The Forgotten

I’ll tell you what I keep in mind when I fight the battles I choose to fight.

It is this portfolio of photos I’ve taken of my patients in Samar and Leyte in all those years I’ve gone there. There was something that compelled me to snap away and then to keep them in neat folders and to make into videos I show to anyone who cared to watch them.

And like beacon lights, they tell me where it is I should go and what it is I should do and say. They have made me fearless. And they have taught me to use my rage as fuel to do what needs to get done and not to be eaten up with this same rage I feel that has me in knots inside.

I look at their faces and although I may not remember their names, I remember their stories.

The woman in :38, for instance, is a widow who lost her home, her livelihood, and when I saw her, her hands were cold and all it took for her to cry was for me to ask, “Kamusta ho kayo?” She was hungry and desperate and she had no idea where to get their next meal.

The 2 kids in :58 lost their mother and came with their burly father—a giant of a man who, when I asked how he was, burst into tears as I watched helplessly. His boat, their only source of livelihood was gone. The sea had carried it away and there was nothing he could feed his family of 8 kids.

The child in 1:16 lost her father and her mother had 6 mouths to feed and she herself, was pregnant with her 6th child. (They’re the same family in 4:10)

The man in 1:28 lost his wife during the surge and like most men there, had lost every means of livelihood he had. And on top of that he had 4 motherless children to care for—children who saw the horror of their mother swallowed by the sea.

The woman in 1:43 ran after me and begged me to show her photo to Noynoy Aquino “para malaman nya nangyari sa amin at para tulungan nya kami.”

The beautiful girls in 1:47 lost their father and their mother was pregnant with her 5th child and when I saw her, it she was fragile as a leaf. Not one word from her. Just tears. And more tears. Like she would never stop crying.

The woman in 1:59 kept repeating to me through bewildered eyes, “Gutom na gutom kami, Dra. Lagi kami gutom…”

The family in 2:09 lives in that hovel. They take turns sitting down because there isn’t enough space inside for everyone to sit down and at night, they cover their stove with a mat and sleep over it. Each space used up for sleeping. The child in 2:52 is wearing his Sunday best. Maybe that shirt has the least holes of all his shirts.

And I show them to you now because the one thing that struck me the most about all these is how so many of you didn’t know they existed. How they were a most forgotten bunch — forgotten by a most callous, a most indifferent government.

And then, forgotten by their own people --- the only ones then who could fight for them and give voice to the crimes done on them by the very people who had sworn to care for them.

And I think it my sacred duty to introduce you to them --- Filipino to Filipino.

Seeing them, touching them, smelling them, listening to them and just sitting with them — all these have left their indelible mark on me. I am changed. I couldn’t bear not to be changed by all that I had seen and touched and smelled and heard.

And if I am fierce, it is because I am fierce for them. And I am fierce for them because they have no fight left in them.

And I find it unbearable when those who can do so much for them, shuffle their feet in place, look at the sky and sigh a million times — and then take their sweet time in helping them. It is all I can do not to grab that person by the shirt and punch their nose bloody.

This is where I am coming from.