FEATURE: A day in the life of a Rugby boy

CEBU, Philippines - Eight-year-old Mark stared at us. His stare, however, was blank, unreadable and lifeless.

 “Ngano inyo man ko gitagaan og pagkaon?” the lanky child asked. “Ganahan lang mi makahibaw sa imo kinabuhi,” we said, hoping he would answer our questions in exchange for the food we gave him.

He smirked.

He again stared at us, his faced filled with sarcasm. We proceeded to ask him questions anyway as he started eating.

“What’s your name?”, “How old are you?”, “Where are you from?” He answered promptly with confidence and arrogance.

Mark is eight years old. Well, that was his first answer, so we’ll stick to that. But the truth is, the child changed his mind four times within an hour of talking to him that it made us wonder if he was telling us the truth or he was just playing us to get more food.

“Dong, ana ka eight years old ka, nya karon 12? Ana ka Mark imo pangalan, unya karun Nonoy nasad? Unsa man gyud tinuod?” we finally asked him.

He looked at us and for the first time, he was serious. “Ambot.”

The reason why this young kid changed his mind again and again was because he himself  didn’t know which was true. As far as he could remember, he grew up in the streets with the other kids who transferred from one place to another, looking for food to eat.

He said when they were little, it was easier to look for food. People would pity them and feed them, clothe them and give them money. But as they grew older, Mark said people looked at them with angry eyes, shooed them away and acted as if they had a contagious disease.

So Mark said that he learned what the other kids on the streets did to feed their grumbling stomachs. They looked for ways to find money so they can buy their favorite meal- RUGBY.

“Unsa diay ma-feel ninyo ug mosuyop mo anang Rugby?”

Mark smiled and looked at the cars passing in front of us. We knew right then that he had just been sniffing the solvent and was still “high” from it.

Rugby or synthetic rubber-based contact cement is a kind of solvent used as an adhesive. To Mark, however, and other kids like him, Rugby is used as an inhalant. They sniff Rugby to get “high” and thus forget problems and the pain of hunger. Inhalants can cause nausea, blurred vision, motor loss and memory lapses.

Mark could not remember when he started sniffing Rugby, just as he could not remember his true name or age.

When we asked him if he remembers his parents, he again looked at us with a sheepish smile and teased “Imo mama, ako mama.” But he later admitted that he does not remember where his parents are and that he doesn’t care.

Solvent abuse, according to studies, can affect one’s brain permanently making him mentally unwell since the brain shrinks in size. 

The world Health Organization has included the Philippines in its study on solvent abuse and indicated that Rugby use among those in the poverty line is evident and one of the major problems of the country. Rugby affects the personality of those using it, which makes them more aggressive. We chose Mark as a respondent of our study because while observing street children in a particular area in Cebu City for three days, Mark showed extreme behavior. One time, he was so energetic that he ran after two policemen and made fun of them while showing off a plastic with Rugby. He then ran away from the police officers while laughing and making fun of the law enforcers.

There was also a time when Mark just sat at the side of the street for an hour, hand under his shirt holding his treasured Rugby.

According to Nemia C. Antipala, acting assistant regional director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development 7 (DSWD), there are about 5,000 street families in Cebu City, some of who are not actually from the city but from the neighboring areas. Most of them came to the city to look for greener pastures but were not lucky. Without jobs to support them and provide food on the table, the children resort to solvent abuse to forget.

Antipala said these children spend the coins they get from begging on Rugby rather than on bread because Rugby is cheaper and can make them forget hunger pangs for 24 hours.

“They go for Rugby because it’s affordable. They can’t afford food, and it’s easier for them to buy Rugby, which is only P1, than food like pandesal. And they can go without food for 24 hours,” she said.

Antipala added that the Cebu City Task Force on Street Children together with concerned agencies are tasked to “rescue” these children from the streets. With the existence of Republic Act 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, rescued Rugby boys will be placed under DSWD custody where they will undergo a series of counseling. Afterwards, they will be set free again, back to their families.

The social welfare official said they are aware that these children will go back to the streets, and inasmuch as they want to keep them in their care, they don’t have the resources to so, and besides, it will not help these children.

“It’s the job of these children’s parents to take care of them, not the government’s. Magsalig ang mga ginikanan kung sagupon na ang mga bata sa gobyerno, magsige nalang nya pud sila og panganak,” she said.

Antipala said they also interview parents, and counsel them on how to keep their children from the streets. But she said food or how to get it is still their main priority. “They can’t eat our counsels, so we really can’t force them if they don’t come to us for counseling,” she said.

But the problem is not in parents’ failure to attend their counseling sessions, said Antipala but the uncontrolled growth of these children’s families.

“The problem starts when the family has no stable income, yet it increases every year,” Antipala said. She said if a family has 10 or more children, and they are starving, some parents force their children to get a job, or do anything just so they can bring money for food.  When these children go home with money or food, they don’t even ask where it came from, what matters is they finally have something to eat, she said. Hunger pushes some of these children to do what their parents tell them to, or at their own volition, as the starving stomachs would dictate them, she said. She explained it is also because of this situation that children start leaving their homes, and opt to live with “new friends” in the streets, where they are in a better situation rather in a small shack with crying little siblings.

“It is not true that these children forget who their parents are. They just don’t want to be sent back to their families for some reason,” Antipala said. And their parents are busy with other things to look for the one missing child, she added.

“How can you expect parents who are busy doing the laundry while watching the rest of the small ones to find a missing child, especially if they don’t see it as a problem?” she said.

Antipala said the government has launched efforts to help these families but these are not helping because of the uncontrolled population. The economy may have increased one percent each year, but the population also does,  at a constant pace of five percent per annum, she said. And the number of the social workers, who are sent to the streets to help these people, remain the same, she added.

“If we can’t curb the increase of population, there will always be families in the streets, children committing robberies and other crimes,” she said, adding that “many of the children who have committed serious crimes are drug users” and they started out with rugby, which is “rampant” among street children.

And while our legislators are still debating on whether to junk or approve the Reproductive Health Bill, Antipala said one of their programs aimed to keep the children off the streets is to strengthen their “family development sessions.”

For his part, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) 7 director Jigger Montallana, in a separate interview, said rugby is not covered by the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act, hence anyone found using it will not be arrested. And besides, these children are protected by the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, which exempts children below 15 years old from criminal liability, he said.

Montallana said that in hopes to keep abusers away from it, the Dangerous Drugs Board had earlier proposed to add a stinking odor to Rugby, but the shoe industry cried foul, as its products, which use rugby, would not sell.

The PDEA, he said, assists concerned agencies in the rescuing efforts but that is all they do. They can’t even put to jail a minor caught doing a Rugby-related crime, no matter how heinous the crime is, because of RA 9344. Last September 19, rugby boys were rescued by the Cebu City Police. They were then turned over to the DSWD for rehabilitation.

Montallana said, however, that not like Manila, Rugby use among children in Cebu is not that prevalent.

“I don’t hear complaints of rampant Rugby use here in Cebu. Mas accessible ang shabu kaysa Rugby. Mas daghan operation ang shabu,” he said. But Rugby is a precursor to shabu, he added, especially if the user will later on earn enough to afford the latter.

— With Liv G. Campo / QSB