Looking up the patch of blue

BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi

Something’s being cooked up for the city jail, something as sweet as freshly baked bread. The ingredients got stirred when members of Rotary, the international service organization, visited while typhoon Gener was pouring  lastThurday morning.

The Rotarians, all from the Baguio Summer Capital chapter, had escorted to prison visiting Rotarian Stanley Tokigawa of AlaMoana District 5000 in Honolulu and Prof. David McQuittey of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary based in Fort Worth, Texas.

Tokigawa and McQuittey brought three boxes of rubber sandals they wanted the prisoners to try on. The two arrived here in stormy weather Wednesday night, from Alaminos, Pangasinan where they delivered a container van of medical supplies for the town, courtesy of Tokigawa’sShiraki Memorial Foundation and the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation.

They were received at the city jail chapel by 65 female inmates and several coordinators of the male cells. All dressed in yellow T-shirts, the inmates were ready with a program they interspersed with hymns and folksongs. After the turn-over and the messages, a female inmate was ready to air a collective plea.

Later, over lunch at the Venus Park Hotel hosted by former Rotary District 3790 Governor Rolando Villanueva, the Rotarians began figuring out how an oven could fit inside the city jail.

Tokigawa and McQuittey themselves reopened the topic, asking if Villanueva, a businessman, had any idea what it would take to purchase an oven and baking paraphernalia. So the prisoners can bake their own morning bread, they agreed.  

In her response at the turn-over of the slippers, a resident of women’s section of the jail had mentioned the need to also slip inside  a bread oven. That was before female wardress, Chief Insp. Mary Anne Tresmanio, could deliver her closing remarks.

The suggestion ignited the imagination of the Rotarians led by Summer Capital co-founder and  charter president Virgilio Bautista, incumbent president Joris Karl Dacawi and incoming president Edward Dogui-es.

“Why not?,” muttered past club president Eric Picart. “With them baking their own  bread, inmates could afford to have four instead of two pieces of ‘pandesal’ for breakfast.”

With him were past president Albert Atiwag, Rommel Alcid,PaulFajardo, Perfecto Lopez Darius Ramos and Manuel Solis Jr.

Wards of the jail used to bake their own bread in the 1970s, after the inmates, under the direction of the late Baguio journalist Frederic Mayo and then warden Dennen,  organized their drama guild and presented three one-act plays.

The plays, also staged at the University of the Philippines here, helped the city jail earn the title as the best urban detention center in the country.

Part of the prize was a bread oven that the prisoners used in baking pandesal, They baked extra  they sold to health buffs dropping by on their way home from their early morning jogs at the Burnham Park.

The prisoners’ appeal for help to be able to bake again hardly reflects a one-way process. Over the years, they have been reaching out to the community at large with their own service and humanitarian projects – within the confines.  

On Mother’s Day last year, they submitted to warden, Chief Insp. SeverinoKhita P4,000 they raised for two months. The following morning, Khita had the amount coursed through the account of the Philippine Red Cross as the inmates’ contribution to the drive for the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan.

In June, 2009, they pooled P360 for TrinalynMangisel, a 21-month old baby who was born with a hole in her heart. Their support, and that of Aira and Rhea Estepa, then five-year old twins who broke their piggy bank to have their dad deliver P476.25 in coins to the toddler, inspired other Samaritans of all walks. Trinalyn eventually went under the knife, thanks to Swiss expatriate Peter Ernst who bankrolled the cost of surgery at the Philippine Heart Center.  

In March that year, the inmates joined the rest of the world in marking “Earth Hour”, and since then had gone to as long as three hours in observing the annual energy switch-off that underscores the need to lower carbon footprint as a means of addressing climate change.

Since then, they have been observing Earth Day and World Environment Day, events they tried to record in the maiden and only issue so far of their in-house newsletter, “The Baguio Insider”. (e-mail:mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)