Christmas, Family, and Hope

For many nations, including the Philippines, Christmas helps boost the economy. Christmas is the season when overseas Filipino workers remit dollars to their families. This explains why the peso has been quite strong since September. But bankers say we can expect the peso to weaken starting February.

From all the material stuff and goodies that they dangle this season, both big entrepreneurs and small street hawkers are cashing in on Christmas. And they really earn as everybody rushes to buy gifts and as each family prepares special meals on the eve of Christmas. It is that time of year when wage-earning folk really spend after getting their 13^th month pay and bonus. More money circulates and that big mall can have all your money as you buy what they have got all for you.

But despite its commercialization, Christmas is an opportune time to strengthen and renew family ties. Normally, sons and daughters, who have been away because of work or college education, would go home to celebrate Christmas with their parents. Overseas Filipino workers usually go home to be with their families before leaving again to bear the loneliness of working overseas in quiet desperation.

In Benguet in recent years, the Christmas break is also usually the time for clan reunions and weddings.

So the relationships and ties that we renew and strengthen as we break bread together either as a family or as a clan is one beauty of Christmas. Definitely, Christmas is not about the material gifts that we receive. It's obviously about the love and compassion we express through our gifts or through our sincere best wishes for others.

Particularly needing our help now are those who lost their roofs, livelihoods, and loved ones during a series of unfortunate typhoons in central Philippines and southern Luzon. The good news is that other Filipinos are not lacking in compassion and love when it comes to helping those who encounter misfortunes like typhoons. Baguio and Benguet's "Operation Sayote" is one example in which local folk were able to synchronize efforts to bring sayote to the survivors of the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 and to other survivors of other disasters in succeeding years. Although once considered a lowly crop, sayote is still a vegetable that can add fiber to the usual government relief goods that consist of instant noodles and sardines.

Another good news is that various churches in Baguio are matching their prayers with actual calls for material help for the survivors of super-typhoon Reming.

As a people, we are not actually lacking in Good Samaritans. This quality of damayan or helping our brothers and sisters in need is what continues to convince us that there's still hope for this country.

Meek Lambs

House Speaker Jose de Venecia was talking tough earlier. He insisted that the only way the country could progress was by changing the Constitution. And this could be done by transforming the legislature into a Con Ass or a Constituent Assembly to amend the country’s fundamental law.

De Venecia was not only tough as an ass, that hardworking beast of burden. He was roaring like a lion, the king of the jungle. But after the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, El Shaddai’s Mike Velarde, and other church leaders spoke against charter-change, the Pangasinan lawmaker known for his traditional politics became a meek lamb.

To save his face, he said he was not insensitive to public opinion so he and other like-minded traditional politicians would now give up on the Con Ass. And instead of Con Ass, De Venecia would agree to a Con Con or Constitutional Convention. But still, he wanted to have his Con Con as fast as he could by challenging the Senate to pass a resolution in 72 hours on 11 December calling for a Con Con. Stressing that the country had more urgent issues and problems to address such as the 2007 national budget, the Senators, however, did not bite his bait.

The public can now see through the motives of De Venecia and other like-minded politicians. Whether through Con Ass or through Con Con, De Venecia, et. al. and Malacañang are really bent on changing the Constitution. By changing the Constitution, the proponents were envisioning a unicameral form of government under which they could stay longer in power.

Then the Church spoke. Some bishops asserted the country’s problem is not the Constitution, but politicians themselves who don’t know how to govern. Church leaders pointed to corrupt governance as the main factor in dragging the country down. Bishop Socrates Villegas particularly cited the politicians’ insistence to change the Constitution as a “primary proof of corrupt governance.”

For the Church, the Constitution is sacred and politicians with self-serving ulterior motives should not toy with it.

To help save its own face for pushing for charter change, Malacañang (the presidential palace) hailed De Venecia’s “statesmanship” in throwing away the Malacañang-backed cha-cha bid via Con Ass. The presidential palace patted De Venecia’s back, appreciating how De Venecia did what he did for the sake of “national unity.” So the presidential palace would now want to paint De Venecia as a hero of some sort. If De Venecia could indeed become a hero in the public’s mind, the presidential palace could also be perceived not as a villain, but as a proponent of national unity.

But the public cannot be fooled. The public can now discern every word traditional politicians utter. For many, traditional politicians don’t mean what they say. So if they say they want to change the Constitution so the country can prosper, the public is not easily convinced. The public may have been fooled many times. But the public cannot be fooled all the time.

"Naked, Chilling Sadism"

The verdict was finally out. US marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith would get 40 years in jail for the rape of a young Filipina, an act which the court described as “bestial” and “chilling, naked sadism.”

At 21, Smith is so young, and he has a lot to do ahead of him. This includes careers in the US Marine corps and probably raising a family. But alas, he committed something, which, to his innermost conscience, he must have regretted doing in the first place.

Unfortunately, Smith, in trying to defend himself, denied he committed rape. He insisted it was “consensual” sex. But granting this was so, following his own argument, why did Smith and his three other colleagues literally dumped Nicole at a street in the dead of night? Granting it was consensual and he acted as a gentleman, why did he and his colleagues just dump Nicole like garbage? Again, granting that it was consensual, the mere fact that he and his colleagues dumped Nicole out in the cold showed their utilitarian behavior, to say the least. Typical of the consumerist and throw-away mentality common in the West, Smith and colleagues practically threw away Nicole after “using” her.

Fortunately, the court ruled that what happened on that night on 1 November 2005 was not just a case of “using” someone. The Court said it was “morally convinced” that Smith committed the crime as charged or what it described as “bestial acts” and “chilling, naked sadism.” “Thus, a severe penalty is meted out by this state, as parens patriae (father of his country) on this advert crime, to protect the women against the bestiality of persons who cannot control their libidos,” the court said.

The crime of rape is not just about uncontrollable libidos. Rape, as one Manila newspaper editorial noted, is also about abuse of power. In the case of Nicole, she was not just overpowered. At that time, she was practically powerless as she was too intoxicated to defend herself. Smith took advantage of this powerlessness in unleashing his bestiality. And while at this at the back of a van, Smith must have thought that such bestial act would just be one of his one-night stand misadventures, which he could brag about among male colleagues. But it was not to be because Nicole gathered all the strength and courage to complain and cry rape.

Many were happy about the verdict. But some insisted the three other US Marines should have also been punished. Although the three were freed, this did not mean they were innocent. It just so happened that there was not enough evidence presented to pin them down, too.

