Okja and Bertha

Netnet Camomot

“BERTHA lived a happy life,” goes the title of a piece written by Dexter Cabalza for the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s July 12, 2017 issue.

No, Bertha was neither a Tokhang surrenderee nor a victim of an extrajudicial killing. Although talks on killings nowadays may try too hard to ignore the elephant in the room—the Marawi siege.

Bertha, the one and only hippopotamus at the Manila Zoo, passed away recently at the age of 65. She had been living inside a prison cell, er, the zoo since 1959 when she was seven years old. 58 years in captivity, that’s 89 percent of her life.

Any human being can relate with that. When he has to follow rules in order to literally keep his head intact, you know, securely fastened to his neck. Have you seen beheading videos? They’re even worse than face-to-face combat videos.

Or to keep his business intact. Keep his valuable connections intact. Keep his money and possessions intact. Hey, a guy has to survive! So, he doesn’t choose who’s right—he goes blind and chooses the one who can make him rich pa more.

He’s swallowed by a system that may spit him out any time soon, thus, the desperate measures to stay inside this system where kissing a**es is the norm. He should make sure there’s no sh*t in the a**es he’s kissing. Ewww!

Each human being defines adventure in his own way. It can be a car—the Mitsubishi kind. Or climbing Mount Everest. Or simply crossing a road. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.

One’s definition of an adventure means you can’t force him to go out of the box especially after learning about the Spanish bungee jumping instructor who shouted, “No jump!,” but 17-year-old Vera Mol allegedly heard it as, “Now jump!”

Proving how disastrous being lost in translation could be, she jumped off the bridge, unaware that she wasn’t attached to the rope that would have secured this as her most unforgettable adventure ever.

An adventure requires exploring the world, even if it’s only crossing the road. There was that day in the ‘80s when I and a cousin crossed a wide multi-lane street at Divisoria Manila, and the way she shouted “Bil*****t” made the whole country shudder as her voice was loud enough to be heard from Aparri to Jolo.

Staying two nights and three days in a foreign country, however, is not exploring the world—that’s a tour. If you want to learn about a place, better live there for at least six months, otherwise, you’re merely ticking a list of places off your bucket list. But who can afford to stay in another place for six months? You have to work there then. Lucky are those whose job description includes a lot of travel, they’re truly the ones exploring the world. But if work is keeping them indoors, where’s the exploration there?

Still, most travelers can only go for the tour, which at least gives them a bird’s eye view of the real thing. Better that than nothing at all.

Travel may have become cheap but people still have their priorities, with food, clothing, and shelter remaining as their basic needs. Since they can’t go to other places, some have thought of the idea of bringing the world to them. So, there’s the zoo, aquarium, SeaWorld, and the circus that features, say, elephants, lions, tigers.

And Thailand where riding elephants is a tourist attraction. But still, you have to go to Thailand to experience that but at least without going through the challenges of taming an elephant—its abusers, er, trainers have already done that for you.

What’s the difference between horseback riding and riding elephants in Thailand and riding camels in Egypt? Hmmm.

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus closed down last May due to lesser ticket sales caused by their decision to remove the part of the show featuring elephants which were apparently having daily baths and pedicures when they were not performing. Add to that other skyrocketing operating costs, and it was goodbye, circus.

Pedicures?! Circuses, zoos, aquariums, and even SeaWorld would always try to show to the world that they’re taking good care of their animals. Even better than the way animals take care of their own selves. Try to imagine elephants lining up for a pedicure.

The Manila Zoo is supervised by the Manila Parks and Recreations Bureau, and its director James Albert Dichaves said, “It is not true that Bertha died of boredom. She was happy interacting with our zookeepers.”

Uh. Define happy. Define interacting. Zookeepers now know hippo language? Do they also submerge themselves in water for hours and only come out at dusk to search for grass? Ah, no, not marijuana. Grass like the one you see outside the window of the room with a view.

And then, there’s the safari, preferably in South Africa.

Last Sunday, I finally watched “Okja,” the Netflix movie about a superpig—an enormous pig that looks like a hippopotamus. No, Okja wasn’t meant to be a pet. She was raised to become a source of food, eventually ending up as, say, a humongous lechon on your humongous buffet table. But she’s a beloved pet to her human, Mija.

Now, do pizza and lasagna have pork in them? Because that’s what I had for dinner before watching “Okja.”