THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Many of us probably remember this poem we were made to recite when we were in the grades, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Some from among us past sixty years old may still quote the whole poem which consists of only four stanzas. Among the four, the last stanza is likely the most studied – and remembered:

I shall be telling this with a sigh (underscoring ours)
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A writer says the poem is about "the human tendency to wobble illogically in decision and later to assume that the decision was, after all, logical and enormously important,” but there is also the tendency to tell about it “with a sigh,” something which makes many think the poet regrets having taken the road less travelled.

I have been thinking about the poem, this last stanza in particular, the past few nights, when I have been sleepless. Rather than think of the proverbial sheep, I have been thinking of roads.

Not the roads with bridges and kickbacks which allegedly make infrastructure in government budgets quite attractive for some people to run for public office election after election. It’s more about roads as part of a journey to define one’s life, set its parameters and endure possible turmoil brought by the weather within that perpetually brings storms to test one’s will to proceed and walk the road chosen for the long and definitive walk towards creating one’s own destiny.

In 1982, at the late age of 40 when I had taken too many roads, too many destinies, too many false starts, dictated by circumstances or by false hopes, I arrived in Bohol not for the first time because I had previous official trips before as part of projects, but this time to stay longer and build a community development training center that hopefully could last for decades.

This one road I took to be part of a dream shared with some of the country’s pioneers in professional community development work: to establish a  repository of experiences to provide lessons and guide those whom we called in those years as fieldworkers in their efforts to reach what UNICEF and our other donors called the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the disadvantaged. In brief, the poor and the downtrodden who seemed to be invisible to policymakers and planners.

I have remained in that road although through the years there were detours that I took but these were in my mind merely side roads to cope with temporary road blocks, constraints that NGOs like ours usually meet on the road to reach our respective mission: lack of funding; withdrawal of support from government due to perceived disloyalty to politicians or their respective parties in power; donor requirements which tend to favor those with relatively more resources which can come up with counterpart funding. In some cases, the detours were a necessity to remind us that despite the dedication and the passion, the flesh is heir to illnesses and the usual mortality stuff, an expiration date imposed by genes and the oftentimes impersonal and self-limiting economic and physical environment.

In recent years, however, it has been more difficult to travel this development path. Aside from problems arising from the usual limitations of being a marginalized NGO, the task environment itself, the macro context where we must do development work has changed drastically in recent years: the Government at national and subnational levels seems to suffer from its own

The drug menace in Bohol has brought to the surface images which portray the  Bol-anon way of life totally alien to what we have known through the years. Political leaders as well as those in the Church and civil society organizations are perceived as inept in the face of  modern-day problems such as the widespread distribution and use of illegal drugs.

Where to Bohol? Where do we go from here? What has happened to our faith in ourselves to dream and recreate a province based on the age-old values of hard work and mutual sharing with kin and neighbors alike? Where is the impact of projects worth millions of dollars given by the peoples of the world to address social deprivation in our midst? When will this “Me Only” and “Me Too” mentality end or at least modified to include a concern for those “who have less in life” in the words of the Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, maligned in history as the creation of the CIA,  but should also be remembered as the one who launched the community development movement in the 1950s?

In those nights that I could not sleep, after being pummeled left and right by opposing views about the Masapano massacre, the deepening silence about poverty and the drug menace in Bohol, the sight of young men and women seemingly under the influence, or either just confused which road to take or probably with brains shrunked prematurely by repeated alcohol and drug abuse, I could only raise questions and hope we can find a new day in my adopted province and justify again this choice of my final road either to redemption or perdition.

May we all sleep soundly again here in this our beloved province.

NMP/13 February 2015/ 8.33 a.m.