Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
We just had our closing ceremony for Pamati: Let the River Rest tonight, and tomorrow, the Puerto Princesa Underground River reopens and this will be my first time to experience this natural wonder. This has been a satisfying work trip for UNACOM. Every time I get asked to speak, my ADHD brain always wallows in some form of impostor’s syndrome. Will my talk make sense? Will I impart usable knowledge? Do I have the right to talk about the things I am asked to talk about? Tonight, a huge part of that doubting got erased by the responses some of the participants gave. [One even quoted me!] So, yes, I’m happy. And I’m glad I took part in this pursuit of using art and creativity to do environmental conservation. Would love to do something like this for Lake Balinsasayao. Padayon!
7:53 PM |
Notes on a Growing City, Part 3: Development and What We Know
It’s important to listen. Development [and everything else] in a community falls flat on its face when “listening” does not occur and when the culture of the place is not taken in due consideration.
I will try to illustrate this crucial element of culture with two examples.
Let’s start with the opening of Robinsons Place Dumaguete in 2009. Even before the mall opened its doors on November 23 of that year [timed to coincide with the annual fiesta], the city was divided between two groups of people: those who believed Dumaguete did not need a mall, and those who were eager for it because it felt like an aspirational marker—that Dumaguete was joining the ranks of bigger cities with their franchised shops and centralized shopping. But there really was no strong opposition to it, except when environmentalists pointed out that it was being built on marshland, which necessitated a change in the design into only two floors, and the foundation subsequently changed and reinforced. [This explains the cracks all over the place after just one earthquake.] Dumaguete mostly looked at the plans, shrugged, and let everything be. I was eager for the movie theaters myself; it had been several years since Dumaguete had a working movie theatre—Ever was now a shopping center that declared itself a mall, Park became UniTop, and UltraVision burned down on 5 January 2010 and never got around to fixing itself.
It’s important to note that management for most of the divisions of Robinsons Dumaguete [the grocery, the movie theaters, etc.] remains elsewhere—Bacolod, in particular. They hired locals to man the most immediate areas of supervision, but major decisions were executed somewhere else. [This includes what movies got shown on the three screens they had!] Still, when Rob opened, we welcomed its presence in our midst—like an oddball suddenly marking its arrival in a community that regarded it with a mixture of bemusement and a desire to see a “mall” [how cute!] become successful in the context of Dumaguete.
I remember walking in on opening day—and was gutted with an immense and immediate sense of disappointment, which I later learned was shared by so many other people. This is it? we all shook our heads. Mao ra ni sya? The cavernous two-story space was just a simple L-shaped thing—usa ka tuyok, humana na. That alone did not bode well for Dumagueteños from the start; we felt insulted and patronized by a langyaw’s underwhelming offering. Coming from three centuries of Spanish neglect in favor of Cebu, Iloilo, and Bacolod, we were [and still are] nursing a grudge. In a previous installment of this series, I discussed the notorious pickiness of Dumaguete people—and the mall was a disappointment in that regard right from the get-go. But still, local businesses were game enough to welcome it, opening satellite stalls and branches inside the mall, essentially replicating the business landscape of the city in the microcosm of the new shopping place. (Within a year, most would close down those branches.)
And contrary to popular belief, the mall did not displace local businesses—the city itself in its smallness was already a kind of a strip mall, and certainly more accessible, and “not far.” This proved consequential for some stores: National Bookstore had a thriving branch in Portal West along Silliman Avenue—but abandoned it in favor of a spot in Robinsons. Foot traffic dropped.
What does this say about the Dumagueteño? That we love our “downtown”—and our thriving concept of it lies within the space of the Spanish colonial tradition of “encircle and protect,” which was naming the streets surrounding and threading through the poblacion after saints [e.g. Calle Santa Cecilia (old name of Silliman Avenue), Calle San Jose, Calle San Juan, Calle Sta. Catalina, and Calle Sta. Rosa] and after Spanish rulers and personalities [e.g. Calle Alfonso XIII (old name of Perdices Street), Calle Maria Christina, Calle Colon (old name of Cong. Lorenzo G. Teves Street), Calle Cervantes (old name of Mayor Joe Pro Teves Street), and Calle Real (old name of the national highway now known as Veterans Avenue and Mayor Ramon Pastor Teves Street)—although some streets retained their original descriptive names [e.g. Calle Marina (old name of Rizal Avenue)]. Beyond this space of “encircle and protect” are the “nether regions” of Dumaguete—which is why, even until the 2000s, many places like Bantayan, Daro, Piapi, Motong, Calindagan, Banilad, Pulangtubig, and many others remained in the minds of many locals as being “too far.” Certainly, Robinsons Place in Calindagan was “too far.”
But the parking story is even more representative about “development without listening or taking note of local culture.” A few days after Robinsonsplace opened, management banned motorcycles from their parking lots, insisting that these were reserved only for four-wheeled vehicles, with the thinking that “motorcycle parking was messy.”