But anything can happen to Smith. With all its power, the US can move heaven and earth to appeal Smith’s case. For now, legal luminaries are debating on who gets custody of Smith. Still, the bigger issue is when Smith, with the help of Uncle Sam’s might, will be freed after an appeal.

If he remains in jail as sentenced, Smith certainly will lose his future. Now alone in his cell at the Makati jail, he can have all the time in the world to reflect on things that matter and to reexamine his unexamined self. Perhaps, he can reflect on what real happiness means and may yet come to realize that real happiness transcends one-night stand misadventures. Or he can also reflect on karma, the law of action and reaction, the principle that you reap what you sow.

Or better yet, he can have all the time in the world to write a best-seller, which focuses on his confessions and transformation while in jail. There just are a lot of positive possibilities Smith can do while he remains sleepless at the Makati jail.

Nicole, the 23-year old survivor of that bestiality, also has many years ahead of her. After more than a yearlong painful wait for that 4 December verdict, she can now plan her future and move on. Despite what happened to her, Nicole has apparently transcended her pains. And for this, she is grateful to the heavens. She, as the reports said, has acknowledged that “God is good.” With God’s goodness on her side, Nicole can now face the world and may yet advocate for other silent survivors of bestiality to also seek redress and justice.

Con-Ass and Con Men

Something just sounds strange each time Manila-based national papers report about how Malacañang (presidential palace) and the House of Representatives would insist on a Constituent Assembly as a first step to their game plan of changing the Philippine constitution. Reporters have invented Con-Ass as a short for Constituent Assembly in the same way that they coined Cha-cha for Charter Change. Cha-cha sounds harmless and I often associate it with tango or even with waltz and other ballroom dances.

But Con-Ass? It just sounds like con man or con artist. And Con-Ass, particularly the “Ass” part, sounds not only slang, but vulgar, a term that should not be used because one of our unwritten rules as writers is decency. But somehow the acronym has become a regular fare in our newspapers.

I tried to do my homework by searching the Web for some definitions of con man and con artist, and, to my surprise, the definitions gave me some insights into the Con-Ass.

One website defines con man or con artist as “a confidence man or a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.”

So I asked myself, “Granting that Con-Ass is the confidence man, are we, the ordinary Filipinos, the victims?”

According to reports, the Lower House of Congress and may be a few senators would be convened into a Con-Ass and would engineer how it could amend the Constitution and form an interim parliament. They already have in mind a timetable for a plebiscite and elections for parliament in 2007.

Some senators, including Senate President Manny Villar and administration Sen. Miriam Defensor, have rejected the Con-Ass move. But the big guns in the Lower House are still optimistic that they can still go on with the Con-Ass because they have the numbers. So the proponents of Cha-cha via Con-Ass are relying on numbers, not on the sound reason of their moves.

In pushing for Cha-cha via Con-Ass, House Speaker Jose de Venecia said: “We are on the eve of a constitutional revolution because we’re destroying the old, oppressive structure and creating a new, and hopefully more liberating, political system. It’s now or never.”

We had heard similar pronouncements from the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos when he changed the 1935 Constitution and created his new Constitution to pave the way for what he called “a new society” through martial law. And to give his iron-fist regime some sweet icing, Marcos called it “constitutional authoritarianism.”

For a time, the “New Society” had remained as new as the bell-bottom fashion in trousers at that time. But Marcos’ “New Society” eventually became a tired refrain as it failed to bring the paradise it promised. And during his reign, Marcos drowned the country with US$30 billion foreign debt, which, together with the foreign debts of succeeding regimes, we are paying up to now and which our children will continue to pay after we, their elders, are gone.

From Ms Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, we also heard about her “Strong Republic” and her tough-girl pronouncements to “crush” the “enemies” of that republic. The opposite of strong is weak so building a “strong republic” is akin to the dream of building a “new society” from the ashes of an old and “weak” one.

There’s no argument in aspiring to build a new society, a strong republic, or even a new world. We should keep on dreaming and hoping. But still I can hardly comprehend whether or not Cha-cha through a Con-Ass can be the means to bring about what De Venecia calls “a new, and hopefully more liberating, political system.”

Another website, meanwhile, defines a confidence trick or game, which it says is con for short, as “an attempt to intentionally mislead a person or persons (known as the mark) usually with the goal of financial or other gain. The confidence trickster, con man, scam artist or con artist often works with an accomplice called the shill, who tries to encourage the mark by pretending to believe the trickster…”

Again I asked myself, “If Con-Ass is a confidence trick, who are the con men or the con artists? And who are the shills or accomplices who are trying to hoodwink us by believing the tricksters in this Con-Ass game?”

Adrenaline Rise and Salute to the Sun

Time flies so fast that before we know it it’s almost Christmas again. While many Filipinos, not only children, have been contemplating and excited about Christmas, some of us are not that excited for various reasons.

Before Christmas comes, which is just six days before 2007, many of us have to keep our adrenaline rising to beat some deadlines, if not complete some work backlogs. For us freelancers with some writing contracts, we have to finally finish what we have started and failed to complete in the past months. Otherwise, we miss the boat in getting new offers in the coming year.

Almost everybody in government or in private outfits also have to complete some annual reports from which plans for the next year will be based. In fact, some non-government organizations and other recipients of foreign donors had to complete their reports as early as October so their funding could be renewed.

The last quarter of the year is actually a high-tension period. With all the expected reports and deadlines to beat, who is excited about Christmas? Of course, working folk have one reason to be excited – their 13^th month pay and, if they are lucky, some bonus.

And as usual, local folk anticipate what the local media would name as the men or women of the year, both in a positive or in a notorious sense.

There’s also one thing more certain than Pacquiao’s recent victory over Morales. One more year will be added to our age, that is. While we, most especially women, try to defy aging by applying some oil or some paste over our faces, we cannot reverse the former thin lines in our faces that are eventually turning into grooves.

The same is true with our muscles and bones. The cavan of rice we used to lift with ease some years ago will soon appear heavier as time passes.

For those of us who kick as a way to keep fit, we will note that the round house or ax kick we used to deliver is not as lightning fast as our kicks before. There just are things the mind and spirit would like to do, but the flesh is just too weak to oblige.

So from taekwondo, we can shift to something friendlier to aging muscles and bones, like tai chi and shi bashi. Either that or we can still kick minus the fancy ones only Jet Li can deliver.

And we have to do away with some highly acrobatic hatha yoga limbering exercises we used to do. But we can still do the head stand and what I consider as one of the poetic hatha yoga exercises, which is “salute to the sun.”

