Donah the village fool

THE first time she went up to the farm house, I thought she was normal like the rest of us for she was talking sense. But it did not take long before she flipped. Suddenly, she was claiming that she owned the place and that she had plenty of vehicles with drivers to boot. Ryan, our first farm hand, grinned at me and made the turnillo sign with his forefinger. But I continued our conversation, bolstering her claims and added absurd details till she stopped talking and went down the hill. Probably she thought I was more crazy than she was.

Donah is forty-ish, reed-thin but has never been known to be sick. She lives in the sitio in a wooden house that appeared to have tasted some paint in its better days. Now it is said to be leaking and has full of holes. I still don’t know how she manages to survive and raised a 12-year old daughter, but both of them appear to be healthy. Does she cook her own food? Where does she get her sustenance? These are questions that often pop up in my head because I haven’t heard of neighbors bringing her something to eat. They probably do, I just don’t know.

Sometimes I pass her on the road in my multicab, carrying something but she never stops me or asks for a ride, continuing her leisurely and unhurried walk and absorbed in her own thoughts.

Danny, our present farm hand, told me once that Donah was a victim of battering by her husband, a drunkard who abandoned her at the time of her daughter’s birth. She must have had such a beating to go crazy after that. Or maybe that was when she finally flipped after being battered for a long, long time.

The DSWD? I don’t think the agency even knows of her existence. The village has come to accept her in such condition, tolerating her perks and sometimes feisty remarks because sometimes she provides a pleasant diversion from their own little tragedies. At least for Donah, her worrying has stopped because even surviving doesn’t seem to be a problem anmore. We, the so-called normal beings, worry a lot about that….plus a lot of other silly little things. And the tragic thing is some of us actually kill ourselves in the process.

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