Love in the time of Zika

I SEE red everywhere.

A change of traffic lights from green to red gave us time to look at the displays laid out by street florists. White blossoms dominated funeral wreaths but red drenched, oozed and glistened everywhere, from the single long-stemmed beauty to the impressive bouquets resembling armor de amor or shields attracting, not deflecting, Cupid’s aims.

The son teased that I was afflicted with a bad case of Valentine-itis. I retorted that any Bisdak (native Cebuano) stuck in Junquera, Cebu’s historic red-light district, would be forgiven for thinking about love in the time of Zika.

Two coming holidays put the spotlight on couples. Chinese New Year ushers in feng shui predictions that augur what’s in store for love and money, two indispensables that drive the world mad.

And then there’s Feb. 14, which releases even more molten sentiments about the timeless quest for one’s half.

Waltzing lazily into this steamy scene is a spindly-legged, hump-backed fellow with the longest ardor-cooling proboscis: Aedes aegypti mosquito.

One of the smallest creatures is taking on the behemoths of church and state in the fight often tagged as “God vs. Evil,” or the reproductive health wars.

Last Feb. 2, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the “explosive spread” of the Zika virus as a “global emergency.” The mosquito-spread virus spiked the birth of babies with brain defects in the Americas.

A day after, the US Centers for Disease Control announced cases of infection transmitted through sex. In countries with Zika outbreaks, desperate governments have urged women to put pregnancy on hold for the next two years.

This stance seems to draw a clear line between the choices open to couples: practice protected sex or consider the abortion of babies born with life-crippling defects. The two options don’t have the endorsement of the Catholic church.

Whatever the religion, many women balk at contemplating the idea of killing the unborn out of fear that one will be unable to care for it throughout its life.

The WHO also advised pregnant women to avoid travelling to about two dozen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean experiencing Zika outbreaks.

The modern loosening of restrictions—in travel and sexual mores, for instance—has been seen as contributing to the explosion of diseases. This observation has invited a panoply of reactions, from the fire-and-brimstone condemnation that sinners are being punished by the wrath of God to the more rational and less hysterical approach of taking stock of one’s actions, applying restraint, and adopting self-help to counter threats.

Our health authorities advise vigilance against Zika, which begins with cleanliness of home and community. To prevent mosquitoes from breeding, the public must empty containers that trap rain and water and cooperate with communal fogging or fumigation.

The public is also advised to monitor loved ones exhibiting symptoms of Zika infection, such as fever, headache, and abdominal pain, and bring them to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) centers. In Cebu, the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center is RITM-trained.

More effectively than the state and the church, an infected insect has made us aware of the consequences of our actions on others. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)



*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s February 7, 2016 issue of the “Matamata,” a Sunday editorial-page column

When babies are not welcome

AS early as January, merchants began rolling out the Cupids and chocolates, the froth-and-tease that precedes the gift-giving hard sell that’s become Valentine’s Day in this country.

In El Salvador, the choices are stark: stagnant water and a government appeal not to have children for the next two years.

Last Jan. 27, the International New York Times (INYT) reported how Zika, a mosquito-borne virus, has “rattled” El Salvador and other countries in the region into scrambling for measures to control the spread of the disease that leaves infected infants with microcephaly, a rare condition marked by an abnormally small head and brain damage.

Zika is spread by the Aedes mosquito, the same carrier of dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya, reported the INYT. The insects thrive in the standing water pooling amidst the trash piling in congested cities.

What hampers the communities and authorities from cleaning up and dispatching the mosquitoes is another Salvadorean epidemic: gang violence. The INYT refers to El Salvador as the “Western Hemisphere’s most violent country.”

In a country where mosquitoes and gangs compete for dominance, one would think having babies would be the last thing on people’s minds, even with Feb. 14 approaching.

Yet, the government’s call for a two-year moratorium on babies, with the implied strategy of contraception, is an issue that is “complicated” to raise in this “conservative, religious” country, reported the INYT.

While the El Salvador archbishop fell sick and could not say Sunday mass immediately after the public appeal for a birth moratorium and the nation’s bishops had yet to meet to discuss how to react to the government’s “new theme,” Salvadorean women interviewed by the INYT said postponing the babies was not a problem for the top three reasons: gang violence, unemployment, and Zika.

