Chronicles of the Life of Thin Towers

You wondered how I fared with barely nothing. Listen to me. Here I am, sweaty with chaffed lips and with lice and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you.
I will tell you. Hear me out. Listen without pity. I cannot use you pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourself in my dirty, worn-out, ill fitting shoes and hear me.
Poverty is retiring at night wondering when the next money was coming from.
Poverty is cooking meals from scratch and scraps.
Poverty is living on about P4000 monthly budget. In the province, a family of six can survive with P4000 and still not starve. But I am in the city working my butt of University of the East.
Probably you are wondering. Why UE and not in a cheap institution in my province, i.e. the Pangasinan State University? Well, I knew in the first place that if I were to study in Manila, I’d be under the tutelage of some of the best teachers in the country and my knowledge of the world would be widened Notwithstanding the fact that Manila presented great academic and career opportunities, unlike in Pangasinan where the flow of life is slow, there is a scarcity of jobs and the colleges here are what can be considered diploma mills.
So two months after delivering my Valedictory speech, I hauled myself and the thesaurus to #500 Antipolo St, in Sampaloc.
I never knew I’d be paying a high price for seeking quality education here in Manila. I wish I had more than enough money. I never believed my parents when they told me I’d die of starvation before I graduate.
I never knew that the first rule of thumb when relocating in Manila is to have lots of money , unless you’d like to end up pitching your dwelling under a bridge . I never knew that my poverty would be taking a toll on me. I wish I knew.
You say my University Scholarship paid for my tuititon, but what about transportation, food and lodging?
Poverty is dirt. You can say in you clean uniform coming from your clean room “Anybody can be clean.” Let me explain about housekeeping with little money. For breakfast I eat fried rice with either a piece of tuyo or a single sunny side up egg. This doesn’t use up many dishes. I have to save the cheapest bar of soap for my school uniforms. Look at my hands, cracked and devoid of moisture like the parched rice fields of my father in the 1998 El Nino. Once I saved for two months to buy a 50mL of Jergens for my hands. When I had saved enough, I went to buy it and the price had gone up to two pesos. I suffered on.
Poverty is humiliation. I had t hide my face with my textbook and run away when one day some girls started spitting the word “Eew!” and they were staring at my behind. When I looked at my behind, a dark red patch sent me scampering to the nearest comfort room. I filled a dipper with water, went inside a cubicle, took off my skirt and carefully rinsed off the blood and blotted dry the wet patch with my terry hand towel. If only the girls knew I was saving money for photocopying notes instead of buying napkins.
You probably won’t have to be absent on gimiks. Not for me, how many times have I been absent during barkada mallings and barhopping. I have better use of what little money I had than to spend it on four to six hours of worldly pleasure.
Poverty is remembering. It is remembering almost quitting school in 1st year because “nice” classmates had been so cruel about my lice and underarm hair. The University Guidance Counselor sent a letter to my landlady demanding an explanation about my weeklong absence. She replied that I was quitting for good. I wasn’t, but she thought that I was and for that, I was sent a letter penalizing me for dropping out in the middle of the semester.
I had jobs off and on campus since then but never long enough to sustain me. Mostly my University scholarship pays for my tuition, also a little allowance. For a time. I had all the things you have. I had a room of my own with running water and pocket kitchen. Then I lost my scholarship. There was a school janitorial job at school for a while and a tutorial job for a high school student in Greenhills.
Soon I could not afford my room and I had bedspace in a decrepit house next street. I was a college sophomore then. The room didn’t look so bad and my roommates were nice when I first moved. Everyday it got worse. Nothing in the room like sagging ceiling boards and rotten bathroom door is ever fixed. My roommates hated me for my lice and mocked me behind my back for having Boy Bawang for dinner. I now had no money. The janitorial job was enough for tuition but the six hundred peso allowance that I got from it went mostly for food then, as it does now. As for my rent, my tutorial job takes care of it.