Before I salute the rising sun, I also “embrace the mountains, push the waves of the sea, and offer a pear to a sage” (these are shibashi exercises). After these exercises, I close my eyes as I count every heart beat and feel the oxygen that enters my lungs while chirping birds and cicadas provide the background music.

On Retirement and Tending a Garden

Many working persons I know look forward to retirement. This is understandable especially if you have been teaching in a village public school or have been pushing and piling papers in some government office for 30 to 40 years.

As a public school teacher, you may want to take a break from inhaling all those chalk dust and all the tensions that go with the profession. Ditto with those engaged in both white- or blue-collar jobs. A clerk tinkering with photocopying machines day in and day out for years definitely needs a break lest he overexposes himself to too much radiation.

We all need a break from the drudgery of our jobs. That’s why we all look forward to that day when we are 60 or 65 so we can retire. So we contemplate ourselves relaxing on a hammock tied to two coconut trees while reading one of our favorite books and sipping buko (young coconut) juice.

We want to retire because we want to do what we have been wishing to do while we were tied up to our 8a.m-5p.m. jobs. Many of us look forward to tending a garden or catching up with some missed hobbies such as ballroom dancing, culturing bonsai trees, painting, or perhaps even writing our own biographies.

Many young people today also want to accelerate their careers because they want to retire young or to take second or even third careers.

But in life, there is actually no retirement. Either you shift to another career or another activity or choose to do nothing but sleep and eat. But the latter option can only hasten your permanent retirement, which is death.

At 65, or even in our 40s, we may already feel that our knees are weakening. But we can still do something worthwhile. We can still be active in some endeavors, which can give our Supreme Life-giver more reason to extend our lives on this planet. Some people I know are taking advantage of their retirement as an opportunity to serve others. After working for themselves and for their families, these retirees, who never consider themselves retired, now want to give back or share with others all the abundance of life they have enjoyed.

Retiree friends, who serve as my elders and mentors, say that they have come to realize that there’s more to life than earning money and spending, if not accumulating, it. So they engage in civic programs and charity work. One retiree I have just met, for example, is now helping give legal advice to some indigenous folk in Kalinga province, who have sought to manage and explore their own mineral resources through a new community-organized corporation. It’s time that indigenous folk themselves, he says, manage and utilize their resources primarily for their own communities.

Another retiree friend, who has not retired, still practices his medical profession, catering mostly to poor Cordillera folk, often times giving out his services for free. Apart from this, he is engaged in helping develop a grassroots-based sports program for the youth. That’s not all. He is among the key persons in helping mobilize local historians, educators, and other professionals to finally write their own history. Our history has always been written from the colonizers’ viewpoint. So he says it’s time we write history from our own perspective.

Since they are busy with still plenty of unfinished businesses, these un-retired and untiring retiree friends are showing no signs of aging. If ever they are aging, they are so in the same way that aging wine becomes tastier as it ages. This is why they are aging gracefully as they are growing in wisdom.

Feedback from Canada and Making Choices

Since last May I have begun compiling my columns for Cordillera Today in a personal blog named after this corner. For me the blog merely serves as a personal virtual notebook or folder for my columns. The blog, however, contains only my columns since last May. If I have the time, I will retrieve the rest and compile them in just one virtual package.

As a personal virtual folder, the blog, I thought, could not be viewed by others. So I didn’t expect feedback or comments about what I have been compiling in my lemongrass tea blog. But Google has a way of showing and sharing the blog with others so some of my pieces got a few comments.

Somebody from Canada, for example, reacted to a column last August, “On Leaving and Staying.” In that column, I said, among other things, that I would not give up on this country, despite all the misfortune in governance we all face. I also said some were pushing me to find work overseas but I declined, saying I could not imagine myself working in some sweatshop there and that I could not stand being lonely and away from my family.

I also said I turned down some suggestion for me and my family to migrate overseas because I could not afford to cut off my cultural and family roots, among other reasons.

Let me reprint this feedback from a Filipino migrant in Canada who, except for giving a website address which I have yet to access, did not identify himself or herself. Thus:

“Just to give you some comfort. Over here in Canada, a lot of new immigrants do not end up in sweat shops. At least here in North America, for as long as you work hard, you can attain anything.

“I came here as a nanny in 1988 and abandoned my accounting career in the Philippines and never looked back. I left the country just after having obtained my Philippine CPA (Certified Public Accountancy) designation for a better future here in Canada.

“After working for two years as a nanny, the Canadian government granted me an immigrant status and was given the opportunity to work in any field I wanted, sky was the limit. I decided to pursue an accounting career and was able to purchase my own home. I was able to sponsor my parents who are currently living a very satisfactory life.

“But most of all, apart from material possessions, I found peace and security (politically and economically). I recently went home to the Philippines to attend my grandmother's funeral and after seeing the current Philippine situation, the more I felt strongly about my decision to have left the country.”

In that last column, I also said that those who leave have their own reasons and that I didn’t and wouldn’t fault them for leaving.

In this age, as long as we have some skill or expertise in whatever field, we can make choices. We can opt to stay put in this archipelago of 7,100 islands, come high or low tide, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or super typhoons. Or we can choose to go overseas and reinvent ourselves there.

But the key is education – real education, which can help equip us with the necessary skill, maturity, the right attitude, and the character to be able to work and relate with other people in whatever environment.

Canada and other countries in the developed world no doubt offer better opportunities for people who have skills and brains. Compared to the Philippines, these countries definitely give more just compensation to well-invested efforts and talents. As a result, people in these countries are motivated to excel.

There was this Filipina who, after not being able to find work here after finishing a mass communications degree, got a job as a nanny in Singapore. Since she had writing skills, she wrote a bestseller, which was aptly titled, “Maid in Singapore.” She eventually moved to Canada where she now works as a writer and filmmaker. She is Crisanta Sampang, one of overseas Filipino workers whose writing talent – besides hard work and perseverance – brought her to greater heights.

So again, the key is education. If well-educated, Filipinos applying as nannies or factory workers need not become nannies or sweatshop workers forever. Like Crisanta Sampang and that person who gave a feedback to one of our columns, they can metamorphose into more accomplished persons. They can even transcend the current government’s program to produce “super-maids.” They can prove to the world that they can also write prose or poetry other than just changing diapers and cleaning bedpans.

In Praise of Mountains

Typhoon Paeng (international name, Cimaron) came, left a trail of destruction, and departed after 24 hours.