The mall management asked people with motorcycles to park along the street or in nearby empty lots—which was a complete misreading of Dumaguete culture. Dumaguete, at least at that time, meant motorcycles. For many years, we were even given the moniker of “Motorcycle Capital of the Philippines.” The ill-advised mall policy was an inconvenience for a population that went around in motorcycles, and not cars. So while the mall parking lot remained mostly empty, the byways of nearby streets were choked with motorcycle parking. And then, several weeks later, the foot traffic in the new mall dropped precipitously—and management scrambled to address this, one of which was to reverse their earlier policy of banning motorcycles from their parking lots.
“By then,” biologist Richard Pavia remembered, “people were already fed up—and realized Rob was not the ‘mall of malls’ that it was promised. It was also too far from the city center, and was in reality an ‘epithelial mall’—meaning it occupies a large area, but the stores are only along the inner periphery. In my honest opinion, going to the mall was not worth the trip. Their parking policy already showed they did not do their research on Dumaguete culture.”
* * *
There was also the case of Frontrow Entertainment bringing the controversial play M Butterfly to Dumaguete in 2019. By and large, it was a successful staging in terms of enthusiastic public response—but it was the first time a theatre company dared put on a production that lasted for several days in succession on a Dumaguete stage, including matinees. Considering the capacity of the Luce Auditorium, the ambitious staging required patronage [e.g., ticket sales] that had to go beyond Silliman University, which co-sponsored it, and even beyond Dumaguete—possibly enticing audiences from the nearby towns and even the nearby provinces.
This required marketing of such precision.
And the production’s marketing staff, flown in from Manila, did their work—but mostly patterned their techniques on how things were done in bigger cities, like Manila or Cebu, one of which was holding a press conference.
Dumaguete locals who do events know this by heart: press conferences do not really work in Dumaguete. They only work in two specific contexts: beauty pageants and politicians making revelations about a policy or a controversy; and sometimes a restaurant opening—but even this is not a guarantee that something will be written about it for print or broadcast. When a press conference was scheduled for the M Butterfly cast and creative staff in Robinsons a day or two before the premiere of the play, nobody came. “But we contacted the media ourselves!” the marketing staff told us. And I remember thinking: If only you asked us if this was feasible.
Another case of langyaw who do not do their research on Dumaguete culture.
* * *
In the proper categorization of heritage items, this type of culture is what we call “secret knowledge” which is under the category of “intangible culture.” Intangible culture is defined by the UNESCO as the practice, representation, expression, knowledge, or skill consisting of nonphysical intellectual wealth. This includes local languages, folk beliefs and superstitions, festivals, rituals, songs and musical compositions, dances, local technologies, local sports and games, literary arts, culinary arts, local jokes, local healing arts, and of course, secret knowledge.
What is “secret knowledge”? It is difficult to define, but perfectly easy to demonstrate. It’s essentially the knowledge of the practical variety that is shared by many in a cultural community that everyone subscribes to and believes in, without it being properly defined or delineated in studies or books. These are things “we just know,” and pass on to the next generation through sheer osmosis.
In Dumaguete, for example, we “just know” that we demand our goods to be cheap but without sacrificing high quality. A dish in a restaurant that costs more than P150 is already “very expensive.” [KRI famously built a thriving restaurant culture by starting off with all the dishes in its menu not costing more than P99. When chef Ritchie Armogenia was asked by visitors from Manila why he priced his dishes so low, he answered: “You don’t know Dumaguete.”]
Other things:
We “just know” that Bantayan is “far,” and the barangays traversed by Larena Drive are “bukid na man na.”
We “just know” that if you’re downtown and you want to catch a tricycle going to Piapi, you will have to flag one down at the corner of Union Drug, if you come from Lee Super Plaza, or at the corner near Jo’s Chicken Inato, if you come from Portal West.
We “just know” that when we tell tricycle drivers we want to go to Orchids or Bricks or Golden Rule, they know exactly where we want to go, even if these are currently non-existent landmarks.
We “just know” that pedicabs and tricycles are one and the same—although they’re really not. [A pedicab is technically something you “pedal,” like a put-put—but we don’t really care.]
We “just know” that the remedy for fevers is Mirinda Tru-Orange with raw egg thrown in for good measure.
We “just know” that “L” differentiates us from the Binisaya of more powerful centers of culture in the region, especially Cebu—and we relish that “L” in our pronunciation of things.
We “just know” that restaurants along the Rizal Boulevard are for tourists and expats, and if you want the real Dumaguete deal, you had to go restaurants somewhere else visitors would not know about—like Qyosko, or Hayahay [although this one is increasingly becoming known], or Manang Siony’s.
We “just know” there is a huge community of expats in our midst, which we tend to ignore—and are surprised when our visitors are themselves “surprised” to see “so many foreigners” in Dumaguete.
We “just know” that when it comes to doing things, it can be a fine balance of pleasing the four major universities in town. [“Pang-Silliman ra man na,” “Pang-Foundation ra man na,” etc.—and the loyalties can run deep, and can even spill over to strange contentiousness.]
