The
Bohol Tribune
A Column by:
NESTOR
MANIEBO PESTELOS
We are all in a sort of journey,
from one starting point to a destination, whether such journey is planned or
not. In a sense, from each other’s vantage point, we are all passers-by. We
watch each other pass by and occasionally we stop to compare notes on where we
are going or how the journey has been.
Life, in a way, is made up of these
journeys, each as important as the other because they contribute to our sense
of direction, which paths to choose for a specific purpose. Or, we don’t choose
at all, letting circumstances or emotions dictate where we want to go. Some
people feel happy doing it this way.
Each destination is as good as
the other in so far as it contributes to our sense of well-being, as long as it
does not harm anyone and, better still, if it amounts to something good for all
or to a significant number of people.
This column seeks to track such
journeys, whether in my own life or in others, fellow passers-by in the search
for something to love, to believe in, to fight for or simply to marvel at in
this our still-expanding universe of 17 billion planets.
Let me, then, start with my own
journey –
Journeys, actually, but let us just
choose one, which is the main one, the path taken that led me to Bohol 33 years
ago. I have done countless self-assessments and group meditations, retreats,
confessions and diary keeping or journal writing for the most part of my 72
years and by now I am convinced that a traumatic experience when I was fourteen
years old led me to take the development path I have taken.
My father died at 23 years of
age when I was only three years old. I grew up in a family of women consisting
of my maternal grandmother, mother and a younger sister. When I had problems, like being bullied in
school, I would visit the grave of my father and there I would tell him
everything. But one day, when I went to
the cemetery to complain that I could not buy Babe Ruth chocolate during
recess, I found his grave was gone. In its place was the ornate tomb of a rich
Chinese businessman complete with huge candles,
flowers and baskets, some still with apples and other fruits.
I rushed to the factory where
mother was working and asked her where my father’s grave was transferred and
she said that if some years elapsed and we failed to pay the annual fee of Php
50, then the administrator of the Catholic cemetery could just take away the
bones and give the space to another family.
I went to look for the parish
priest and found him asleep and I was told he could not be disturbed in his
siesta. In frustration and disgust, I
unzipped my short pants and urinated all over the balcony and vowed I would
never go back to church again. During that week, I resigned as auxiliary member
of the Legion of Mary. It took me years
to get back to the faith.
This traumatic experience
colored my perception of the world I was growing up in and through the years, I
used it to explain my bias in working with projects among the poor and
marginalized. In the late 1970s, I worked with UNICEF-assisted projects in the
eight provinces considered as the country’s poorest. From 1982 to 1989, I worked with the pioneers
of community development to establish the Ilaw International Center in Bohol
which served to field-test and document innovative approaches to improving
service delivery to remote communities. In the 1990s, I served in various UNDP
projects in underserved atoll countries in the Pacific and had the chance to
work in Maldives, in the Indian Ocean.
Three months after retiring from
UNDP, in April 2002, I joined the Provincial Government of Bohol as volunteer
consultant to be part of a team at the Provincial Planning and Development
Office (PPDO) with the mission to help get the province out of the list of top
20 poorest provinces. The following
year, I founded the Bohol Local Development Foundation to serve as partner of
the PPDO in developing the Provincial Database and Monitoring System (PDMS)
which served as tool to identify the poorest households based on core poverty
indicators and achieve more effective targeting of service delivery to them.
From Bohol, the pro-poor targeting tool has been brought to several cities and
municipalities in the country as well as in other countries, namely, India,
Bangladesh and Bhutan.
In recent years, PDMS has been
used by local government units in combination with other tools and approaches
such as in the promotion of asset-based community development, gender balance
in project planning and implementation, eco-budgeting, as well as medium, small
and micro enterprises (MSMEs). We have put all information about this pro-poor
targeting tool and its possible applications in a website www.pdmsplus.com for those interested that the real poor in a
particular purok, barangay and municipality can be identified properly sans
political interventions and reached with adequate information and services.
This is the journey I have taken
for the most part of a lifetime conditioned by a traumatic experience I had
while growing up in my hometown in Quezon province. In efforts to achieve clarity
of targets and goals for my own development journey, I am in a sense looking
for the bones of my father in remote places and among both the downtrodden and
those who profess to serve them .
Such is the way I will view similar journeys taken by fellow passers-by in
our common quest for meaning and commitment in an increasingly complicated and
hostile world. Join me, then, in this our journey. ###
NMP/06 Jan 2015/11.10 p.m.
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