I graduated in grade 6 and also told her that I really wanted to go to high school). A year later when she was assigned to be the Mother Superior in charge at St Augustine School in Tagudin she looked me up, and having found me, I quickly became her personal Girl Friday, her slave girl named Faustina.
Manang Pat at 15 years old was working at that same convent in Paco at the time. Not for long she found another job that gave her the nights off. She spent those free nights wisely, attending high school and earning herself a high school diploma. She eventually and fortunately found a very good Canadian Diplomat employer who helped her migrate to Canada. Manang Pat is our family pioneer who migrated to Canada and after not even seven months later I followed as a result of her petitioning me. Our youngest sister Delia followed me a year later and the rest is history. We thank our Manang Pat for her decisiveness, level-headedness and good heart.
I landed as an immigrant in Canada, couldn’t get a job teaching high school because I needed to study for a year at a Teacher’s College first in order to get certified to teach. But for another reason, and even though teaching was my first love, I had to find work right away to pay off my "fly now pay later" debt to the Canadian International Airline that flew me here. I found a job at the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada (USC - a non-denominational organization here in Ottawa that helps orphan kids, poor families, etc. all over the world, a subsidiary of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Having been orphaned at an early age, it was rather ironic that I would find work in the Foster Parent Plan Division of that organization and be a parent to orphan kids myself. Manang Pat also worked there at USC and our youngest sister, Delia still to this day works there too (she’ll be with them at USC for 30 years in 2 years).
My work schedule was heavy but at nights I continued my studies at the Technical College and on Saturdays for my Computer Science Degree. Three years and many hard-studying sleepless nights later, I became a Canadian citizen and that's when I was hired to work first as a Computer operator, then as a programmer and moved up - up from there at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Before I was accepted, my background in the Philippines was thoroughly investigated for a "Special Activity Clearance" (SAC). That was the time when Manong Rudy Lucero (who worked with the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation [NBI] told my folks about me). My folks thought I was in trouble because Manong Rudy did not bother to explain to them why I was being investigated.
I married late at 30. My chances of child bearing were well over by then because not only did I get busy establishing myself but also studying and working for my career. Add to those responsibilities the never ending aid and assistance I was expected to render for my family members back home – which I assiduously did. I helped send 18 nephews and nieces from four different families (two brothers and two sisters) to school. Many graduated from St Augustine School (SAS) and a few at Tagudin High School (TGHS) while some of them did not finish because school work was just too hard for them. I suspect that they did not have the academic skills, the acumen and the predisposition to hard work to finish school.
In hindsight I don’t totally understand why these kids, given the assistance they have been given could not persevere to finish their schooling. I am certain they never had to work as hard as I did, never had to walk to and from school as they always had tricycles or jeepneys to ride. They had much more than I had when I was going to school. Not a single one of them ever attended or finished college. A few started college but could not study hard enough (sayang laeng ti cuarta) to continue and to successfully graduate.
After I had been in Canada for only a few years, I had built two concrete houses for my two brothers and their families because when I left the Philippines they had only a "calapaw," a shack that was marmarpuog over their heads. One of the houses (my younger brother's) where I used to stay with a room reserved for me every time I went home burned down in 2006. What a terrible misfortune. Malas a biag! For this brother, I supported his five children because they lost their mother when they were all very young by a hit and run Partas bus in 1998 diay latta batog ti balayda a mismo. I adopted the 2nd eldest (a baby girl in 1983), brought her to Canada and she is the only one who is successful among all those cousins having earned a degree from Ottawa University, with a major in Economics, and is now independent and working in Montreal, Quebec as an Accountant Manager of a big company. I am so proud for her accomplishment. The thing that sort of disappoints me is that she never lifts a hand to help her siblings back home. She claims she does not know them even though I brought her home to be with them when she was yet young. She is happy with the fact that she had a good life growing up in Canada. I believe that she has totally forgotten that when she was 12 or 14 years old I brought her home so she could see the real hard life back home where she would have grown up – back where her siblings have to make a living.
We helped a few of those very same nieces whom we helped attend school to immigrate here in Canada. Some of them married young and with their own families now. My sisters and I expected that they would in turn help their families back home but how could they? They themselves are only working menial jobs bringing in minimum wages. I tried to encourage them to go back to school when they first arrived in Canada but they would not listen. In hindsight, they did not listen to us then when they were attending high school back in the Philippines, why should they listen to us now?
So now you can see more clearly what my life has been and continues to be. Until now I am still saddled with helping my family and a few non-immediate family members because they are very poor and don’t have any work to support themselves nor their families. Most of all there are these four little kids who were left behind by their 22-year old father who was addicted to shabu and who eventually committed suicide. This 22-year old was one of the those whom I had been paying in 2005 - 2006 to help out at my farm in Rosario but he never showed up for work in the farm according to his two cousins. He just took the money I paid without ever earning it and unbeknownst to me spent all that money for illicit drugs to feed his shabu addiction.
Brian and I would love nothing more than to help SAS Ai with the scholarship awards but at this time we cannot with a clear conscience sponsor a scholar right now. We will as soon as those two who are in college whom we are currently helping will finish (if I were still alive – but if not I will make sure that I will put one in my will). I have an account in the Philippines for my foundation.
There are times when I question God why I have had to go through so many difficult times. God has been good, that is for sure. He has taken good care of me and I am grateful. But why am I always being asked to help with money matters, money and more money by these members of my family.
I thought the property I bought in Rosario would serve as a gift for them to work for their own livelihood, thinking that I won't have to give them anymore money, or at least minimize their incessant begging for money. Would you believe that only three nephews wanted to work there? And now there is only one because the other two died. But how about the others? Do you think that they may want to earn their wages? That would be the ethical thing to do?
I don't have a child of my own. But am I being punished for not having a child of my own but being pestered incessantly by all these people who are asking for my help? I am not by any stretch of the imagination a rich and wealthy person? I ask myself sometimes if there is any justice in any of this? I ask God to have mercy on me and to not punish me for thinking such thoughts and for asking.
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