Saturday Stampede

How heartbreaking it is to see our countrymen die while trying to get into a gameshow in the hopes of winning money. Ganito na ba tayo kahirap? 61 people died in a stampede in ULTRA, hopefuls for Wowowee, celebrating its anniversary, offering big prizes. This tragedy is doubly heartbreaking—for its result and cause. :’{

Thus reads the text message I sent to friends this mid-morning. The supposedly quiet and lazy Saturday morning was jarred by news of the tragedy in Pasig. With no appetite for breakfast, I stayed glued on the TV screen the rest of the morning. I see the Vice-President and a Secretary helping with the rescue operations. One footage shows a lifeless woman being lifted on an army truck already loaded with corpses. A camera scans through one area where several more cold bodies lay. A few hours before, they were still alive, with blood pumping with excitement. If they get inside the auditorium, they’ll have their one in a thousand shot at big bucks. Now, not only is their chance lost. All is lost.

I couldn’t help but shed some tears for these people because these are my people. Filipinos, suffering the kind of poverty that makes them endure hours, some, days even, of waiting, wishing for a single gameshow ticket, one out of the 17,000 printed. This ticket was not just paper with words; it represented the promise of a better life. It dangled the hope of their being snatched out of the pit of poverty. How much was at stake? Probably a million pesos—money they could never earn otherwise, not in a decade, or probably not in their lifetime.

I hate it that our country is desperately poor. I hate it that hundreds had to face days of hunger and sleeplessness, not in their own shackles but outside a huge building in Pasig. I hate it that many survivors of today’s stampede didn’t even have enough money to make their way back home. I hate it that one grandmother is appealing on national TV because her 5-year-old granddaughter was snatched away from her by another in the midst of the confusion.

And I hate it that all I can do, aside from watch news on TV and say a prayer, is blog about how awful I feel.