ARNEL

Let’s just call him Arnel. He was 28 when I first met him, first born son of a kidnapper-turned-state witness/police asset. I don’t know much about him. But once, while I was running errands for my boss and he was driving for me, he said, in a slapdash comment, “I want to have my own bus someday so that I could be my own driver and I could provide for our family.” I could never forget that moment when he said that. That was the most sensible and at the same time the most impossible dream I’ve ever heard of.

Most of us, by the time we reach our early twenties, dream of having our own car, a stable job, or an apartment – material possessions within our reach. These things are non-existent in Kuya Arnel’s dreams. When he told me about his dreams, I did not see any desire for self-fulfillment nor gratification in his intentions. All he has wished for was that simple life of a bus driver so that he could provide for his family. He could have told me that he wanted to be a rich businessman, or a lawyer, or a doctor, but he didn’t. For others it might be an absurd dream, mediocre, ludicrous. But for me, it was sensible, well-thought of, innocent and true.

But indeed, for him, it might be an impossible dream.

To the people who work with him in the office, he did not even get that much respect so as to be called by his first name. He was merely known as the first born son of the “Ampatuan Family” (Ampatuan – the name which is almost synonymous to the Maguindanao massacre that has happened in the Philippines in 2009) just because he was his father’s son. He earns enough to get by day by day by doing the ‘dirty works’ for the police, running difficult errands, on-call 24/7. And his safety depended on how he gets along with the authorities. His job wasn’t stable enough. One wrong move and he could be thrown out of his harbor with nothing but his clothes.

He was just so unlucky that he did take this one wrong move when he was tempted to steal something from his boss, out of necessity, because of poverty. Without any questions asked, he was immediately robbed of his only chance to even get a head start for his simple dream.

Kuya Arnel’s story was not meant to question the existence of poverty or humanitarian issues concerning the way he was treated. This simply tells the story of someone who possess such a small dream but was still unable to reach it because of his life’s circumstances.