Each time shortly before the year ends, Benguet folk and other peoples of the Cordilleras in northern Philippines since time immemorial had been noting a one-day-one-night strong typhoon they named after a migratory bird locally called kiling. The last typhoon must have been the same as the one our elders had learned to live with when there was no weather bureau yet to inform and warn us about thunderstorms and tropical depressions.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) had warned that Paeng was a super-typhoon packing sustained winds of 195 kilometers per hour. Such strength could have been more devastating than the reported destruction and lives lost. But thanks to the Sierra Madre, a series of mountain ranges in the island of Luzon, the strength of the typhoon, according to Pagasa, was reduced to 125 to 130 kph.

Besides the Sierra Madre, the Cordillera mountain ranges must have helped parry the deadly blows of Paeng before it left towards the South China Sea.

That mountains help protect people from the beatings of typhoons must have been one reason why most indigenous folk highly regard these elevated land formations as highly important, if not sacred. In my hometown of Kibungan, the center of town is well- secured and surrounded by mountains, which have long protected us from the wrath of typhoons exiting towards the South China Sea.

In Benguet, some peaks regarded as holy grounds include Mount Pulag in Kabayan and Mount Kabunian in Bakun.

The Aetas also consider their mountains, including Mount Pinatubo, as sacred. Southern Tagalog folk likewise have Mounts Makiling and Banahaw, a Mecca of some sort for some local pilgrims. Lumad folk in southern Philippines also count Mounts Apo in Davao and Kitanglad in Bukidnon as among their sacred sites.

Other peoples elsewhere in the world also regard their peaks as hallowed ground. The Himalayas, for example, has a special place for Buddhist monks and pilgrims. Those who have climbed and “conquered” the Himalayas swear that they have experienced some kind of spiritual awakenings.

The role and importance of mountains cannot be underestimated. Besides serving as windbreakers, mountains are where we can find certain plant species with medicinal values. No wonder, Mount Pulag’s mountain yew has caught the interests of bio-pirates because of the plant’s reported anti-cancer potentials.

Mountain ranges also serve as the headwaters of lowland communities. Northern Philippines’ Cordillera region, for example, has seven major river systems, which serve as the cradle of agriculture for many lowland communities.

Formed after a series of volcanic eruptions ages ago, mountains are often regarded as metaphors for challenges. The Chinese, for example, say that a person is successful in life if he has climbed mountains, fathered a son, planted trees, and wrote a book. In this regard, climbing mountains is not necessarily climbing and conquering the Himalayas as Romy Garduce and company did. Climbing mountains, according to the Chinese, also means being able to overcome challenges and difficulties in life and coming out a better person.

After typhoon Paeng came and was gone, we are thankful that the Sierra Madre and the Cordillera mountain range stood their ground, protecting us from our vulnerabilities. These mountains also continue to teach us about how to stand our ground on things we are passionate about.

Living by Tradition

There’s one thing I learned from Imam Bedejim Abdullah.

“Why do I grow my beard and mustache? I do so because it’s not a fad or fashion, but growing my beard and mustache is part of our tradition as Muslims,” he said, explaining that God’s servants and messengers, from Abraham to Mohammad, had grown their beard and mustache. “And why do we not eat pork? This is also part of our Muslim tradition because our religion extends into our kitchen.”

I interviewed the Muslim chaplain of the Philippine Military Academy during the World Religion Week celebration hosted by the Saint Louis University last month. While I was interviewing him, many students came over and the Imam invited them to join us at his prayer carpet, which he spread at a lobby of one of SLU’s buildings where various religions also displayed photos and posters describing their basic tenets and doctrines.

The Imam encouraged the students to ask any questions under the sun about Islam. As expected, the students’ questions included why Muslims don’t eat pork, whether or not Islam is also a path to salvation, etc.

On pork, he said the Koran considers pigs as filthy and therefore unclean for human consumption. And so avoiding pork in their diet has become a tradition Muslims live and practice each day of their lives. According to Abdullah, the kitchen is also a sacred place and must not be defiled by something unclean.

Except for Seventh-Day Adventists, I don’t know of any Christian groups, which incorporate their Christian tradition with their culinary arts.

Even for practical reasons, there must be some wisdom in the prohibition by some religions on certain foods. And it’s not just because one person’s food is another person’s poison. Many of us belittle those who abstain from pork until we get arthritis and high blood pressure and our doctors advise us to avoid pork and other meat altogether.

On tradition versus fashion, there’s also wisdom in not being easily swayed by fashion trendsetters in Paris and New York, who decide on how our hair and faces should look and how we should dress up. Of course, new fashion means new product line, and the more people crazy about a new product, the more money for those behind this fashion business.

So there’s something to appreciate about the likes of Abdullah, who simply look and dress up as their Muslim forebears did ages ago because this is part of their tradition. In so doing, they are freed from the craze, if not trap, of having to keep up with the latest fad in fashion.

I met a Malaysian Muslim leader a few years ago and he said he stopped wearing Western suits and had since worn loose Muslim attire made of batik. He said patronizing his own traditional attire would be good for his country’s economy. Batik is Malaysia’s top clothing product and patronizing it would indeed be favorable to local batik manufacturers. Such attitude must be one of the moving forces behind Malaysia’s transformation as an economic tiger.

Even just from their views about their cuisine and about why they grow their beard and mustache, our Muslim brothers can teach us a vital lesson or two. They have much to teach to their Christian brothers and sisters, many of whom generally profess and say one thing and practice another thing.

Face of Death Changes in Benguet Upland Town

KIBUNGAN, Benguet – His village mates expected him to be given his last respects and buried the traditional way. That meant his corpse, donning only a red turban and a g-string, would be fastened into a makeshift chair surrounded by bonfires within a seven or nine-day wake. And his corpse would be entombed beside a boulder or at the mouth of a cave.

Such practice was specially accorded to someone who, during his lifetime, had hosted a series of pedit or traditional feasts during which several pigs besides cattle were offered to the gods and spirits. Under the old tradition of this Kankanaey upland town, the more pedit a person hosted, the higher status he attains in the community.

But many town mates were surprised when Teodoro Bolislis Sr., more known as Lakay (elder) Paguli, died in 2001 at age 91. Instead of a red turban and a brightly-colored dominantly red g-string, the elder’s corpse was made to wear a coat and tie. And he was not made to sit on a chair surrounded by bonfires.

Shortly after the elder died, the son drove to Baguio City to get the services of an embalmer. And the corpse was laid in state inside a pine wood coffin, which was fastened not with nails but with bamboo sticks drilled into the pine lumber. (It is taboo to use metal in a coffin as the corpse is not also allowed to wear any metallic object such as jewelries.)