We “just know” that even though Siquijor is a completely separate province, it’s still part of our landscape of what “home” means—even among Siquijodnons themselves.
There are so many other kinds of secret knowledge only people who have stayed in Dumaguete for years and years would come to know in all their strange nuances.
But above all, we “just know” that central to our identity as Dumagueteños is the easy access to both sea and mountain. Straddled between Bohol Sea to the east and Cuernos de Negros to the west, Dumaguete worships the icons of both: the Rizal Boulevard is our temple to the sea [and the frame to our idea of sunrise], and our regular hikes to Mount Talinis is our pilgrimage to the mountain gods. To attempt to destroy both, even in small ways, is a stake through the very heart of what “we know” about being Dumagueteño.
When the Philippine National Oil Company [PNOC, now the Energy Development Corporation or EDC] attempted to encroach in 2003 on the natural bounty of the Lake Balinsasayao Natural Park—which is essentially the colorful front door of Cuernos de Negros—for the reason of “geothermal exploration,” which required cutting more than half of the area’s forest cover, we rose in arms and protested, and we won.
We already protested an earlier attempt at reclamation by the Philippine Port Authority of the sea off the Rizal Boulevard in 2007—and we also won. Now that another, and more pervasive, reclamation project is underway, there’s no denying the vehemence of the opposition. It’s essentially sacrilege, and this partly explains the anger towards the plan.
In our hearts, this “Smart City” reclamation is perfectly anti-Dumaguete, given what we know about ourselves and our community. This is an unsolicited proposal from another langyaw which somehow gained traction among the powers that be, and this feels very much like an invasion into the heart of ourselves.
I shall continue this essay in another installment.
1:52 PM |
"Look at the Root Cause, We Can't Be Doing Cleanups All Our Lives."
My sobering choice quote from Deia Schlosberg's The Story of Plastic (2020): "Day in, day out, there's cleaning operations going on. It's unending. You can do cleanups and the problem will not go away. You have to look at the root cause, we can't be doing cleanups all our lives."
The documentary is screening for free until July 30. Here's the link.
Ige Ramos reminds us that "a 16-year old girl from Sweden asked the world to slow down and take care of the planet; nobody listened to her. Now an invisible nano-sized bug has ensured we stop, not just slow down." Actually, we did not just NOT listen, a lot of us called her a brat. [Didn't you?]
Which brings me to this New York Times article from 2012, where Jim Robbins writes: "Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife. / Teams of veterinarians and conservation biologists are in the midst of a global effort with medical doctors and epidemiologists to understand the 'ecology of disease' ... And they are studying ways of managing forests, wildlife, and livestock to prevent diseases from leaving the woods and becoming the next pandemic." [Read the rest here.]
“Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium.”
~ Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization
2:23 PM |
Death by Potpot in a Sweaty Race for Earth
When I first heard about Race Across Dumaguete, it was through Facebook, and it was a little too late for me to do anything about it. There, plastered on my Facebook wall late last year, were pictures of many of my friends—Angeline Dy, Zara Dy, John Philip Uy, among others—in various poses of sweaty deliriousness, running like mad all over the streets of Dumaguete, in what was the first staging of our very own version of the Amazing Race.
Ram and I in Hayahay with our wind chimes made of Tanduay bottles.
And I thought: didn’t we always want to be part of something like this, a gripping test of physical endurance and mental work, in what is essentially a grown-up version of a treasure hunt? The versions we see played out in television promise adventure (bungee jumping! exotic places!)—but, in the final analysis, they also promise something else: a chance to gauge oneself in a series of trials. Finishing the test becomes a kind of affirmation akin to a rite of passage. Eons ago, the young of Sparta and other ancient societies were sent out to the wilderness where they must learn survival and fight off the encroachment of beasts and all manners of evil—and then they come back after the ordeal to be proclaimed adults worthy of a place in their world. These days, we don’t do that anymore: instead, we join beauty pageants, go to war, or take the board exam.
Or run races.
It had been Gelo de la Cruz’s idea to transfer the concept of the race to Dumaguete, and on 29 November 2009, the first ever Race Across Dumaguete was held, concentrated mainly around the downtown area. According to the official site, “ten teams signed up [and] seven teams showed up,” and by the end of the day the team of Aryan and Cris Carlo won.
Ram planting a tree in Valencia.
I was amazed, and immediately wanted to join the next event.
“When? When?” I pestered Angeline all throughout the new year, until finally, by February, she had gathered the necessary group of people together to organize an entirely new race, sans Gelo, who was by then working in Germany.
This time around, they built the event around Earth Day—with clues and tasks that had something to do with conservation, ecology, and what-not. And so, last Sunday, April 18, fifteen teams gathered around Ninoy Aquino’s bust in Freedom Park at around 8:30 in the morning, ready to race.
Relaxing for a bit in Hayahay during our lunch pit stop.
