BACOLOD CITY – Rosinie Distrito was already a village councilman when he decided to take up nursing in the 1990s when demand for nurses was high in the United States caused by a shortage of these health professionals. Here, known personalities including lawyers and dentists decided to don a gown and cap in seeking the cliche “greener pastures.”
But growing up in Punta Magsungay sub-village, where poverty abounds and where kids like him also got daily lessons from the University of Hard Knocks, Rosinie had to put his dream of becoming a nurse on hold after he graduated from STI College-West Negros University (known then as just West Negros).
Why? I asked.
“Ummm… I don’t want to appear politicking…”
Then he paused.
“I cannot leave my responsibilities as a village official, public service I should say,” Rosinie, now a second-term village chief of Singcang Airport tells DNX.
The Distritos are a political clan in this village of more than 30,000 residents or about a sixth of the city’s population.
Punta Magsungay is where this city was born and where Rosinie and his brother, Caesar, a lawyer and former city councilor, were born and raised by their mother, Simplicia, now a city councilor.
It is also on its sandy basketball courts that their famous uncle, basketball superstar Rudy “The Destroyer” Distrito honed his tough playing style.
“I really wanted to be a nurse and go abroad to earn,” he admits.
Being a village official, however, “makes you realize you have fellow Filipinos to serve,” Rosinie adds.
Now, he has to put that dream on hold again “maybe, decide after my term ends.”
Should he proceed to medical school, become a doctor or go abroad?
A nursing degree was supposed to be his pre-Med course as his sponsors, an uncle and an aunt, promised to send him to medical school.
But Rosinie is looking at a Master’s degree in public administration now.
“After all, I am still a fulltime public servant,” he says.
And that dream of being a nurse has to wait again.
