The Pinoy student’s seesaw world: Is it ‘baon’ or ‘pasahe’ today?

Either way, the answer cannot but tip the seesaw; balance comes from both—the student’s life as played out daily.

As I recall, in my high-school years, I walked to school carrying baon in an Army mess kit, probably inherited from an uncle, often with rice and a dry main dish like grilled chicken, or a few cubes of adobo.

I shared or exchanged this with classmates who walked from across the river or rode the jeepney from far-flung barrios; they had what I always thought better food, such as tulya omelet and grilled hito; others who lived nearby went home for lunch.

Maybe life in the 1960s, during our schooling, must have been easier because I have not known of a classmate who stayed hungry in class, or absent for lack of money for fare.

But today, parents in countless Philippines rural towns apparently anguish over this dilemma every day; they could scrape or borrow for tuition and other fees but often, left empty for daily needs. Still, undaunted, children would rope-climb a cliff from a riverbank to get up the road toward school, like somewhere in the Visayas, as reported on TV Patrol last Wednesday.

Or like the little girls I once saw while on a media coverage in Leyte, walking barefoot, singling hillsides, to get to school miles away.

In the news report, a few of the rope-climbers lucked out with bicycle giveaways—though I couldn’t feel relieved by the recipient’s joy, knowing vast fields of other children trudging to school.

As for the barefoot little girls, who I bet had meager baon if at all, perhaps, a feeding program happened in school once in a while, the best some organizations could do that if set against ballooning figures of hungry or malnourished school children only staves off a daily threat.

If funds would only fall like the proverbial manna from skies, school could be worth fighting for. Indeed, manna does fall but not in torrents, which Filipino children need.

I know of a unique sponsorship program, which aspires to make going to school a reality, though, even if only at least to four students per class year, followed through until graduation or a total of 16. At 7, P500, each of them under the ILIW sponsorship program could have pasahe and baon, every day through the school year.

Not of an organization but an informal alumni group of Bacarra National Comprehensive High School (BNCHS) in Ilocos Norte, nothing about it sounds like something already known to have rooted, even if still quite fragile, so far. ILIW, its name, a fanciful acronym for “Innovative Learning Initiatives and Ways for Bacarra,” a rather quixotic dream, in truth, describes a sentiment.

In Iluko, iliw not only means nostalgia, it could also conjure up gestures that burst with longing, which, in this case, happened on cyberspace, a yahoo group site Tony Ponce owns, where members swapped memories of Bacarra not just for a night, but nightly for about a year.

If one of them had not gone home and driven by iliw dropped by BNCHS, bringing back to the group a poignant picture of some students trekking miles or hungry in school, the group could have just thinned out into air. But fired by nostalgia, they birthed ILIW ti Bacarra, the sponsorship funded with disparate amounts they send from various parts of the US and Manila yearly to a Philippine National Bank account in Laoag City; four batches have since graduated.

Again, about 30 hopefuls would be screened at the BNCHS library—with only four chosen for Grade 7, as the rest step up in class years. Victoria Albano, not an alumna, but a contributor nonetheless, prays for those not taken.

I pray with her, though honestly, more often, I fantasize over the alleged hoard in billions of corrupt officials—what if through a rat hole, 10 percent of it seeps out for school children?