Sister Act, Part III

"I love you~" the April 3 sms began, "Today is best sister day. Send this to all your favorite sisters." Didn’t Woman’s Month just march past? Scanning the week’s broadsheets, however, demonstrates the Woman’s Month flows on to this month and to the next and yet the next - "To infinity and beyond!" as Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear, the lone male of this story, would have us know in climactic cartoon-character fashion. That is, if Filipinas and their sisters have their way. And you and I, in our heart of hearts, know that we will.

Last week’s triumphant headlines about the 37 women graduates of the Philippine Military Academy and UP’s Joan de Venecia, niece of Speaker Joe de V (oops, spoke too soon about the "lone male"), topping the bar examinations set the tone for the après-April Fool’s spate of stories.

Look at Supt. Lilian Castillo, chief of the Manila Police District’s elite all-female Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team now stalking the land. All-female? "The special all-female SWAT team was formed last year because there are times when female police officers are needed to handle delicate situations," explained the chief. Women hostage situations for instance, or last October’s anti-administration rallies. "The presence of the female police officers somehow softened the image of our male counterparts who were accused of indiscriminately hurting militants and protesters during crowd control and dispersal operations," she said. Holding a rank equivalent to a lieutenant colonel’s in the military, the superintendent, 44, is also head honcho of the department’s Civil Disturbance Management unit and the District Intelligence and Investigation Division’s monitoring section, in addition to the SWAT team. Not a mean feat for this slight, diminutive lady from distant Carranglan, Nueva Ecija, whose dreams of becoming a police officer were fed by her father’s own example and experience.

The tale of how dried pijanga from Lake Mainit in Surigao del Norte migrated to the shelves of Metro Manila supermarkets is likewise admirable. The endeavors of 18 women from Mainit ARC II, not without help admittedly (from the Philippine-Australia Technical Support for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development and the Upland Marketing Foundation Inc., which supplied the capability building, the technology, the product development, the market development, the incessant training, and the Foundation’s 100-plus retail outlet network) all chosen for their spunk, their doggedness, their sense of commitment. Dried pijanga, or white goby, is considered "first class dried fish" in the category of personal favorites dried bisugo and danggit, and commands a premium price. Its natural habitat is Lake Mainit, which, with its 124,700 ha. area and 50-km stretch of lakeshore, is the country’s fourth largest lake and the province’s most significant body of water, brimming with such freshwater fauna as catfish, mudfish, carp, tilapia.

By this time, the news account reads, the processing plant will have reached full capacity production of 150 kg fresh pijanga a day. At full capacity, the plant’s output is 205 kg of dried fish a month, generating sales of P71,750 and a net profit of P19,065, or income augmentation of over P1,000 for each of the women. In this rural agrarian reform community, an additional thousand per month per household is nothing to be sneezed at and it raises the earnings high above customary poverty alleviation programs in the south.

Newsworthy too is Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy, who has launched the SOS SMS (SOS Short Messaging System), a mobile-based service to lend global assistance to OFWs in dire circumstances. Birthed after a series of abductions involving Filipino workers in the Middle East, SOS SMS is "a way to report quickly cases of distressed OFWs . . . Even if an OFW is in jail, as long as he has access to a cell phone, he can ask for help or intervention from the government," Ellene said in a phone interview with another paper.

Although still in the experimental stage, the service provides a platform by which OFWs can text in an emergency situation, report accidents or complaints raging from maltreatment, sexual abuse, to non-payment of wages, and obtain quick, if not immediate, aid from the nearest Philippine consulate.

Thus far, distress calls have come from mostly men as perhaps men have greater access to cell phones. In cases where problems are not immediately solved, the OFWs "know their woes are being listened to," and that alone is a source of comfort.

Then there’s the improbably-named Keanna Reeves, who struck gold in the "Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Edition," the reality tv show, beating the male second-placer by double-digit percentage votes. Her story was made more remarkable by her unusual choice of recipient for the counterpart P1-million cash prize: the Gabriela Women’s Party, a 100,000-women strong nationwide network.

The starlet, Janet Derecho Duterte in real life, also known as "Kilabot ng Senado", 36, caused a major furor in 2004, when, during a Senate probe of alleged sex trafficking in the corridors of congressional power, she was prevailed upon to reveal the identities of the guilty. She ran to Gabriela in fear for her life after receiving copious death threats from various and sundry lawmakers. In the end, she refused to divulge the names of the escort service’s most favored customers and the investigation, going the way of furtive sexual congress, fizzled out.

The Pinoy Big Brother win has vastly expanded Keanna’s fan base and established her reputation as a woman who refuses to be a victim.

She prefaced her acceptance speech at the star-studded awards ceremony with, "I want to pee," an outright reference to an early episode where indeed, she relieved herself behind the bushes in the garden of the Pinoy Big Brother house, cameras trained unblinkingly on her.

"Which is my point precisely!" exclaims a Manila-based foreign observer of global peccadilloes. "Why is it that the women of this country are so different from the men? The men, feeling the need to micturate, would just unzip their trousers and whip out their instruments, anywhere, everywhere, in plain view of the planet! You never see Filipinas doing that! I have yet to see any woman lift up her skirts in the middle of the sidewalk. But the men just go ahead and do it, with astounding impunity!’

Chimes in his student, an equally outspoken young person, "For which reason, I think this preposterous Gloria Resign movement is going nowhere. And the resistance to Charter change? You know what that proves? These people don’t love the country enough. They don’t care! Because if they did, they would just leave the president to do her work and see what happens when it’s a woman in charge!"

You go, girls!

‘WE’RE STILL HOT!," an incredible off-Broadway musical that’s showing these days at the Teatrino Theater, Promenade, Greenhills, is drawing crowds of elderly women – and men – and yuppies and young women on the go. The play is about three middle-aged women getting together for a class reunion and a janitress as their recruit, winding up talking about the woes of mid-life and menopause.

The lovably funny characters are Shamaine Centenera, Lynn Sherman, Pinky Marquez and Nina Romualdez.

Margie Moran saw the musical in New York last year, and asked her theater-loving friends to produce the show here. Wise decision. For tickets, call 7224532, local 116.

* * *

My e-mail:[email protected]