Off the Record
bcupin@theguidon.com

Camille is a bubbly and wide-eyed 15-year-old. She looks a little more mature than she actually is, but the softness in her voice easily betrays her innocence and naivety. She also isn’t very difficult to talk to—in the hour that we talked, she shyly admitted that she still loves watching cartoons and that unlike most teenagers her age, she enjoys going to school.

But unlike my little brother’s friends, Camille is a mother of two. Her eldest is a two-year-old boy named Arbie and lying beside her the day I met her, was her three-day old baby girl. I met her during my weekend immersion at Fabella Hospital in Santa Cruz, Manila.

Back at home, my brother was probably playing those role-playing online games he loves so much. Academics would probably be the biggest problem in his life. And come to think about it, his grades aren’t too bad anyway.

They say immersion is designed to put you out of your comfort zone and to apply all the social responsibility theories Ateneo has been teaching since day one. It’s also supposed to enrich you because of the stories and experiences that you learn in the two-and-a-half days spent in the community.

But right then and there, I wasn’t moved. I wasn’t touched. Instead, I felt useless; utterly, completely useless.

I’ve always known motherhood wasn’t easy but as stupid as it might sound, I never thought about how difficult it would be in the context of economic, emotional and political poverty. At the end of each day we spent in Fabella, I found myself overwhelmed—not by the human traffic during the ride back to Katipunan—but by the gravity of the stories the mommies and hospital staff shared with us.

I spoke to a friend and immersion-mate about how we both felt the need to come back to Fabella soon. Now that we knew their stories, what were we going to do about it?

But we soon realized that the problem was way too big for us. We thought about donating clothes—but that would probably only cover two new babies. A paper drive was also an option, since the Fabella’s offices were clearly always in need of scratch paper.

But what could we do about the less-than-P2,000 per capita income? How would we ensure that the teenage mothers we saw that day would continue schooling after giving birth? What could we do about the deplorable state of the hospital building? Nothing, really. At least for now.

We received more from Fabella than we gave. Looking back, I’m not even sure if we gave anything at all.

While I’m sure the conversations we had with the mothers in Fabella helped them a little (it gets really boring in there, they said), we definitely learned more from them than they did from us.

If anything, the experience awoke us from the pampered, privileged dream that most of our lives are.

Fabella Hospital is a maternity hospital in Manila. Over 100 babies are born there daily, so it’s no surprise  that resources are always scarce. If you’d like to help, email bcupin@theguidon.com.