Quest for Quality

By Marifi Jara

As a little girl, on our family summer visits to my mother’s hometown, Sabangan, San Fabian, I would know that we were close to my grandparents’ home once we hit the rough road.

That last left turn to my most wonderful childhood playground brought us to a pebbled street and the crackling of the stones under the tires was wonderful music to my ears.

Once we go past the Sanitas Elementary School, the cemetery, and houses few and far in between, lola’s enchanted kingdom, with its wooded backyard, would just be a few breaths away.

Today, more than two decades later, much of this neighborhood, where I now live, has changed. More houses have mushroomed closer to each other. Sanitas is no longer just my mom’s alma mater, it is now where we cast our vote. The cemetery – where I once got frighteningly lost after going astray from our group while walking back from the beach half barefoot (I lost one of my rubber slippers at some point in my aimless roving around) and about an hour later found by my brother and a cousin – is more crowded and fenced on one side. And the once pebbled road is now paved.

But the concreting leaves much to be desired.

If the cementing of a road is a sign of progress for the area, as it is generally construed, the development of Sabangan (or barangay Nibaliw Narvarte officially) is not a straight line forward.

Laid out in patches over a period of several years, the less than one-kilometer unmarked street waves up and down at the different points where the patches meet. Driving through it feels like a mini roller coaster ride, minus the thrill.

The contractors who laid it out obviously couldn’t care less if they added a strip that was higher than the existing paved portion. At the first point of connection, the new strip, laid out just before the May election this year, is so high that soil and gravel had to be laid out lest vehicles would not be able to pass through. The rains so far have not eroded it just yet, but I wonder how much longer it will hold.

The local government both at the municipal and barangay levels, obviously like the contractors, did not bother checking out the quality of the project.  

This lack of quest for quality, I believe, is pervasive in many a Filipino undertaking. It’s our pwede na attitude. Couple that with our often excessive and misplaced tolerance level, then pathetic results are simply accepted.

The barangay election is just a little more than a month away. The chairmanship will be hotly contested in Sabangan with so far five people gunning for the position. I wonder which one of them does not settle for pwede na.

I don’t miss magical sound of the pebbled road of my childhood. But the current paved one is quite frustrating. I do hope the next Sabangan leader will put that in his/her to-do list.

*****

Our kabalayen writers – both professionals and the unpublished, amateur ones –  might be interested in joining the UP Centennial Literary Prize, dubbed “Gawad Likhaan”, with P200,000 at stake for each of the winners in six categories.

The categories are novel/short story collection, poetry, and creative nonfiction, each in English and Filipino. Entries for the creative writing categories could be a biography, autobiography or a collection of personal essays.

The contest, in line with the University of the Philippines’ centennial celebration next year, is open to all Filipino citizens.

For more information, visit www.upd.edu.ph/~icw.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/roots/)

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