NYX MARTINEZ learns about Filipinos who traveled—not to see what the world could give them, but to see what they could give the world.
I had more than a good-enough reason to beat Manila traffic on a Wednesday night. It was no ordinary book launch. I was with complete strangers who have crossed time zones and distances in the journeys that brought them—brought all of us—together on a pre-Christmas night.
Liza Lopez is a volunteer financial management adviser for the Karen mountain tribes on the Thai-Burma border.
Amid the applause given to those who labored behind computers and presses before the book Brave New World made it to shelves, I scanned the room, remembering the conversations I had in the last 10 minutes. More than half of those present were Filipino volunteers.
There was a doctor who served in the Pacific, and was now on his way to South Africa. There was a young man, fresh from volunteering in the steppes of Mongolia, who told me about the cold in that country, but in his eyes, the glint of having experienced something many never even dare to dream of doing. There was a woman who volunteered in Kenya, the one who invited me to the event.
That night, we celebrated the generosity of the Filipino spirit, the passion that carried unsung Filipino volunteers forward, to something greater, nobler. These are the people who tirelessly worked with the “untouchables of Bangladesh,” the Karenni mountain tribes of northern Thailand, the indigenous communities of Papua New Guinea. These are Filipinos who are, in a remarkable way, going out there and changing the world.
“There is nothing in these stories about the Pinoy as receiver of help; rather they introduce us to the Pinoy as a capable giver of aid and an active global citizen,” said VSO Bahaginan Executive Director Marilou Pantua Juanito, in her prologue. “The stories you’ll be reading will change your mind; maybe even your life.”
Written and photographed by Dutch journalist Nicole Van Zurk, the accounts in Brave New World are all true, resounding messages of what Filipinos are capable of achieving when we do things beyond ourselves.
May we all take some of that unselfish spirit in our hearts as we, travelers, remember what Mark Twain once wrote:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
More info: VSO Bahaginan recently celebrated four decades of volunteer operations in the Philippines with the launch of two books: Apat na Dekada and Brave New World. VSO is the worldís leading independent international development charity that works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing countries. To find out how you can volunteer or purchase copies of the books, visit www.vsobahaginan.org.ph, email bahaginan@vsoint.org, or call (+632) 374 6450 to 52.© Mabuhay Magazine, February 2011
