A packet of chips for Christmas dinner?

A former sponsored child looks back on the ghost of Christmas past...

Ethel Camiguin's story - from a sponsored child in a Filipino slum to a university degree - is testament to the potential that lies hidden under the cloak of poverty. Photo: Michael McVeigh, World Vision

When Ethel Camiguin described her “best Christmas ever” to a group of school children on a recent trip to Australia, they were a little surprised by what they heard.

Rather than the usual story of Santa Claus bringing gifts, Ethel’s story was much simpler. The only decoration her family had was a piece of cellophane draped across the window, while their special Christmas “dinner” consisted of a packet of corn chips and three lollies they’d found.

“Garbage kept me and my family alive”

The setting for Ethel's Christmas story was her parent’s bamboo shack in the slums of Toledo City where she grew up. The house had no cupboards for their clothes, they were piled on the floor alongside the bottles and other scrap her parents had collected at the local rubbish dump, to sell at junk shops for their living. “Garbage kept me, and my family, alive,” she says, even though the smell sometimes kept her awake at night.

Still, her Christmas experience shows that even in the depths of poverty, she found time to enjoy life with her family. This way of life was all she knew, and she became resolved to it. “I was aware that we were poor, but I did not think of the future,” she says.

Yet even this simple way of life proved too difficult for the family to sustain. After they were robbed in 1986, the family could not afford to eat for a week. “I realised how unstable our situation was,” Ethel says.

“I dreamt of becoming a teacher, but every time I saw my parents quarrel due to financial problems I felt hopeless and gave up dreaming.” Her parents decided to go to Manilla for work. She and her two sisters were left in the care of her mother’s parents. They received letters and money regularly, but didn’t see their parents for the next seven years.

"I wouldn’t have been able to finish school. I wouldn’t have finished a university degree."

World Vision came to her community in the year after her parents left. “They took a photo of me, and within a month I was told that I was sponsored,” she says.

The sponsorship helped her to stay in school, despite the family’s precarious financial situation. World Vision also gave her an annual health check-up, and provided medication when she got sick. When a typhoon tore the roof off their family home, World Vision provided them with money to buy plywood and other materials to reconstruct the house.

“I really felt special having (sponsors) in my life, They were the ones who enabled me to see more of life,” Ethel says. “Had it not been for the generosity of my sponsor, I wouldn’t have been able to finish school. I wouldn’t have finished a university degree in Mass Communication. But above all, I wouldn’t have learned to face life with a smile.”

"I met kids whose living conditions were even worse than I used to have"

Ethel now works for World Vision in a development programme in the Philippines. Her path has taken her from a rickety bamboo shack, right around the world. She has witnessed many walks of life, and seen poverty in other parts of the world. “I met kids whose living conditions were even worse than I used to have,” she says. “They didn’t even have a shelter, just a single scrap of clothing. Kids with nothing but rice to eat.”

In 2000, World Vision Canada invited her to their offices and she was finally able to meet her sponsors face to face. She says it was an emotional experience. “I am amazed by the thought that for a 12-year time in my life there were two individuals, whom I had not known in person, and yet they just learned to love me and help me become what I am today.” Ethel’s life has brought her full circle, and she now sponsors a child of her own. She hopes her sponsored child will one day have the opportunities she’s had.

Ethel’s Christmas this year will be slightly different from the one she shared with her family so long ago. But while her dinner this year will have a little more substance to it than chips and lollies, she hasn’t forgotten those who will still be struggling for a meal on Christmas day.

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