Begging Inside and Out

BEGGING INSIDE AND OUT

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat."

--- Mother Teresa

In my sixteen years of existence, I already met different kinds of people. Some people are very lucky that they eat more than ten times a day. There are also who are fortunate enough, for they eat from three to five times a day. But most of these people were unlucky. These unlucky ones eat less than enough food per day, or worst, they do not have even a grain to put in their mouths. If there are people who have all the money to buy every single thing in the world, there are also people who do not have a single coin in their hands.

Everyday, my mom wakes me up in the morning. Because I like to sleep more, I would ask her to wake me up again after 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I will go out of bed and eat the breakfast that my mom prepared for me. After eating, I will take a bath and get dressed. At exactly 6:30am, I will leave the house and go to school. During school time, I will buy something to eat whenever I got hungry. After our class, I will go home. I'll ride the jeepney going to Cubao. Every time I cross the overpass in Cubao, the beggars on the side catch my attention. They are seating there, looking at me with their pleading eyes and asking for food or money. I will stop and stand there for a second, looking back at them and thinking if I have to give them a coin or a small piece of my food. In the end, I will just ignore and leave them. After crossing the overpass, I will ride another jeep going to Marikina. This is the part where I hate the most. It's because of the traffic. Then a minute later, there were these little kids who will ride the jeep not for transport reason, but for soliciting. They will give every passenger (and I'm of those passengers) an envelope with a short letter on it that reads "Ate/Kuya, kami po ay mga Badjao. Namamalipos po kami ng konting tulong. Pambili lang po ng pagkain", and for the second time, I will ignore another pleading soul. Maybe it's my conscience that's calling me, but I keep on thinking of these people until I fell asleep.

Beggars, like every one of us, are special. We should treat them the right way, and the first step in treating them right is to understand them by knowing them and communicating to them. That is the goal of our class.

From the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (Main), our feet brought us to Quiapo Church. At first, we thought that we can't find any beggar outside the church because of the rain. But we were wrong and we were shocked to saw some of them still begging for something to eat despite of the rain. And that made me admire them. An old man, maybe in his forties or fifties, caught my attention. One look at him, it is already obvious that he is disabled. We were meters away from him and what I only saw was his side view. He has a crutch and he's holding a cup while facing the Quiapo church, waiting for the people to come out. The old man's quite short so I thought that he's a midget. We walked towards him to start the interview, and as we are approaching him, I felt a bit nervous and excited at the same time.

Mr. Jerry Basa, a 50-year old man who suffers in polio, was one of the beggars in Quiapo. When we asked him if it's okay with him to be interviewed by us, he told us that he's tired of interviews. I felt sad because I believe that my instinct is telling me that he is the one that we should talk to. But in the end, we still convinced him. Mr. Jerry Basa was born on July 4, 1962 in Samar. He's the son of Mr. Felix Basa and Mrs. Juana Basa. According to him, he was born a normal baby, but everything changed when he suffered into polio. When he was a baby, he got a high fever. Because they do not have enough money, his parents never brought him to the hospital. They thought that it's just a normal fever, but as time passed, they observed that his legs were swollen. The next thing they knew, he already had polio, and this disease broke him down. Tatay Jerry lives in Quiapo for 17 years, since 1995. When I asked him the reason why he became a beggar in Quiapo, I saw that his eyes became teary, and then he told me that he has no one to live with. His parents already died, his father died in 1998 while his mom died in 2010. I was stunned for a moment and I thought about my parents, that I can't live without them. He doesn't have a wife neither a child to take care of him. All those years, Tatay Jerry is alone, wandering in Quiapo church and begging for something to