The trouble with kindness

ILEARNED about the Maginhawa Community Pantry on the day it was first set up. A friend happens to live in the area and started sharing photos on Facebook of this simple wooden rack laden with fruits and vegetables, parked under a tree, with a sign urging people to get what they need—an incredibly generous effort by a resident Ana Patricia Non. I don’t know her, and I’ve never heard of her until my friend shared her photos.

I thought to myself, “Galing! What a laudable project!” and was sincerely moved by her sign: “Mabigay ayon sa kakayahan, kumuha batay sa pangangailangan [Give what you can afford, get what you need].” People not only went there to help themselves to the produce, but others went to give and share whatever they could.

In just a matter of days, after social media and eventually the traditional news media noticed the Maginhawa Community Pantry, other people started replicating the project in their own communities.

It doesn’t take a social anthropologist or psychologist to explain the phenomenon. It’s because Filipinos are basically kind and generous. It is one of our most endearing qualities that translate to hospitality, for instance, for tourists coming from abroad, or receiving friends and relatives from the provinces.

We go out of our way to make our guests feel at home, and ensure they are enjoying their time spent with us. We feed them the best food money can buy, and go out of our way to bring them to the best places that are meaningful, popular, and Instagram-worthy.

In small towns, people slaughter their one and only pig to be roasted during fiestas, to be able to feed their neighbors and make them feel special. And even to this day, there are still a few villages where the residents in one place help transfer their neighbor’s nipa hut to another location, which best exemplifies the bayanihan or community spirit.

Just remember the past natural calamities many of our kababayans have suffered. Whether it be a supertyphoon, earthquake, or volcanic eruption, many of us are quick to whip out our phones and donate via Gcash to the Red Cross, the TV stations, and other organizations conducting relief operations.

I remember distinctly after typhoons Ondoy and Yolanda, scores of people were in the supermarkets, buying boxes of food, water and blankets to send to the survivors.

So the idea of community pantries, especially at this time of the pandemic lockdown, when thousands more have lost their jobs and can’t properly feed their families, is not a surprise. That it spread like wildfire from Non’s neighborhood to other places in the Metro Manila was also to be expected.

As Filipinos, we always come together amid adversities. We can’t rely on the government for help, so we have to look out for each other. But of course, there will be spoilsports. The trouble with kindness is that it attracts attention. It is infectious. Generosity, sincerity and just plain good deeds show up the people who have more funds and whose job it is to take care of the public’s welfare. Napahiya sila, to put it more bluntly. Imagine this government functionary saying that community pantries now need permits to operate? Or that bemedalled stiff who is so paranoid about the organizers that he sees “communist” in their charitable actions. (Of course, it did not help that some netizens actually put it out there in the ether, joking the community pantries would eventually be redtagged. In fact, some of them came up with a fancy new meaning for “Cpp-npa”—community Pantry of the Philippines-national Pantry Association. Said in jest, for sure, but obviously taken seriously by people who only have evil and malice in their hearts.)

But seriously, when did kindness become a crime? I am sure it was not the intention of Non to embarrass the government. When you listen to her explain her project, you know that she is pure of heart and was more likely influenced by her own mother, a social worker. (I can relate. My own mother was one, although she had already stopped working by the time my siblings and I were born. But every time there’s a calamity somewhere, she is quick to invite me to go to the supermarket to buy relief goods.)

I don’t know how long this community pantry will last. Even during natural disasters, people also experience donor fatigue after months of organizing or donating to relief efforts. But make no mistake, this community pantry was a good thing. And it does prove one person can make a difference in the lives of so many.

“When the day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

—Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb, Thank you, Patricia, for being that light. n