By Ven Arigo
Bohol Chronicle
He slept on a desk outside a closed restaurant, on a stool in a 24-hour bread store, his back against the corner wall or face down and flat on the snack counter or table, or on a bench beside a seated tired balot vendor at Plaza Rizal - and then woke up in each following early morning for school.
All these he used to do, and had more often done since class opening last year, without supper and breakfast.
His demeaning homelessness, chilly nights and knifing hunger in Tagbilaran City where he studies seem pre-destined to shatter the dream of Virgilio Linaza Bucia to get a college degree and, hopefully, rise from rooted poverty.
His only benefit today from being a child of poor parents in upland barangay Sto. Rosario in Antequera is his being accepted as a striver and working first year student of the University of Bohol because of it.
But the student is far too motivated, even as aggressive as a fool.
Bucia is taking up aircraft maintenance, a choice of course that could suggest the poor young man's faithful aspiration for a "takeoff' from poverty ground that has ever since held his family in economic indignity.
He is the second in a brood of nine. His father, Rogelio, a high school undergraduate and a former barangay tanod, has since been jobless while his mother, Anaclita, of only elementary education, presently works as a housemaid in the city.
Bucia can possibly avail of assistance through the Educational Subsidy Program of the administration of Gov. Edgar Chatto, himself a champion of education for the poor, who is bent on implementing it this year.
In a chance exclusive interview, Bucia confided that he managed to finish his elementary studies in their place despite their hand-to-mouth existence, subsisting on bananas, paw, which is a root crop, and little rice, if any.
He had stopped schooling after his sixth elementary year.
At age nine and despite his lean physical build, he already learned to climb coconut trees, assisting his father hired and paid to harvest matured nuts. The eldest child of the family is a girl. He is the second child and eldest son.
Bucia so valued education that he decided to enroll in first year at the Cogon Night High School in the city while working at daytime as a maintenance boy of a spa clinic at a monthly wage of P1,500.
To his misfortune, his employer closed business, forcing the boy to quit schooling again without finishing his freshman year in high school.
Bucia went home and assisted his family in whatever lowly yet decent means of earning, including making bamboo furniture out of raw skills honed by necessity.
Having a little saving from sold bamboo chairs, tables or cabinets, which would usually took time in the absence of purchase order, or no capital at all to buy new materials was alone disheartening.
Hope could spring eternal for Bucia so that in 2008 he took and passed the test for Alternative Learning System (ALS) for Accreditation and Equivalency, entitling him to an automatic full completion of high school education.
In other words, he could already eligibly enroll in college. Only his elder sister has so far actually graduated from high school. He is the "second" in their family.
But still because of utter financial handicap, Bucia stayed home and had to lead his younger brothers and sisters in helping their parents meet their daily survival needs.
STEEL RESOLVE
After all the years he failed to spend in school since graduating from elementary and quitting from high school, Bucia, this time already 25, resolved unto himself to enter college at UB as a striver last year.
Safekeeping his few personal belongings inside his striver's locker at the school, Bucia would roam around rather purposefully in the city after classes and school chores.
He could not rent a bedspace, much less a room, so he had to spend some evening time in a yet open restaurant, a store, bakery or at Plaza Rizal until his tired body - and empty belly - would force him to rest.
The student would thus sleep, even in sitting, wherever his bare feet led him to in the dying night.
Already married, his elder sister and her husband rent a small room in the city but which can no longer accommodate additional occupant because of their two children, plus Bucia's younger sister who tends to the kids at daytime while studying at the Cogon Night High School.
His elder sister happens to be presently working in Kuwait as a domestic helper, but Bucia understands that she already has her own family - and obligations to her husband and children not just for now but long, long years yet to come.
Besides, she will not keep renting a little space for her family if she has enough earning now, according to her brother. The fact that she also supports their younger sister is enough for Bucia to be grateful and happy for them.
There were countless times when Bucia only had to eat a small amount of bread before his roofless sleep, without even a thin blanket to cover his body from biting colds and insects.
How he had secured himself from blood-hardening and flesh-trembling colds during the recent weeks of phenomenal rainfalls is another tale of the poor, pathetic student's endurance - an "immunity" by poverty - not to mention the danger posed by gangsters, drug addicts and other social misfits as well as lawless elements.
Bucia would just bring with him his bag containing his class things so that he could readily study whenever he would be and readily get to his class in the morning, at many times without supper and breakfast.
In rare instances, which could happen even only once a week, he would secretly take his bath inside the school when he had still time.
When the last precious cent of his few pesos had been spent, the student would get home in Antequera, earning hard money from bamboo crafts not just to help support his family but for his school needs, too.
He has also younger siblings in elementary grades now.
GOD IS KIND
For the determined poor student and model son, God was so kind to him that He used no less than one of his teachers, whom he identified as Michael Van Reyes, His instrument to reward his suffering.
The triumph of human spirit told in the daily - and nightly - hardships of his student had come to be known to his mentor who, in turn, recounted it to a friend named Vincent Rey Rasonabe, a former aeronautics student, and his wife Nancy.
Just early last week, Reyes personally brought along with him Bucia to the house of Rasonabe near the Montessori School along Butalid Street, this city, where the student is now temporarily staying with his friend couple and their two children.
Meanwhile, about a month ago, a young man asked the parents of Rasonabe, Jun and Sally, in Aliguay, Maribojoc if they could allow him to cut and use their bamboo trees for furniture livelihood.
Overwhelmed by mercy on the needy, the couple, who has another son (elder brother of Vincent) who is an SVD priest named Fr. Roberto "Mario/Obet" Rasonabe, granted the young man's want without any money in return.
The young man turned out to be a brother of the student now fostered in the city by the son of the Rasonabe couple in Maribojoc.
They all came to know this twist of event only when Bucia was brought by the son Rasonabe to Maribojoc on the occasion of his father's birthday last February 21, exactly during which the celebrant's missionary priest son surprisingly arrived from Papua New Guinea.
Bucia really needs help - far more than this story can all suggest - to finish his college study and someday offer his parents and younger sisters and brothers "even a little comfort in life."
He yielded to this exclusive interview on a wish that his fellow poor Boholano students may be inspired by his suffering and hard work, and that those who come from families that can more than afford may not end up as frustrations to their parents. (Ven rebo Arigo)
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