Chronicles Revealed

Chapter 21: Minus One

Ronald grew up in Sitio Omega where you learn to be tough before you learn to walk.  Here, survival is not only for the fittest but also for the wisest. It is a dangerous place to be and people survive because they know that right or wrong is a matter of perception. No one in the place is judgmental because no one judges anyone else. Mind your own business is the call of the day.

You can find everything in Sitio Omega, from mothers who sell their children to pedophiles in the internet or face to face to drug addicts and drug pushers and drug dens to guns for hire to prostitutes to stolen gadgets and car accessories that are so easily disposed. Snatchers and pickpockets and robbers abound here. When they run to this place with their stolen items they disappear like bubbles in the air.

Ninety five percent of the houses in Sitio Omega are made entirely of light and combustible materials, interminably connected, wall to wall, back to back, from end to end, like Siamese twins, no space in-between. When fire strikes in the place, practically all the houses are gutted down and reduced to ashes because fire trucks and firemen could not get close enough to control the spread of the fire and the damage it makes. They will start re-blocking again and the houses rise like Phoenix but more of them each time and the Sitio becomes more cramped. Who would not like to live in such a beautiful location?

I had a car once which was stolen. True to their reputation, the police could not find it in the same manner that they could not find the motorcycle of a friend he reported lost but he saw being driven around by a policeman of the station. One day I saw someone with a girl passenger park the car along the main road. I confronted the man and he pretended he did not know what I was talking about. I threatened to call the police and he and the girl ran to the interior of Sitio Omega. I ran after them but they vanished in the labyrinthine cat alleys of the place.

Mama was angry with me. She thought I should just have called for help and I was reckless and foolish. She was right. That man could have stabbed or shot me. I would have been simply grabbed and pulled into one of the houses while running after the two never to be seen again. There is a cemetery adjoining Sitio Omega and there are many unregistered burials there.

Sitio Omega is just a stone's throw away from a well-known shopping mall. It stands in stark contrast to what the mall represents which is unbridled consumption and spending.  If customers get robbed there or are scammed people in Sitio Omega describe it as nothing more than part and parcel of wealth distribution. They, too, can do business as lucratively as the mall owners. If mall owners are good at selling brand new products, the businessmen of Sitio Omega sell second hand items better.  And no taxes to pay!

Not everyone in Sitio Omega is the usual suspect type of person, of course. There are good people there who have legitimate jobs in call centers and BPOs nearby, and in the establishments in the malls and town centers within a two kilometer radius, people who eke a living without immersing their hands in dubious activities, and people who, despite the odds, can still circumnavigate around the unpleasant accepted practices of the Sitio. These people may be tainted but nobody is totally immune to the virus of Sitio Omega.

Ronald is one of those who stuck to the straight and narrow path without offending anyone in his place and without sacrificing his sense of right and wrong. He talked, listened, drunk and made friends with everyone in Sitio Omega. They liked him and he liked them.

Way back in the eighties, Mama created the Working Student Scholars (WSS) Group to help the less fortunate but promising students of her school. She personally supervised the group under very strict rules and goals of scholastic performance. Violation of any of the rules and/or none attainment of the scholastic goals could mean separation from the group. She guided, molded and fully supported her working student scholars, to the extent of personally giving them financial assistance, where she deemed it necessary. Many of them have become highly successful in their careers. One of them was Ronald. Andy, Rowell and Navs were bosom buddies of Ronald in the WSS Group and they continue to be up to now.