They have been teaching longer than I do, with salary, in the last two years of 2,250 per month (USD 45 per month), often delayed for at least a month, after much begging and waiting for the government bureaucracy to “process papers”.
I asked them why they teach— they said they love their profession and they love the kids whose lives depend so much on them: whether they get to read and write and count, whether they get to dream. Who will teach them, if not us?
I asked them what they dream of — it is to be able to continue the work they so love without worrying if they get to eat the next day. There are days, both the teacher and the kids are hungry. Hungry!
I asked them, given a choice, would they want to be someplace else? They said no. Working in the city or taking on better compensated positions may give them the money they so lack but what good is this money for if they do not do what needs to be done? For us, whose education comes easy, it does take on a different depth when we realised that for so many others, they put their lives on the line, for that.
I asked them why? Why such commitment? They said, looking at me who is often tired and despairing over little discomforts in my little world— they continue on for their people, because they believe this is what it means to love what you do, you fight for it and then you hope, you keep faith that it is for something, that it gets better, in the end.
And so there in that room with wooden floors and walls and windows, that rely on sunlight and wind and fortitude (what else, when there is no electricity nor funds for all the other things most of us, city-bred think we need)— I found the answer to my question as to what matters at the end of the day: that it is not so much that we find pleasure and compensation in what we do, it is when what we do truly matters in the lives of people around us. Do we help so others can also live, can also have something to hope for? If we say we love, is this love expansive? Does this love frees? Does this love fight for something greater than secure, comfortable lives?
And so as it goes when talking about love loved deeply, we were all holding back tears. They said it feels good being able to speak, to tell their story of how it is like, their struggles, their strength. As for me, I wanted to cry over how little and unknowing I am and yet there I was, a tiny part of their journey too if only because they got to teach me that we do is not for naught and that, more importantly, there is no reason to not work, to not give, to not have hope, to not believe because people in the communities who have so much less than us, give and give, hope and hope because this is what matters and in the nation that is us, through all these noise and personal and political mess, this is what holds."
This article was written by Rowena Briones, a teacher of Sociology in UPLB.
No comments:
Post a Comment