By Rex Catubig

 

HIS name is Cesar.

Yet there is nothing remotely noble about his birth nor upbringing.

Born into poverty, his family was forced out of their home because they didn’t have money for the rent. With no other place to go, they squatted on a vacant lot adjacent to the old Weather Bureau in Babaliwan (now Poblacion Oeste) and made a shanty out of scraps. He was my neighbor.

The hovel was so small that when his father died, his coffin wouldn’t fit inside, so they held the wake in a neighbor’s slightly bigger house. He was only two when his father died, and he learned then that there was no time for grief.

To make both ends meet, his mother Saling washed laundry for families at P150 per month. To augment this, Cesar went with her dorm to dorm and offered to wash the uniforms of the Nursing students during the boom of Nursing schools. For each student, she charged a measly P20 but found it difficult to collect payment. Still, she took the job because she had a son to send to school.

Five centavos was all the allowance Cesar had in his pocket as a pupil at the West Central Elementary School. And twenty five centavos when he reached high school. Luckily, out of sheer resolve burning the midnight oil, he did not have to pay tuition in college as a scholar.

But it was not that easy. To avoid having to pay for a ride, he took a shortcut and walked the expanse of the labyrinthian fishpond dikes to reach Lyceum College that was in the middle of swampland. For lunch, he brought a pack consisting of rice wrapped in banana leaf, and a piece or two of fried tuyo, or on better days, a boiled egg. Drinking water made his stomach feel full.

 

His perseverance paid off. Cesar graduated Cum Laude, but like the proverbial prophet, he did not gain acceptance in his home turf. He had to venture to faraway San Carlos City to land a teaching job.

Maybe, he was destined to go far. Owing to his Med Tech internship in Clark Air Base, he was emboldened to apply for work in the US and was accepted.

Cesar Campos took off for the States in 1990 –” kapalpaltak” as folks say –with only his balls to keep him afloat. But luck and hard work began turning his life around.

He found work at the Regional Medical Center of San Jose. And for doing well, the hospital sponsored his further schooling, taking up Master of Science in Public Health.

Within two years, in 1992 he had saved enough to buy himself a house. Not just in San Jose. Back home in Bolosan, Dagupan, he built his dream mansion.

Yet for him, his penultimate achievement was having brought his destitute mother to the promised land of milk and honey. It was the thank you America moment, the culmination of his struggles. Alas, it was not meant to last.

Within five years, his mother became ill. Hard times had failed to bring her down, but she fell prey to cancer and it didn’t take long for the brain tumor to consume her. On her deathbed, as she gasped for her last breath, she had one last wish to ask Cesar. “Isempet moak”, take me home, she implored him. “ Agmoak pupuulan”, do not cremate my remains, she pleaded. Though inconsolable, the good son humbly complied.

Cesar still works at the Regional Medical Center of San Jose. He holds at present the supervisory position of Tech Manager of the hospital’s Bioreference Specialty Lab–presiding over a staff of 25–that conducted Covid-19 tests during the pandemic.

The frontline is his birthright. For Cesar has always been at the frontlines of life. Struggle and survival are second nature to him. Then and now, he has fought hard and always came through a victor.

At last, he has rightfully earned the honor to be worthy of his name.

Hail Cesar!

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