I remember being a sophomore in the Ateneo when I first found out about the required Immersion that I would be required to undergo, in senior year. I knew immediately that there would be problems. It is something that my parents will simply not allow me to go to. Some will say that I have overprotective parents - I am never allowed to go out of town unaccompanied by them, I was only grudgingly allowed by my parents to walk the streets outside the Ateneo, I am not allowed to drive and I don’t commute. So after getting their final “No!” I had to go up to my Theology professor. Would it be possible not to go to Immersion? He said yes, but he also said that he would want it very much if I could go through area instead, because it would give me a chance to have experiences with the poor.
So after about half a sem of procrastinating, I went to my first area today. My teacher had wanted to arrange it himself with ATSCA because he used to be a member in that organization. But since I said I could arrange it myself with ACIL (since my friends were members of that organization), he allowed me to join ACIL instead. At about 9:34 A. M., Aug. 28, 1999, Saturday, I boarded the squishy ACIL bus together with a horde of other people. Ria, my classmate and an officer in ACIL doing double area, repeatedly assured me that I was welcome to join them, but she scared me slightly when she told me the day before that I should take off my watch, my bracelet, my wallet and leave my telecommunications devices. She told me that my timing was perfect because two of her partners (they were five) weren’t going that week. So we got to Barangay Escopa, fifteen minutes from the Ateneo, left the safe confines of predictability and went on to teach.
The area wasn’t extraordinary. Everyone sees it everyday, from the inside of their cars. It’s amazing how everything isn’t really as horrifying when you’re close to them, up front. The children were shy to me but they cooperated happily when we played “Charades”. The lesson for the week was on Jesus’ call to Matthew and how all was being called to a similar discipleship. Then it was connected to how we can be disciples in our own way. Ria was the picture of patience as she guided children who probably wanted to do a million other things, through the lesson.
We were all supposed to meet back at the bus by 10:30 A. M., after only about 40 minutes with our children. But we left the area half an hour later, after joking with the children who had boarded the bus and who pretended that it was them who were going back to Ateneo and that it was us that they were leaving behind.
But when the bus’s engine started, everyone was brought back to reality. The children quickly got off the bus, unwilling to leave, and ourselves, unwilling to stay. They had to stay in their world where it was a perpetual immersion and we had to go to our own world, to watch them from inside our cars again.