BAGUIO CITY – More than 30 blind persons, some of them children, were able to take part in the Sunday festivity at Session Road playing chess, belting out songs and even get to play like small kids.
The third leg of the month-long, seven-event “Silahis ng Pasko” (SnP) on Dec. 15 allowed blind people, as young as seven and as old as 60, to be the center of attention as they get to have a part of the weekly festivity at the city’s, if not the country’s, most popular road.
Some 30 blind people through the City Social Welfare Development Office (DSWD) got to parade their talents in a song contest like 16-year-old high schooler Kyle Zeika Dayami who belted out a Taylor Swift tune with a guitar in hand to the delight of the crowd.
Pretty and confident, she handled well the notes of the popular American pop singer.
The amiable high schooler from the Mount Carmel Montessori School here topped the singing competition for kiddies which had six competitors, some of them she gamely accompanied with her guitar.
“I’m just so enjoying it,” she said in her shrill voice after also joining the walkathon for the blind that was originally slated at Upper Session Road.
But then it was relocated at the Baguio Athletic Bowl for safety reasons as the “clappers”, mostly college Social Work students, have gone into a vacation. Clappers serve as guides, who clap their hands so participants can find their direction.
“The athletic bowl would be a safe place to have the race,” said Fritz Gerald Padilla of the organizing SnP Legacy.
“My dad would be very happy,” said Padilla, son of the late city councilor and tourism officer Narciso Padilla, who started the SnP program in 1973.
The older Padilla died last March 3, after more than three months of going in and out of the hospital following the staging of the 45th season of the program.
Parlor games like arrange yourself from shortest to longest hair, and smallest to widest waist line elicited child-like screams even among the older blind persons.
But it was in chess that “normal” people came to see how they do it.
A specially modified chess set has been made by friends for some of the male participants, where the black “spaces” were elevated with a ½ plywood square pieces nailed to it.
There are also holes drilled in the middle of every hole so that the pieces, which have an inch blunted nail, can be slotted on.
The white pieces, on the other hand, have some chiseled out portion so that they can feel if it is white or black.
“There are chiseled portions of the pieces so we will know if it’s white. While the black pieces remain pristine,” said Benedicto Dangpayan, who lost in the final round to Noli Perez, the eventual champion.
The participants were mostly masseurs, who for half-day had to join the “festivity” at Session Road, the first that it was held at the city’s main thoroughfare. In the past, it was held at the People’s Park (Malcolm Square forever for the late Padilla).
The games used to include the “wheelaton”, a race for paraplegic that is more or less a kilometer long.
The blind were fed by three groups who want to share what they have to the blind – a group of Saint Louis Boys High School class of 1986; a team from Axa All-Stars of Baguio and a lay Catholic group Feast – who provided “goto”, “arroz caldo”, “bulalugaw” and soup.
The third phase of the Silahis ng Pasko program, the Special Olympics for Special People and “game-o-rama” is one of the original events of the month-long program for those less in life.
It started with the Children’s Mardi Gras, a parade for some 8,000 pre-school learners from the city’s Day Care Centers on December 1, followed by the Special Christmas Family on December 7 and 8, where an indigent family is given special treatment from meals to hotel accommodations, to city tours and Christmas gifts from SnP and its sponsors.
This year’s lucky family is an eight-member family where the father, Onofre Arenas, is a jeepney driver plying the Aurora Hill route, and his common-law wife, Edna Pineda.
Pineda, 49, has three children from her previous marriage: Aya, 26; Rommel, 26; and Ena Rose, 23.
Arenas, 39, has Diana, 14; Mayanne, 12; and 10-year-old Shaina Rose, who is deaf-mute with Down Syndrome.
Diana and Mayanne, who are enrolled at the Baguio City High School are also beneficiaries of the CSWDO scholarship program for indigent families where they receive a monthly stipend of PHP1,500 each, said Social Worker Priscilla Dumiwal, who accompanied the family in their city tour, including the holding of a novena at the Shrine of the Brown Madonna in neighboring Tuba, Benguet.
This weekend, the young Padilla said he will be dressed as Santa Claus to visit children at the Pediatrics Ward of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
He said gifts will be given to these kids like crayons, coloring books, art materials, and other toys as well as fruits.
“These are very sick children and we just want to give them fun since Christmas is for kids. We want them to be ripping off the Christmas wrapper and see the glee that will emanate from them,” he said.
“This is the spirit of the Silahis ng Pasko which my dad founded nearly 50 years ago, to give light to the less fortunate, to those with less in life, so our program started with indigent kids, indigent families, then the PWDs, now the sick kids,” he said. **Pigeon M. Lobien/ PNA
