Good bus, bad bus
My son Gelo, barely four years old, is trying to deal with the Manila hostage crisis in his own baby terms. He now labels buses as good bus or bad bus depending on how the trip went. A bus could be a “good bus” if its passengers arrive at their destinations safe or happy while the one he saw on TV, whose passengers were killed, is some sort of a “bad bus.”
A qualifier may be necessary to assure him, bad buses are one in a million – an isolated incident. Of course, there are many other ways to die in a bus than in the hands of a madman, but road accidents are easier to explain to a kid. I can tell him that with road accidents the bus driver can make a mistake or that bad roads can cause them. But the Manila hostage crisis cannot be reduced to simplest terms with its complex twists and turns.
It’s so hard to make a kid understand why that Hong Thai tourist bus he saw on TV was the way it was. Gelo saw the earlier coverage of the hostage crisis although my wife turned the TV off in anticipation of a tragic outcome by night fall. It was also not a good time to be exercising parental guidance when parents themselves are in a state of shock over the unfolding violence. With the TV off, she had to get her updates via Facebook or some other inconspicuous news sources – such as yours truly – who sent her updates (blow by blow) via SMS.
A week before the Manila hostage crisis, Gelo and I had a father and son bonding during their school field trip to a leisure farm in Batangas. The bus ride had been pleasant. Gelo enjoyed it because his classmates were there and along the way there were trees, rolling hills and many farm animals – refreshing sights for my little city slicker. It had been a good bus. At the conclusion of the trip, he could not stop raving about the bus ride and how he enjoyed it immensely, until a bus hostage crisis unfolds on television. How does one explain to a kid that a bad man shot and killed the tourists in the bus?
The Manila hostage crisis and its many backlashes has been a regular topic at home in the past days. The outrage over how the crisis was managed and how the incident had evolved into the national shame that it is today are topics repeatedly and endlessly discussed over dinner and even in bed – where it has become a part of marital conversation alongside utility bills, school matters, leaking faucets, and other household inanities.
My wife says she still gets carried away by how the victims suffered unnecessarily while enraged by how the government dealt with the aftermath. She has been closely following the developments by reading through many opinion columns written on the subject for days now, from time to time exclaiming, “this column exactly put into words what I feel about this whole mess!”
Sometimes she would empathically talk about how inept the police have been or lament on how the government had taken the “public relations way” of dealing with the problem rather than simply dealing with the problem, period. We share the same feeling of being unsafe in our own country. Although it is something many Filipinos already suspect all along, it was just all the more injurious witnessing police incapacity on prime time.
There are times when my wife’s fury would drive her to tears as she lays down her talking points on the hostage crisis in a slightly raised voice, like it is some kind of a major, major family problem. If neighbors didn’t know better, they’d suspect we’re on the rocks.
During her online time, my wife shares content on the Manila hostage crisis with her Facebook and Twitter friends as much as she would react to other posts and shared multi-media on the Manila hostage crisis. It could be her way of dealing with the traumatic spectator experience and I think talking about it often is therapeutic. She may not be able to achieve closure right away but at least the internet is an avenue for emotional release.
In my own media circles where nothing is supposed to come as a shock anymore, the Manila hostage crisis is still a recurring topic. A colleague who was anchoring the first few hours of the hostage drama described the feeling as draining. In the days that followed, she didn’t quite get over the experience. Other colleagues who were on the scene were not prepared for what they saw and in some way, they are dealing with how the experience affected them.
In newsrooms, discussions on the decisions taken by authorities, how the government has been dealing with the aftermath and the implications of each good or bad judgment calls made so far, are endless. There are even discussions on the need for self-assessment, on how media covered the incident, what we did right and wrong and how we can improve.
I get asked repeatedly what I think about the tragedy, or what I see as areas where the country failed in the Manila hostage. Journalists are often expected to help process the information and I answer (best as I can) with what I know so far. People just need to talk endlessly about this for now as a way of coping with their own trauma over the incident, which really moved everyone even in the subtlest of ways.
At any given time in the past two weeks, many Filipinos were either enraged, shamed, worried, disgusted, depressed, or sobered by the experience. This nation needs to be debriefed.*
