Work of folktales, historical pieces, fiction and nonfiction: stories and novels set mostly in Zamboanga Peninsula and Maguindanao. Chabacano pieces.
This is going to be short, but not the least sweet!
Just the other day - that it's still clear in my mind - a distressed friend of mine had this story to tell:
She said she had brought her teen-aged son, who was bent with chest pain and rocking cough, to Iligan City Hospital, late morning last month. As she narrated to me her horrible experience at the Iligan City Hospital, she became livid with anger:
"I asked the attending X-Ray technician, who seemed camatose before his office door, why he wasn't 'moving' to prepare my son for X-Ray, seeing my son suffering before his eyes." - Here, I saw her turn more livid - "You know what was his reply? ... 'You've to buy first an X-Ray film...just outside our gate. The hospital has no X-Ray film, ma'am.'"
No X-Ray film!
... Hearing this, I too turned livid. How was it possible for a city, enriched with so many factories, and with hydro-electrical power supplying nearby towns, be so penniless/way cuarta she can't afford a sheet of X-Ray film?
Then I quickly realized the culprit, who has made Iligan City Hospital so destitude: Porky Napoles (full participation of some of our congressmen and senators) fattening herself with the pork barrel, from which a tiny-winy part should have gone to the hospital.
Iligan City Hospital certainly would have a mount of of X-Rays in stock, as high as her rafters,for Iligan folks and give it out for free!
Shame!
Ay, and to think it is our money (taxes) - Porky and not a few 'honorables' themselves have been salivating on the pork's cholesterol fat.
Greed ... thus, they denied the sick child's urgent need for a single sheet of X-Ray, for a few pesos, and the delay to get a laboratory result, could have endangered the teen-aged child's life, and as well as other child's in the future!