We are better off than El Salvador: violence that’s much worse in the media reports than in reality, so-so employment, and no Zika.

It is understandable why, with Feb. 14 approaching, we are not preoccupied with clearing standing water, fumigating the neighborhood, and reciting a loop of Hail Mary’s from fear and desperation for a child that’s still in the womb.

It explains why health workers distributing condoms outside motels on Feb. 14 invite derision. It’s not that they don’t want unwanted babies; the government only works to please condom manufacturers, never mind if they promote sinfulness and break up marriages.

Two worlds: one that does not welcome babies, another that does.

However, if one took away the particulars of place and time, what can the women of El Salvador ask their Filipina sisters: prior to conception, what kind of world do you dream of bringing a child into?

A world where a young mother without a husband, an education or even a supportive family can bring to full term a child, no more certain of its place than its mother.

A world where one can believe one’s child has a fair chance at a better life than its parents.

A world that loves a child and its becoming.

Though we may be in far greater danger from the arrows of Cupid than from the proboscis of the Zika-carrier mosquito, we should ask ourselves like the women of El Salvador: into what world do we bring a child?


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)



*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s January 31, 2016 issue of the “Matamata,” a Sunday editorial-page column

Climb every mountain

THE BEST time to be in this town is after the revelers have gone.

Post-Sinulog, I realized this as I commuted around, examining the city of my birth like a homeowner who has been away for a long time and finds upon her return, the home altered beyond recognition.

A day after Sunday’s grand parade, the sons and I joined early morning commuters. The sight of the purged streets made me wonder about the rest of the city: still in bed, nursing a hangover?

My family’s experience confirmed the reports: traffic during the Sinulog weekend was also headache-inducing.

Uptown, a solitary roadblock was like a throwback, a remnant of the previous 24 hours when it served as a veneer of order and system. According to Sun.Star Cebu, parties took over the streets after the grand parade ended around 9 p.m. on Sunday, with some 90,000 revelers massing in the uptown area alone until dawn of Monday.

With immense respect, I viewed the few men and women still about, sweeping and bagging street waste.

The performances and spectacles hog the limelight during the festival. Yet, we owe a debt of gratitude to Cebu City Hall’s Department of Public Service and barangay environment officers, as well as to the informal clean-up crew—the scavengers collecting discarded water containers–for clearing the streets and making these operational and safe in a matter of hours after the street revelers quit at dawn and before the 8 .a.m. masses moved in.

Hercules himself would balk at the challenge. Every year, as the Sinulog grows in stature and fame, its trash record also piles up. In 2012, 100 tons were left by the estimated million joining the grand parade. This went up to 113 tons in 2013, then 170 tons in 2014. The 2.5 million drawn to Sinulog 2015 left the biggest whopper: 197 tons.

In 2016, the mound slid to 110 tons. Yet, we still need to clear this mountain before we can mention without embarrassment the zero-waste target we seem to set every Sinulog.

Clearing the trash required this year a workforce of 500 that started around 10 p.m. on Sunday and ended by 7 a.m. on Monday, reported Sun.Star Cebu. That’s not the only reason the environmental fallout of the Sinulog is hardly invisible: when the rains come and the gutters and canals overflow and choke the city in traffic for hours, we will know where the rest of the trash went.

Even more unpleasant than the crowd’s leftovers were miscreants in the mob. A day after Sinulog, office breaktime stories centered on personal anecdotes and social media posts about the drunken behavior of revelers and their assault on people and property.

Groping, bruising, verbal abuse and theft were often mentioned. In the 1980s, when I first and last joined the Sinulog due to a PE class requirement, the worst possible experience was walking for hours to get a ride, losing your wallet or getting your face smeared with canal waste by copycats of the Ati-Atihan face- and bodypainting.

It’s hardly reassuring that the official recommendation for future Sinulogs is to station more buses to temporarily hold drunks. The principle is apparently not to detain them but to allow drunks to sleep off their stupor in safety, with free coffee served, if possible.

Why does this proposal sound even more Mount Everest-like than a zero-waste Sinulog?


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)



*First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s January 24, 2016 issue of the “Matamata,” a Sunday editorial-page column