After a lovely relaxing week in Sweden, full of delicious food and warm-nosed puppy cuddles, we arrived in Brussels. It sounds easy, but believe me, it wasn’t. Because of the terrorist attacks last week, Zaventem was still in a state of disrepair so we were once again diverted to Antwerp Airport. We saw on the Brussels Airlines website that there were shuttle buses from Antwerp to Brussels and vice versa, and we were told the same at the check in counter in Gothenburg but suffice to say they are probably figments of someone’s imagination.
We, passengers of flight SN1718, waited for more than an hour at Antwerp airport, waiting for a bus— any bus— to arrive, but to no avail. Thanks to collective encouragement, despair at being abandoned, and a friendly De Lijn driver, we eventually made it to Antwerpen-Berchem, and via train and taxi home.
We do understand that Brussels Airlines is doing its best post-attack, but this was a bizarre way of managing passenger transfers. There is supposedly a bus every quarter hour, with the exception of 15:15 and 21:15. This is quite odd as most flights arrive at half past the hour, or in our case, 20:15, right during the two hour ‘break’. We can only assume that the shuttle buses then either leave empty as Antwerp airport is so small that it only has two gates and twelve flights a day, or that for some reason they planned the shuttle with the intent of completely ignores incoming flights such as ours (notably no flights were scheduled to arrive during the other two hour break). In any case, we made it home.
It was while we were on the InterCity that I got the news: the Faculty Center was burning.
What many Europeans or Americans don’t understand is that the loss of the Faculty Center is immense. We, professors, worked hard for each and every item in there. We don’t have the option of just buying books from Amazon or having the library order them; no, with our basic salaries and the university’s lack of budget each book was a precious resource to us. We would ask relatives to scan copies, or buy them when we went out of the country for the rare holiday or international conference, or we would spend our own salaries to buy them when they arrived in the local bookstores. Things that are commonplace in classrooms here— projectors, computers, whiteboard markers— these we share as a department. Our department only had two projectors to share between more than sixty faculty members until one broke down in 2010. My roommate and I eventually bought our own, with our own money, just so we could offer our students a better classroom experience. A junior professor’s monthly salary of PHP 18,000 or around EUR 350 can only stretch so far, but we did our best. We all paid for our own photocopies, for our own readings, some of us even offered free copies to students who could not afford their own— notably Prof. Dalisay was one of those generous souls. It hurts to think of the sacrifices each person has made just go up in flames.
I haven’t even mentioned the important works lost that were housed in the Arcellana Reading Room and Botor Library. Or the personal mementos from students, thank you letters and little gifts of appreciation, the little things that keep us going strong despite the long hours and low pay. Gone.
I always held tight the idea of coming ‘home’— of returning to the University of the Philippines to teach, to once again engage with brilliant young minds, to once again go ‘lunching’ with friends who are now solidly moving away from the ‘junior’ in their name and getting their academic titles. It is difficult to put to words how the loss of FC shatters this dream. It’s a selfish thought, coming from someone who lost nothing but a dream, but as a friend who lost everything said, we are allowed to have them during times of mourning.
At the moment 250 faculty members are displaced, and it is midway through the second half of the academic year. They will make do, as they always do and classes are slated to resume next week. My heart goes out to friends who must rally to continue teaching with brave faces despite the great loss.