I partnered with friend and student Ramuel Reambonanza Jr., and we called ourselves The Hive—after the name of the group of friends that we shared. The rest that pumped thigh muscles with us on that starting line included the Koreans Hyunsung Kim and Yeong Ho Kim, Team Gammans Karl Raciene Coyoca and Marvin Luther Tan, Team Song Lawrence Nodado and Sarah Jane Sibala, Team Flowrsie Arsie Cris Duran and Flowr Therese Bana, Negros Tri Team Dennis Lagahit Jr. and Welbert Laurecio, Team Baka Baki Alf Campos and Anthro Kadipunan, Team Amagaeru Kemuel Lazalita and Cheri Mae Amistoso, Team Eco Warriors Felix Araula II and [son] Sean Philip Araula, Team Swallow Rex Oliver Tan and John Philip Sanchez, Team Bang Lyndon Lorence Borromeo and Lea Therese Marino, Team Diveworx Glenn John Carballo and [son] John Thomas Carballo, Team Tachycardia Chantal Mae Diao and Jerry Ortaliz, and Team Green Acers Michelle Alcantara and Eve Queennie May Balbon.
With a Lo-oc kid with a solved Rubik Cube puzzle.
We were told we could not bring wallets or coins or cellphones. We were told to bring a windbreaker or umbrella, just in case it would rain. We were told to bring our own drinking water or energy drinks, and some snacks, in case we got hungry before we could reach any of the checkpoints. We were told to bring a digital camera, a ball pen, some paper, and a hand sanitizer or alcohol—which soon proved essential. We were told to be in our most comfortable sportswear as we would be active throughout the day. We were told to put on sunblock. We were told to practice good sportsmanship, and told that we were not allowed to seek help from anyone, unless clearly specified.
And then, on that early Sunday morning, past 9 a.m., our grueling day began with that shout of “Go!” The moment I started running, the thought came to me: “Oh, dear God. This is for real.”
We went on an impromptu sack race across Freedom Park, then carefully counted 637 kernels of rice [miscounting meant doing the entire thing all over again], then raced on foot to the public market 3 kilometers away to find Manang Lolit’s stall in the middle of the market’s maze, then ate five big cubes of ice in less than 90 seconds [my mouth was soon numb, and the inside of my cheeks were bleeding…], then, given only P24, raced to Valencia town after haggling with a jeepney driver who was determined to wait for more passengers while we were determined to just go [which meant us going around, cajoling people to ride, now na!], then we planted a tree sapling in the mayor’s brother’s yard where we also collected non-biodegradable garbage in a black bag, then we took a quiz about composting, then we dug into a huge pot full of earthworms, then we solved another clue using cellphone codes which gave us instructions on where to go next, then we begged a habal-habal driver for a P24 ride to Hayahay [which is worth P100 on ordinary days], then we ate pizza for lunch, then we made wind chimes out of the Tanduay of bottles we gathered in Valencia, then we solved an intricate pictorial puzzle about garbage disposal, then we raced to Mercury Drug and then I ran [while Ram rode the potpot] for more than 10 kilometers to the city dumpsite while picking up garbage along the way [this could be said to be the leg of the race that was invented in Hell], then we threw said garbage to the city dumpsite, then we raced back to the city on the same backbreaking route, then we went shopping and haggled for P30-worth of children’s clothes at the ukay, then we ran another 3 kilometers to a specific basketball court in Lo-oc to give said ukay to a poor kid, then we were told to solve a Rubiks cube which contained the next clue, then we ran to the Boulevard, and then, for our final task, garnered twenty signed petitions from total strangers promising to do something good for the environment.
Ram and I learned to beg and haggle that day. We learned to knock on strangers’ doors that day, begging for a drink of cold water. We learned to go around the metro for the entire day with only P24 in our pockets. We learned strategy. We learned to go beyond body pain and the unfortunate instance of a potpot tumbling over along the highway.
We have never ran as much and walked as much from all our lives. But we did all these with humor and so much good will. We laughed a lot, and we had each other’s back. That’s what mattered most. And at the end of the day, our bodies were tired and broken and achy. We were red from the sun. But it was all worth it.
So, how was your day last Sunday?
Ram and I in Don Atilano after the race and a shower, red from the sun, bone-tired, but happy.
Today, with good friend and partner Ramuel Benedicto Reambonanza, I went on a sack race in Freedom Park, counted 635 kernels of rice, raced to the public market 3km away to find Manang Lolit's stall in the middle of the market maze, ate five big cubes of ice in less than 90 seconds, raced to Valencia town after haggling with a jeepney, planted a tree in the mayor's brother's yard where he also collected non-biodegradable garbage, took a quiz about composting, dug into a huge pot full of earthworms, solved a clue using cellphone codes, then begged a habal-habal for a P24 ride to Hayahay [which is worth P100 on ordinary days], ate pizza for lunch, made wind chimes out of Tanduay bottles, solved a puzzle about garbage, raced to Mercury Drug and ran more than 10km to the city dumpsite while picking up garbage on the way [while Ram rode a potpot], threw said garbage to the city dumpsite, raced back to the city on the same backbreaking route, haggled for P30-worth of children's clothes at the ukay, ran 3km to Looc to give ukay to a poor kid, solved a Rubiks cube, ran to the Boulevard, and finally obtained 20 ecological petitions from total strangers.