Embalming was first introduced in this town of 16,000 when Atayoc Bay-an, another elder and Bolislis’ brother-in-law, died in 2000.

“Mayat kayman met baw ay doy guwapo yan doy kaman wat nanaek (Oh, he looks handsome and looks he’s just sleeping),” somebody commented then during the wake of Bolislis.

Bolislis’ three children decided on embalming and on letting their father wear coat and tie because, they said, he was a former municipal mayor.

Religion was another factor. A few years before the elder died, two of his children had just converted to “born-again” Christianity, which seeks to do away with various facets of tradition such as customary burial rites.

But even fundamentalist Christianity cannot totally wipe out old tradition. During Bolislis’ wake, the bereaved family still had to slaughter pigs whose bile and livers some elders “read” for any sign of good or bad omen. After the meat was cooked, somebody prayed the Christian way, but an elder also prayed the traditional way, offering the meat to the gods and ancestral spirits.

Also during the wake, “Amazing Grace” and other church hymns were interspersed with traditional eya-ey chants.

At early dawn during the day of the entombment of Bolislis, elders performed the traditional pabaon during which some rice and meat plus a glass of wine were offered to the spirit of the dead. The food and wine were believed to be the dead person’s packed food as he travels into the spirit world.

But at 8 a.m. a woman pastor led a necrological service for Bolislis before his remains were finally kept in a concrete tomb not far from the backyard of the family’s home.

The next day, the Bolislis family performed the traditional lawit, the last rite during which the family had to procure another pig. Through a traditional priest, the family thanked the gods and spirits and invoked them to help sustain and keep watch over the surviving family members so they could also live long, stay healthy, prosper and be at peace.

When Bolislis’ wife, Ganaya, died in 2005 she was accorded a similar mix of traditional and some Christianity-influenced burial rites. Ganaya’s remains were also kept in a concrete tomb just beside that of her husband’s tomb.

Despite the inroads of Christianity, first by the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant churches and lately by fundamentalist charismatic and evangelical groups, traditional burial rites and age-old spiritual worldviews remain strong in this alpine town 67 kms. north of Baguio City.

One is the belief that the condition of the dead at his tomb or gravesite has something to do with the health condition of the living.

Recently, for example, the coffin of the late Juanito Mayamay, who died a few years ago, had to be repaired after his surviving wife, Payag, got ill. This was the advice of a traditional seer whom the children of Payag consulted.

The coffin of Mayamay, it turned out, was being eaten by termites so his children and relatives had to build a new one. This entailed another ritual during which the family had to procure some pigs to appease not only Mayamay’s spirit but also the gods and other spirits.

As elsewhere in the Cordilleras and other indigenous communities, Kibungan is one community where people still believe that the dead commune and communicate with the living and that life after death is very much part of the life here and now, and not separate.

Tsao-ang's Heart

Maria Elina Salvacion Kristina V. Ramo has a problem with her heart and she needs help. She is turning 19 on December 25 and the best Christmas gift for her from any Good Samaritans can be any form of support to remedy her heart problem.

Tsao-ang, as she is fondly called, was born with a hole between her left and right atria or the wall dividing her upper heart chambers. In short, she has a hole in her heart. Doctors call it Atrial Septal Disease, an abnormal condition that makes the blood flow back into the right atrium instead of going back into the other chambers. The condition, according to cardiologists, has to be corrected through an open heart surgery to close the hole.

When Tsao-ang was two years old, her parents had hoped and were made to believe that she could outgrow the condition. But she is now in college and the hole in her heart is still there. In 2004 a cardiologist in Baguio City checked Tsao-ang’s condition with a modern gadget called 2D-echo machine and recommended that she should be operated on immediately.

In May this year, yet another cardiologist at the Philippine Children’s Hospital in Quezon City confirmed the previous findings and advised Tsao-ang’s parents to move fast before anything tragic happens to their eldest child. Despite her condition, Tsao-ang has been making good in her Physics course at the University of the Philippines-College of Baguio. Tsao-ang’s teachers since pre-school say she is a specially gifted child, who excels in all her subjects, particularly math and the sciences.

Tsao-ang’s parents, Ador and Lyn, are doing all they can to save their child. But the cost of the operation is no joke, especially for both parents who simply cannot afford the more or less half-million-peso cost of operation and medicines. Ador works as a researcher in a non-government organization while Lyn writes for a local weekly newspaper in Baguio City. “Although we have only two children, our meager income barely allows for savings,” the couple said in a letter of appeal to would-be Good Samaritans who can offer any form of support to them.

Finally last October 17, Ador and Lyn finally had Tsao-ang checked up at the Philippine Heart Center in Quezon City after queuing for almost 10 hours. Although the new check-up reveals that she is doing well despite the hole in her heart, Tsao-ang, cardiologists at the heart center recommend, still needs surgical operation to finally close the hole.

Tsao-ang is scheduled for another final check-up through the 2D-Echo gadget on November 20 and by then the Ramo’s would know when Tsao-ang finally will be under the knife. While waiting for the schedule of operation, Ador, Lyn and their daughter are taking the opportunity for the time left to pool resources and support from relatives, friends and from any one with a big heart for Tsao-ang. And they have to prepare themselves psychologically and spiritually for the operation.

Despite her condition, Tsao-ang, as advised by her parents, could enroll during the coming semester while waiting and preparing for the operation, which, the Ramo’s are forewarned, may take a longer wait.

Tsao-ang has dreams. She hopes to finish her Physics course next year and seeks to pursue a career in architecture later. Any form of help from you can help make Tsao-ang’s dream come true. And that dream may yet help build this nation. We need all the talents and God-given gifts of every Filipino harnessed for this country of our hopes and aspirations.

Real Food

Have you ever wondered why cities are called concrete jungles? The reason is not just the skyscrapers, which replaced once lush forests. The reason may have something to do with food.

During their hunting-gathering days, our ancestors would scour the jungles to search for food. Wild animals that they hunted provided their proteins. Before discovering other edibles such as wild fruits, herbs, shrubs and other plants, our ancestors may have experimented a lot. Our ancestors had to learn which plant or fruit was edible or poisonous. They also discovered later on which plant or fruit or bark of tree or root of a shrub was medicinal.

We may be in the 21^st century, but we are on the same boat as our hunting-gathering ancestors. Like our ancestors, we have to hunt for real food that can nourish our bodies while we are in any concrete jungle in the world. If we want real food, we won’t just settle for a burger or a pizza. Real food that can give us vitamins and minerals is found elsewhere. So we have to search or hunt as our ancestors did.

