tara na... palabas ng bansa

photo by Raymond Saldana (used without permission)

When I was in my younger years in Baybay Elementary School in San Jose de Buenavista, Antique, our kasaysayan teacher would always say that our country is rich in so many ways- natural resources, skilled manpower and so on. Saying it as if all of us can actually understand what she meant. None of us did. Instead, it gave us such illusion that we are afterall a great nation.

A few years later in the mid-eighties when I get to somehow picture the state of the nation when I get to see my father cursing the television set everytime Marcos would appear. I actually thought at one point that he will throw his coffee mug at our Radiowealth black and white TV. We are a mess as a country. After eighty six, everytime there is an election, it's a fiesta of new hope. Promises are laid and a new beginning is near. A few months after the election, the fiesta continues to the streets, clamoring for change wanting yet another beginning.

My father has always been a patriot. I grew up hearing him say that I should love this country because this is the only one I can actually claim to be mine. That I should never settle being a third class citizen anywhere else. It was last year when he asked me if I want to work and stay abroad, some asian country perhaps. My other sister is leaving the country two weeks from now. She says she going to study there for two years and if she can find a job after, probably will stay there for good. And the other one, this November, together with her family. They are going to the US as migrants.

It is indeed an illusion what my grade three teacher discussed. Though there is a part of me that still believe that it is not so. As my father resigns to the whole situation, I begin to ask myself what really is in store for all of us if indeed we stay? As a lot of our peers left already, will we be lagged behind?

Before I got to answer my question, I chanced upon this video---