My Turf

One of the participants in the basic computing workshop we held back when I was still employed in an NGO wrote this in the survey form as response to the inquiry on why he’s never operated a computer in his life. "Oo nga naman!" was the first thought that sprang to my mind. After all, what use would a construction worker have for computers?

Those construction workers belonged to an organization called the National Union of Building and Construction Workers. NUBCW is a group that fights for the rights of construction workers. It likewise aims to increase awareness of different issues that concern workers like them. Skill and capacity-building was also part of the NUBCW’s main missions. Moreover, the leaders of the group were dead-set on putting up their own website so that members from different parts of the country could coordinate with each other and view updates and important data more easily. Hence, the need for computer know-how, however basic.

To be completely honest about it, I felt nothing short of blissful after I taught them the basics of using a word processor. The glow brought about by that experience stayed with me for weeks. Not even mindful of the fact that I hadn’t slept a wink days before my lecture and that I spent the entire weekend editing a video with Ronnie for an Asian Conference AND finishing my presentation for the MS Word workshop. I realized then that, indeed, the true source of happiness lies in exerting effort to make another creature happy.

How I felt pure joy when the participants wrote in the evaluation forms "Word Processing" or "Microsoft Word" as their MAJOR LEARNINGS from the first day of the workshop! More so when I saw how they transformed from people who could barely use a keyboard and a mouse (they had so much difficulty absorbing the differences between Click, Right-Click, and Double-Click!) to, at the very least, computer literates in a span of three days. By the end of the workshop, the people we taught are already able to surf the Net on their own and send and receive email. SIGH.

Bliss. Is inevitable.

It is the happiness that you do not chase, but reaches you anyway. In the least likely places, but in perfect timing.