Purely self-made: an interview with Dr. Joey Santos

ONCE IN A FEW MILLION YEARS, THE STARS perfectly align and the gods smile as a baby is born to live a charmed life. Born from a destitute family on an earthen floor, this child, through the sheer dint of hard work and conscientious study, has overcome the binds of poverty and trod the road less traveled.

Meet Dr. Joey Santos. From having used laundry soap to wash his teeth in the clear rivers of Atimonan, Quezon, Joey now hobnobs with world-class chemists and researchers like him in international conferences and scientific meetings. He has published numerous scientific papers in international journals and has presented his work in various confabs.

No one in his hometown expected the boy who used to sell binwelos, puto, kutsinta, and banana cue to be a scientist now at the Nanoarchitectonics Research Center of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki, Japan. Formerly, he was also an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños.

After a brief hiatus, PHILIPPINES TODAY returns with this interview that hopes to instill the value of education and hard work and to inspire parents and students worldwide. With Joey, who is an epitome of the typical self-made man, we have put a human face on such lofty concepts as perseverance and constancy of purpose. It is proof that poverty need not be an excuse for mediocrity and lack of self-worth.

Read on and believe that YOU can do it, too.

1. Please describe to us your growing-up years?  How were your living conditions then and how was your family's financial status?

I spent my entire childhood in a remote barangay called Malinao Ilaya in Atimonan, Quezon. I did my elementary and secondary school in the local school and all my ways, ambitions and ideals were mainly based on my exposure and experiences in that neighborhood. Malinao Ilaya was about 10 km away from Atimonan town proper and about an hour travel by bus from Lucena City, the provincial capital. There was no electricity in our barrio until 1984 and the most high tech appliance that I could touch was a battery operated radio-cassette player owned by one of our neighbors. There were no TVs, no refrigerators, no computers, no telephones, and the simple mode of getting informed was through listening to radio stations like DZRH or DWWW or by renting comics. Except for radio-cassette recorders, nobody in the whole barangay owned any electrical appliances and I always associate someone owning one as being well off. In addition, I considered those families living in houses with cemented floor or having galvanized iron roof (yerong bubong) as rich.

We were 5 in the family. I have 3 elder sisters and a younger brother. My parents were very poor and they did not have any real properties, life savings or inheritance. Both of them reached only grade 2 in elementary and they had no stable jobs. We were living in a small house granted to us by our neighbor who happened to be my parents’ godmother in their wedding. It was just a one-room type where the kitchen, dining and bedroom were all contained in one area. The roof was made of nipa and the floor was bare earth. Aside from having no electricity, the house had no running water and all the fixtures were made from bamboo or wood obtained and crafted locally through the help of our friends and relatives.

To sustain our daily needs, my mother was buying and selling things (mainly foodstuffs like pinangat, banana cue, puto, kutsinta, maruya, binwelos, etc.), while my father was working as a conductor in a local bus company where he was later promoted to become an inspector. Although my father was working, he was an infamous womanizer and a habitual gambler. We never gained enough from his earnings. In 1976, he finally left us for another woman and my mother was left alone to support us. Occasionally, he would give some money to my mother that somehow made the situation more bearable for her. We didn’t have the luxury of buying something that someone in our place would consider essential. For us, anything that had a price tag was expensive. For instance, we were using the laundry soap blue wheel to wash or clean everything. I mean everything. We were using it not only to wash our clothes and dishes, but also to wash our bodies, hair and even teeth. Toothpaste and shampoo were considered luxuries. I still remember brushing my teeth in the river working out on great lather and taking care not to swallow the bitter soap suds (yuck!).

I had my first pair of shoes when I reached second year in high school. It felt awkward to have something intact covering my whole foot but the excitement of finally having my own shoes defied all the embarrassments. During my elementary school years, I was wearing only slippers and whenever there was a special occasion that I needed to wear shoes, I would borrow from our neighbor. You know, I borrowed everything I wore (except my underwear) when I marched for my elementary and high school graduations. The trend continued after high school. I also borrowed my shirt, pants, shoes, socks and belt when I graduated in college.

2. How much influence did your mother have in your life?  How did she keep your family going despite the hardships?

The influence that my mother has in my life cannot be compared with those of the most intelligent people that I have met, books that I have read, lectures that I have listened or trainings that I have attended. Through the life that she lived, I have understood myself and learned how to deal with people and situations.

Despite being extremely poor, I had no recollection of feeling hungry or having nothing to eat because my mother always had something to put forward for us. Hindi kami nagdildil ng asin o nagtiis sa tuyô. She knew where to find the food without having to buy them. We usually maintain a garden in the backyard and my mother grew all sorts of edible plants there. We never ran out of vegetables like eggplant, ampalaya, patola, kamote, etc. She also knew where to find edible ferns (pakô), gabi leaves and she was very skillful in catching crabs, shrimps, snails, frogs and fish from the river. Since I was her first son, she always asked me to accompany her in collecting pakô or gabi and also in catching something from the river. In local dialect, palagi niya akong kasama sa pamamako, panggagabi at panggagama.

She was a woman of great disposition. When we ran out of money she would ask me to go to the store and borrow some ingredients to make, for example, binwelos (straight donuts). After cooking what she intended to cook, one of my sisters or I would sell them to our neighbors and out of the proceeds she would pay for the raw materials that I borrowed and the remaining amount would be our profit. The money earned was not too much but usually enough to meet our needs for that particular day the foodstuff was made.

I considered our family a happy family. My mother had a good sense of humor. She was not easily irritated and was very kind in dealing with people. Everyone in the neighborhood liked her because she was always smiling and very generous. The last thing she would be concerned about was her own when it comes to buying new clothes, some sort of a big deal for us. We always looked forward to Christmas because that was the time of the year when we would get new sets of clothes. While she recycled her old dress, she had consistently dressed us up with something new at least once a year. Parati akong may bagong damit kung Pasko.

My mother was a woman of faith also. She was very religious and she placed God on top of her life and that was something that made each of us God-fearing. Every time we leave the house she would utter to us, “Pagpalain ka at ingatan ng Panginoon”. When my father left us, she was praying instead of declaring war. She never influenced or trained us to hate our father. That’s why we were not bitter and we did not hate our father. One time she told me that every time she prays, God instills to her to take good care of her children. Our neighbors labeled her as martir.

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