Erring on the side of kindness

I was on my way home close to midnight and contemplating how I would put myself to sleep after some sleepless nights when I got a text message from a friend. “Can you call me?” the message said.

I called right away, because when my friend G asks me to call at that late hour it means he is having one of those days. It is either that he has just lost the love of his life or found a new one (which happens too often), or finds no meaning in what he has been doing or has discovered it again.

He told me that he had seen a man who was bending over and pressing his stomach along Paseo de Roxas in Makati. The man was obviously in great pain, G said. The man would take five steps and then he would stop with a loud groan and sit on the sidewalk.

He didn’t look like a beggar, my friend said.  He had a proud face and wore a clean denim jacket.

G said he stopped and looked at the man from a distance, unable to decide what to do. But he told himself that if the man should fall down unconscious, he would have to come to his aid. G felt he could not just leave the man like that.

Passersby also stopped and looked at the man. They wanted to approach him but were apparently afraid to do so. Somebody could be watching them watching the man, and so they walked on.

The man would walk again and stop, and others would just look at him out of curiosity and then walk on. This went on for several minutes. G maintained his distance, walked when the man walked and pretended to tie his shoe when the man stopped.

When the man reached a spot where there was nobody else, G decided to make his approach. But a foreigner suddenly appeared, saw the man and talked to him. They talked for a while and then the foreigner moved on.

The man resumed walking and stopped again.  G kept following him. When they reached a dark area and G saw nobody else around, he finally worked up the courage to ask the man what his problem was.

The man said he was on his way to Cavite. He had recently been diagnosed with stage four liver cancer. He had gone to various government offices in Metro Manila to seek help. He wanted to avail himself of the government’s Balik Probinsiya program. He had an 8-year-old son living with him in a resettlement area in Cavite, and he wanted to go home to Leyte with his son so that his relatives could care for him after he died.

At this point my cell phone ran out of load, and I had to find a reloading station so that I could hear the rest of the story.

When I got back to him, G said the man first approached the local government in Cavite, but he was told to try the national government offices in Manila. He went to Malacañang where he was directed to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Somebody at the DSWD told him, however, that the Balik Probinsiya program had run out of money and so they could not help him.

The man was a construction worker and he was too proud to beg. (He could not bring himself to ask G or the foreigner for money.) After being turned away by different government offices, the man went to the construction site where he used to work. It was the day before payday and his co-workers did not have anything to offer him except food. That was his last meal before G saw him nine hours later on Paseo de Roxas.

At first G gave the man P100 to buy himself a meal. The man did not even look at the money but he thanked G. But when G learned about his desire to go home to die, he gave him enough money for his bus fare to Leyte.

When they reached Edsa, the man got on a bus bound for Cavite. He kept looking at G and waving his hand until G could no longer see him.

I ran out of load again, so G sent me a text message to finish his story.

G said that at one point during their conversation, the man voiced his disappointment and anger at the government. He said that if ever he would get another chance to come back to Manila, he would rob somebody so that the government would have another headache.  “Sinusumpa ko silang lahat,” he said.

G’s encounter with the dying man speaks a lot about the way we approach poverty in our country. Some people are willing to help the poor, but they are either afraid or they don’t know how to go about it. It often takes a foreigner, usually a white person, to do something about a poverty-related problem first. Some of those who wish to help want to do it from a distance. Only a few end up actually giving help.

Had I been there, I too would have been afraid to approach the man. He did not ask for help, so I would have hesitated to offer him any assistance lest he feel insulted.

G confessed that he could tell things like this only to me. “I don’t dare to tell others,” he said, “not even my family, because I could be misunderstood. It’s weird.”

In a later text message, he said, “I don’t want to be tested like that again.”

What if the man took G for a ride? G did a good turn, nevertheless. It was still better for him to err on the side of kindness.

If the man survives and does come back to the city, I doubt if he would commit the crime he vowed to do. A good deed usually works wonders.

Roberto S. Salva is executive director of the Catholic Ministry to Deaf People. Contact him at babisalva@gmail.com.