Award-winning fictionist Janet Villa just emailed me to try this little green experiment, and I'm passing on her message: "Let's turn off all our lights and appliances on March 29 for an hour -- between 8 PM to 9 PM. The more there are of us who'll do this worldwide project, we can help fight global warming. Besides, it will be a good time for us to sit down for elegant thought or talk, away from TV or the Internet. Read more about it here." It's a good idea.
Last June 21, in an annual environmental event they call Lights Out London, the capital of the United Kingdom turned off all electricity for an hour, between 9 to 10 p.m., "saving roughly 750 MWh of electricity in just one hour -- enough to run 3,000 televisions for a year."
I found the whole thing both impressive and strangely ho-hum. What comes immediately to mind is that it's a great initiative for greening the earth, in a world still waking up to the challenge and reality of global warming -- and being an environmental activist, anything like this is okay in my book. But at the same time, it amuses me as something that smacks of First World conceit. Thing is, in these industrialized countries, a tiny blackout can be cause for panic and alarm. In my tiny corner of the Third World, we have Lights Out Dumaguete every fucking Sunday for the past five years, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Not to save electricity, but "for maintenance," according to the lackeys at the local energy company. That's soft-speak for bad infrastructure, really. Bastards.
A new exhibit called "And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews"t at the Yeshiva University Museum's Center for Jewish History gives us insight about inconvenient truths. The exhibit -- a massive display of ordinary photographs of Jews in Poland before World War II broke out, and with it the horror of the Holocaust -- tells us that sometimes a coming horror is too unbelievable to consider that we can even refuse to believe it, until the full weight of its reality bares its fangs upon us. The New York Times reports:
What can sometimes startle viewers about the banal photographs is the text from an accompanying letter. A photograph of 30 schoolchildren, two of the girls in sailor blouses, with their teachers in Kozowo in June 1939 looks like any posed classroom eager for the coming vacation. But the caption about the class's young Jews says that sometime after the war began that September, "They took them out of town to the quarries and shot them to death."
Indeed, these pictures of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives is all the more horrific given what we know now of what will happen to them in the next few years. Their denial finally becomes deadly in the long run.
Sometimes that's what I feel about those who deny global warming, too.
What I don't get about most conservatives is the way they have hijacked the term "Christian" for themselves, and yet deplore most innate human goodness: love, acceptance, tolerance, a sense of equity and equality, and a nurturing accommodation of God's creation. They fight all these by somehow managing to make the word "liberal" sound dirty, and then by advocating hate and intolerance. If they fear the coming of the Anti-Christ, maybe they should first start by looking at themselves in the mirror -- and see how demonic they have become. I remember reading one conservative blog once, and the writer wrote something like, "We're here to save souls, not to save the environment..." That made me cringe. It was straight out of a horror movie. Or at least Borat.
Today, the New York Times reports (here and here) that the Episcopal parishes in Virginia, in the U.S., have voted to secede from the church, to affiliate with Nigeria's Peter Akinola, "an outspoken opponent of homosexuality who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant."
There's a new apartheid coming. And "Christians" are at the forefront. They won't be burning witches or heretics or blacks this time around. They'll be burning people who just happen to love a little differently. And you know what? I know many, many people who think this is a good idea.
The wonderful YouTube seems to be a veritable gold mine of documentaries, some of them Oscar-nominated. These are films we in the Philippines only get to read about, but are largely unseen in our movie screens, even our video outlets. The latest find is the ecological film Darwin's Nightmare, directed by Hubert Sauper. (See IMDB information here.)
The clip information goes: "Through interviews with the Russian and Ukrainian plane crew, local factory owners, guards, prostitutes, fishermen and other villagers, the film discusses the effects of the introduction of the Nile Perch to Lake Victoria, how it has affected the ecology and economy of the region (the introduction of the Nile Perch into Lake Victoria has caused the extinction of hundreds of native species, see Nile Perch for more information). The film also dwells at length on the dichotomy between the huge amount of European aid which is being funneled into Africa, and yet at the same time the flow of munitions and weapons from European arms dealers flows unendingly into the continent, often on the same planes which transport the Nile Perch meat to European consumers, feeding the very conflicts which the aid was sent to remedy."
This is the first part:
The rest of the film is archived in YouTube as well.
I've always wanted to see the movie, but I doubt Davis Guggenheim's An Incovenient Truth, documenting Al Gore's powerful plea for environmentalism (see the IMDB information here), will ever come to a Dumaguete screen.
But here's a YouTube pirate doing his best to spread the word. This is part one:
What can I say...in the name of planet Earth, hurrah for copyright infringement!
UPDATE
Conrado de Quiros writes about the movie in his latest column, and sees its horrifying resonance in the last three supertyphoons that have lambasted Philippine shores of late. Think global warming can't touch you? Well, what was the last cold December in memory?
