PSHF

A red plastic flower accompanied Aiza’s crudely made casket as it was lowered to a newly dug pit in the little space between the tombs at the public cemetery in Pontevedra, a an hour and a half bus ride from Bacolod. The plywood material was donated by the Miranda barangay office while the rectangular piece of glass was bought by Aiza’s family members. A carpenter neighbour volunteered to make the coffin for a cheap bottle of rum.

Poverty had followed Aiza up to her grave; she was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and nobody had bothered to check if she was wearing an upper undergarment or not. Grief was written all over her husband's face. A few minutes after I took photos of Aiza inside her coffin, one “sepulturero” or gravedigger asked if he was going to close the coffin now. Somebody cried: “wala na si Mama” - Mama is gone, referring to Aiza. Gerald, Aiza’s live-in boyfriend for seven years, turned his face away from the coffin. Then the gravedigger with the hammer started to drive down the nails through the thin plywood; another one counted one-two-three and the coffin was lowered.

The children who were closest to the grave were the first to throw in their flowers - mostly made of crepe paper, and then several adults did the same. As the people started to leave, the gravediggers started to scoop earth into the grave, filling in the hollow spaces beside the coffin, and then later gradually covering it as well as the flowers thrown upon it. In less than 10 minutes, the entire pit was covered.

Evelyn, Aiza’s mother, asked the oldest among the gravediggers if she could come back the next day to have the grave cemented. The man said “No, let’s wait for a few more days for the earth to settle (harden).” I asked Evelyn what was her request all about and she said that Aiza, before she died, had asked for a “lapida” or gravestone so that she does not get forgotten. I did not know what to say; it was all too simple a request and yet it seemed surreal that this was Aiza making a request and she was now dead!

I first came to know Aiza in June 1992. Richard and I were visiting Miranda, a fishing village in Pontevedra in southern Negros Occidental. We strolled through the different parts of the community and it was in one cluster of houses that Aiza caught Richard’s attention. She was one of the many children who surrounded him when we stopped to talk to some of the village residents. But who would fail to notice a child with an emaciated body and wrinkled skin! Yes, she was extremely thin, and looked like a human stilt more than anything else.

Upon Richard's instruction, Aiza was to be confined at the provincial hospital in order to receive treatment for her Marasmus, a form of severe malnutrition which left her looking emaciated. For the next two and a half months, Aiza and I were to have an interesting relationship characterized at first by rancour and gradually replaced by friendship.

In my diary, I’ve described Aiza as the girl with a permanent scowl in her face and she was often irritable. When she left the hospital 77 days later, she was unrecognizable; gone were the emaciated body and the wrinkled skin; instead there was a bright-eyed six-year-old child!

When she was 15, Aiza met Gerald; they fell for each other and eventually came to live together. They built a family - they had two little children, and built dreams as well. Shortly before her death, Aiza and Gerald planned to have their small abode, which was actually a lean-to next to her mother’s house, renovated. Gerald was supposed to go to his parents’ place to ask for materials.

Soon after that, Aiza began feeling ill and had difficulty breathing. It became so severe that she later asked to be brought to the hospital. At the rural hospital in the next town, a doctor diagnosed her as having bronchiectasis, pneumonitis and pleural effusion - all lung related illnesses. After a few days, she asked to be brought home, saying that she was feeling better. With hindsight, Evelyn commented that Aiza was probably worried more of the increasing cost of her hospitalisation than her health. On her last day, she had asked for some soup and Evelyn readily cooked some for her. It was while sipping her soup that she (Evelyn) noticed that Aiza began to weaken and then leaned in her (Evelyn’s) arms. Then she breathed her last.

Bernadette Gampay-Togado

12 February 2009