Arrogance of power

Who do not want power?  Juan de la Cruz?  Priests?  Politicians?

Juan de la Cruz wants power desperately.  He has suffered injustices for so long.  He could not even eat three times a day much more send his children to school. With power, his woes would be over.

The hierarchy of power in the Catholic Church, and other religions are very elaborate.  Subordinates are directed to observe blind obedience to the superiors.  After all, the superiors are held to be the vicars of Christ. Power is wielded so the apostolate may be propagated.

Politicians occupy positions of power.  They hold the reigns of the government.  With millions of constituents under them, they need the awesome and vast state powers so the common good may be promoted.

Power per se is not wrong.  Without it, there can be no control, no peace and order in the world, and even in the universe.  Can you imagine what happens to the cosmos if the fallen angel Lucifer were as powerful as God?

The problem sets in when there is disconnect between the ideal and reality.  This is particularly of strong significance in case of politicians because they wield the vast resources of the state.  Corporations may fall; religious sects may fold up.  But their effects are not as pernicious as the failure of politicians.

When politicians fall, and wield power in a manner diametrically opposed to its avowed purpose, the mayhem it will cause to the people multiplies a thousand fold; it is even exponential.  The people suffer physically and spiritually. With wrong exercise of power, people get hungry and illiterate, and their freedoms curtailed.

By virtue of the command of politicians over the multitude of citizens, they can easily play god over the plight and fate of so many people. The trouble with this is that the more they exercise power, the more they think that they hold the destinies of people, and the more they delude themselves of being gods.

Politicians who go beyond the threshold of powerful leaders to being demigods do with delusions that they are already indestructible, that no opposition can stop their further ascent to power, and of perpetuating their grip over it. This is a psychological threshold that not only wreaks havoc over the nation but over the person himself.

We have witnessed in history men who have deluded themselves to be demigods that they led with seeming impunity. It is history too that proved that as long as these leaders are still made of flesh and bone, they too have to suffer the penalties of their abuse.

Adolf Hitler. Benito Mussolini. Saddam Hussein. Joseph Stalin.  These are international figures that have fallen from the ivory tower of their delusions to the ashes of their destructions.

In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos is too recent in our memory.  He usurped presidential and legislative powers, and ruled with seeming impunity for more than two decades.  He too, like the rest of his breed, had to suffer the humility of defeat and destruction.

Despite the historical lessons, people do not seem to learn, and still insist on threading the path where others have fallen.  Is it human nature to learn things when they experience personally the agony of failure? Or is it just like a child that has to burn his finger to learn that something is really hot which much be avoided?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a well-read person.  She does not hold a graduate degree in economics without a good reading of history.

But despite the historical lessons, she is showing the symptoms of arrogance of power.  Maybe her stay in the palace when her father was then president, and her own nine years stay there has pushed her to a psychological threshold when a leader thinks that whatever she does, nothing can stop her nor could she be held accountable for it.

History has shown that when this psychological threshold is reached, the leader is prone to commit stupendous blunders.  These are blunders which the people could not anymore take, and therefore, they have no option but to punish the leader.

President Arroyo may have to meditate deep and long whether her charter change moves amount to a psychological threshold of arrogance of power.

Recalling Martial Law

Nightmares are not worth recalling.  That may be true if they occur in the privacy of our rooms, wrap in the eerie silence of the night.

But political nightmares deserved to be reminisced, debated upon, and reflected on, if we have to move forward as a nation.  A nation that has no common historical memory is just a hodge-podge of tribes without national identity.

On a personal level, I did not want to recall life under martial law.  The experiences were bad enough, and defying risks that went with the rallies were chilling to repeat.

But the innocent question of my ever precocious eight-year old boy changed the temper of yesterday’s 37^th martial law anniversary.

He asked:  “What is martial law? “  The lawyer in me wanted to parrot the constitutional basis of martial law, and the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court on the issue.  Of course, I would not have to discuss with my boy in a grandiose manner.  That would be Latin for him.

As I was about to tell my son what happened during the Marcos era, my fourteen-year old daughter proudly volunteered that according to the textbook, martial law was declared by then President Ferdinand Marcos on September 21, 1972.

That saved me from the cross-examination type questions of my boy.  He has the innocent knack of firing questions until you are left without answer.

