Story of Tarsela, A Woman In A Distant Village

On our way to the Village.

One of the unforgettable memories I have from community development work was a trip to a distant village in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Philippines. It took me and my companions four (4) hours walk from the center of  the town to reach  the village.

When we arrived, the people were so happy to meet us. They prepared so much for our visit, they prepared hot tea and sweet potatoes. Some even offered us  a body  massage before going to sleep. Of course, we accepted the offer as our muscles ache from the laborious hike. 

There is no farm to market road in the village.  It is obvious that the farmers have difficulty in marketing their crops.  However, in spite of poverty, what touches me most is their language of love and contentment. 

A woman named Tarsela invited us to her small nipa house, she introduced her father who is about 90 years old and her 2 daughters aged 7 and 4 years old. It is sad that before Tarsela's youngest was born, her spouse left her for another woman. But that did not make Tarsela gave up her life, she said she had her father and two children to take good care of. 

Tarsela was not educated and barely finished grade 3. She's not skilled of anything except farming. One thing that also touched me is her passion to take good care of the environment that she promotes organic farming. It is known that people in the community would rather use synthetic fertilizers to give them more income. However, even in Tarsela's poverty, she chose to take good care of the environment by using organic fertilizers.

Tarsela said she's lucky to have a sack of carrots during the harvest. She would usually carry 50kg of her product and hike for four hours to reach the town. Upon reaching the town, she needed to transport her goods to the city which is 2 hours away by bus. She would be lucky enough if she could sell her goods at a higher price at the Trading Post. Whatever is her income would be good enough again to survive 3 or 6 months until the next harvest. Just imagine if her carrots would be sold at Php 4.00 per kilo and she had 50 kg only. That would be around  P200.00 or around $5 only. The amount is not even enough to compensate all the hard work she had.  However, with the Php200.00 on hand, she would be happy to go home. "It's better to go home with something rather than nothing at all," she said.

Tarsela also gave us her best product for the day, she gave us  half of the best peanuts she had harvested.  We refused to accept the gift and she refused to accept payment. It seems disrespectful not to accept the gift so we took it. It's all she got but still she gave it away as a gift to a stranger like myself.

Her story awakens the conscience in me and I would love to talk about contentment. Sometimes people tend to forget on what really matters in this life.  Sometimes we are raised to aim for more and dream for more at any cost. 

My experience with Tarsela is something I would not want to forget. No matter what we aim for in this life, we should always base it to the basic principle of  humanity and that is on love peace and kindness. Contentment is also one thing but we should never stop dreaming and working for our goals.

With my experience in that distant community, I want to aim for more success and  I want to carry Tarsela with me and all the Tarsela's in this world.