THE GRADUATE Marlo Frias, 16, runs a trolley service (at right) on the railroad tracks in Mayao Crossing, Lucena City, which is his part-time job but pays for his education as a fulltime student at Quezon National High School. He graduated recently, and is now preparing to go to college. ARNOLD ALMACEN
Marlo Frias, 16, has the rare privilege of having gone to two schools in the last four years. One was the School of Hard Knocks. The other was the Quezon National High School.
School of Hard Knocks sounds terribly corny but it was how and where Frias learned all kinds of life lessons. In the morning, he would push a makeshift trolley to transport water for the families who lived in the homes along da riles (railroad tracks) in Lucena City, including his own. He got paid P12 a gallon.
In the afternoon, he would rush home to change from his QNHS uniform into something more rugged, carry a trolley on his back, lay it on the tracks and start giving passengers a ride along the railway. The fare for the one-kilometer ride is P5. On a good day, for two hours of pushing (with one leg while running) and after paying the trolley owner a “boundary fee,” Frias would have enough money for his next day’s allowance.
Between 7:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. on school days, he would be in Quezon High learning history, math, science and other subjects required to enter a university in June.
Full-time student
Despite his part-time work, Frias was a full-time student, and a not-too-shabby one either. His grade average in the third quarter was 89 (final report cards will be issued after graduation). His highest rating, 92, was in math, his favorite subject. His lowest, 84, is in English and Filipino, his least favorite.
“I’m not a reader,” said Frias, who also admitted to being poor in writing. “Maybe because I have a need to be constantly moving.”
Running the rails certainly filled that need, but he also enjoyed sports. “I was on the school swimming team,” he said. “I didn’t win any medals. I’m sure the other competitors had swimming clubs where they could go to practice any time. I could only swim in the river.”
But he was proud of the team and the affiliation has worked in his favor. He has just been asked to teach swimming to a young kid this summer.
Frias was in the section for the brightest students in the Basic Education Curriculum, the regular secondary school program. Although he tried, he didn’t make it to the Engineering and Science Education Program (Esep), a more elite group of students that, in senior year, had subjects such as public health, advanced chemistry and research.
Scholarship
It was just as well because the Esep schedule would have eaten into his trolley time and there was no way he could have worked after dark. He has a condition called night blindness. He has had to wear eyeglasses since first year high school to correct his nearsightedness.
Two years ago, a group of mass communication students from Manuel S. Enverga University Foundation made Frias the star of a 15-minute documentary titled “Batang Padyak (Trolley Kid).” The film, which showed how a boy from a poor family strove hard to support his education by transporting passengers on an improvised trolley, won the gold in a nationwide competition.
As an offshoot of the film, the university has awarded Frias a scholarship for a course in civil engineering.
Featured in ‘Mukha’
“I’ve lived in a shanty all my life,” he said. He became curious about how sturdy houses were made, he said, after a draft-your-dream-house project in his TLE (technology and livelihood education) class. “That’s one reason I want to be a civil engineer.”
Just as Frias was starting his last year in high school, ABS-CBN came around to film him for an episode of its docu-series “Mukha” (Face). The response from viewers after the program aired locally and on The Filipino Channel was tremendous.
Frias said he received gifts in cash and kind. Someone gave him a digital notebook and pocket Wi-Fi that helped him immensely with school work. Other people sent him food. Two viewers gave cash with specific instructions that the money be used to buy a trolley. As a result, he now has two trolleys, which works out fine because a younger brother has joined him in plying the railway tracks.
An anonymous donor started sending him P1,400 every two weeks, he said, for which he was thankful even though he had been warned that the money would stop coming upon his high school graduation. The allowance had enabled him to buy food in school.
“I think that’s the reason I’ve grown taller and less frail,” Frias said. If you watched the two documentaries, you’d know what he meant.
Frias is the third of nine children of Rizalito and Marissa Frias. His mother studied to be a teacher but never got the break to work as one because the kids kept coming. In such a large family that had to depend on a jeepney driver’s meager income, there was never enough food to eat.
Helping out
Being the eldest boy in the family, Frias realized early enough that he needed to help out, although what got him started was a more selfish reason. He wanted a cell phone, something that his classmates and friends had because their parents could afford it. So he started peddling pan de sal before breakfast and pan de coco in the afternoon. He was just in sixth grade. Each piece of bread cost him P4 and he sold at P5. He made P40 most days, as much as P120 on better days.
Frias didn’t get to buy the cell phone because he ended up giving his earnings to his mother to make ends meet.
A year later, he was brave enough to try pushing the trolley. The railway, as it turned out, made for a good classroom. He was picking up math, problem-solving and social skills in the real world, not to mention he was getting a free workout.
One day, exhausted from peddling bread using the trolley, he accidentally hit a three-year-old child, who had no injuries but ended up crying. “I will never forget the look on the father’s face,” Frias said. “That was really scary. He was going to hit me. I was lucky the child’s mother was able to stop him.” He added that he is friends with the man now.
Backbreaking work
The flip side of that experience was the time his friends from QNHS came by for a trolley ride with him. Now imagine a group of high school boys atop an open cart rolling down a track where, any minute now, a train or another trolley could be coming. Imagine the boys imagining themselves riding in a convertible with its top down, the wind in their faces, cracking jokes all around. “We had a lot of fun,” said Frias.
But imagine, too, how exhausting it is to push a trolley, how backbreaking it is for a boy in his teens to be moving the cart on and off the rails, how sore his legs and arms must be at night. He said he was thankful he had very supportive teachers at QNHS. Sometimes, he nodded off in class, he said, but no teacher had ever embarrassed him about it.
All his teachers knew he was working the railway and understood the exhaustion. One teacher, Carlo Pacinor, went to the tracks just to see for himself and soon realized that no visit with Marlo Frias would be complete without a trolley ride.
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