Remembering Ate Cel (1972-2009)

At dawn, Thursday, 30^th of July, Marcela ‘Ate Cel’ Afuyog, dear friend and colleague in one of my most cherished communities of practice in the Philippines left her cancer-stricken body to embark in a new phase of Life. She was 37.

Tonight, I feel she is with me. And while I imagine her trying to catch up on stories we missed sharing face to face with each other in our most animated selves, I also visualize reminding her not to pull my leg. Not to play tricks on me. I tell her, ‘Matatakutin ako, Ate Cel’ (‘I easily get scared, Ate Cel.’) to which she replies, ‘I know. Alam ko naman, bago pa man ako bumisita sa’yo at sa iba pa nating kaibigan’ (I’m aware of that even before I pay you or any of our friends this special visit.’)

While I continue to imagine things and ponder on what Ate Cel would do when she’s inside my little nook (little sauna actually – it’s not air-conditioned) in Singapore, I am reminded of the lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoons when I would visit her and our friends in their Legazpi Apartment at Umali Subdivision in Los Baños. Those afternoons were of course not really lazy as we would talk about the prospects of our NGO life and catch up on stories we had missed sharing with each other because of our busy schedules. (If my memory serves me right, the last time we watched a movie together in their apartment was the time we saw the Academy Award-winning Chariots of Fire with friends Jundoc, Katkat and Yen. I shall check some clips of the movie at YouTube to recreate that moment. I think she will like that.)

Ate Cel was a colleague in NetWorks, Inc., a non-profit non-government organization committed to the development of organized youth groups in the country using facilitative and participatory approaches. She was the first chairperson of the board of directors of the organization founded in 1997. We had known each other through common friends since college, but it was in the organization that we really became close like family. We worked together as co-facilitators in several trainings conducted within and outside the UPLB campus.

One of my fondest memories of her was that she was an admirer of my ‘male beauty’ (She knew my narcissistic tendencies all too well that she would never fail to call me ‘Sophia,’ an alias borrowed from the beauteous Sophia Loren) and that she was an occasional date during weekend masses at the Saint Therese Chapel in the UPLB campus. She was undeniably a very prayerful person.

I will always remember Ate Cel for providing comforting presence during a dark hour of my stay in Los Baños. At the time when my sister was struck by a very unsettling illness while we were far from home, Ate Cel made us feel her reassuring friendship and I actually felt her turn into one of our staunchest prayer warriors. For a long time, she remained to be so and will be more than ever now that she has gone Home.

I of course envied her for being a jetsetter in the Philippine archipelago. From her early 20’s until she was diagnosed of cancer, she travelled all over the country to serve rural communities first as a Pahinungod of UPLB (she was a university extensionist for a number of years), then as part of an internationally funded project team under a Philippine government agency.

A true-blue Cordilleran and a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture graduate, Ate Cel quite easily established rapport with the many Philippine communities she had visited during her active years in service and created bonds of friendship and lasting relationships with a number of community development workers she had interacted and made contact with. (If I remember correctly, she majored in Plant Pathology (or was it Soil Science?), one of the toughest areas of the agricultural sciences in UPLB.) While working at the university’s Ugnayan ng Pahinungod, she pursued her master’s in development management and it was during her graduation that I first met her family, including her very pleased and proud father who came all the way from Benguet in the Northern Philippines to be with his daughter on a very special day.

Ate Cel was an embodiment of a loving daughter. Because her mother died early, she, being the eldest daughter, served as the second mother to her younger siblings. I imagine her as a pillar that would hold the family together during her short-lived but undoubtedly meaningful stay in the bio-physical world.

We will miss your physical presence Ate Cel, but you have not really left us. The wonderful memories you have given us will stay on.