An encounter with Bethlehem and hope

It was 4 p.m. of Dec. 24, 2023, not quite a month ago now, in the wake of a refreshing afternoon merienda (afternoon snack) with sikwati (hot chocolate) and suman (rice cake) with family, that I embarked as I am wont to do on a leisurely afternoon walk at the shaded part of Plaza de Jagna. As I neared the corner facing Jagna’s St. Michael’s Church, I noticed a man, perhaps not past 40 but deeply furrowed like one past 60, cuddling a newborn baby not a day old and a woman, visibly gaunt, perhaps from labor the whole night long, seated on one of the many concrete plant boxes around the plaza.

To my surprise, they were the very same couple who, during yesterday’s version of my walk, were seated on one of the cast-iron but thankfully ergonomically designed and reasonably comfortable benches provided at the plaza; these were fortunately shaded from the sun by lush acacia, balete, and narra trees planted by generations past. (“Thank you,” I said to our ancestors as I managed to recognize that past generosity which I hope our generation doesn’t run to the ground. But if there is hope, our own past is hardly our guiding star.) The young woman was clearly in an advanced stage of pregnancy and, indeed, appeared to be having labor pains by the grimace occasionally etched on her face. The man, her husband (?), was rubbing her back trying, with little success, it appeared to me, to ease her pain.

The message was clear — there was no bed in the District Hospital just across the street from the plaza where she could have lain down and labored in some privacy. “No room in the inn,” the phrase from eons ago in Bethlehem came flashing in my mind. I thought: Yet another of the many faces of poverty in this country, which, unless blinded by the parade of pompous SUVs of the affluent few, you can’t miss despite the season’s glitter and revelry. Still, I felt helpless to intervene. My own lone grandchild, a boy, saw the light of day only six months ago and it pains me to imagine “what if” this was his and his mother’s predicament. Life is not fair. An accident of birth gives my grandson a distinct advantage I am grateful for, but does the baby now kicking in this woman’s womb deserve the severe disadvantage? Did the baby kicking in that other womb on that fateful night in Bethlehem deserve to be denied a room and to shiver in the winter in the manger?

Now the baby is out, just hours after delivery and without the usual courtesy of a rest and recovery day at the hospital. By the looks of it, they were now waiting for a ride at this corner where passengers going further east wait for public conveyance. I noted more than I did yesterday that poverty left unmistakable traces on their attire. The father wore a faded red wind breaker that is stock-in-trade in ukay-ukay (secondhand) joints, which however I hasten to confess I sometimes also patronize. He was wearing flipflops that still carried cakes of mud as he seemed to have been hailed straight from the basak (rice field) at the alarm call. I was attracted by how beautiful the small baby was; how deep in slumber in the swaddling cloth that showed only the face. Parental instinct came over me and with as wide a grin as I could muster I enquired, “Babae o lalaki?” (Boy or girl). “Babae,” (girl) was the answer. “Naa nay nga’an?” (Has it a name?) I rejoined. “Diana, Diana Ranis” was the reply. “Ah Diana, she’s so beautiful!” I muttered with a shameless exuberance that I imagine I could only manage at the sight of an angel. “Asa na man mo ‘ron?” (Where are you headed now) I persisted. “Guindulman.”

Ah, Guindulman! Guindulman is two towns removed from Jagna and further east of the capital, Tagbilaran. It is a town oft-mentioned in my own circle and oh so close to the family’s heart. For it is the birth town of my grandson’s great grandfather, Esteban Bernido. Esteban Bernido was born on the wrong side of social privilege. He was, in fact, born out of wedlock and was relegated to the fading footnotes of the annals of one leading clan of Guindulman. I can almost imagine how a similar disadvantage, only made worse by whispered social rebuke, may have attended Esteban’s birth.

As the awaited bus could materialize any minute now, I quickly ran through my pockets to fish for some valuable to gift Diana on her birthday and as a Christmas offering to the family. The only valuable I could get hold of was a crisp P500 bill. I quickly made the offer saying: “My gift to Diana.” And to Diana herself, “I love you Diana and Godspeed!” I don’t know whether the intense pulses racing through my veins connected with the sleeping soul but I hoped against hope. She is, after all, a precious bundle of exquisite neurons waiting to be pruned by pulses of love or, God forbid, its anti-thesis. However it happens, I hoped to thicken the cohort of the former.

I dread the thought of her future struggle against “kawad-on” (poverty) my late sister-in-law Marivic’s favored word for the plight of poor students whom she especially cherished at CVIF, the high school she and husband Chris, physicists of some renown both, were running in Jagna. Marivic was a teacher and principal at CVIF; her lasting legacy being that CVIF struggles tirelessly daily to overcome the horrid starting block of the children of kawad-on. Kawad-on was partly the reason for the radical “no homework policy” at CVIF — electricity which some take for granted was and still is scarce or absent in poor rural homes. The Bernido tandem’s struggle against kawad-on among CVIF students was fortunately recognized by the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation.

Thinking back, I regret that I failed to gift Diana and her family more than the crisp bill; had I doubled it, “it would not have made me poor” as my grandson’s granduncle, Chris Bernido, is wont to say when bitten by the bug of generosity which is quite often. While the P500 may afford Diana a warm blanket, neither it nor its double will provide the adequate nutrition and the education which we as a nation owe her. The sad truth is that we have shamefully left adrift 30% of our children in the desert of under-nutrition and stunting. When I rounded the corner once more, they were gone.

But there is always hope. My grandson’s great grandpa, Esteban, managed to become a World War II hero, a licensed engineer, and eventually erstwhile governor of Bohol. That baby in the manger in Bethlehem managed to bring hope to the world. Here’s hoping and praying so will Diana!

Raul V. Fabella is a retired professor at the UP School of Economics, a member of the National Academy of Science and Technology, and an honorary professor at the Asian Institute of Management. He gets his dopamine fix from tending flowers with wife Teena, bicycling, and assiduously courting, if with little success, the guitar.