For The Bohol Tribune
In This Our Journey
NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS
In a few days, I will turn 74. Let me share with you some thoughts on
the way to this personal milestone.
Specifically, let me pass on to you a few things I remember from this
journey, seven decades and still counting.
First, on the need to be action-oriented. It’s great to have a dream and to always talk
about it but in the final analysis, it’s what you do that counts. Having action
plans and carrying them out are vital for survival. Otherwise, we will end up daydreaming
our life away.
In college, I used to carry in my wallet a typewritten quotation from
a philosopher who says: “Philosophers
have interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change
it.” This bit of wisdom served as antidote to a pernicious tendency on my part to
intellectualize intent and purposes and to pursue them in seemingly endless
talk with friends and relatives.
The inability to act on some critical matters gave me so much remorse
in my younger days. Since my Grade 4 teacher, Miss Cruz, gifted me with a
Webster dictionary which opened up a whole new vast world for me in what I
thought then as the intellectually arid landscape of a copra-making village, I
never gave up reading anything. I voraciously read books and magazines , in
both English and vernacular, some of
them given by well-off friends. Until now, I see to it that I know the library or
book store in places where I lived or worked as refuge when I am bored or
depressed.
While reading had its obvious merits, it could lead to an analytical
but passive way of life. Opportunities pass by while you are left on the shore “contemplating
your navel,” as the old phrase puts it. While doing so with my navel, I had my girl
friend snatched under my watch by an action-oriented engineer while I was
focused more on reading and reciting to her the poems of Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Baudelaire
and Rimbaud, for instance, all my
favorites in my younger years.
Enough of poetry, I said. I was 19 and for three months, in fact the
whole summer term, I refused to touch any book. I joined eventually a college
fraternity and lost myself in action, which I interpreted at the time as
learning how to drink Tanduay, serenading girls on midnight at the women’s dorm
for which we were chased away by the dorm matron and carrying street signs and
parading them around the campus while singing the national anthem!
We ended up explaining things at college security and later at the student
counsellor’s office where we were given severe tongue lashing. So much for
mindless action! The journey to maturity is actually to learn to balance
life-affirming romanticism with restrained action as the classicists would have
it. The reluctant, indecisive Macbeth prepared us to appreciate the contrasts
in the character of the intellectual and the man of action, portrayed as lover
of life, in the popular movie turned into film, Zorba The Greek, during the
Sixties.
The onset of Marxism-inspired nationalist movement on the campus ended
our flirtation with agnosticism and the lively debate on whether God exists or
not with intense discussions on the real history of the Filipino people. The
evils of Feudalism, Bureaucrat-Capitalism and Imperialism were laid bare in
debates and became the subject of protests and discussions on the campus. Even
Art could be judged based on class analysis. You could be accused of being
burgis as against the prevailing proletarian politics of the period.
The whole campus became a cauldron of revolutionary politics and art. You
have to decide whether to join the Left and if you do so, you need to decide to
which faction you would like to belong. An exciting time indeed, but we were
growing old fast without getting anywhere in our initial goal of getting a
college degree and ended up being editor nonetheless of the alumni paper. My
qualification was that I was editor of the college paper for two years, founded
the first literary paper, Tangent, and won the much-coveted Creative Writer of
the Year Award bestowed by UP Los Banos itself.
Two years of serving as alumni paper editor , we were advised to leave
the campus to escape military spies and assume the post of literature teacher
in a provincial high school, a job we thoroughly enjoyed because we were given
the assignment to teach in both the upper section and the lowest section. I
realized that no matter how we screamed about the isms in the State-run university
and in the parliaments of the street, a large portion of the student population
in public schools, mostly children of the Proletariat, remained largely
insulated from the burning issues of the day which could affect their future.
I had a year of that exciting experience and left for Manila to look
for a job that would bring me nearer the hospital where my Sister was brought
for treatment. With the help of a friend, I landed a job as editor of a company
publication. Metro Manila was in turmoil during that period leading to the
declaration of Martial Law. I was just in the periphery opting to be adviser to
a group of UP students who, while subscribing to the national democratic
platform based on the struggle against the triad isms, preferred to use
moderate language in their protests.
I was happy with this task among persons sympathetic with the left but
choosing to be incognito and engaging in support activities such as running a
handicraft shop with part of the proceeds going to support some cultural groups
aligned with the protest movement. Then
prior to the declaration of martial law, in 1971, the writ of habeas corpus was
suspended which provided a legal basis for the arrest of individuals suspected
of being in the underground. My girl friend was among those arrested and jailed
during this period. I was advised by my friends to lie low with my DG
(discussion group) activities and to make arrangements that I could do my job outside
the office in putting out the monthly company publication.
