“Thank you very much, sir…” This was all Lourdes Carpio could mutter with voice cracking and tears of joy streaming down her face. Yulo Perez, mine manager of TVI’s Canatuan Project, was visibly moved as he handed over to the old lady the new nipa hut the company had built for her. Just two months earlier, Mrs. Carpio was a picture of melancholy.
“I always noticed her sitting at her doorstep every time I passed by her house on my way to Ipil,” Perez related. “Her sadness was reflected in her eyes – always gazing at the horizon.”
Mrs. Carpio, 60, lived in a dilapidated house near the public school in Guinabucan, R. T. Lim, Zambonga Sibugay. A widow of a former employee of Zambowood (a logging company that used to operate in the area), she has no source of income. She and her 12 year-old granddaughter rely only on whatever their neighbors and some relatives – her children are equally hard up – can spare. With barely any food, having a decent home was the least of her concerns. Which only magnified her desolation.
“I was going to Ipil with the late Col. Ruben Ilaban (the then TVI Canatuan Security manager) in early February when again I saw Mrs. Carpio, sad as usual at her doorstep,” Perez continued. “We stopped and got off our vehicle to talk to her. That’s when we learned about her circumstances. We felt that TVI could do something. This woman had been deprived of joy for quite a while.”
The two TVI managers had planned to build the weathered old lady a new house shortly after that encounter, but tragedy came in the way. Col. Ilaban was felled by an assassin’s bullet on February 22. The project had to wait a while.
“I knew that Mrs. Carpio’s plight touched Ruben’s heart as hard as it did to me, and I knew he would want me to proceed with our project even without him,” Perez added.
Come first week of April, under the supervision of the new Security manager, Col. Gilberto Cayton, carpenters from TVI’s Engineering Department and personnel from the company’s Community Development Office (CDO) went down to Guinabucan (now San Fernandino) with construction materials to replace Mrs. Carpio’s house. Her niece had agreed to have the new house built on a small plot she owns as the old one stood on someone else’s land.
When she saw the materials being unloaded from the TVI truck, Mrs. Carpio could not contain her happiness. “I am overwhelmed with this blessing,” she said crying. “The least I expected is help from TVI.”
The construction went on for a week, with two carpenters and a helper assigned to complete the job. “From sunrise to sunset, she was there watching us build her house,” said one carpenter, who happens to be her distant relative.
On April 18, Perez, together with Col. Cayton and TVI CDO Manager Lullie Micabalo formally turned over the newly constructed house to Mrs. Carpio. Overjoyed upon seeing the mine manager, she kept on holding Perez’s hands, profusely thanking the company for its kindness.
“At that moment, there wasn’t a tinge of sadness in her eyes,” Perez told his fellow managers . “I saw only happiness.”
