BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 16
Dec 22, 2004
social criticisms by
Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III
The Holidays
A. Neighborly
Christians
IT’S
the morning of the 20th of December that I begin to write this.
My wife is on the phone talking to a friend who co-owns a Mexican
restaurant (Sunzibar) in Tacloban, my eldest son watching a video of his
younger brother’s birthday party at McDonald’s Bocaue (Bulacan).
We’re here billeted at my parents’ subdivision unit in Tacloban which
I, one week earlier, had the ceilings repainted to a brighter orange color
from its peeling original grayed white, care of my neighbor
housepainter’s demonstrated expertise. After lunch we’re going to my
parents’ house in the nearby town, my hometown, of Palo. General Douglas
McArthur (the first Mac myth we swallowed) landed here on his return from
Australia in 1944 to liberate us from the Shintoists who couldn’t
contain their hatred of the Christian exploiters of Asia. We’re bringing
our laundry there, to Palo, where a laundrywoman (who washes clothes
better than the expensive laundry franchises) offers her services to my
mother and to my brother who lives in a house right behind my parents’
house.
The
Christmas season brings families together, often also hometown friends,
and there’s much food preparation, and repainting and cleaning before
the New Year arrives. Much column writing will also be dedicated to this
season’s spirit. So, let me do my share.
I
BELIEVE all provinces now have their portion of McDonald’s outlets. My
wife’s hometown of Bocaue has one, and Tacloban (my second hometown)
also has its share. The new culture of saturated fat, along with Dunkin’
Donuts sugar-saturated breads, has virtually erased the many types of
suman in Leyte.
There’s
something about McDonald’s, its colors, its mascot, and so on, that had
the kids of the Philippines ganging up on their parents to leave the old
favorite haunts for the more “kid-friendly” fastfoods, never mind if
we know the food to be had here are not necessarily healthy children’s
food and may in fact be more doctors’ incomes-friendly than anything.
Recently my wife has scored me for patronizing the vendor who roams the
streets of our subdivision in Tacloban selling hot dishes like my favorite
taro leaves cooked in coconut milk; my wife asked me to re-cook this, to
which concern I replied that often I buy the vegetables (sometimes it’s
my other favorites, the rare cut coconut tree’s bottom trunk’s white
core or the similarly coco milk-cooked banana flower bud) still smoking
hot. I also told her that, in contrast to these neighborly concoctions,
thrice I happened to get loose bowel movement after eating a quarter
pounder at two McDonald’s outlets, and I can’t be mistaken about where
I get such movements since spoiled food or a bad food source has that
instant effect on my stomach (as they probably have on many others).
I
do not mean to assert of course that non-McDonald’s foods are much
safer, but what is more important to learn is the fact that McDonald’s
is no more conscious of its reputation than the vendor who daily ply a
subdivision route on a pedicab driven by her husband.
But
to say that fastfoods, which do indeed look cleaner and disinfected, are
indeed safer houses to eat in, may demean the kamayan culture of our
tribes. We must remember that the cleaning of spoons in restaurants could
even be considered more suspect than the self-implemented kamayan culture
of our people. After all, way before the kamayan restaurants came into the
picture, my father already taught me how to neatly eat the kamayan way in
front of the farmhands. Having thoroughly cleaned both hands with soap and
water, one is expected to rest his left arm (if he’s right-handed) on
the table’s edge, the hand hanging free from the table’s wood and
one’s dirty shirt. The right hand does its dirty work of picking the
food from the banana-leaf plate and craning it up to the mouth. To fetch
more communal rice or dish at the center of the table, one (like everybody
else) uses his communal clean left hand.
In
contrast again, in restaurants one is left at the mercy of the mood of the
underpaid waiters and cooks, many of whom are wont to take their ire on
the looks of customers upon whose food any of them could simply mix phlegm
in anytime. Or, more subtly, at the mercy of sleep-poor or ill-trained
dishwashers (who also wash the spoons, in case you don’t know).
Fastfoods might be deemed free of such invasions, considering that
customers can see virtually all kitchen and waiting activity. But this
forgets such elements as supplies delivery trucks that may be contaminated
with rat shit, for instance.
This
is not meant to sabotage restaurants and fastfoods, bearing in mind also
that the alternative neighborly enterprises could be scored with several
other suspicions. Nor is this to advise restaurants to make certain that
their people are always emotionally cheerful, to the extent that this is
seen by their shops’ customers, since knowledge of this is something I
assume many restaurateurs (like my wife’s friend) to already know much
about. And as for those who take this principle for granted, like the many
siopao shops I used to visit, their restaurants’ demise would be none of
my concern, in fact deserves to lose the clientele (and workers) they’ve
neglected so well.
