Feelings are not for public display unless the situation calls for it. People in this warn torn and politically divided nation opt to keep their feelings in the recesses of their hearts unless pressed hard to do otherwise. Amid the raging issues of the day, many would chose to hold back reactions and just busy themselves doing what could make them survive for the day. The call of the stomach is to many the primary concern that must be attended to over all other concerns. Indeed, the impoverished masses do not have any idea of that hierarchy of needs for to them there is only one primary need which is top of all, never mind the needs that follow, whatever the nature and classification may be. The real concern sans others is to find food that could make them live for the day, without which, all their being is put to great peril, on the brink of death.

The deprivation of many less privileged if not underprivileged among the poor is devastating in the real sense. To the person who could barely find food to feed ones hunger and those in the family that depend on him, the inability to have that basic need causes, more than physical weakness, mental imbalance. Hunger drives people to wild thoughts, if not actions, that bring danger to the person and others in the community. An empty stomach can cause malfunctions in both mind and body, with consequences beyond normal imagination. Many tragic ends had been traced to such cause and though there are efforts aimed at dispelling the causal connection, there are manifest proofs in support of the same.
Amid the economic rescission, government is projecting an image that the country is on an unprecedented economic rise. It is trying hard conditioning the public mind that the country is economically stable and its people are fine. Advertisements are regularly published on all media fronts just to remind the people that the economy is healthy. Poor people from the less privileged sectors of society had been tapped to proclaim the good news about the good things that government had been doing and is continue achieving under the present leadership.

Those who passively watch the advertisements about the proclamations of the country’s progress are often caught bewildered. It is truly hard discerning where progress is flowing from and for whom because in reality what poor people feel are the contrary. Employment is tough to find and when one finds, it is only good as that, employment, and in some misfortunate cases, underemployment, as even such do not actually redound to gainful economic activity. We know too well how employment has kept many workers in the clutches of grinding poverty despite ones industry.

All the advertisements about the economic progress that people purportedly feel are after all devoid of meaning. The real situation of the poor and deprived masses depicts a vivid picture that is in contrast from what government is projecting and which government would want believed by the masses. While no one has dared to openly refute the expensive government advertisements about people feeling good and feels too well the economic progress. The picture of the economy is well retouched or even implanted by a mask. Its true economic condition was only revealed by that harrowing and horrible tale of a mother feeding her three children with poison, and herself thereafter, in a somber despair over having no food to feed. Feel?

comments to alellema@yahoo.com

A maritime country with a shoreline longer than that of continental USA like the Philippines, to import salt is an absurdity of the highest order. The country’s salt makers still using the ‘primitive’ method of producing salt was able to meet the domestic demand decades ago. Lately, however, Filipinos were stunned to read in the metropolitan dailies about the Philippines importing more than 90 percent of the salt sold in markets, groceries, and ‘talipapas’ because of the poor, low local salt production output.

Technologies have long ago entered the Philippines, including modernization of salt-making methods. Those in the salt industry contends that age-old salt beds have been included in the reclamation program of government and the private sector. But this is untenable because of the maritime geographic make up of the country – seawater being many-fold wider than the land/terrestrial one. Also, salt makers blame the passage of RA No. 8172 or Act for Salt Iodization Nationwide in1995 that “mandated all producers and manufacturers food-grade salt to iodize the salt they produce.” But how? Laws are made not to be destructive?

Alas! The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) has come to the rescue of the dwindling, dying salt industry by allocating P200 million, split in their 2022 and 2023 budget. BFAR has targeted 23 various salt producing areas spread around the marine waters of the country. They added that in the 1980’s 85 percent of salt sold in the market were outsourced locally and only 25 percent were imported. Also, BFAR reported that the salt producing areas in the Philippines are Bulacan, Pangasinan, Occidental Mindoro, Las Pinas, and Cavite. Very noticeable in the list, not one area has been identified from the Visayas and Mindanao, a fact that should be considered. Specifically, is the need to introduce salt-making among entrepreneurs and fisherfolks in the Visayas – Eastern Visayas particularly because of the many islands/islets that dot the provinces of Samar, Leyte, and Biliran.