But the incident led me to realize that while I, having experienced the horrors of martial law, could relate with increasing pulse rates and sweaty hands the dark years of Marcos dictatorship, the generation next to me, my daughter, has nothing but facts and statistics of the era, enough for her to win any quiz bee contest.

If only for my kids, I need to write this, to recall the events I personally experienced and the insights I learned under martial law in the hope that next time around, it is not only the facts but the full range of the tragic drama that was Marcos, must like the portrayal of the Greek dramas played out in the greater drama called life, that the succeeding generations could recount.

I was still seven years old and thirteen days when martial was declared.  There was no cable news, no newspapers in our barrio. There were only one or two transistor radios where the folks huddled to listen to the declaration of martial law.

Despite the innocence, I knew then there was some big news that day.  My father who kept a rifle hurriedly buried it somewhere.  Other folks did bury theirs too. Days after, soldiers inspected all the houses.  When they arrived in the house, I cowered in fear. I only glimpsed at the uniformed men, but I could hear the thuds of their boots, like the sound of the hooves of horsemen.

The beauty of pure innocence is that despite the horrors martial law wrought upon the people, I had carefree frolics with my friends in the pristine river, and the mountain treks in the then virginal forest, unmindful of the terror that gripped the people.

The burden with knowledge is the loss of innocence, and living in a gay abandon eludes forever.  Innocence is replaced with the angst for not acting on the dictates of what is right.

The high school years at the old Ateneo school just right there at the heartland of the city were spent reading books, and learning so many things from all fields.  The Jesuit-run school inspired critical thinking, the ability to see the issue in the broader perspective, as it were, in an eagle’s view.

Despite the adventures and misadventures of puberty though, the incarceration of the mayor of Cagayan de Oro Nene Pimentel in 1981 fired-up the protests of the already opposition-inclined people.  That too echoed in the corners of our classrooms.  Without political acumen or organization, we did have boycotts from our classes.  The reasons for our boycotts may have varied, but it reflected the over-all sentiment of the Cagayanons whose mayor was placed behind bars.

The horror of martial law was not anymore in somebody’s doorsteps but right there in the City Hall, the last citadel of democracy. It was an affront to the proud Cagayanons whose political pedigree came from the local heroes who fought many wars in the past.

Different folks have different ways of protesting. In the stage where the opposition was not yet so organized, the protesters were like sticks hoping to form a broom so they could have concerted and effective actions.  Meanwhile that the protest movement was still disorganized, opposition to martial law took different shapes, colors, and hues.  But the seed of revolution was unmistakably there already ready to explode in the most opportune time.

The martial law terror was unabated.  There was Elma, a relative who was shot on mere suspicion of being a sympathizer of the communists.

A good friend, the editor of the student publication of Ateneo de Davao was abducted, and no one knew what happened.  Just like other students  who were missing, she was another statistics of the martial law terror.

Killing fields were not only popular in North Vietnam.  We also shared the infamy.

The guns were blazing too in areas like Claveria, Salay, Lantad, Taglimao, and almost everywhere. In all these areas, human rights abuses were the norm rather than the exception.

Power is intoxicating. It can be delusional. After having wielded power without accountability, the powers-that-be are emboldened, and regard themselves as invincible, that they could commit abuses with impunity.

When the rulers do not see anymore the limits to their powers their doom begins.

Right before the glare of national and international opinion, Ninoy Aquino was martyred on August 21, 1983 as he deplaned from his exile in the US. That was stupid thing to do.  But drank with power, the rulers did not see it coming the start of their defeat with the mortal shot at Ninoy’s body. The mortal body died, but the immutable ideals came to life.

That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Suddenly, the disorganized protests had a common voice, a rallying point from which to launch their battle against the government, a battle plan drawn-out within the framework of the ideals of democracy.

I found myself co-founding a student political party at Xavier Universit.  The student party was founded on the precept that the students cannot live in the ivory tower of the academe but must lead the people in the struggle against the dictatorship.

There were rallies, civil disobedience, and other forms of protest.  And just like all other student leaders who dared challenged the dictatorship, the “red tag” was written in my forehead by the military, a tag that meant I could be “salvaged”, misnomer for assassination.

