SMALL CHANGE

SOMETHING SMELLS

By: Marilyn M. Soliven

The afternoon of November, 2007, a group of women from neighboring subdivisions called for a meeting. This group of women on their own initiative tried to find answers to the recurring flood problem in their own areas. For months they inspected waterways, located clogged drainage and canals, investigated silted rivers meandering through the city. Their alarming discoveries when referred to the attention of the government officials were left unheeded.

Curious, I attended the women’s meeting. I was amazed at the number of people in the group who were affected like us by flooding. It was not only Mandalagan but Villa Valderrama, Bata, Robinson’s, Banago, Eroreco, Lacson St., and a good number of the city’s barangay marshlands. We diagnosed the flooding problem before us. In the meeting, it was explained our rivers were silted and had to be dredged. There was absolute need to clear waterways of garbage for a majority of the populace would dump refuse into the rivers. Obviously this requires the establishment of a recycling program. Informal dwellers with homes obstructing river flow and waterways, endangering lives and properties needed to be resettled and given priority. The idea was to take action for the city problem is surmountable. What we hope for are elected officials willing to commit to the city’s cause. All of us have a role to play. No one should bear this burden alone. We all have the right to make demands on them.

 In the course of that one meeting, a consensus was reached. If we had any chance of shaking City Hall, and be heard, we had to aggressively invite more members.  Now you know why I joined the storming of the Bastille. That day everyone wore black. It was a cloudless afternoon. People who wanted to join the motorcade met at the Capitol lagoon. Over two hundred vehicles paraded around the city in protest, passing through Banago, then around the downtown area and finally City Hall where the “Manifesto” was handed to the city mayor and council. There had to be a second revolution.

  The group is named BAHA, The Anti-Baha Alliance.  I say revolution because we are on the verge of an extraordinary and exciting change for this city.  It is a future you and I may not have dreamt of.  A shift is taking place across the earth. Our old thinking must change as well. Start small and remake our city. Change it for a better living and not be the effect to self-annihilation. I know we should not aim to be too perfect, just as it is hard to tell if rain will fall a week from today by staring at blue skies.  How submerged Mandalagan would be 15 years from today when voices remain unheard?