I was advised by friends from the underground to get lost first,
resign from my job and started the risky business of hopping from one safe
house to another. I spent time in convents, remote islets, garage and stock
rooms of offices owned by close friends. Some journalist friends would assign
me articles to write while in hiding and got paid for it. This helped tide me
over those months jokingly termed NPA days, the acronym meaning No Permanent
Address. It was getting to be difficult to be mobile in what was termed “white
areas” or places in the city with relative concentration of State institutions
and the military.
I was again advised to get lost, but this time to join an armed unit
in the Sierra Madre but my task would be to handle discussions on Philippine
history. We were all young and it was quite an ordeal having to survive in a
small hut with basic provisions procured from the town. Somehow we discovered
the weaknesses of having us to be here in the midst of a Revolution for which
we were not prepared to participate in terms of warfare or of simple livelihood
skills. We saw very clearly during this time the Revolution was bound to fail.
I eventually fell sick and had to move out of this safe area in the
mountain. Back to a life of moving from place to place but, finally, the
military caught up with me and had to spend three months in solitary
confinement in a camp not far away from Manila. I was instructed to go back to my
old job at the Green Revolution office
at Nayong Pilipino where my movement was restricted. Only my Grandmother, Mother
and Sister were allowed to visit me. I slept on the floor of the Green
Revolution cottage and succeeded later to have a temporary house using what
used to be the exhibition booth of a province at the Nayong Pilipino complex. I
stayed here for eight years!
The most important thing which happened to me while in virtual
confinement at the Nayong Pilipino was my being part of the UNICEF-assisted
Country Programming for Children , the first exercise done in the country to
formulate a four-year child-focused program with the involvement of the
Government, NGOs, the private sector and faith-based organizations. Through
this exercise, I happened to know young people from NEDA and UNICEF and we
became members of the Technical Working Group for what is known as CPC 1.
At this point, I recall what Steve Jobs said in a famous commencement
address, that you could only connect the dots at hindsight, that you could only
establish the logic of having been in some past events when you look back and
see how previous engagements relate to what you do at the moment.
Our establishing the UNICEF-assisted Ilaw International Center in
Bool, Tagbilaran City in 1983 could not have been possible without my Green
Revolution experience in restricted task environment, my getting involved in
CPC 1, and our contributions to determining how community participation could
be articulated in a planning process in each program or project. The
methodology of having local government-community participation spelled in
detail in a social preparation process would not have been possible without our
involvement with all efforts by the Church, the NGOs and the Left in defining
such a process. Our being recruited to serve as community development
specialist in a UNDP project in 12 atoll countries would not have been possible
without UNICEF investing in my education which brought me to the Bangladesh
Academy for Rural Development and the University of Bradford with focus on
participatory rural development.
Our work in the country’s 8 poorest provinces under the Area-Based
Child Survival and Development (ABCSD) of UNICEF seemed on hindsight as a
precursor of what I would be called upon to do among disadvantaged households
and communities in 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Under several
UNDP-UNOPS projects. My experiences in all
these projects seemed to be a logical development which led to the formulation
of the Poverty Database and Monitoring System (PDMS), a pro-poor targeting
system and software developed over a ten-year period by our NGO, Bohol Local
Development Foundation, with technical assistance from a British IT expert,
Tony Irving, and several IT counterparts from Bohol. Without the advance
versions developed, there would be nothing to replicate in Timor Leste under
Habitat for Humanity International and in several countries, such as India,
Bangladesh and Bhutan under an EU-funded program.
As I approach my 74th year, I look back and wonder if the
past actions I took were all part of deliberate plans or, as in the case of earlier
misadvantures, something that resulted from just following what my heart
dictated, a series of emotional involvements that just happened to be
consistent in their objectives and seemingly preconceived strategies. Two weeks
ago, we were meeting with potential donors to the FARM It Works Balay Kahayag
(FITWBK) drug rehab center which our NGO helped establish in Bohol, and I was
asked by the representative how could we relate our mission for poverty
reduction and sustainable development to the current advocacy of helping
rehabilitate drug abuse victims.
I could only mumble a reply aware of what Steve Jobs said of being
able to connect the dots only after events happened. It will probably take
another 74 years for me to answer that question. Meanwhile, I dare you to l
look back and connect the dots in your life, an exciting way to celebrate life
during one’s birthday. #
NMP/01 April 2016/2.53 p.m.
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