I was awake for 20 straight hours yesterday starting at two in the morning. During that time, I took a cab, a plane, and a bus to get to North Cotabato over a thousand kilometers south of Manila. I met with a bishop and two priests, had lunch with a teacher, spoke before a crowd of almost 70 people most of whom are older than my parents, got interviewed on-air by a local radio station, and, to cap my day, dined with nuns. As soon I woke up at 3AM today, I had to travel two hours to get to the airport and fly back home to report for work.
That's just half of the story.
For the next 41 days leading to the elections in May, I expect to make a few more trips like that, mostly in Mindanao. That's part of my job as a Namfrel volunteer. Together with another guy in myteam, they call us regional directors for Mindanao. We get deployed all over Mindanao a few weeks before every national elections to train Namfrel volunteers in the field. We are practically on call. Namfrel secretariat would call us and advise us of preferred training dates that our provincial chapters have requested. Most of the time, we don't have a choice. We file for an emergency leave and take a one-day working vacation to far places. In cases where I need to sweep several provinces in one trip, I let the Namfrel chairman call my boss and request that I be made available for the job. I'm glad my boss has very strong sense of his social responsibility.
It's a very humbling experience to brush elbows with co-volunteers whose stories in the field since 1986 are as colorful as the lives they live. It's even more humbling to witness their passion to do selfless service for a cause, while risky and unpaid, yet provide unexplainable rewards that only them can understand.
My dealings with these volunteers have kept me grounded all the time. But largely, it makes me deeply sad at the same time. I almost never fail to wonder why ordinary people like them have the biggest hearts for something big as guarding ballots while some people allow to be preoccupied and filled up with mundane GQ and Cosmo things.
Maybe I'm just old. Or maybe I just know how to value things.
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