Having fun yet?

Newspaper society pages are full of stories and pictures of men and women who come from buena familias; who graduate from the best universities in the country and abroad; who earn good money working in top positions in multi-national companies or in their own successful start-ups; who drive the latest cars; and who party at the most popular bars and resto's almost every night. These are the privileged; the intelligentsia, the literati, and the glitterati; the people that a majority of the population can only look up to in envy, wondering how they got to be so lucky in life.

But these are not just mindless hedonists. These people also have a very acute sense of social responsibility. They rail against the graft and corruption in government, notwithstanding the fact that among their closest family friends and godfathers/ godmothers are elected officials from whom they receive gifts, fruits of graft and corruption. They worry about the environment, though they drive their gas-guzzling vehicles to the latest party places, 2 to 3 hours drive away from where they currently are. They fight ferociously for their freedom of choice without considering the lack of choices available to others. And they are deeply bothered about the poverty in our country.

Unfortunately, their facile, painless solution to poverty is to reduce the number of poor people through birth control. They support the RH Bill to provide free and ready access to contraceptives and abortion services so the poor can limit the number of children they have.

They want to minimize the number of deaths during maternity and childbirth, simply by reducing the number of women who get pregnant. Improving health services to minimize these deaths does not seem to be in their menu of solutions.

They want to limit the number of beneficiaries of free education and social services in order to reduce the expenses of government. Then, there would be more resources for the living, among whom would be themselves.

They are quick to provide solutions to poverty without any proof that they have acquired any knowledge of the real problems of the poor they wish to help. When do they get to associate with the poor other than during their infrequent outreach programs? Do they visit the homes of the poor to eat what they eat, to drink what the poor drink, and to talk with them about what their lives are all about? Are they familiar with the problems, dreams and aspirations of the poor their hearts bleed for? Who are they to recommend how to alleviate lives lived in poverty? Do they know the face of poverty?

A few months ago, there was a great outcry because of the postings of a coed from an exclusive school located near the boundary between Quezon City and Marikina in her Facebook account, She wrote of her experiences in an immersion program of her school where they had to live with the poor in a remote village. She decried the deplorable conditions she had to live in, their lack of sanitary hygiene, the blandness of the food they ate, the insects she had to endure.

The lesson she took home was extreme thankfulness for her status in life and the resolve to live her lifestyle to the fullest, because she never wanted to experience such poverty ever again. No mention of lessons learned about the poor themselves and the help they need.

Just eating and speaking with squatter families during vigils for their dead, or the wedding celebrations of young couples, or the baptisms of their children; chugging drinks from the same glass during their drinking sessions late into the night and joining in their drunken carousing; there is one lesson one will quickly learn – these people love their families. They have a special regard for children, no matter how poor they are, no matter what difficulties they have to overcome in raising them.

That old joke about the poor having a lot of children because they have nothing better to do at night, doesn't apply to the urban poor. They watch TV in their shanties. They have DVD players. They play games on their celphones. But they also choose to make love in their crowded shanties, lying right beside their children, or parents, or in-laws. Teenagers play out their lives in parked jeepneys late at night. And they choose to bear the children they beget.

There is a young widow who raises her four children by scavenging in trash bins around the city. There are elderly grandfathers who work as gravediggers who willingly take on the responsibility of taking care of their grandchildren because their children cannot assume the burden.

There are teenagers who earn a few hundred pesos driving tricycles or pedicabs during the day, and who get their girlfriends pregnant by night. Whether or not they eventually wed, these couples do not have the pregnancies aborted. The boys revel in the round bellies of their girlfriends. When the babies are born, the fathers coo and coodle their babies, whether or not they legally carry their fathers' surnames. They stand out in the streets sunning their newborn infants, with happiness and pride on their faces. Will they have enough to eat next mealtime? Who knows? They are content with their children.

The educated illuminati say the poor need easy access to free contraceptives or abortion that the RH Bill will bring. The poor already have access to these; maybe not free, but very close to it. They can afford cigarettes and alcohol; they can easily afford available contraceptives. Not in drugstores or 24-hour convenience stores, but visit Quiapo or Baclaran or any large-sized church and there will be peddlers offering natural contraceptives.

Who needs a licensed medical abortionist when the neighborhood hilot already has the experience, and the success rate to prove it? The poor are aware of these affordable remedies, but they choose not to use them simply because they love children. They enjoy seeing them running and playing in the streets. They love watching them grow from crying babies to sniffling toddlers to cavorting children to strutting teenagers to under-aged mothers and fathers. Then they can watch some more as their grandchildren are born.

They may shout often at their kids; even curse at them and call them dirty names. But the concern and love are ever present. Let no harm or injury come to their children for they will wage war against the world.

They may be deprived of luxuries by the number of their children, but what little there is, is freely shared by all.

While we eat at 5-star restaurants where the price of an entree is the cost of an entire family's meal, they make do with some rice, a little bit of vegetables, and a piece of meat, divided between 5 or 6 of them. While we travel abroad for our vacations, for a few measly pesos they treat the kids to fishball, or share a bowl of street-vendor lugao with them. While we post our intellectual musings on solving poverty on our blogs, or on Facebook, or on Tweeter, they talk about where the best pickings among the trash sites are, where there are metal scraps or copper wires ready to be “picked up” for free, or which politician or church is running a feeding program for kids.

We pride ourselves in bemoaning their condition, but will not share our meals with them. We think about the difficulty of their conditions, but will not bother to find out what they need. In our intellectual superiority, we already know what is good for them. We pity them, but do not show compassion.

The poor need their children to give their lives meaning, because their posterity is defined by their children; they have nothing else. Their children offer them hope because they may grow up and to make something of themselves and extract their families from poverty. They find faith in their children because they are able to give thanks for every day they are alive and are together. For the poor, children are not burdens in their lives; they are the hope-filled future.

And this is what we want to take away from them. Hey! Are we having fun yet helping them out?