My Stint In Capoocan, A Changing Community

BIMBO CABIDOG

Years ago, a new acquaintance asked me to help in their municipality’s planning for comprehensive medium-term development. I have used the buzz words CMTD many times in conversation and seminars where I shared inputs. But wow, to know a local government unit take them seriously and actually want me to be part of the planning process was beyond joy. It was an offer I could not refuse (apologies to Michael Corleone).

So I came on the scheduled activity-launching conference. You cannot overhighlight my blush at the presence of village chiefs (in full force), their leader – the ABC president, the mayor, and the LGU’s designated Technical Working Group. The latter was composed of local heads of offices. I felt butterflies in my stomach. I had to forget about me, to stand before them.

My acquaintance really opened a door to three gold nuggets: an opportunity to grow, an official privilege to participate in local history, and an exciting time to live. Her role (not exactly her position) was vital to her town’s government machinery being revved up to a new direction. I was just vital at being maybe a replica of The Nobody, unsure if my kind truly has the right to earn a living. She made it sure, however, that the stint meant monetary gain.

Well, no pretence, I wasn’t exactly up to that. My professional credentials were not worth a second thought, simply because I had none. I had only some sort of talent at speech and at standing before an audience without melting, a product of trying it all those years living on the edge and God’s pity. Yes, I got skills in fiercely critical political-economic analysis from the University of Hard Knocks.

Anyway, a measure of currency for a man’s worth wasn’t what I was after. I just sought to pay my rent, settle monthly bills, and above everything bring food to the table. What I sought wasn’t pay but wherewithal. And hey, the self-esteem booster was great.

I spent days there. The days became months and years. The place offered a bailiwick to my dreams for me, community and country. I just found myself one day caring for the people, their futuristic visions, the collective directions their barangays take. I participated in their change until I felt already belonging to them, more than I belonged to the only town I called home.

Capoocan, the municipality I am referring to, was at the crossroads of two divergent ideas. One was of departure from the past. The other was of permanence. No few among the local folks resisted change. They clung dearly to their economic fiefdoms, their traditional political turfs, and their old rule. But the ground was shifting underneath. This was of the people being introduced by a rapidly changing world to new ways of living and of marshaling their fates.

As the ground shifted, the resisters would themselves be swept away. Not just a handful lost foothold, not of course by revolution, but by attrition. Old means burst like old wine skins full of the new spirit. Once you take the new, you close the past for all times. And you sweep the clingers to the leftovers of history.

It was at this dynamic period of a community on the cusp of fresh developments that I grounded my fantasies at social transformation. I entered it not presuming knowledge or far better know-how, but as an avid learner from the masses. You have to be a participant of change to learn.

Sometimes, amid discouragements I kept answering myself: you know how it is in this sphere, with the overused and abused traditions for everyone’s self-aggrandizement. I then honed my teeth in the politics of local governance. I also negotiated the tricky intricacies of electoral politics, handling one campaign or two. I was lucky to have my learning curb, no PhDs.

An arena of engagement with so much for everyone’s personal advancement and egotistic fill would surprise if it has no intrigues coming from various points 380 degrees. Yet, I was still surprised to be hit by one. And that hit profoundly one’s ego and bat for a career. But my survivor instinct taught me how not to fight and steered me out of troubled waters.

Include the above in the lessons. Development is not merely propelled by theoretical dialectics. It is impelled by contention in real fields of battles. It is about people at odds with each other, persons challenged to do best by their opposites.

Fear of saying goodbye to a sole means of living as always would soften my rockbound stances. I compromised on lifelong doctrines. I yielded high ground, not only by inch but by square kilometer, for at the back of it all was uncertainty. Piecework wages and talent fees proved occasional. From one deal to the other, I had to deal all over again.

In the long intervals of unemployment, I slammed into literally hungry years. For the family, hunger would become a fact of life, not to speak of electricity repeatedly being cut off for unpaid arrears, and a landlady at pains how to evict five prospectively homeless mortals with six months of forgone rentals.

But Capoocan has been more than an on-and-off engagement. It was a job that you care with all your life, because it is you. It runs in your bloodstreams, since you saw a society blighted by an oppressive order and deprived of development. It awakened every morning since your eyes began to see people brutalized by exploitation. You take a rest. But you always await one more nostalgic round of the good fight.