4:09 PM |
Under Ground, It's Too Late to Think of Trees
A grotesquely untoward thing happened in the aftermath of the Guinsaugon mudslide over the weekend, and the Zamboanga parallel that occurred right after. First, there was the outpouring of genuine shock, concern, and dread which zapped through every Filipino's heart, all over the world. The Wily Filipino, for example, reacted to the headlines that rendered our Saturday mornings fraught with a new taste of tragedy: "Nothing more chilling than the words 'No survivors had been found'," he wrote. Nothing more chilling, indeed.
Barely were we finished commiserating over the "Wowowee" Ultra stampede tragedy, when we had this on our hands again. The frustration that soon comes is an earthquake of mind-numbing questions: Will we Filipinos ever be free of constant, unrelenting tragedy? What attracts the fates to our islands to play such gruesome tricks on us?
Of course, there was sorrowful pity from all of us. There was dread, most of all.
And then, just as suddenly, there was the avalanche of apathy. No, not exactly apathy, for that would make us a cruel people. It was a sense of being unsurprised, one might suppose. It was a feeling that came with these words: "Here we go again," almost as if we were admitting that tragedy was our middle name, and its death-hold our home. Had we become so inured from this constancy of death and destruction, that all we could muster now was a show of brief grief, and then a shucking of the shoulders?
I was chatting over MSN Messenger with my Sydney-based best friend Kristyn, for example. Below is the transcript of part of that conversation:
KRISTYN: Am I heartless to not be surprised, and almost not care, about the mudslide in Leyte? I mean, people here [in Australia] seems to be shocked by it -- but for me, it's just another Pilipinas nature-shock that has been repeated over the years.
ME:Ay, tell them nobody is shocked in the Philippines. This is so Ormoc all over again. If you don't take care of your own environment, bad things really happen to you. Now, if that was a volcanic eruption, I would have felt something.
KRISTYN:I know! It was weird when I just went "Oh, yeah, okay," and they were all surprised. Even mama [who is currently in Australia] wasn't that fussed.
ME: Tell them we eat tragedies for breakfast.
KRISTYN: Yeah, but I think they know that already. [Yesterday], you know, when I was online? Justin's [her husband] mum said she thought I was checking the news about the mudslide online. I was almost going to say, "What for?"
ME:Ahahaha! I bet she thinks we are such a heartless people.
KRISTYN:Mao gyud, hehehe.
Forgive Kristyn and I our "irreverence," if you can call it that. Something bordering "flippancy" may be another description. Deaths, we know, are not something to joke about. Tragedies much more so. And yet -- there is certainly that undeniable welling of resigned knowingness that seems to be everywhere.
The tales to tell are certainly macabre, but we cannot seem to help ourselves to mixing everything with irony. Sketches of the Village Idiot Savant has this to say: "The news carried stories of a schoolteacher buried in the mudslide sending text messages calling for help. The messages finally stopped at Friday 7PM. It's a poignant story, but I'm wondering: is it possible? I would have thought that under all that mud, about 30 feet of it, you couldn't get a signal. Just thinking."
But of course, there is also an informed, frustrated anger. ExpectoRants gives up: "This blog is on leave for at least two days, or one week at most. I am in mourning, mourning the death of hundreds or thousands. (Isn't big-scale logging through the years to blame in the landslides in Leyte? It's clear as day to me. It's not overpopulation, it's not the rain or La Nina, it's not the minor earthquake, it's not the arrangement of the stars. It's wanton logging, legal or illegal.)"
All I can do is nod to all of that.
Perhaps because we have seen this happen before, in the very same province no less, that to have a another tragedy coming from the said thread just strikes most of us as bizarre, and even stupid. On 5 November 1991, if you care to remember, a flash flood struck Ormoc City in Leyte, killing approximately 8,000 people and leaving an additional 50,000 homeless. The number of people who died -- a larger number than those who perished in the World Trade Center in September 11 -- was so huge that bulldozers had to be used to fill the mass graves.
The picture above -- of drowned bodies gripped in fatal panic -- is a testament to that senseless catastrophe. (More here, if you can take it.) In 1991, we did mourn. And we did promise that these things will never ever happen again: we knew, from the flood of postmortem analyses made, that the waters rose because there were no trees to stop the gush, to absorb the danger. The environment must be cared for, we vowed.
But our tragedy as Filipinos is that we are a forgetful lot -- and a largely uncaring one, too. Our promises soon faded, and one hundred years after the fact of Spanish colonization, we have reduced the rainforest that was the blanket we call our country to a bald-headed archipelago. According to the Center for International Forestry Research, the remaining forest cover in the Philippines is a shadow of its former self. It has steadily decreased, from 34% in the 1970s to 22% in 1987 -- and what remains is concentrated around Palawan, Mindanao, and the uplands of Luzon. The Visayas is a virtual desert devoid of green. And finally, according to the CIFR, the greatest danger lies in severe erosion problems that spring from "vegetation removal."
Most Filipinos do not care about the environment. That's why we should never ever be surprised if the environment strikes back to kill, or maim, us.