For us Asians and even for Africans, there’s no food as real as a simple broth with a variety of vegetables plus steamed rice. Sabah’s state capital of Kota Kinabalu, for example, has cafes and restaurants that serve indigenous Kadazan village food. These include steamed fish, clams, lobsters and a variety of tops and shoots and three kinds of ferns. For pure vegetarians, they can go for tofu plus various kinds of beans, legumes and grains for their protein. And these are also available in street food stalls, where one can get a good breakfast for three ringgits.

We share almost the same traditional cuisine culture with the Kadazan who simply steam, blanch, boil or simmer many of their food. They use less oil and no MSG (monosodium glutamate). They simply use salt and a little sugar plus locally available spices such as ginger, garlic, onions, lemongrass, and other herbs from their mountains, forests and paddy fields.

In the Philippines, healthy cooking includes the dinengdeng or inabraw of the Ilocanos, the nilambong of the Igorots, the tinola of the Tagalogs and Visayans, and many other traditional ways such as pangat, paksiw, ginataan, and tamarind-flavored broths.

The key to healthy eating, say health food experts, is being able to get a variety of vitamins and minerals besides protein and energy. The simple malunggay, for example, is one of Manny Pacquiao’s hidden secrets behind those punches that made him a boxing champ. Former Secretary Juan Flavier himself has promoted malunggay because of its multi-vitamins and minerals from A to Z.

In a globalizing world where global food chains are homogenizing our palates, we have to hunt for the real food, which carries with them age-old traditions handed down from our ancestors. No burger please, which is as predictable as a Hollywood movie or its Pinoy clone.

Contest of Superlatives

We are a country engrossed with contests of superlatives. These superlatives mostly have something to do with size or length. So we have La Trinidad town’s biggest strawberry cake, Dagupan City’s longest bangus (milkfish) grill, and now Baguio City’s longest longganisa (meat sausage). Of course, we are not the first with this idea. Germany, for instance, has had its longest frankfurter.

The sponsors of these displays of the longest or the biggest have their reasons, apart from possibly landing in the Guinness Book of World Records or in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Through its giant strawberry cake, La Trinidad wants to showcase its strawberry crop. This is the same with Dagupan City, the source of the famous Bonuan bangus. The big guys in Baguio’s longanisa industry also wish to feature a recipe, which, they say, has been concocted since 1946.

By showcasing the longest or biggest, the sponsors seek to draw tourists who are expected to spend their money and help invigorate the local economy. Yes, we need all the gimmicks to help nourish our local economy. We need more guests to check in at our hotels, and to buy our vegetables, peanut brittle, brooms, wood carvings, and souvenir items.

This November, Benguet Province will hold its Adivay festival, which also falls during the province’s founding anniversary. The cutting edge of the Adivay festival is that Benguet people from the 13 towns can exhibit not only the biggest cabbage or squash or the longest cucumber, but also the most variety or diversity of crops.

As expected, the commercial farming towns of Buguias and Atok can come out with the biggest carrot or potato. But other upland towns, which have maintained their traditional crops, can display their wide diversity of sweet potato and other root crops; upland rice of all colors, aroma, texture, and taste; beans and other legumes; and other crops.

In fact, I encourage the provincial government to organize some kind of a competition that can promote diversity. Our diverse crops have been overrun by commercial mono-crops. As a result, our diverse traditional crops, which supply us with a wide array of vital minerals, vitamins, healthy carbohydrates and plant proteins, are under threat of disappearing.

As a child growing up in Kibungan town, I remember looking forward to feasting on a wide variety of native corn, which we would harvest by August. We had yellow, orange, white, violet and multi-colored corn, which would sustain us during the typhoon months. We also had yellow, orange, violet, and yellow-white camote or sweet potato. My grandparents’ rice terraces would also provide us with red, brown, white, and violet rice of all texture and aroma. And we had a wide variety of beans and legumes, which gave us proteins. Much of these diversified crops, including taro or yam, cassava, and bananas, were raised in our nem-a or upland swidden farm, our supermarket.

Unfortunately, much of these traditional food crops that sustained my youth are now, to a large extent, just part of my childhood memories. Much of these native food crops are gone and replaced with mono-crops. Cash-crop agriculture has ruined a more diversified traditional farming, which put a primacy on food self-sufficiency. In Kibungan, for example, the once diversified swidden farms have been replaced with a sea of sayote. Sayote farmers had to sell their sayote before they can buy other foods such as rice, which are mostly sourced from Baguio City.

So in a contest for superlatives, I would suggest something on the most diversified. We need diversity because, as they say, it takes all kinds to make this world.

Summers of Childhood

Now on school break, my two sons -- one of whom had just finished high school and the other a would-be high school senior -- have begun hunting for summer jobs. They tried inquiring from at least three fast food chains in town, but they were turned down. They were told they were too young to qualify for the minimum age 18 requirement. But they didn’t give up.

As of this writing, they were still seeking for a job to do this summer. A friend told us that we advice our sons to try inquiring at City Hall.

As a way of preparing himself psychologically for whatever job awaits him, my eldest son asked his mom: “What kind of job can they possibly offer at City Hall?” His mom said she had no idea but opined that maybe my son could help fix files, dust tables, and prepare coffee for some personnel. “Do you mean I’ll be doing that for eight hours five days a week for a month?” he asked. He couldn’t imagine himself doing something boring for eight hours daily for a month.

We don’t want him to develop a defeatist attitude towards something based on unfounded perception or imagined fears so we told him to try first before even judging whether that elusive summer job is boring or exciting.

Whether my eldest son and his brother can find a job or not doesn’t matter at all for us parents -- at least for now. For one, they are just active teenage kids seeking for something on which to use their energies this summer. For us, the experience alone of our sons in looking for jobs is already part of their education.

Of course, the experience of hunting and finally landing a job will give the two kids some sense of fulfillment and triumph. As they get to learn something and get to meet and relate with other people in the process, they can say to themselves that they are ready to face adult responsibilities sooner or later when they have to stand on their own feet.

And if they finally get jobs, they will be doing something more productive other than just playing computer games at home, listening incessantly to hip-hop music and texting their friends. This will also definitely help reduce our electric bill.

