The Kindness of Strangers

Vicente A. Sapguian

They do not come from Krypton dressed in shining red. But in their hearts they know that even superheroes cannot solve the miseries of this world.

The photo exhibit mounted by the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) to raise funds for ailing senior media colleague Ramon Dacawi is proving once more that charity is very much alive and transcends boundaries of ethnicity and social status.

Eight photos were sold on opening day last Sept. 14, when  Dacawi turned 65 and on this fourth day of the exhibit as I write this, more were reserved or taken.

Whatever is collected will go to Dacawi’s life-time thrice-weekly hemodialysis and other medical treatments of the financially beleaguered newsman. To serve their purpose the photojournalists agreed that a minor portion from the sales will go to the frames and mounting of the pictures they had taken all over the Cordillera Region.

“Aside from the lensmen, I am indebted to many I had never met before," Dacawi admitted. “Dhobie de Guzman, our media president who planned this undertaking, must have been quite convincing, for them to see the worth of the installation.” 

The exhibit is set up at the New Town Plaza Hotel located at #43 C.M. Recto St.(former Navy Base Road), corner Leonard Wood Road across the Baguio Botanical Garden. It will run until Sept. 30, 2015.

“When he learned of our plan, lawyer Edgar Avila introduced me to Kenneth So, one of the owners of the hotel,” recalled De Guzman.

The New Town Plaza Hotel accommodated the exhibit for free. “Moved by the effort for charity, they even made the buenamano purchase during the first day,” Dhobie De Guzman, BCBC president and news anchor of ABS-CBN, added.

To set the tone, Hotel and Restaurant Association of Baguio (HRAB) director Anthony de Leon also bought four photos for good luck. 

Dacawi recalled that on the first days of his blood-cleaning session last August, de Leon handed him a check for P20,000, telling him to hang on.

At the exhibit’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, the mood turned serious, Some fought back tears for what it meant for as senior member of the Baguio media who, everyone knew, spent years linking, through his writings, Samaritans to dialysis patients and sick people in the Cordillera.

He turned the mood tongue-in-cheek, drawing from his Ifugao upbringing: “If your photos will not stand up in an exhibit and fails to sell, it’s a signal you need to change profession,” he ribbed the photo-journalists who spent days framing their best.

Maan Cacdac, editor of Baguio Sunstar Daily who was serving as master of ceremony began to collect herself and lighten up, so did everybody.

“In the media, you tend to develop jaded feelings due to the almost daily exposure to the competitions and the hard realities of this world. Despite this, I see hope. I see in this exhibit an outpouring of spontaneity, sensitivity and care,” Dacawi observed.

After 40 years serving several mayors of Baguio, from Luis Lardizabal to Mauricio Domogan,  Dacawi has retired as head of the 

Baguio City Public Information  Office. Unable to let him go, mayor Domogan issued Administrative  Order 099 last September 14 retaining him as consultant  at one-peso per year to help his administration work on environmental and humanitarian projects.

After all, the Baguio newsman had given a heart to community journalism through his articles linking Samaritans to the needy and tapping children for environmental education  and empowerment under the Eco-walk that won for Baguio its only “Galing Pook”  award from the Local Government Academy and the “Global 500” award from the United Nations Environmental Program.