It was most unfortunate.  I knew of students who abhorred communism as much as they deplored Marcos dictatorship.  But in a war-like situation, the protagonists become color-blind.  Infiltration of the ranks of the students by the military and the reds were rampant.  Many were killed on mere suspicions.

I just laughed off the “red tag”, the communist label.  I have thoroughly studied Marxism in its primary sources and read the history of communism.  The flaws of the communist ideology are just glaring to ignore.  Embracing communism would be prostituting knowledge for expediency.

Expediency, I knew so many brilliant students who joined the communist’s movement for that reason. They joined the communist movement because it offered them concrete plans with which they could topple the dictator.  But I did not judge the folly or brilliance of their decisions. Instead of judging, there were tactical alliances of students from different colors in the political spectrum joining hands just to oust the dictator.

The students have the time, the mental prowess, and the fire in the belly to mount concerted actions against the dictator.  Organizing the students in Cagayan de Oro was the most logical thing to do and our group, composed of leaders from the left to the center, did manage to awaken the students.

The streets of Cagayan de Oro saw mass actions, protest marches, prayer rallies, and the famous “Welga Ng Bayan”. Xavier University students joined with students from Don Mariano, Cagayan de Oro College, Liceo de Cagayan and Lourdes College.

Activism was mainstream. The rising tide of dissent could not be doused anymore.

Ninoy was not the only martyr.  The casualties were many.  Several of the student leaders were gone, either they went underground, or they were invited by the military henchmen and never to return again.  Those were brilliant students whose whereabouts I have not heard of since.

For my daughter, my missing friends would just be mere statistics.  But after she reads this piece, hopefully, she may feel the pulse of life, and the tears of pain Martial Law has shed in the Philippine landscape.

Computer virus

A COMPUTER virus is a program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. Well, if this virus does not migrate from the computer to some other place, there should be not much of a problem. A computer expert can undo the damage.

Where the computer virus plays out in real life, there the real problem emerges which can infect our culture, further damaging whatever is left. The damage, like cancer, cannot be undone.

Technology is here to stay. The modes with which we communicate with others are defined largely by text messages, chats, and emails. Continents are bridged, thanks to the Internet.

We are now a global village.

The territorial barriers are breached easily with emails. Violence and suppression in Burma and Iran were instantly flashed in cable news, exposing into the light the dark and sinister acts of these regimes.

We will not miss mentioning the inter-racial marriages, courtesy of amorous chats. The financial transactions sweep across continents in an instant through the data transmitted via submarine cables.

These are the plusses of the Internet. But we cannot gloss-over the downsides.

While in a party, a lady excused herself. One wonders if there was an emergency that she had to go in haste. Actually, she went online to harvest, as she explained later when she re-appeared, the grapes, which she planted in Farmville, a virtual game that is very popular in a social network format in the Internet — Facebook.

It turned out that the lady spends no less than four hours a day to stay competitive in this virtual game.

Except for the man-hours lost, we need not worry the mental and psychological health of this lady. She is mature enough.

What should worry us are the young ones.

These children spend hours in the Internet, not to research for loads of information, but to play computer games. Instead of reading, time is spent battling against virtual empires and soldiers. The children suffer a double whammy – they imbibe the culture of violence and at the same time lose the habit of reading.

What is most alarming for the young in this age of Internet is misconstruing the virtual for reality, and vice-versa. The demarcation line between reality and virtual is blurred.

Imagine a kid rushing to be online so that he can feed the virtual dog, which would accordingly die if he does not feed it with virtual food on time. Over time, the kid makes the virtual pet a part of his real life. The kid straddles between the virtual and the real, and in the process loss the concept of what separates the two worlds.

The pathetic part about this whole thing is that the kid’s excellence in the virtual world is in a way directly proportional to his skill in isolating himself from the real world as he immerses into the virtual kind. To some extent, one’s excellence in the computer game is gauged with his capacity to focus with ferocity on his game, on his ability to detach himself from his surrounding, from the real world.

If this computer virus plays out uncheck in the real world, we might yet see a whole new generation of human beings who are anti-social, people who find comfort in taking care of virtual beings instead of the real ones.

Slowly this virus is creeping into the fabric of our society. It must be recognized now. Unlike our computers which we can fix with easily, this is not so in our daily living. The virus is imperceptible but its damage is apparent and insidious.

where hath the home gone?

