Better than Boracay

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TOURISTS usually return from the Philippines with glowing stories about places they visited like the white powdery sands of Boracay or the spectacular breath-taking panorama of the Banaue rice terraces. For me, over the years, it has always been the people I have met, not the spots I have been to, that leave a more lasting impression.

In my recent visit to Cebu City, for example, I met Jenny Franco who many years ago had returned to Cebu with her family after living in New York. Jenny's parents and siblings are still in the US and she visits them occasionally but Cebu is her home.

Over lunch, one day, Jenny related about how she much loved her life in Rochester, New York, where her husband Nick was a highly successful and well-paid surgeon. Though she was a registered nurse, she didn't need to work because her husband's income was more than sufficient to support the family.

Then one day, Nick told her that he just was not getting personal satisfaction from treating his patients, who were primarily rich white Americans. He had attained his professional goal and now he wanted to achieve his personal goal. He wanted to return to practice in his hometown.

Jenny recalls that she cried when her husband told her of his wish because she did not want to give up their dream house, their expensive cars and the pampered life she had gotten used to in the US.

But Jenny loved her husband more. If that is what her husband wanted, then she would be willing to give everything up including their green cards and return with him to an uncertain fate in Cebu.

Adjusting to life in the Philippines was even more difficult than Jenny had expected. Nick had difficulty getting patients and establishing his medical practice but he persevered, devoting most of his practice to providing free medical care to the indigent in the charity wards of various hospitals

Jenny felt miserable, hating every day of her life in Cebu, constantly pining for the good old days in Rochester.

While Jenny was feeling this way, the worst typhoon to hit Cebu in decades devastated the province, shutting down all electricity and water supply for a month. Gas was rationed, Jenny recalls, and she had to queue up with other cars to get gas for their two cars. After filling up the tank of one car, she would drive it over to her husband so he could do his rounds to visit patients who had been injured or whose medical conditions had deteriorated because of the typhoon. She
would then line up again to get gas for the other car.

While driving home one day after getting gas for their second car, Jenny saw a long line of women who were queued up to get water from a pump. What struck Jenny as curious was that the women were all laughing. The children, who were running around them, were laughing as well.

Why were they laughing? They should be in tears. She could not figure out why they seemed so happy when they should be commiserating in misery. I have a thousand times more reason to be happy than they do and I'm terribly unhappy, she told herself.

Jenny went rushing to the home of her best friend to tell her what she saw. Why are they happy and we're not?

It was a moment of epiphany for her. Jenny realized that you can be happy in poverty or miserable in luxury, that it is all up to you. It is your state of mind, how you view life, and what you make of your life that determines whether you are happy or melancholy.

From that moment on, Jenny determined that she would be happy, that she would look forward to each day of her life, enjoying and savoring each day that she was with her family and friends. And she would do what she could to improve her community.

Jenny started her own travel agency business, Travelvision of Cebu, which organizes conferences and special events for businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Jenny currently serves as president of the Cebu Chapter of the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies (NAITAS).

To promote tourism in Cebu, Jenny became an active member of the Cebu Visitors and Convention Bureau. Through this, she actively participated in hosting the successful Third Global Filipino Networking Convention that was held at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu a year ago.

Several months after the convention in late May, Jenny suffered a personal tragedy. The love of her life, her husband, Nick, succumbed to cancer. Among the hundreds of people who mourned his death and attended his funeral were the families of his indigent patients who deeply appreciated what he did for them. He died a happy man, Jenny said, because he did what made him happy.

When I visited Cebu recently, I went with Jenny to the town of Consolacion, just outside Cebu City, to see the Sinulog Gawad Kalinga project there where homes for the poor were built on the site of the former Eversley Leprosarium Hospital. She had been a student nurse at the hospital there in her youth, she said, and now she was working to raise
money to help build more housing for the poor on the site of the former hospital.

Jenny was working with Gawad Kalinga to carry on the work of her husband who had devoted himself to helping the poor and she was doing so because she had decided that helping others is what would make her happy.

What a great tourist ad this would make: "Visit the Philippines and meet fantastic people like Jenny Franco."

Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com. For more information on Gawad Kalinga, log on to www.gawadkalinga.org.