To Fix a Leaking Roof
By: A.M. Baq
Tags: Philippines, Culture, Politics, Society, Social Issues

Super typhoons come when all is not well with the house roof. Technically, twenty years are enough to corrode its paint of hope and glimmering metal sheets. It’s been that long. The family needs to access external resources to have it fixed.

The roof, like a country to its people, shelters and protects its inhabitants ever since one can remember. There are summers when it is pleasant to stay under its shade and rainy days when hearts are grateful for the big umbrella. Until the people remember that the roof needs care, too — now that the leaks begin to show and become worse with every passing storm.

My parents were born twenty years before the Second World War. In their stories, they talked of the terrors the war brought and how frightening it was to be uncertain of every tomorrow. They also shared moments when they were forced to forget the war, like the times when they and my father’s family were commanded to entertain a group of enemy soldiers by playing the piano and singing jolly songs. The house was controlled by foreigners and the roof over them made the days dim.

Miraculously, the war was over and they were free! The house was a venue for feasts as happiness engulfed the land. Under the roof, people were counting paper bills on the floor mat. Outside, transportation came alive with new buses, reconstruction of roads and bridges began, and wrecked buildings were rebuilt. The government people were simply the educated, the outstanding, and the intelligent, as the elders used to say to the children. The roof was new and presumed to last.

In the decades that followed, the power people got so excited with having wealth and literally got drunk and lusted for more. For twenty years the house seemed and was promoted as orderly, with most of the residents going with the flow of things that were ran by the strong men. Until the occupants gradually felt they were becoming less significant, less heard, and with less resources. In the mayhem, the dictators neglected the roof and it started to collapse. Then the people stood up against the abusers and had the roof replaced.

Today, the family wants to patch the holes and put the roof back in its functional form. The government lending party is willing to shell out the requested half a million pesos if the borrowers could put up one million and seven hundred thousand pesos or more than three times the amount of the loan application. The lendees need to give in their resources first, get the loan, and pay with interest according to the terms of the lender. In other words, the terms are insufferable. The roof needs to wait for another option to be fixed.

Presently in the nation, the citizens critically inspect the roof over their head. After thirty three (prophetic?) years, it is gapped and shaky. The heads are seeking help from the outside to solve the problem. Will the terms of assistance be taken whimsically and make the payors work to despair just to acquire the enforced relief? Relief for who? The need for discussion about this concern is being demanded by the people from the leaders of the house.

May history repeat itself, not of self-destruction and neglect, but of vigilance and determination to work toward equal control, of refinding what are lost but beneficial, and of securing the roof that leaks.