Humble Beginning, Simple Living

Humble Beginning, Simple Living

by Raqueline C. Mandreza & Gwynnie G. Gonzaga

For 25 years of service, Simeon Manajero, 57 is still doing his job credibly. He is the longest utility member of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Iloilo City. He helps the DA community makes its working habitat comfortable and clean. 

Simeon is a native of Lambunao, Iloilo. During his childhood, he spent his time helping his parents tend their rice fields instead of going to school regularly because they are poor. Having 9 other siblings – three from his father’s first wife, and six from his own mother,  education is almost non-existent to them. Feeding 10 children ate most of his parents daily earnings. Thus, Simeon’s educational attainment was only grade V. With his young mind, he decided to help his parents feed their family of 12.

At a very young age, he decided to leave home to search for his luck elsewhere. He ended up helping a small baker in Janiuay, Iloilo where he learned how to bake bread. His boss gave him a break by letting him handle deliveries and ordering from the grocery stores what bakery needed. It was during those long-time-ago that he first felt in love with the sales clerk in the grocery store where his boss ordered the ingredients for the bakeshop. It was a short and bitter sweet love story about two young lovers who thought it was forever, but it wasn’t. Of course, since, Manong Simeon had to leave and look for a better job. For him, he needed a more suitable job to feed himself and his family. Seven years of being in the baker is enough for him.

Semeon’s first love now lives in Manila with her own family. We will never know if that may be the reason why Manong Simeon never married. He insisted he can’t sustain a family with his current salary of 9,000 pesos per month. But that could be just his excuse. He may still be holding a fire for that mystery salesgirl he promised forever with and exchange “I Love You”.

Despite being single until now, Manong Simeon is happy just talking about his family – siblings, nieces, nephews, and his 105 years old uncle. He may get pity from other people for how life treated him, snatching away the opportunity to study Commerce. Manong Simeon believed it could have taken up the said course if he had enough resource for his education. But he’s not someone who sour grape over his unattained dream of becoming a commerce graduate. He’s the type who rises up to the occasion. One proof of his lack of bitterness towards life is that he helped one of his nephews finished college. He’s still supporting his older sister who remains single. With his experiences and wisdom about living, he’s gladly sharing it to his nephews and nieces. He wants them to have what he wasn’t able to get just because circumstances never allowed him.

He now stays at the DA compound; visits home once in a while to reunite with his loved ones. He’s a family oriented person who cares so much for the people he loves. After his retirement, he wishes to go back to his native town to help her old sister in their small farm. He wants to be close to his family members.

Simeon wakes up at 3 o’clock in the morning; listens to the radio until 4 a.m. as he prepares for the day. At the strike of 5 a.m., he starts his daily routine of cleaning rooms and preparing everything for the coming employees of the DA before 8 in the morning. He finishes at around 5 p.m. and at this time he cooks his dinner and sedates himself with the tranquility of the night that is about to envelop him. He sleeps early, he said because there is nothing else to do.

This is his continuous routine that some may find mundane, but it balances him. It is the stability of his schedule from Monday to Friday that grounds him since it is what most old people like – a constant timetable, an unchangeable operation and something which they can grasp without worrying what is the next step. His schedule is his breathing space, the ground that holds him to continue and not be lead astray by other unimportant matters. This is how he does his job effectively; not be distracted by other things unlike teenagers who are constantly texting on their phones than doing the task assigned them.

One must be patient when making sure everything is in its proper order and is organised perfectly to suit the working area. Manong Simeon shows patience in the task assigned to him. This is a good quality as a person and as employee. This is the reason why Manong Simeon, after 25 years of service, is still with the DA. It is his meticulous, positive and compassionate attitude towards work and life that brought him to where he is right now, a life already a haven of sanctuary.

Manong Simeon is a role model not only to his fellow staff and co-workers but also to us students. “Dapat mag-tuon ag mag-skwela guid kamo it mayad,” he said. “Masyadong malisod mag-usoy it ubra kun owa ka it tinapus sa colehiyo.” This is his statement that he obviously directs to us students. A person doesn’t need to rethink this line. Take it from the man who had experienced life. This man sets an example of a person who strives best in life, a person who is contented with what he has. Nothing more and nothing less. /MP