 

It was a reunion.  Yet when he entered the campus, the location was different and the structures unfamiliar.  Is not a reunion a reminiscence  of the good old days,  both as to persons and places?  How could this be a reunion in an alien place?

Then the host welcomed them with her speech: “ This is not anymore the house you used to play around.  The new high school campus is here.  The buildings you used to spend your time have now been destroyed.  Yet, we welcome you all to our home because it is in our hearts, in our collective memories.”  No one indeed can take the home away, but can she possibly relocate a new home for the alumni?

A house is not a home, so the cliché goes.  Wordweb says “the house is a dwelling”  but a home is a social unit living together”. 

He has  lived  in three cities and three provinces, and spent years in those different  places.  But whenever he was asked where is home, he always blurted the place of his birth, Libas, that place that wherever he would be, he still longed to return and revisit, to renew lifelong ties. His umbilical cord was buried there by  a “mananabang”, one who assists in a delivery even though she has no  formal schooling.  Of the siblings, his connection to his birthplace is the strongest.

Way back in the school days, vacations and Christmas were not complete without going home to Libas.  The place seemed to contain psychic energies that keep aflame the fire of life, when all the stresses of campus days gave way to charivari at night drinking “tuba” with childhood buddies, and recovering from a hangover  by diving into the then pristine river.  If the womb would nourish the fetus, Libas, his home, nurtures life.

But the home was lost. It started with the house.  In 1984, super typhoon Nitang felled two coco trees near the house, damaging the greater part of the kitchen.  The ancestral house was never the same since.  Then, the  dog which reached 13 years, got blind, sedentary, and then died.  The dog, even if he were away for a year, never failed to meet him at the wooden gate, wagging his tail and jumping at him, as if reaching for an embrace.  The saddest news struck: his  grandmother’s brother died.  There was no one left living in the house.

He cannot recall now when the last time his saw the ancestral house.  The windows, the roofs, the pillars, without his knowing, slowly disintegrated that what he sees now as testament of his  birthing home, are concrete posts.

The last time he attended the fiesta of  Libas was almost a decade already.  Together with a law partner, he joined a gathering of people watching a program, and then later on, public dance which the folks claim to be a “disco”.  He did receive few handshakes from people  whose name he could not recall anymore.  For the first time, he felt estranged in the place of birth.  Ah, could these folks not remember that for several years he was there in the stage to emcee the program which he orchestrated?  And these wannabe bullies, could they not know that once, he was a “gang leader” here?

In a place that once was so familiar with you, now is a place where you become a stranger.  How could it be when he thought he owned this place because his umbilical cord was buried here?

Where is then home now?

The host in that high school reunion told them that home is in the heart, that even if the old campus is now gone, there is  a new campus which they can claim theirs.  After her speech, he wanted to tell her, “ Our campus was the place where we played basketball, milled around, peeked at our young and sexy teachers, played out our foibles and whims – our campus was the only witness of the secrets of our batch.”

Sorry ma’am.  Your new campus cannot be his home.  The campus where he once belonged had been destroyed. There are new buildings which he could not associate with.  True to worbweb definition though, “Batch  ‘82 is  a social unit”  which is now finding a house which the batch hope, over time, after so many interactions, can be called home.  Rebuilding the old campus is impossible but in the virtual world, they have found a house, where all the batchmates, who are now in different parts of the globe, can congregate, share foibles and whims, and in the journey in time, he may call this house – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xuhs82/ – our newfound home.

To live without a home is to go through life without the beginning.  Somehow, if the old home is neither here nor there anymore, one has to search for a new home, a place which nurtures life.  Libas was once a home, but it has ceased to be one when one day, he felt he was a stranger, when everything else seemed alien. 

Where is that home?  The batch has found a house. But his new home is out there, in the process of making. Or, who knows, there could never be home anymore like Libas.

wishes she had: a child who chose to die

On November 9, 2007, in Davao City, Philippines, at the tender age of 11, little girl Mariannet Amper hanged herself with a nylon rope. Borne to parents whose mother earned only P25 a day packing noodles, or half a US $ dollar, and a father who is jobless, the little girl lived a life at the cellar even among the slum dwellers. In a slum area, her family was discriminated because they were unshaven, dirty, and poor even by the slum standards. Who ever said that even among the poor, there is no social ladder.

