By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
The earthquake the other day jolted us to reality. What if the big one came and isolating Baguio City from the rest of the world? Are we individual citizens ready for it?
Now, it is stormy due to super-typhoon Inday. It further pushed the same question into the recesses of our minds. What would happen to us if Baguio is isolated?
The matter is not far from reality. Whoever thought the July 16, 2990 killer quake would hit us? Nobody. So we were on our usual relaxed way of going through our day-to-day lives. Then boom. The temblor came catching everybody unprepared. Days after, people were going hungry in the city. Most especially students from the lowlands whose families were faraway.
Even Baguio residents were looking at the same fate in a matter of days. Where to buy food after farmers’ produce were gone? Nowhere.
Then I recalled my old mother whose life was like that of other Igorot mothers. They would have “etag” or pork preserved by salt and then dried under the sun. They would also have dried deans and other legumes which were their produce. While most of them never saw the four walls of a classroom, they were more intelligent han us, the younger generation. They knew and practiced saving for rainy days.
So, if it rained for days on end, they would bring out their dried legumes and their “etag” and other preserved meat. In addition, they might have been keeping also some dried fish— “tuyo” or “bakalao.” In short, disastrous events could not have surprised them into hunger.
How about us of the younger generation? We think we are intelligent but the quake the other day and this stormy day made me realize we are stupid as stupid can be when it comes to preparing for the future.
The same thing can be said of my mother’s way of handling her money which am sure would not be so different from other Igorot mothers. I remember she always had her “bay-on”- a cloth made into a very small bag with a string around its opening edge for closing it. The string is long which she used to hang the bay-on around her neck and so the it would be hanging in between her breasts hidden by her T-cunirt or blouse or jacket. It would take some effort to dig it out when she needed to get some of her money folded and kept in that “bay-on” with her coins. This happened only when there was an absolute necessity to spend. How does that compare to the younger generation? We the younder ones can be described only with one word—we are a spendthrift – “gastador.” And so we feel nervous if not helpless whenever a prolonged disaster happens. Where will we get food or money for the next meal for our families?
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