(A newspaper article on Lin Manalastas-Castro)

 

Ladies of the Lake

Posted: 10:25 PM (Manila Time) | Oct. 26, 2002

By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz

Inquirer News Service

(source http://www.inq7.net/mag/2002/oct/27/mag_4-1.htm)

 

'Save the planet'

 

WORLDS apart when they were growing up, Maria Victoria G. Dizon and Humbelina Castro only recently discovered that they shared a common vision of saving this planet. Or at least its rivers, lakes and watersheds in this part of the Pacific.

 

Marivi Dizon grew up in the lap of luxury, having lived and studied in Europe when her father was senior aide de camp to President Diosdado Macapagal and later, military attache to the Philippine embassy in Rome in the '60s. Meanwhile, Humbelina Castro had to work her way through college. Named after a saint whose feast day she shares, Lin recalls working as bookkeeper/accounting clerk for a drugstore while doubling as receptionist-secretary for a medical clinic.

 

"When I went to college, my father, a mechanic, found work doing air conditioning, refrigeration, and power plant maintenance, first in Vietnam and later in Iran," she recounts. But, she adds proudly, though her father was only an elementary and vocational school graduate, "his last position was Power Engineer Consultant."

 

Those were lean times and Lin, the eldest of seven girls and three boys, barely scraped by. Holding down two jobs had its rewards, though, she says. "I met famous and beautiful people who were patients in the medical clinic, like Rufino Cardinal Santos and Sen. Jose Diokno."

Still, tending the drugstore and washing bottles for prescription medicine while her classmates went off to enjoy the holidays were enough of a downer, Lin recounts. "After work, I'd go back to our quarters above the drugstore to find nothing but cold rice and soy sauce for dinner because the other workers had finished up the food." All that work, with only Sundays off, netted her just enough to pay her tuition for two semesters.

In contrast, Marivi remembers growing up in their ancestral home in San Juan. "My mom was a gentlewoman who loved nature and animals," says this Marymount graduate. "We had 12 dogs, 14 cats, several turkeys, and so on. For our weekend picnics in the countryside, we had our pet Doberman in tow. In grade school, the nuns encouraged us to get involved in sports, so I was in several teams -- volleyball, tennis, skiing, trekking."

 

The family's return to Manila, however, pulled her back to earth.

"I was appalled at the state of affairs in the country and the harsh realities of poverty when we got back in the early '80s," says Marivi. Forthwith, she got involved with several NGOs opposing the Marcos rule, among them Womb, Gabriela, Women's Crisis Center and Lila Pilipina, and found herself wading into such issues as domestic violence, compensation for comfort women and legislative advocacy on the anti-rape bill.

 

"Being with these NGOs gave me the opportunity to visit local town folk across the country, speak with them and feel their pulse," she says of her political activist days.