Pride of the Malay Race

By Mike Banos

There‘s not too many people left who care about our late great National Hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. Oh, sure they know who he is, what he did, but do they give a hoot about the ideals he lived and died for? The youth know the comic character Mulawin who is now on TV, better than Rizal.

At this point in our country‘s history, most people are probably thankful the Spaniards chose to execute Rizal on this day, thus providing them a guaranteed three-day holiday every end of the year (since the last day of the year has automatically become a holiday, immediately preceding New Year‘s Day). Thank President Arroyo and her spin doctors for coming up with what is probably the only thing most people can sincerely thank the Arroyo administration for :‘Holiday Economics,‘ no less. Both John Kenneths (i.e., Keynes and Gilbraith) must be spinning in their graves.

Personally, I think it‘s a pity the Boy Scouts of the Philippines has lost its former stature and key role in the formation of Filipino boys. Were it not for the Boy Scouts, I would not have gone to the Rizal Shrine in Dapitan for a very moving once-in-a-lifetime encounter with the ‘Great Malayan.‘

Now this was way back in 1969, I was an elementary student at the former Zamboanga Normal College Laboratory School. Boy Scouting was mandatory, and as a candidate for the rank of ‘Maginoo‘ Scout (the penultimate step to becoming a ‘Rizal‘ Scout) the so-called ‘Dapitan Trek‘ was one of the merit badges needed to be earned.

For the major part of that long, long bus trip, I have little recollection, except throwing up somewhere after Bgy Vitali, some 70 kms. from Zamboanga City, and passing through the municipalities of Ipil and Sindangan on our way to Dapitan.

Dapitan was even sleepier then in ‘69 than it is now. Except perhaps for the electric lamp posts and occasional jeepney, it could very well have been the same town that Rizal was exiled in for three years late in the nineteenth century. I remember being very moved (now remember, I was a boy of 11, and even then, not a very impressionable one) when we visited the Rizal shrine which had replicas of his residence, clinic and other structures. In the shrine, the ‘Great Malayan‘ was not a mere abstract in a book or a statue in a public square. Here, you could almost see him sauntering around as he went about his daily rounds.

I vividly recall climbing the belfry tower of the old Jesuit church where Rizal attended mass to see Dapitan from a bird‘s eye view and especially the map of Mindanao in the church yard hand made by Rizal and his students. I‘d say it made quite an impression on a very unimpressionable kid at that time.

But my favorite Rizal ‘artifact‘ during that trek was his ‘Mi Retiro Rock‘, a massive limestone rock a little off the high water mark of the beach in front of the residence where Rizal lived. Here, it is said he would often retire when he was in distress or just plain courting the muse for perhaps another poem.

Alas, it was to take another lifetime, or 29 years to be exact, before I was able to visit the Shrine City again during the Centennial Trek to Dapitan as part of the media pool covering the event. To mark the hundred years since his execution in Bagumbayan, the Department of Tourism and local governments in Regions 9, 10 and 11 embarked on a grand caravan from Cagayan de Oro to Dapitan. Picking up more and more participants as we got nearer the shrine city, the caravan had grown to over a hundred vehicles by the time we reached our destination.

I was very excited when we finally got to Dapitan in the late afternoon. We were doing this documentary for the then Sarimanok News Channel or SNN, and with me were anchor Mylene Pabayo-Chi and cameraman Cocoy Ragmac. I suggested we do a stand upper at the church belfry and they agreed. Mai-mai had no problem going up the last step up the old bell tower, a rickety wooden ladder which went almost straight up, what with her kimona, bakya and all. Ditto with Cocoy who was toting his heavy ENG camera besides. But 29 years is indeed a lifetime as I found myself shaking, BP rising and nerves fraying as I slowly made my trembling way up that wooden ladder, acutely conscious of the 29 more years it had seen since I was last here, as well as the appoximately one hundred extra pounds now strapped to my middle aged frame.

I finally made it to the top and it was as magnificent as ever. Dapitan was still that in many ways, the trappings of progress notwithstanding. The town plaza has definitely improved, and the map of Mindanao kept just the way it was when I saw it back in ‘69, which is most probably also how it first looked when Rizal and his boys first made it.

There were a lot of new surprises in this centennial caravan: the magnificent display of relics and artifacts, the favorite of which was the famous lamp that Rizal‘s mother told him the story of ‘The moth and the lamp‘, perhaps not so much because it‘s a methapor of his life the way he lived it, but because it stuck in my memory the way it‘s supposed to whenever I‘m faced with a moral dilemma.

We also went to the Eguia farm in nearby Katipunan, Zamboanga del Norte where Rizal and his so-called ‘Twelve Disciples‘ went every now and then to farm and enjoy nature by boat. It‘s now marked by an NHI marker as a heritage site, and I believe the Tourism Dept. should encourage its inclusion in the ‘Dapitan Trek‘ package tour operators should be pushing for the Shrine City.

Five years after the Centennial caravan, I again had the occasion to visit Dapitan when I was assigned to work in nearby Dipolog for about five months. I‘m sad the Rizal Shrine has deteriorated, in the sense that it now has this ghastly concrete walkway all around he site, ostensibly to stabilize the soil and prevent the pounding from the feet of countless pilgrims from eventually pushing the whole place, molecule by molecule, into Dapitan bay. The net effect is ‘commercialization‘ with the whole place looking what it really is: a replica. The spirit of the shrine the way I saw it in ‘69 has been destroyed by this walkway. Especially distressing to me personally is the enclosure which now surrounds the ‘Mi Retiro Rock‘ ostensibly to prevent vandals and souvenir hunters from taking it away bit by bit. The net effect has been to make it look like a Little Alcatraz.

So where‘s the Youth whom the Great Malayan called the ‘Hope of the Fatherland‘? Unfortunately, many indeed have followed his advice to ‘go into business‘ and are now busy distributing illegal drugs to all levels of society. Not to lose faith in the young people however: though many have given up education to help bring home the bacon in an increasingly competitive global village, there‘s even far more of them pushing tabloids in the streets, and either driving a trisikad, dispatching jeepneys, or hawking cigarets or mineral water in our national highways and city streets.

I hope the Commission on Higher Education (ChED) restores mandatory participation by all elementary boys and girls in the Scouting Movement, and similarly, that the Boys and Girls Scouts of the Philippines restore the ‘Dapitan Trek‘ in the list of requirements every student (at least from Mindanao) has to accomplish before he can graduate. Nothing like getting Up-Close-and- Personal with the ‘Pride of the Malay Race‘ to put some backbone, some character into them kids. Traits which many of the ‘Hope of the Fatherland‘ are now sadly very much in want of.

-INDJC-

Mike Banos
Mike Banos is a free-lance journalist who contributes an opinion column "Hammer and Anvil" to the Mindanao Gold Star Daily newspaper Mondays and Fridays. He is a member of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club, Inc. Board of Directors and has been a journalist for over 20 years in the cities of Zamboanga and Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. He also writes for other national and regional publications like Business World, The Freeman and The Philippine Graphic. He is the content provider for Kagay-an.com, Online News from Cagayan de Oro. He was recently cited as the KAABAG Awards 2006 Tourism Writer of the Year by the Department of Tourism Region 10 office.

Source : http://www.americanchronicle.com/
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