I don’t know how I lived through almost three school years, but I did. I’ll tell you something, after the last university scholarship (specifically, my University service grant as school janitress) I was out of work. It had been a good one, but could you keep on doing an arduous job while enrolled in a course which requires me to study really assiduously? Did you ever think how much it was easy to mentally solve chemistry problems in your mind while sweeping leaves in the campus? I knew I couldn’t keep my job any longer but I had no regrets since I could get another part-time job. I never could hope to plead again at the Accountant’s Department during exams.
Poverty is asking for help. Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing you will suffer unless you get it?
Think about asking for a loan from a roommate, a classmate, orgmate or a professor, if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help I will tell you how it feels.
Let’s start making examples by making a classmate as the target lender. You go to where the house of your classmate you’re supposed to visit. You march that block of neighborhood, back and forth; four or five times rehearsing your lines. Thinking of your overdue rent, you knock at the door. Then she tells you she has already paid her tuition and she won’t have her allowance until next month. You go see another person, and after spilling the whole shame of your situation all over the screen door between you and that person, you find they aren’t keen on helping you out at all. You must repeat the whole process of borrowing spree from acquaintance to acquaintance room to room and it never is any easier at the next person.
You have asked for help and after all, it has a cost. You are again told to wait. You are told why, but you don’t really hear because of the thick steam coming out of your ears because of embarrassment and despair.
Your last resort would be to pawn your phone.
That’s when I asked for help from a relative in El Cajon, California. When I got it, you know how much it was? It was, and is US$75 a month for me, that is all I ever can get. Now you know why there is now moisturizer, no lip balm, no shoe shine. None of these things unless my Uncle raises it to a hundred dollars. So that you can see clearly, I pay P400 a month bedspace, tuition fee installments, church tithes; the rest goes for food iron pills, shampoo, and laundry and bath soap. I try my best to spend little. If I spend money on non-essential items like Smart AllText and Pond’s Detoxifying Cream, there is that much less for really necessary payments like tuition and bedspace.
But you say to me, I will be two semesters away before graduation. Yes, and that means ten more months of deprivation and anxiety-filled days to endure. I am hoping t graduate with high grades, if not with Latin honors. But I can barely retain facts and figures when I review my lessons, due to ill health. I have ulcer, rotten molars, lice and an eighty pound body that’s anemic. I do not suffer from hunger, my US$75 keeps me alive, but I do suffer from malnutrition.
Oh yes, I was taught about health in grade school Science. It doesn’t do much good. In some elementary schools here in Manila, there are feeding programs but I’m too old for that. I do wish there is a food aid like in the US. Not here. The country could not afford it. The country doles out relief goods only to victims of national disasters. My Uncle has promised to included multivitamins in my package he’ll send in May. But I have a stomach that will already be damaged by the time he sends it.
Even a poor student can dream. A dream of a time when there is more than enough money. Money for the nutritious kinds of food, for iron pills , lip balm for photocopying textbooks, for shoe polish and sanitary napkins. Money to regularly load credits into my celphone. And oh, money for Pond’s Detox and Rexona Deo-Cream and bi-annual dental checkups.
A dream of when asking for help doesn’t eat away the last bit of pride. When the old classmate or relative you visit is as compassionate as the game show hosts of Wowowee! When there are enough people to loan you money, when people don’t think you only show at their doorstep because you need something. When you have to tell your story to only one person and that person can send you for other help and you don’t have to prove your poverty over and over and over again.
Poverty is an acid that drips on pride until all pride is worn away. Poverty is a chisel that chips on honor until honor is worn away.
Probably you would say you’d do something in my situation and maybe you would for the first day, but for days? And weeks? And months?…
I have come out of courage to tell you this. Remember, I didn’t come from another place or another time. Other students like me are all around you. Look at me with an angry heart, anger that will help you help me. Anger that will let you tell of me. The poor students are always silent.It’s time we come out of our cocoon.
I really don’t have much choice in my situation, do I?

Chronicles of the Life of Thin Towers

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Good luck to me...

Saturday, February 2, 2008

How Does A Poor Filipino Student Manages to Keep Her Insanity

Journal Entries by Thin Towers

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