Hope in rehab

I thought I should write about Fazenda da Esperanza, a drug rehab center of a different kind. It has no gate, yet no one escapes. It maintains an 85-percent success rate. And parents or sponsors pay only P2,000 per month per patient.

A “fazenda” is a plantation or large farm found in Portugal, Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking countries. “Esperanza” means hope.

I first visited Fazenda Masbate a couple of years ago to watch the Rodeo show, an annual event held in Masbate City every February. The center is an hour’s drive from the city across “Marlboro country.” I knew I had to come back for a purpose: to see if it can be replicated in other places. And that was the pre-Duterte era.

Thus, the Rotary Club of Manila, represented by its president Teddy Ocampo, Willie Pelinio (who hails from Masbate) and me, together with the officers of the Rotary Club of Masbate, was welcomed by the Brazilian nuns and lay missionaries running Fazenda. But would our efforts even matter given the gravity of the Philippines’ problem, a nation with 700,000 confessed addicts? The nuns and missionaries are willing to share their protocol with new rehab centers. We thought that if other Rotary Clubs and civic organizations help put up a center in their districts, who knows? The movement may ripple out. The problem is so big there’s room for everyone to help.

What we saw were not-so-costly buildings made mostly of local materials. Well-ventilated for wind and sunlight to come in, the buildings don’t look like prison houses. The magic of space makes the difference. It’s not the hardware but the system that makes it work.

Maybe a center can be put up in each region, then in each province. There’s room for the Rotary, Lions, Jaycees, Knights of Columbus, etc. and the government to join hands. I see the government providing land, and private/civic organizations building the shelter and running the place. Perhaps a mega rehab center costing P50 million and run by the government is not the way to go. Why not spread out the projects into manageable chunks run by civic groups or organizations?

Masbate has a wide expanse of land. But only a few hectares are really needed for the Fazenda buildings and farm. Cattle and goats are raised for meat, milk and dairy products. Rice is grown for consumption. That keeps the patients’ cost of living low and the parents’ monthly contribution of only P2,000.

Manual labor serves as therapy. The patients look forward to it because work is their exercise that makes them sweat off body toxins.

They live a community life, do community work, and experience spirituality. For recreation, they play in a musical band, which performed for us during our visit.

The patients stay for a little more than a year. One young man from Parañaque who shared with us his experience was moving out in 25 days. Previously in a rehab center in Metro Manila, he said, he did not see sunlight. A girl from Manila who had just entered three months ago recalled how she first hated working in the farm. She’s 26 but was into drugs at age 13, so she had been an addict for half of her life. Now, she thinks Fazenda is the best thing that happened to her.

There was a young man who came back, so I asked him: Why? Was he returning for treatment? No, he said, he was already okay but came to pay back! He volunteered to be big brother to the new batch.

When we visited, Fazenda had 45 patients under rehab. Of the number, 12 were female. The girls’ quarter was some distance away. The boys were housed in three buildings with three rooms each. A room had four occupants at most. So the center graduates about 40 patients a year.

But with 700,000 confessed addicts, are we not swimming against a tidal wave?

Maybe so. But even if we are able to save only one soul, still it is a soul saved. St. Teresa of Calcutta once said that if she did not start with one dying beggar she saw on the street, she would not have helped 40,000 souls. And she now has 5,000 sisters to continue her work.

Felicito C. Payumo is a former representative of the first district of Bataan.