On summer jobs, I would tell my kids that school break for me and my siblings was no break when we were in grade school and high school. School break meant sunrise to sundown work in the rice fields or in the nem-a or swidden farms. But somehow we found some ways to enjoy our childhood even in the midst of heavy toil, which the International Labor Organization may consider “child labor”. Hunting honey while tending our swidden farms and catching fish and lobsters while camping out in the rice fields were exciting experiences that still fill memories of my Kibungan childhood summers.

In fact, I can now liken my childhood excitement of learning that my bamboo trap had caught some lobsters and fish to the same feeling of ‘high’ each time a newspaper or news agency used an article I submitted.

Since I had to help procure my needs when I had to enroll in college, I also worked in a friend’s vegetable farm in Brookside village in Baguio and at La Trinidad valley right after my high school graduation. At that time I was paid P5 per day with free board and lodging. We worked from Monday through Saturday. Sometimes we had to work until morning of Sunday. Again, somehow I didn’t feel “kawawa” (pitiful) or abused at all. Learning to raise cabbage and potatoes actually became part of my education.

So if the printed word becomes irrelevant and I’m forced to choose another vocation, I can perhaps go back to my hometown. There, as I used to do during the summers of my youth, I’ll roll my sleeves, wear my straw hat, pick up my hoe, sow some seeds, and anticipate and share my sprouting seeds’ joy as they seek out and embrace the sunshine. (9April2006)

Dateline Granada: Something Spanish

Intricately arranged river stones dot most sidewalks of Granada, a historic and cultural center in southern Spain. Black and white river stones or pebbles are so arranged that they form shapes of flowers and hearts. Aside from the aesthetics of it all, the pebbled sidewalks ensure that pedestrians, especially the elderly, won’t slip while strolling to take a deep breath of the evening winter breeze.

From sidewalks and cobble stone-covered back streets, the new guest can immediately note the artistic and cultural wealth of this city of 350,000 people, many of them students and tourists. One can find something Arabic, Jewish, and Romanesque in the architecture of buildings and other structures. But the mix of all these is what makes it Spanish, in the same way that the mix of all our colonial architectures – from Spanish-designed stone churches to American-designed cities like Baguio -- makes us Filipino.

This is not surprising because Granada, which used to be the pre-historic home of native tribes who, along with other tribes in Southern Spain, the Romans first colonized. The Arabs came later, brought Islam, and gave the name Granada. But the Muslim city fell into the hands of Christian monarchs in 1492, at the hands of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband Ferdinand Aragon.

The plazas or squares of Philippine lowland towns, which are surrounded by the munisipio and a cathedral, are definitely a legacy from Spain, our colonizer for almost 400 years. After every few blocks here in Granada is a square, complete with trees and hedge rows of bush plants, which also serves as the city’s breathing space.

As a convention center, Granada has built big modern buildings to accommodate international meetings such as the current fourth meeting of the UN Working Group on Article 8j of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Ongoing since Monday, the meeting ends on Jan. 27. Another meeting of the UN Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources follows next Monday and ends until February 3.

But one thing unique about Granada is its restored historical buildings, which include not only the 14^th century Cathedral and the Royal Chapel where Isabel and Ferdinand’s remains lie buried. Also restored and currently being restored were centuries-old stone houses, some of which have carmenes or gardens on their roofs.

Courtesy of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity secretariat, I have just registered for a weekend free tour of the famed Alhambra, a series of palaces and gardens built under the Nazari Dynasty in the 14^th century. I anticipate that the tour can help me understand and know better the historical soul of this southern Spanish city of hospitable people, whose “hola” greetings help the weary and homesick visitor endure the mild assault of winter. (25January2006)

Interesting Times

We are under interesting times. Last September 19, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a military coup. Last September 21, the Philippines commemorated the 34^th anniversary of the declaration of martial law by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. During martial law’s commemoration, the resounding lesson and message was for us not to fall into the trap of letting martial law reign all over again.

Amidst the continuing political killings, however, activists are saying the country is under an “undeclared martial law.” Despite the sermons on respecting human rights and sanctity of life that Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo got from many leaders in Europe during her recent state visit there, the political killings continue.

Political analyst Bobby Tuazon also cited the well-placed positions of former military officers in key cabinet posts. Tuazon thus asks whether the civilian bureaucracy under Ms Arroyo is now under militarist control.

During the commemoration of martial law last 21 September, which turned into a national protest against political killings and the legitimacy of Arroyo’s government, protesters have warned that Ms Arroyo will go the way of Thaksin if she continues “charting the same path of corruption and repression taken by both Marcos and Thaksin.”

In Baguio City, various groups, including the religious sector, from Northern Luzon gathered also for “unity and solidarity” to “urge all freedom-loving Filipinos to break silence into song and transform fear into a people’s movement for justice.”

Asked about hopes for peace and unity for this benighted land, Bishop Carlito Cenzon of the Baguio-Benguet Diocese told us that it was time for this country’s leadership to learn how to deal and relate with dissenters. Dissenters, he said, include political activists, critical journalists, and protesting workers and students. Allowing the free market of ideas, even dissenting opinions and hard-hitting criticisms, is the real essence of democracy, according to the good bishop. For him, respecting political dissent is one indicator of a healthy democracy.

Democracy, the bishop said, is participation of the people and by the people in governance for the common good. Curtailing democracy, he said, is courting chaos. Democracy can work only through more participation of various stakeholders, including dissenters. “Not through gold and guns,” he said.

As in Marcos’ martial law reign and during Joseph Estrada’s administration, journalists are now threatened with libel suits. Worse, some were shot to death. The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines reports that First Gentleman Miguel Arroyo has filed 42 libel suits against journalists, many of them veterans of Marcos martial law regime who celebrated their new-found freedom after EDSA I.

We are indeed under interesting and threatening times. And history seems to be repeating itself probably because we have yet to learn our lessons well. Or maybe we have refused to learn at all.

Tales from the Dark Side

September is not just the time when, to paraphrase a song, you will see me after summer is gone. September also marks those dark years in recent Philippine history when a man from Batac, Ilocos Norte proclaimed that he was destined by Divine Providence to rule and control our society.

I was not exactly a toddler when the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on 21 September 1972. I was actually a high school student then. One thing I vividly remember about the first years of Marcos’ martial law reign was the Bagong Lipunan (New Society) hymn, which, as we sang it with gusto, would reverberate in our barrio high school prefab building.

The Bagong Lipunan hymn almost replaced the Pambansang Awit (National Anthem). We would sing it quite over and over – maybe at least six times a day. The first stanza goes: May bagong silang/ May bagong nabuhay/ Bagong bansa, bagong galaw/ Sa bagong lipunan/ Nagbabago ang lahat/ Tungo sa pag-unlad/ Kaya ating itanghal/ Bagong Lipunan. You can easily note that the common key word in almost every line is the word bago (new). The song talks about renewal – a new birth, a new nation, a new society, a new way of behaving, and new forms of action.