In Dumaguete, for example, you can only rant silently as you witness countless tricycles and cars emitting noxious black smoke into the air. Sometimes you wish the DENR, or even perhaps the LTO (or City Hall!), has a cellphone number you can report the plate numbers of these toxic vehicles to. But then again government people are rather notorious for just sitting on their asses and wait for the official day to finish so that they can go home to their stupid telenovelas. (If you are a government bureaucrat, and you are offended by this generalization -- shouldn't it be time you to do something in the name of the people?)
In Dumaguete, stores and restaurants are still fond of wrapping everything in plastic or styrofoam, rather than paper bags or other perishable materials. For the longest time, I always take it as a duty to decline having my newly-bought goods wrapped in plastic bags (in VideoCity, for example). But I don't see anybody doing the same thing. If you go to the local landfill, you will see that the mountains of trash over there are largely a freaky collection of Lee Super Plaza shopping bags. That should make you think. In Manila, it must be the same: their mountains of trash the blue color of SM bags.
In Dumaguete, it's not a surprise to note that most people have forgotten there is a river called Banica dying from the city's refuse and squatters.
In Dumaguete, the corners are littered with unbelievable amounts of trash from people (like you) who think they're just giving MetroAides the opportunity to sweep the streets. Sometimes, you want to shout to these ignoramuses: "Baga mo ug nawong!" But, of course, you don't.
In Dumaguete, the night streets are home to swarms of cockroaches and unbelievably fat rats, subtly telling us that underneath our pavements and feet, the city's sewers have become breeding grounds for untold diseases.
In Dumaguete, it is too easy to build a stupid overpass over a street where it's easier to cross the normal way than to climb the steep path of the new infrastructure project. And worse still: the sacrifice of an old acacia tree for such a white elephant. They're still finishing the construction now, but every time I see that overpass over Hibbard Avenue, it becomes my paragon for the stupidity of people. Trust me, if ever they do the usual political game of painting politicians' names on the newly-painted walls of that overpass, I know some good people who can earnestly throw buckets of red paint.
I will repeat what I told Kristyn in our chat: if you don't take care of your own environment, bad things really happen to you. Guinsaugon is not a freak accident. Guinsaugon can be us. Guinsaugon is us.
The very nature of the bamboo -- which is among the most useful of all plants -- provides a fitting metaphor for understanding the mechanism of the success, and the continuing goals, of Buglas Bamboo Institute (BBI) in Dumaguete City: the bamboo is resilient, it is highly functional in so many ways, and it is always conducive to growing to its fullest potentials.
There is, all over the world, over 1,500 species of bamboo. A significant portion of them grows in Asia, with the Philippines breeding many of the species best suited for the manufacture of specialty products. According to experts, their uses can astound in the way they vary: bamboos, of course, are highly decorative plants, but their compact and highly-complex root systems also make the bamboo environmentally useful because of its magnificent capability for controlling erosion. Houses, screens, and windbreakers have been made from bamboo, and its culms have been used for an array of things, from bridges to rafts, from fishing poles to garden stakes, from water pipes to scaffolding, from carving to jewelry, from cooking utensils to woven mats and baskets, from fences to furniture. Toys and musical instruments have been made from bamboo. The bamboo organ in Las Pinas, for example, was constructed in 1818 from 950 bamboo culms -- and is still operational. There is no construction material as hard as bamboo. Its complex physical structure makes it a hardwood material perhaps comparable to steel -- but is, almost paradoxically, waterproof, light, bendable, and tough. In many Asian cuisines, edible bamboo shoots are also considered a delicacy.
The bamboo gets into the record books as the fastest growing plant in the world, and its continuous regeneration makes it an authentic "sustainable resource." What is remarkable about the plant is that, under certain beneficial conditions, new shoots become taller and thicker over the years, until that particular species of bamboo planting reaches its maximum potential in terms of height and breadth. While the mother plant produces new shoots every year that develop to their maximum height within a few months, the poles can be harvested after 4 or 5 years when they reach their maximum tensile strength. And bamboo can grow relatively anywhere. Thomas Walta, the DED specialist currently assigned to look over the manufacture and design component of the BBI, says that bamboos generally thrive on moist and rich soil, but are fairly tolerant of varying soil conditions. "That is why they grow mostly beside riverbeds," Mr. Walta says. But once they take root to any particular environment, they become reasonably resistant to drought -- hence their remarkable resiliency.
That may be the same exact story about how BBI itself came to be. Resiliency. That story is also the chronicle of a socially-minded Carmelite missionary who came to the Philippines from the Netherlands in 1964, and quickly took root among Filipinos, particularly those who lived by the skin of their teeth and the caprices of often cruel fates.
Frans Kleine Koerkamp's first assignment as a man of the cloth was in Escalante, Negros, where his social education about the plight of common Filipinos first flowered. "I would take a walk in the barrios of Escalante," Mr. Koerkamp recalls, "and already I could see so much of extreme poverty among so many people." Moved, he decided to help form a credit cooperative in town -- but soon his social activism took its first mark in the eternal skirmish of local class wars: he eventually got himself in trouble with the local hacenderos or landowners.