BFAR revealed that it would revitalize the industry in all 23 salt producing areas in the country. The budget for the salt industry “covers the distribution of post-harvest materials, upgrading all the storage facilities and establishing technology demonstration.” The 23 areas include those in Luzon: Pangasinan (Alaminos, Infanta, Dasol, and San Fabian) ; Ilocos Norte (Paoay, Burgos); Ilocos Sur (Narvacan, Sto. Domingo ,and Sta. Catalina; La Union (Bangar, Luna); Cavite (Kawit, Noveleta); Batangas (Lobo, Calatagan);Quezon (Atimonan); Mindanao: the cities of Isabela and Zamboanga, and the provinces of Aurora, Bataan, Zambales, Bulacan, Occidental Mindoro, Antique, Guimaras, Iloilo, Bohol, Negros Occidental, Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga-Sibugay, Zamboanga del Sur, and Basilan.

MY COMMENT:
I cannot understand why Eastern Visayas do not have a single salt making outfit despite the many islands/islets scattered in the 3 main islands of Biliran, Leyte, and Samar – potential areas for salt making. At the height of COVID-19 when Filipinos were overwhelmed by the virus, jobs and were scarce, fisherfolks could have opted to venture in salt-making, instead, and not depend on ‘ayudas’ from government and good Samaritan organizations.

May I, also, remind the BFAR leadership kindly to add Eastern Visayas to their list of beneficiaries of their P200 million fund to rehabilitate the country’s dying salt industry, introduce salt making technology so as to improve the lot of the marginalized fisherfolks.

ON the Feast of St. Mark, the Evangelist, we are reminded that all of us, like St. Mark, are asked by Christ to also “go into the whole world and to proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” (Mk 16,15).

That is simply the effect and consequence of being a Christian who is supposed to be like Christ and to share his mission of evangelizing and redeeming everyone. We also have to apply to ourselves those words Christ told his apostles: “As the Father has sent me, so also I am sending you.” (Jn 20,21).

Evangelization is an integral and indispensable part of the whole mission of Christ—the redemption of mankind. While it may immediately concern itself in the transmission of the doctrine of our faith, it cannot go alone without being vitally and organically connected to the other aspects of human redemption.

It should not be understood simply as a matter of giving talks, classes, homilies and the like. It should not be understood simply as a matter of transmitting the doctrines and truths of our faith. We have to understand that truth is not simply a matter of doctrine. It has to involve the whole of human life. It just cannot be ideas. It has to be life itself.
We need to understand that evangelization is the transmission of Christian life that obviously involves doctrines that affect all our life. It should not just affect us intellectually or emotionally. It has to affect our whole life, our whole being, to such an extent that we get transformed into another Christ as we are meant to be.

As a consequence, for us to evangelize, we should feel the seriousness of Christ’s words commissioning us to go to the whole world and to preach the gospel. We should not just do evangelization purely as a human initiative. It is Christ who commands us to do so. We have to spend time to process this truth about evangelization in our mind and heart.
Then we obviously need the grace of God who actually gives it to us abundantly. The challenge is how we are corresponding to that grace. Do we study the gospel and the doctrines contained in it? Do we internalize them, making them flesh of our flesh and the spirit that animates our soul?

As an effect, a certain zeal to evangelize should develop in us. Do we feel the urge to really go out, meet people and talk with them, eager to edify them with our words and example? For this, we should be willing to make all kinds of sacrifices. And to carry out this duty, do we find ways that are adapted to how the people are?

We need to see to it that when we talk with the people, we manage to be in the same wavelength. We have to know how to be intellectual with the intellectuals, practical with the practical-minded, etc. In other words, we should try our best to be all things to all men, as St. Paul said, (cfr. 1 Cor 9,22) and as Christ himself personified. With God’s grace and our effort, we can hack it.

Again, we have to remember that the effectiveness of our evangelization can only come from our true identification with Christ. Effective evangelization can only be an overflow of our own sanctification, our own effort to be like Christ.