This is the Olympic story you almost never heard. This is the story of Samia Yusuf Omar, a 17-year-old female Somali sprinter who caught the attention of Olympic spectators in Beijing and around the world. Not because she won an Olympic event. But because she showed up and ran, despite the knowledge that there was no chance for her to win. An underdog in every aspect, Samia finished last in the 200-meter dash event that she competed in.
“As Samia came down the stretch in her 200-meter heat, she realized that the Somalian Olympic federation had chosen to place her in the wrong event. The 200 wasn’t nearly the best event for a middle distance runner. But the federation believed the dash would serve as a “good experience” for her. Now she was coming down the stretch alone, pumping her arms and tilting her head to the side with a look of despair.
Suddenly, the half-empty stadium realized there was still a runner on the track, still pushing to get across the finish line almost eight seconds behind the seven women who had already completed the race. In the last 50 meters, much of the stadium rose to its feet, flooding the track below with cheers of encouragement. A few competitors who had left Samia behind turned and watched it unfold.”
After reading her story, I couldn’t help but realize that we Filipinos are still blessed in so many ways. Yes, we are poor, but probably not as poor as most Somalis. Yes, there is still a war in Mindanao, but it’s not as bad as the wars in other countries.
This is not to say that we should be content with being poor or that we should do nothing about the war in our own backyard. This is to say that we should stop yapping about how poor we are and start doing something about it.
We complain that we lack opportunities in the country. This is may be true; but I’ve seen some of us standing still when opportunities come. My own sister, a registered nurse, was offered a chance to work abroad. On the day she was supposed to meet with her potential employer, she didn’t show up. She probably didn’t take that opportunity seriously, thinking that there would be other better opportunities to follow. She forgot that almost every other person in the Philippines is a nurse or is studying to become a nurse. Even doctors go back to school to study nursing so they could work abroad as nurses. By the time my sister realized that it was a rare opportunity that she should not pass up on, the opportunity was gone, taken probably by someone more desperate, someone more deserving. Now, my sister is jobless. A registered nurse, true. But a jobless registered nurse.
My sister’s story is not a unique Filipino story. All too often, we Filipinos are afraid to try, probably because we’ve failed too many times before as a nation. But just because we have not succeeded as a nation doesn’t mean that we cannot succeed as Filipinos, albeit individual Filipinos.
We cannot control how our government is run because we’re not the ones who put our government officials in office. You think we do, but we don’t. Remember “Hello, Garci“? Oh, we forget too soon. Our collective amnesia makes us forget our ugly history time and again. From Marcos to Erap to Nano.
Our national history is rich with political and cultural lessons that we need to learn and remember. But what is it that makes remembering impossible for us to do? Is it the water that we drink or the food that we eat? Or is it our culture that stops us from trying harder to better ourselves? Is it our culture that foments lethargy, indifference, and forgetfulness?
If we can learn to remember the ugly lessons of our nation’s collective past, maybe, just maybe, we can also learn how to run like Samia.
