‘It’s a harsh reality: as our population has grown from 29 million in 1962 to about 120 million
today, urban sprawl has spilled over from our cities into what used to be rural areas.’
YESTERDAY, I trooped to Ibaan, Batangas with four colleagues to visit a budding children’s art museum-enclave that Atty. Gigo Alampay is slowly putting together.
The project is a realization of such an out-of-the-box concept of an art “museum” that is not confined within a building – it is spread out over a 2-hectare property, is basically without walls (except for the walls demarcating the property line; and one in which visitors, children especially, can actually touch the art objects, even “enter” them, allowing an immersive experience of sight, sound and touch
The sense of taste can be satisfied, I guess, by the many fruit-bearing trees dotting the property. But 1) ask the property owner or custodian first whether you can pick up or pick a fruit and 2) if you are allowed, make sure to wash both the fruit and your hands first!
Anyway, we departed BGC at 6 a.m. for the 1.5-hour drive south. Most of the time, my young companions were comfortably asleep on board the office Grandia while I kept our company driver company (no pun intended). But during the early part of our journey, while they were still awake, I pointed out one harsh reality we often overlook when complaining about our country.
The huge swaths of land on both sides of SLEX were, in my teens, nothing but rice farms that turned from green to gold as harvest season approached. From Muntinlupa all the way to Canlubang, a traveler passing the SLEX could see nothing but agricultural land on both sides.
Today, those rice fields are gone, and a traveler could see nothing but factories and warehouses as well as subdivisions for all types of budgets. That’s why you’ll see tile roofing for upper-middle-class housing or rusting GI sheet roofing for the less privileged. All were built on what used to be prime agricultural land.
I am sure this is true not only along the SLEX, but throughout the country, where urbanization has spread to cope with population growth.
It’s a harsh reality: as our population has grown from 29 million in 1962 to about 120 million today, urban sprawl has spilled over from our cities into what used to be rural areas. Tillable land needed to give way to subdivision titles. So as the number of mouths to feed increased in size, the area for cultivation decreased.
And then we wonder why we import rice from Vietnam and Thailand?
During the short drive south, I happened to come across social media posts of some politicians dancing away at their campaigns. One mayoralty candidate even joked about seeing single mothers once a year during their fertile periods. Others were heard talking about giving out “personal” money. And still another, when asked what laws he would propose once elected, side-stepped answering by, in return, asking the one asking the question what she would propose that he propose as a law once he is elected! (Yes, this was senatorial aspirant Kuya Willie Revillame.)
Another harsh reality: the Filipino voter seems to have less stringent expectations from and criteria of potential occupants of public office than they do of their dentist or family doctor or their bus driver or even airline pilot: he makes me laugh, he amuses me, his heart is in the right place, he helps people like me. If we were to use the same standards in choosing who would fly the plane we would take from Manila to wherever, then we are sure never to reach wherever. But this we take very seriously; who we elect into public office, we care less about.
And then we complain why corruption abounds, why the poor never see an improvement in their lives; every neighbor around us, with the current exception of Timor Leste, is leaving us in the dust.
It’s another harsh reality: we as voters are our own worst enemy. When we treat elections as a joke, we get to be the brunt of the joke.
But here’s the harshest of realities: we do not see both of the above, and so we complain, complain, complain while nothing happens.
Thank God, once in a while, you can escape to a place like Ibaan and see a dream slowly becoming a reality, and so, even for a brief moment, feel good about the world!
