Perhaps Is it Time to Change the Name of the Province and the City to “Sorsodom”?

By Lolo Bobby Reyes y Mercado of Sorsogon City and West Covina, CA

First Part of an Occasional Series called “Sorsodom?”

It was my literary mentor, Poet-pundit Fred Burce Bunao (now deceased) who punned “Sodom & Gomorrah” into an Erap joke in the late 1990s. Mr. Bunao cracked a joke that when then-Vice President Joseph Ejercito Estrada addressed the Filipino-American community of Southern Nevada, the Filipino Veep reportedly said: “I fear that Las Vegas is turning into a modern version of ‘Sodom & Gonorrhea’,” and all the Filipino medical practitioners in the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Well, if Mr. Bunao, whose parents hailed from Albay Province, were alive today, he would have also asked if “Sorsogon Province, especially Sorsogon City, had become a Filipino version of “Sodom & Gonorrhea”?

This week, the DZGN-FM (AKA “Spiritfm Sorsogon”) station has posted in the Facebook (FB) a report that the Sorsogon City Council was about to designate a certain area of the city as a “Red-light District,” similar to certain zones in the State of Nevada or in Amsterdam, Holland. The SorCity Council did not bother to conduct a public hearing to arrive at its decision, other Sorsoganon FB members commented further. Certainly, the act of designating certain areas of Sorsogon City as a “Red-light District” will probably reduce the real-estate values in the area, if not in the entire province.

In 1988, my cousin, Antonio F. Dioneda, Sr., M.D., told me then that there were lots of cases of sexually-transmitted diseases (STD) in Sorsogon Province. He said also that quite a few Sorsoganons had died after contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that caused the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Dr. Dioneda (now deceased) said, however, that since autopsies were not conducted on the AIDS victims, his findings were only educated guesses.

Nearly a quarter of a century after my interview with Dr. Dioneda, Sorsogon’s health situation is probably worse than it was in the 1980s. Proof? There is now an ongoing cholera epidemic that has so far killed more-than 18 individuals and that has afflicted hundreds more of cholera victims.

Here’s an article datelined Sorsogon City, Feb. 5, 2012, by Irma A. Guhit about “Provincial health office records 18 deaths of Cholera, advises public to take extra health precautions.”

URL: http://sorsogoncity.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/provincial-health-office-records-18-deaths-of-cholera-advises-public-to-take-extra-health-precautions/

If a preventable disease like cholera could run amuck in Sorsogon Province, how much more the STD, which many of its victims are ashamed to report to health authorities or their private physicians, if they could afford one?

Rising Crime Statistics

T here are many Sorsoganon victims of unsolved murders, if not extra-judicial killings, and robberies perpetrated by “Akyat Bahay” (home-invasion) gangs, the members of which commit the thefts supposedly to feed their rising illegal-drug habits.

Illegal-drug distributors and illegal-gambling lords are said to be proliferating in Sorsogon Province. Some community leaders claim that the criminal elements are being protected by corrupt politicians and even by some law-enforcement officers. There is an iota of truth in these claims that without the connivance of some crooked public officials, law and order would have prevented prohibited-drug and numbers-game syndicates from operating wantonly in the province.

Now to add insult to injury, the Sorsogon City Council is establishing a Red-light District, so as to fatten supposedly the public coffers (or line up their pockets, as some of their often men-of-the-cloth critics allege).

Perhaps is it time to change the name of the province and the city to “Sorsodom” or maybe follow Poet-pundit Bunao’s punning exercise as the unofficial moniker for Luzon’s southern end of a tourist destination?

(To be continued …)