- - Love and Other Blogs - -: ANCOP - Project Hope & Love

I was excited to have my first Ancop Project at the instance of the invitation of my HHH - all the more when I learned that this case is going to be a challenging one. Picture “challenging" here: I could only imagine things are cluttered everywhere and we could finish cleaning that same day. “Yes we can do it!” I exclaimed with optimism. Little did I know of what awaits us. We were a group of around 20 then. I was just wearing leggings underneath my shorts, big disposable shirt (yes, disposable - just as I was told! J) and a pair of slippers (that would turn out to be my powerful weapon later on). I could remember it was raining hard that morning and we were waiting at the MRT station when 2 women seemingly discussing something passed by. I was told that one of them was conditioning the other who happens to be the tenant of the unit we are going to clean. This stirred my curiosity. “Why the need for conditioning, huh?” So I was all the more interested to know the person of the tenant – and how else than by looking at her dwelling place – her home. We were instructed to be careful on what to throw and what to keep. Sounded easy – just before I came to see the unit. Voila! When I first saw the interior, my first question was – how and where do they sleep here? 3 big rooms, 1 storage room, 2 toilets plus a wide sala and kitchen full of everything from papers, boxes, bottles, cans, old bags, clothes, all kinds of rubbishes you can think of. Imagine that we could only see the inside of the rooms through a small opening of the door. That full. Not to forget the unpleasant smell and of course, the little “terrorists” of the house who tried to shoo us away – cockroaches. Yes, at first they brought us terror seeing they outnumbered us. (ang kukulit nila! Gusto pa makipagchacha samen! Pwes! Tsinelas katapat nila. Bleh!) But we conquered our fear and brought them all down. J

I was observing around. Looking through every rubbish. Trying to salvage any kind of stories behind all the mess. I learned that the lady tenant, let’s call her “Auntie” for the purpose of this writing, had a brother who also shares the same habit as hers – bringing home of all kinds of things they see from wherever they go. I noticed that most of the things are magazines and newspapers. Now these explain why Auntie knows a lot about some happenings even in Philippine showbiz. (ikaw na!) I guess what made this case unique is the fact that not only do we need to deal with cleaning up the house which is already challenging enough but that we also need to extend our understanding of the predicament of the tenants – they have this obsessive attachment over things and they have sort of found a security in them already all these times that disposing these things threatens that security they have already built around what to them were their “precious possessions” – so we needed to be sensitive then. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” – this I remembered looking at their situation. (di lang pala to applicable sa love J Segway lang.) So we needed to form a strategy. We had to look for nice things to show and give to Auntie to keep her attention from all the rest of things we are disposing – otherwise – she will begin throwing tantrums and we all had to stop whatever we are doing. It was more of like making a baby stop crying, you know. But we understood that. We lovingly did as we are told.

Kitchen Area

For the 2nd truck for the day

This whole experience taught me 2 things: First - to learn to let go. I see their situation like that of some people who go through life painstakingly bringing along with them all their emotional baggages – unforgiveness, fear, etc.. Their journey becomes slower than that of the one who frees himself from hang-ups and lets go of any unnecessary burden. Sometimes, people have this tendency of building a security blanket over some of their unpleasant experiences in life getting themselves accustomed of the pain, holding onto them thinking that this is already their way of life. Clinging onto pain is just like picking on the scabs of a wound – the wound stays fresh everyday and you never allow it to heal. Similarly, it’s like walking everyday carrying 2 pales full of water on your shoulder even when you know you can unload them and transport them through however easier way but because you have been used to the burden you just accepted that that’s how it’s going to be for the rest of your life. But I believe it’s really just a matter of drawing security from the right source - GOD. While trying to understand the situation, I thought that perhaps I am missing a piece of the puzzle here. There must be some reasons why the siblings had developed their obsession over things. Could be a traumatic experience that triggered the attachment for things so that in order to fill in that void they diverted their attention to other things in the hope that these would somehow make them feel complete or at least provide them a sense of security in their own home. Amidst all the mess in the place, I was only able to see one corner neatly kept intact -that small side table in the master’s bedroom where all their family pictures were displayed underneath a glass. I guess that says much about their persons. And I would like to keep my probing only that far. Besides, one knows only his own pain as they say.

Family Pictures

Secondly, I have come to prove that where there is Love, God is there. This experience taught me a whole different kind of love – we are no relatives nor acquaintances of the tenants but we were all there to bring love to them. True enough nothing can be more propelling than love. It amazes me how everyone who was there never complained about anything and instead still managed to show smiles in their faces. The act of love is just so amazing and contagious that it even caused the neighbors to ask how are we ever related to the tenants and why we are doing the “dirty” work. Well, this is what I’d rather call an exemplary act of Christian Love. – Love in Action. Truly, I can feel God’s presence there in everyone.