But the little girl did not die without a statement. Under her pillow was a diary and an unfinished letter she titled, “Wish ko lang”, which means “my wishes”. She wished for a bag, new shoes, and jobs for her parents so she could finish primary school. At a tender age, she knew that her only ticket away from the depravity of slum life is education. In her diary, she wrote she missed school because she had no money for the fare. She was absent so many times that her teacher stopped counting. Her passion for learning was evident when she said that being absent for a week felt she missed school already for months. Though she wanted to go to church, she could not because she had no money for the fare.

In life, she was nothing, but she had something that even death could not take away from her: her dreams, the dreams that she surely shared with the little children across the globe. How many children have been deprived of food, health, shelter, and education? Mariannet made sure that her death would open our eyes to the grinding poverty children have been exposed to.

The news shocked the senses. How could a little girl decide to hang herself? The children are supposed to be gay, playful, and unmindful of the troubles the parents have. If what were flashed in the news was the suicide of an adult, it would not have bothered us that much. But here was a child who was innocent and supposed to be insulated from the woes of the adult, all the while bearing the pains only the adults should carry, finally taking her life when she could not have P100 to buy materials for her school project.

Yes, she was finally buried. But she kept us shocked that we should be too calloused if her poignant statement about life among the poor children would not open our eyes.

tagging marriage

There are one and a thousand reasons why people marry. Love and commitment, the foundation of marriage, may not necessarily be one of them.

Britney Spears, in one drunken moment in Las Vegas, tied the knot with a hubby, and the following day, she sought to annul it. There have been many marriages of this sort, when couples, euphoric for an instant, decide to marry, only to realize days after, that there was no love at all. They separate as quickly as they got married, err lust subsides.

Mail order brides? Even before the internet, there have been many unions via the mail. The usual plot is repeated several times over: a lass from a poor country has a pen pal from the rich country. The pen pal is old but has enough money to bail out the lass from the cycle of poverty.

The internet now has only made things a lot easier and faster. Desperate, a lass goes to the an internet café, surfs the net for an online lover, and bingo, if the terms of endearment are okay, another couple ties the knot.

Whether it is through the mail or the internet, you find the same actors and the same script, but the plot now is like that in the movie The Matrix, fast, swift, and surreal. After a series of chat, the man flies over and dresses up the lass, and a wedding before a judge or a mayor is had.

What have become of marriages? Recall the courtship before the cell phones and the internet. Then, the courtship was up close and personal, The suitor goes to the house of the lady, professes his love, and promises to cup the stars and the moons in his hands, and basically offer, his life for the lass, and he does this, before the eyes of the parents. The courtship takes longer, and the man has to pass though many gauntlets, and only those who truly love wins the heart.

Tragically however, poverty has pushed so many lasses to marry not out of love but of a necessity to survive, to break the cycle of poverty. Marriage has a price tag.

As one goes higher in the social strata, the price tags are not packaged in mails or chats, but the same, there is hidden the economic factor. On the average, marriages take place between couple who are capable of economically supporting each other. There is one joke here that says, “teacher, teacher, and doctor, doctor”. Meaning, couples of similar stature should marry each other. Can you imagine a lowly laborer in a wharf marrying the daughter of the president of a country? That was unthinkable, then and now.

But there are marriages that are based truly on love, not necessarily of commitment yet. Commitment you see, does not grow from nowhere; the seed of love during the marriage rite must be planted, nurtured, and grown in the course of the relationship, and until love finally ripen into commitment.

“Till death do as part”, so the couple profess. But life is changing so do passion, lust, and love. You cannot pass through thru the same river twice: the water you step on is in constant flux. As you go through life, you realize that the way you see your beloved at the time of matrimony is not the same as you look at her now, and in the future, and that too is certain. Even the love of eros later on disappears and you begin to wonder what happened in between.

A marriage built on the sandcastles of money, passion, lust, and even love, is doomed to fail. There is the legal provision in the Philippine laws that states: “Marriage is not a contract. It is an institution.” Money, passion, the burning love may later on dim, but for the institution to survive, it must be founded on commitment, the will to perpetuate the union even if all expectations have failed. Even as the couple change, the willing heart and mind commit to something greater than themselves. Passion, erotic love may go, but the will to commit, to take the vow “till death do as part” till the grave, remains.

