Unsung heroes

We are all so engrossed with politics and entertainment, little else is getting done and our nation is going to the dogs. It’s like May 2001 all over again, when many Filipinos were consumed by the yearning to be anywhere but the Philippines.

Just watch our currency plumb new depths with each day of fresh scandal and coup rumors, and you will be depressed. Yesterday the peso slid to 55.60 before closing at 55.45 to the dollar. On the other hand, the Thai baht – at par with our peso only six years ago – was trading at a healthy 41.30 to the greenback. How did we mess up so badly, so rapidly?

I know a number of people who actually packed up after the May 1 riots and relocated with their spouses and children, mostly to Canada, others to the United States and New Zealand.

Fortunately, there are people who refuse to be bogged down by pessimism and disappointment. There’s former President Cory Aquino, for example, with her "People Power People" project. If we do less yakking and whining and refuse to give in to despair, the nation will be a better place.

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For inspiration, Filipinos can look up to the people who are recognized each year by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Often the awardees are unsung heroes in their respective fields.

And often, like 27-year-old Japanese physician Tetsu Nakamura, their work transcends politics, religion or race. Nakamura, a native of Fukuoka, Japan, went to Afghanistan in 1984. He has since devoted his life to fighting leprosy and other contagious diseases that ravage people in refugee camps and isolated villages.

The repressive Taliban regime did not discourage Nakamura and the US attack following 9-11 did not prompt him to return to his native land. Instead he raised $3 million from the international community to provide wheat and cooking oil for the refugees who streamed out of Afghanistan and into Pakistan, where he had set up a 150-bed hospital in the city of Peshawar.

These days he is busy teaching people how to find water and grow crops amid an ongoing drought. Nakamura will receive the Magsaysay award for peace and international understanding.

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The same award will go to Seiei Toyama, described by the Magsaysay foundation as Japan’s "leading authority on desert agriculture." Toyama can coax fruits, flowers and vegetables out of sand. He found his calling in 1935 when he saw Chinese agriculturists growing grapes, peaches and pears in the Chinese desert. His research grant ended when Japan invaded China two years later. Toyama did not forget the desert agriculture. Neither did he forget the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese on the Chinese during World War II.

Many years after the war, Toyama organized Japanese volunteer missions to teach Chinese how to grow crops in barren land. Now 97 years old, Toyama and his Project Green Hope have transformed over 10,000 acres of Inner Mongolia into an oasis. The project, he said, is his "green atonement" for Japan’s past sins and "testimony of our desire to live in peace and harmony."

Toyama’s formula for long life is just as inspiring: "Life doesn’t need to rest. To me, I just work from morning to night. It’s time to rest after death."

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Shantha Sinha grew up in India’s Andhra Pradesh State, where she saw many children forced to work instead of being sent to school. The practice is legal in India; up to 44 million children aged 5 to 14 were believed to be working in the country in 2000.

Bucking cultural mores and economic practices, Sinha has spent the past two decades putting indentured children back to school. She set up a foundation in 1981, which gained support from 1,600 teachers and 8,000 youth volunteers. Their target: to withdraw from work 80,000 children in 500 villages and put them in school. Since then thousands of child workers have returned to school, with many of the adolescent girls consequently avoiding arranged marriages.

Sinha, 53, is the Magsaysay awardee for community leadership.

Another woman, the awardee for public service, also battled cultural constraints. Gynecologist Gao Yaojie emerged from retirement after diagnosing her first AIDS patient in 1996. Gao then set out to warn her country about the deadly disease. If you remember how Beijing tried to keep the SARS outbreak secret, you will understand what a tough battle Gao faced. She was initially reviled, laughed at and considered eccentric. Eventually, government officials took notice and tried to stop her from spreading her warning across China.

Gao persisted. Now 76, she has the pleasure of seeing how attitudes toward the AIDS threat have changed in her country.

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Meanwhile, we can only hope our election officials can take some pointers from the awardee for government service, James Michael Lyngdoh, the chief election commissioner of India. Undeterred by religious and ethnic violence, Lyngdoh conducted fair elections across India, even in such hot spots as Gujarat and Jammu-Kashmir. The Magsaysay foundation should send his life story to our Commission on Elections.

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Then there’s the youngest awardee, Aniceto Guterres Lopes. He was just eight when Indonesia annexed East Timor, and he grew up amid stories of atrocities perpetrated on his people by the occupation forces. Lopes studied law in Indonesia, where he learned to fight for the rights of East Timorese. He returned to his homeland and set up a foundation that provided free legal aid to victims of rights abuses. Lopes documented the abuses and released the stories to the press, ignoring threats and harassment.

By the time Indonesia let go of East Timor, an estimated 200,000 East Timorese had died at the hands of the repressive regime. When the East Timorese voted for independence, militias went on a rampage of murder and destruction. Among those destroyed were Lopes’ house and the headquarters of his foundation.

A Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation was set up last year, to help the East Timorese come to terms with their past and improve their future. Lopes was the unanimous choice to head the commission. Just 36, he is the Magsaysay awardee for emergent leadership.

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And finally there’s our very own Sheila Coronel, the awardee for journalism, literature and the creative communication arts. Multi-awarded Sheila serves as an inspiration for all journalists in this country who strive for excellence in their profession. The nation is familiar with the groundbreaking work of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, which she heads. An independent press plays a key role in strengthening democracy, and Sheila has devoted her life to this role.