Winnie and my dad

I would like to introduce you to a family friend of the Reyes family, a man I affectionately know as Mr. Winnie (pictured left). He has been a friend of our family since he was a small child playing with my father in the beautiful plains, mountains, and bay of Malbato, Palawan, Philippines. Our family was the landowner of the huge 10,000+ acre tract of land on Busuanga island that Winnie's family called home. They did not own the land; legally they were considered squatters on our property.

During the time period in the 60's to 80's, my grandfather Lolo Vicente had business interest in the property, be it rice farming or the goats that my dad raised as a child. My dad was the youngest in his family and the one that Lolo Vicente dreamed would develop this land in Palawan. He spent many summers there playing and raising his goats and Winnie was his best friend on the island as they grew up together.

God, however had different plans than my grandfather and brought my father along a road that took me and my family to the United States. My dad pursued further education in England and the USA from which he attained his Ph.D. and has taken our family down the so-called "American Dream" to a standard American home in Chapel Hill. He has his standard wife and two kids with a decent paying job for which to support our family.

Recently, our family has come back into regular contact with Winnie and his family with my dad's current international development work. Winnie's life path kept him in Palawan, partially by choice but mostly by the lack of opportunity for the impoverished in the Philippines. His life has followed a path standard for many families in the area. He does not have any education past grade school and became a fisherman by trade. Winnie has a family (pictured right) with his fairly standard wife and twelve children.

His 'salary' from catching fish and selling his daily catch at the market sometimes does not pay him enough to support his family. A particularly bad week fishing translates into his family of fourteen going hungry for days. There is no available medical care for his family and the community school has three classrooms to meet the needs of a community of about a thousand people.

Winnie's eldest daughter Gretchen (pictured above second from the left) is the top of her class at her school, however with the cost of education past grade school and her family's financial status, her best prospect of moving from the islands and into the world is to work as a maid for a more well-to-do family. My family, as upper class Filipinos, hires maids for $4 a day. This is more than most impoverished Filipinos make and an opportunity tempting for a girl who's family is starving. Life as a maid wears most down drowning their hopes and dreams in the hopelessness of the present menial labor in which they serve.

Due to Filipino Land Reform laws, Winnie and his family now own a small (10 hectare) portion of the property. He can now do some rice farming, though still not enough to feed his family. They live in a tiny shack (pictured below) on the property with the total living space smaller than the 10' by 10' room that I am typing in.

Winnie is a good man. He believes in God and is Catholic like my extended family and most Filipinos. He does not drink so as to be a good example for his children and to not waste the little money that he has. He works hard to support his family and loves and spends time with his wife and twelve children. They are supported to the best of his ability and he makes sacrifices for them to go to school. His children are taught the practice of rice farming and fishing from their father so that they too can have that opportunity to earn a livelihood in the future.

This is the reality of the island society that Winnie lives in and is the cycle that his family has been caught in as impoverished Filipinos. There is absolutely no reason other than the grace of God why my family has been afforded so many more opportunities than Winnie's family. We are all made in the image of God and all deserve the same opportunity.

Thankfully, my family is making some change in Winnie's life. We have hired him to develop the "Vicente and Carmen Reyes Biodiversity Park" in Malbato and are paying him 1.5 bags of rice, 15 kilos of sugar, 2 cans of coffee, and approximately $20 a month. This is what Winnie requested from us. He is now one of the 'lucky' ones in the village that has a job and can always feed his family. Gretchen's further education is being supported by my aunt, Tita Joy, and my father is adamant that she does not become a maid like so many in the area.

The reality though, is that in the world there are countless other poor famililies stuck in the same hopeless cycle that Winnie was stuck in and no one is helping them. My family does not currently have the means to even ensure the livelihood ("kabuhayan" in Tagalog) of the thousand in our area in Palawan and we are landowners that care. Just imagine the hopelessness in areas with no outside influence. Something must be done!

With application to our lives in the United States, we frequently waste opportunities to better our lives and the lives of people around us. We self-destruct by wasting our money on the overuse of drugs and alcohol, or numb this reality with over-indulging in good things such as sports or movies, wasting time and money that could go to the needy. Winnie's family is just grasping for one such opportunity that we have seemingly daily. Our government grants us 'freedoms' such as a minimum wage and a good market to easily find a job that we take for granted that Winnie does not even dream about. We all as wealthy Americans and as citizens of this race called humanity have the responsibility to share our money and opportunities to the less fortunate one family at a time. Maybe then we will break through to the end of poverty and to the peace humanity seeks.

 

Micah Reyes

"Poverty is unnecessary." -- Muhammad Yunus