But alas, should there be a reason for marriage, and love, and commitment? Is it not marrying for a reason reveals the selfishness of it all? Why don’t we just proclaim “till death do as part” out of the abundance of our heart?

Tags: marriage, mailorderbrides, commitment | Edit Tags

Sunday September 16, 2007 – 09:32am (CST) Edit | Delete

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finding a community

the population is exploding, the internet and mobile phones have interconnected people, yet amid the noise of the crowd, there is an eerie silence inside, of being alone, and detached. and this is more true in urban centers than in the rural areas. the more crowded the area, the more tragic the sense of isolation.

 

I arrived in Los Angeles on March 2000. As the plane was descending into the LAX airport, I glanced at the wide expanse below, and yes, there was a sea of tall buildings there. As I stepped out of the airport, I realized that indeed, the six-lane road only confirmed what I saw above. Cagayan de Oro, my place of residence, is way behind by decades in terms of size, infra, population, and modernity.

 

I had a busy first month. Since, I went there with my family, there was fun and excitement in going to places I only heard of before, like the Disneyland, Griffith Park, Universal Studio, the famous Sta. Monica Beach, and so on. There was always something the eyes could feast on. LA is eons ahead of my place.

 

Yet, after satiating the senses, the soul has to be nourished. After the excitement of seeing new places, next came reality: the need to commune with people. This is basic human need that dates back even at the Garden of Eden, when it was shown that the first man could not live by paradise alone. Man is incomplete without the company of fellow humans.

 

After a month, I longed to talk to people other than our host and members of my family. We were staying in an apartment. In the compound, there were many apartments. So I often went out of the apartment waiting for any neighbor to come out from their main doors so that i could strike a conversation, and hopefully start a friendship. They did come out of their doors. To my dismay, from the main doors, they went directly to their garage, started the engine of their cars, then sped away. For several mornings, I did the routine. But there was not a neighbor I was able to talk to because they were always in a hurry.

 

Way back in my birthplace, a small barangay, with a population of not more than 500, everybody was a friend. We all had one activity, either a benefit dance, Sunday mass, basketball game, or a patin-tero at night when the moon shone. When somebody died, everybody would vigil. If there would be marriage, everybody would eat in the banquet. Our lives revolved our place. We had only one community, and everybody belonged to it. No one was isolated.

 

While there in LA, on week-ends, I would go to the public plaza where there are at least six tennis courts. I love to play tennis. I would bring along my tennis gears. But, in my almost two months stay there, I was not able to play a single game. There were tennis players, but they came to the tennis courts in pairs. As soon as they arrive, they play one or two games, and off they went. Once, twice, or thrice, I tried to approach them, but except for few exchanged words, there was nothing of substance. Like the neighbors in the compound, they too were in a hurry.

 

After almost two months, we went back to the Philippines. We arrived in Cagayan de Oro City early morning. By lunch, I called my tennis buddies, and arranged with them for tennis matches in the afternoon. We did play in the afternoon after which we drunk beers. Alas, I was back in my community.

 

Our host in LA was Aunt Nice. She has been in LA since 1993 until now. She would call – up by phone and talk to my wife, my kids, and me. She would talk over the phone for hours without stopping. When she wanted to talk to me, I usually cut short our conversation and give the phone to my kids. I could hear them giggling as if they were talking face to face. After my LA experience though, I don’t cut short anymore our phone conversation. I realized that, even after almost two decades, she has no community there. Her community is still in the Philippines, us.

 

Joanne, a cousin-in-law, has also resided in the US for six years now. When I am online in the office, her video camera would pop-up, and our chatting would take my working time. But having understood that she too has no community in the US, I oblige with the chatting.

 

There are countless souls out there, regardless of age, color, origin, and place. They too live in a place where they don’t belong, where they have no community. They remain alone in a crowded mall. They remain solitary souls in the sea of humanity.

 

A month ago, i saw a stranger in the tennis court . He had been sitting in one corner for more than an hour already, with no one to talk to. He had complete tennis gears. I approached him, and asked if we could play. He leaped from the corner, and with beaming eyes he blurted, “Sure”.

 

After a month, the stranger is not anymore a nameless face. He is now one of us. He is now in our community.

 

If only we open the gates of our small communities.