nathancruz

Nathan Cruz moves on but dream remains

GAL ROMA HONG KONG

Seven years ago, a young man living in the slums
went on stage to deliver his valedictory address at
the University of the Philippines. Standing tall and
proud, he began his speech by saying, “My mother
is a domestic helper”.

To Cristeta Cruz, those were moving words of
affirmation from her son Joseph Nathan Cruz,
whom she raised on her own.

In front of thousands of people, Nathan
acknowledged how important her job was in aiding,
pushing and inspiring her son to finish his studies,
and graduate at the top of his class, magna cum
laude, in the College of Arts and Letters.

“I wanted to honor my mother,” Nathan tells Filipino
Globe in a telephone interview from Singapore,
where he is now based. “I wanted to share the
honor with my family because graduating at the top
of my class was such a huge step, it was very
personal to me,” he adds.

Education, he says, was high on his mother’s
priorities.

She was desperate for Joseph and his older sister,
Joy, to get a degree. “My mother did not finish high
school because no one would support her,” Nathan
says.

Eventually, she became a domestic helper, “slaving
away to wash other people’s underwear and cook
other people’s food”, as her son would describe it.
His father died when he was only nine years old.

“My mom wanted more than just survival,” Nathan
says, adding: “Quitting school and quitting on our
dreams was never really an option. Not when you
have a role model like my mother. She did not give
up on us. She persevered.”

So his sister Joy finished a degree in education
while he pursued his dream at UP. “The first thing
we did was to get out of that social ghetto,” Nathan
quips.

Nathan was referring to the slums, a place they call
“Coco Village” in Taytay, Rizal, where most houses
are made from cheap coco lumber. It was home
while he was growing up.

When he and his sister saved enough money, they
moved out of the slums. He was happy enough to
move on with his life, until he tried his luck in civil
service.

“I graduated at the top of my batch and I could not
get a job in the civil service,” he relates. He blamed
corruption and the patronage system that blocked
what he thought was his way of paying back the
government that paid for his schooling.

“I wanted to serve my country and they wouldn’t let
me,” he says.

After some time of serious “soul-searching” Nathan
found his calling. He wanted to be part of the
academe and become a full-fledged teacher.

He was granted a scholarship at the National
University in Singapore, where he finished his
master of arts in literary studies last December.

His wife, Lorie, is also a scholar at the NUS.
“I will be marching to receive my MA diploma in July.
My mother will be here and I’m sure she will again
be very proud,” Nathan says.

After his MA, he will work on a doctorate in
sociology in the same university.

“When I go back to the Philippines four years from
now, I hope to be starting the rest of my life where I
could just focus and do my life’s work, studying the
forces that make our society tick and helping
students do the same in the effort to help, or in their
small way, to fix it,” Nathan says.

“It’s not a bad life, and I am looking forward to it.”