This
Christmas season, so much money may be out there for the consumption of
much food. And along with this the unguarded joys of Christmas that
forgets to consider waiters’ faces that may manifest such possible labor
truisms in these parts as having been failed by their bosses, their 13th
month pay postponed to Valentine’s Day or something like that.
But
to cut short this myopic indictment, may I swerve to a panoramic view and
remind everyone of sprayed vegetables in the market, the MSG culture of
Oriental cooking and cannery, the great karma of grocery overpricing, the
cunning middlemanship of farm-to-market routes, the retouched expiration
dates on canned goods at Clark and many where else, the salmonella-fed
animal husbandry tradition behind our lechon Kodak moments, the
tax-evasive quasi-legalized distribution of virtually smuggled-in bolas de
quezo, the cartel-based prices of many of our Binondo-derived goodies on
the table (defended, of course, by many DTI personnel).
From
the cooked-food vendor that plies the streets of the subdivision to the
big corporate food distributor or franchiser, who can we trust and how do
we judge who might be worthy of our trust? Certainly not the government
that is often late in reacting to reports of bad ingredients in
manufactured and farmed food, no, not for being constantly suspected too
of being corruptible to manufacturers’ bribes. Certainly not the
Christian culture that is only slightly Christian even during the
collective prayer ceremony cum silent gossip period called Mass, a culture
that cannot in fact claim to be more virtuous than the culture of
atheists. In fact, I’ve seen more good values in my atheist friends than
in my religious friends. The Jesuits, active in charity, are also active
in unannounced stocks investing. Who is to say that the stocks investing
of a virtuous party is guaranteed scrupulous?
In
our Christian community, we are all left to each fend for ourselves. Each
to his own judgments, given the light that the Christmas season is just
another set of “holidays” meant to service corporate profits, the
business interests of carolers, the interests of our vanity as interior
and exterior decorators, the interests of our persons as receivers instead
of givers, the interests of our social pride as holiday benefactors
building our own psychological personal billboards that read “donated by
Mr. And Mrs. xxxx”.
The
Christmas season is not a Christian season. Not anymore. We are no more
Christians than the politicians are statesmen. We don’t even know what
Christ, the revolutionary who fought the empty ceremonies and consequent
hypocrisies in the Old Testament, was all about. The devoted Christian
neighbors I know take delight in imagining the worst deeds in our other
neighbors, in the same way that many Pinoy “machos” feel great in
imagining the possible homosexuality of another mate for the reason that
the imagined possibility feeds machismo into their cowardices. Christians
also pray a lot, mostly to save their own souls and their incomes. They
forget that Christ was someone who demonstrated the virtue of sacrificing
oneself to the sharks in order to save the drowning, even to the extent of
sacrificing oneself to the devil (if that’s possible) in order to save
the souls of the evil. If the Philippines is one of the most corrupt
countries in the world, it may be because we’re a bunch of worshippers of a
now-meaningless religion demanding a second coming of a first failure.
I
don’t believe Christians are a Christian people. George W. Bush is
purportedly a devout Christian, a compassionate conservative who has
allowed American incomes to plunge in order to service multinational
corporate demands (inclusive of his and many Saudi corporations, including
bin Laden corporations). My neighbors are Christians and they are no more
good than my recurrently wicked self. Our government is a Christian
government that has constantly proven a devotion to family interests
against state interests.
Christians
are not Christ devotees. They’re a people in love with the story and
movies of Christ while practically disgusted with the themes of his
sermons. Therefore Christians are just as human as most of us. Sometimes
they do good deeds. Often they do bad ones.
Ergo
sum, I don’t believe Christmas is anything more than for families to get
together, compare wealth notes, show churchgoers the latest fashion,
consume “good” food, increase Lucio Tan’s and PAL’s profits. I do
not believe the Church, which has designed boring ceremonies supposedly
celebrating Christ’s sacrifice, even believes in its own mythology
anymore. I’m more inclined to believe it’s more interested, like the
other Christian institutions, in the reports of its accountants.
My
consolation is this. Christians (or a Christian nation) comprise of
humans. Often they do bad deeds. Sometimes they do good ones.
This Christmas season, I will continue to be wary of the bad deeds of our entrepreneurial corruptions. But I will celebrate my favorite vendor’s devotion to good cookery with coconut milk, my wife’s friend’s devotion to good Mexican food, my favorite laundrywoman’s honest work. Good deeds many of us cannot compete with.
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Posted at the Bananacue
Republic website 12/22/04. Send comments to:
[email protected]
"I don’t
believe Christmas is anything more than for families to get together,
compare wealth notes, show churchgoers the latest fashion, consume ‘good’
food, increase Lucio Tan’s and PAL’s profits."