In 1972, he was transferred to Iligan City, but there his social activism became even more heightened. He helped setup labor organizations, with the sole purpose of starting a housing project for local workers. In those days, that brand of advocacy was already enough to cast suspicious eyes from the authorities, and when military rule became instituted under President Marcos, Mr. Koerkamp again got into trouble. In 1980, he was in Manila trying to organize church people to become more aware about the social evils of Martial Law, focusing mostly on human rights abuses, which he saw firsthand happening in the countryside.
By the end of that tumultuous decade, Mr. Koerkamp's social activism took on a different focus. "I had, by 1989, become aware that there was a need for a kind of socio-economic progress for political advocacy, but I didn't know what to do," he said. His wife suggested that perhaps he stayed, at least for a while, in a typical barrio -- where he might grow into seeing what needed to be done.
In 1994, he settled in Dauin, a town south of Dumaguete City. In barrio Casili, he noticed there were plenty of bamboo plantings -- an abundance that belied the stark social realities of the place. The land in Casili, just like most land in the province and elsewhere, have become privately owned and subdivided, with the local farmers left to tenant the land, producing mostly coconut and maize. "The children of the barrio farmers knew only to get out of the place as soon as possible, and go into the big city -- where they end up selling cigarettes or becoming housemaids," Mr. Koerkamp remembered. "That got me into thinking... If we could only do something with the plentiful bamboo, we could increase the income of the farmers -- and perhaps, in the process, empower them as well." He concluded that the utilization of bamboo, whatever that may be, should be in the hands of the people.
By the time Mr. Koerkamp came into that conclusion, countries around Asia already knew of the bamboo as a source of a multi-million dollar industry. In the Philippines, however, he knew he had to start from scrap. First, he had to convince local farmers about the value of the bamboo itself -- a feat in a country already used to concrete and the like. Between 1995 and 1999, he devoted his efforts to research, and was astonished to find out that in a given year, Negros Oriental alone is capable of producing between 90,000 to a million poles -- but that only 30,000 of these per year are being used.
Buglas Bamboo Institute -- which took into its identity, "Buglas," the pre-Spanish name of Negros Oriental -- finally came into being in the interim, with initial support from Dutch developmental organizations. In 1999, Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED) came into the picture, with the primary aim of extending technical expertise, and networking potentials, to the program. That year, DED's Andreas Eineg helped set up the extension component of BBI -- something which sets the Institute apart from typical business entities: it is a corporation with a social conscience, and works actively to develop it. For the most part, this is an evolution of Mr. Koerkamp's belief that corporations should develop a benevolent social dimension to help the poor.
Set up as a support base for the marginalized farmers and rural poor of the province who have little stake in the formal economy of the country, BBI urges them to make their own living through their own enterprise, by producing something in their fields, in their homes, or in small workshops -- in other words, helping communities make sustainable use of local resources for their welfare. That resource, in this case, just happens to be the bamboo, which farmers -- in localities such as Maayong Tubig, Si-it, Lunga, and Apolong -- breed, harvest, and sell to corporations like the BBI, which in turn manufacture them into profit-making products. Today, BBI's biggest products range from raw bamboo materials, to elegant furniture, to the construction of houses and gazebos.
But it is also an institution currently in the crossroads of its existence -- and the question now is how it must become more viable in the future. For that, it is in the stages of splitting the closely-linked production and extension components to become more sustainable, but still aims to retain the overriding social orientation that started it all.
For the most part, the future looks bright. Local sales of its products have gone up almost 200%, especially with the Institute's success in the 2005 Cebu Exposition, where it won a Mugna Award for Best Outdoor Design for an intricately conceived lounge chair.
The international market is also being exploited, with orders now streaming in from everywhere, particularly from the Middle East. By 2006, according to new CEO and business head Samuel Ruiz, the BBI will finally get into the black, rising above the break-even point. Within three years, the company will finally be earning for good.
The challenge, it seems, is to firm up the business side of the program, meet customers' needs, streamline the factory in Dauin, and control overhead.
But perhaps the bigger challenge BBI is facing is in promoting the bamboo as "the grass of life," restoring the original significance of this indigenous resource. Although very much a part of Filipino culture, bamboo has lost much of its importance in the lives of the common people, and has become dubbed "the poor man's timber." The ultimate aim, Mr. Koerkamp admitted, may be for "the culture to be redeveloped since it has already been damaged for 500 years."
With BBI at the helm of a bamboo renaissance, the future indeed looks green -- and pliable, just like the bamboo.
10:18 PM |
Pamati, Done!
Award-winning fictionist Janet Villa just emailed me to try this little green experiment, and I'm passing on her message: "Let's turn off all our lights and appliances on March 29 for an hour -- between 8 PM to 9 PM. The more there are of us who'll do this worldwide project, we can help fight global warming. Besides, it will be a good time for us to sit down for elegant thought or talk, away from TV or the Internet. Read more about it here." It's a good idea.
