By Rex Catubig

 

March is Women’s History Month. The national theme for 2024 celebrates “Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” “The theme recognizes women throughout the country who understand that, for a positive future, we need to eliminate bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions”.

“They know that…young people in particular need to learn the value of hearing from different voices with different points of view as they grow up”.

These women I wrote about in a previous post, are neither professionals nor women of influence. They are ordinary homemakers, who have not made a dent in history. Whose contribution to the ideals of “equity, diversity, and inclusion”, to “women empowerment” is to go about their task of eking a living routinely, so that their family can survive.  It is a struggle that knows no name, a hope that has no face, an unnamed, unheralded advocacy.

They make their living under the cover of night. They set off towards sunset–just as others are heading home, they’re just about to embark on a routine solitary journey to earn their day’s keep. But they don’t wear lipstick nor brush on make-up or slip into some slinky dress. They don’t slither seductively into some dim-lit club with loud karaoke music.

Instead, they cross the river from Pantal, carrying an army provision of pots, pans, plates, plastic tubs and other paraphernalia. Thus fortified for the night outing, they seek out and stake their territorial claim on their respective battleground.

Aling Mely holds court amid a setting of fire, heat and smoke–just off the desecrated Post Office. With a tubful of specially prepared batter, she pours the mix which she garnishes with chopped salted egg into a row of round clay molds lined with like-shaped banana leaves and fired on top and on the bottom with burning coconut shells. She does this with delicate ease and speed and within minutes, her special Bibingka priced at Twelve and Fifteen pesos, are ready to be brushed with margarine and brown bagged.

She’s now 59 and she confides that she’s been doing this for the past 13 years. Her Bibingka draws a long line of buyers, some buying in bulk (as if preparing for an impending apocalypse). The night we ordered a couple, there was an earlier order of 14 pieces that she was busy filling up and we were third in line. Yet she claims a night’s sale from two plastic tubs of mix is just enough to keep the family from going hungry. With seven children and a couple of grandkids to feed, she seems bound to the fire and smoke of living. But behind the smoke, she and her grandkids, have only the sweetest smiles to while away the long hot night.

Aling Mely will not quality for your wonder heroine garbed in a colorful costume, no tiara crowns her hair; she holds no diploma, no mortar board had sat on her head; ukay ukay defines  her clothing; nail polish had not painted over the stained nails on her scrawny fingers and lotion is alien to her rough hands. The folds and furrows on her face hide the beauty of her soul.

But to her “apos” who she dots on, though they’re too young for the right words, their adoring eyes express it so well: she is the unlabeled wonder woman in their life.

(To be continued)

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