I was no longer fond of singing the Bagong Lipunan hymn in the early 1980s when, during a human rights public forum, the late lawyer Arthur Galace shared a story about that hymn. One day soldiers of Marcos came to a village somewhere in northern Philippines. To welcome the arriving soldiers, the villagers sang what the soldiers thought was a spoof of the Bagong Lipunan hymn. The villagers sang: May gagong silang/ May gagong nabuhay/ Gagong bansa, gagong galaw/ Sa Gagong Lipunan… The soldiers were not pleased so their commander reprimanded the village chieftain, warning him that the whole community could be arrested and thrown into military stockades. So the chieftain asked the military commander, “Gakit?”

The villagers, the commander finally learned, didn’t have a “b” in their dialect. Their “b” was “g.”

True or not, the story was one of the likes of Galace’s way of actually coping with the pains and fears during the martial law regime. Humor was actually one way by which many Filipinos coped with the excesses and abuses of that regime, which was ruled by the barrels of guns. It was a regime, which jailed and tortured critics. Many others were summarily killed while others were abducted and disappeared without a trace.

Close to home, it was during the martial law regime when politicians, accompanied by M-16 rifle-welding soldiers, practically grabbed the lands of poor villagers in Taloy, Tuba. It was the martial law regime which snuffed out the life of Macliing Dulag, a Kalinga tribal chief opposed to a series of World Bank-funded mega-dam projects along the Chico River.

Despite the pains the martial law regime brought about, Filipinos kept their sanity through their humor.

One slogan of Marcos’ dictatorship was “isang bansa, isang diwa (one nation, one thought).” But some wag spoofed this into “isang ganso, isang hiwa (one goose, one slice).”

The state-controlled airwaves during those years would also repetitiously hammer into listeners the mailed-fist regime’s slogan, “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan (Discipline is needed for the country to move forward).” But a naughty radio commentator parodied the slogan, saying, “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, bisekleta ang kailangan (We need bicycles for the country to move forward).” The radio commentator was reportedly punished. He was made to bike around an oval until he got exhausted.

And there were those agitating chants from the militants. One famous chant sang to the tune of the “London Bridge” nursery rhyme was, “US-Marcos falling down, falling down, falling down/ US-Marcos falling down, with First Lady.” This was quite famous after the 21 August 1983 assassination of Sen. Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino.

At that time all media outfits – from broadcast to print – were state-controlled. So everything the public heard or read were, as Imelda Marcos would push, only “the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

Many Filipinos would buy the newspapers but they just read the cartoons and answered the crossword puzzles. One time human rights lawyer Rene Saguisag commented that no one could believe the state-controlled newspapers because they couldn’t even be accurate with their dates.

Some Filipinos came out with alternative means to disseminate information. One alternative small paper was called Sick of the Times, which printed humor-wrapped critiques of the Marcos regime. In its first issue, it announced that it was “Volume One, Only One.” After some time, another issue appeared, and it was “Volume One, Another One.” Both issues were sold out. It was too bad I didn’t keep copies of the two volumes, which should have been a highly priced memento of that period. But keeping something like these could cost your life because Marcos’ military intelligence agents even considered as “subversive” the tapes of the Asin folk-rock band.

There were other stories, both painful and humorous, from those dark years of Marcos’ martial law dictatorship. Many of those who were born not just yesterday helped battle the dictatorship. Four regimes after the Marcoses’ downfall in February 1986, however, the country still has to get out of the rut. Given the current state of things, we note with sadness that tyranny still reigns, threatening to resurrect those tales from one of the dark sides of the country’s history, which was Marcos’ regime.

September 11 to Remember

September 11 is a significant date to remember. Some remember it with mourning and grief. But some remember it with triumph. Others remember it as the first day of the rest of their lives.

The most recent memory of a September 11 event was the series of coordinated and well-planned attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001. That Tuesday morning attack, also often referred to as 9/11, surprised the world’s lone super-power. The world’s super cop was practically caught flatfooted. The account of what happened that fateful morning is now recorded in the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia.

Ninteen men, who were said to be from al-Qaeda, hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners, with each team including a trained pilot. Two planes (United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11) crashed into the World Trade Center, also known as the Twin Towers, in New York City, one plane into each tower. Within two hours, the towering symbols of America’s economic power collapsed.

The pilot of the third team crashed a plane into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. Passengers and members of the flight crew on the fourth aircraft attempted to retake control of their plane from the hijackers. That plane crashed into a field near the town of Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Excluding the 19 hijackers, a confirmed 2,973 people died and another 24 remain listed as missing as a result of these attacks during which passenger jets, for the first time in history, were used as weapons.

The world, including the Philippines, mourned the attack because some of the casualties were Filipinos. But while others mourned, some of our brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world cheered the hijackers. For them, it was time for America, who invented the phrase “collateral damage” and who has been applying it on hapless people in some powerless Third World nations, to learn its lesson and to get some dose of the kind of medicine it has been prescribing for its own overt and covert wars.

Humiliated and outraged, America’s George W. Bush unleashed his rage on Afghanistan and, later, on Iraq. Afghanistan, which was said to be sheltering the al-Qaeda, was bombed and flattened and sent back to the Stone Age. The attack on Afghanistan exacted more “collateral damage” than the casualties of 9/11 in America. After Afghanistan, America’s Bush and Britain’s Tony Blair shifted to Iraq, which, they said, was concealing “weapons of mass destruction.” Both guys even got the UN’s approval for their war on Iraq. It turned out later, however, that the supposed weapons of mass destruction were weapons of mass deception and that the war on Iraq was about oil.

After 9/11, Bush wanted to count on his allies in the world for support on what he called the war on terror. Saying “either you are with us or against us,” he called on other leaders of the world to support that war. Among the first to respond to Mr. Bush’s call was Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who even offered the country’s ports as refueling stations for America’s warships if need be. Ms Arroyo’s support for Bush’s wars on Afghanistan and Iraq made Arroyo, as one critic put it, “Washington’s little drummer girl in Asia.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush’s war on terror didn’t make the world safer. The war has endangered not only the US, but also its allies such as Spain, UK and the Philippines. There was the series of coordinated bombings against the commuter train system of Madrid on the morning of 11 March 2004, which killed 191 people and wounded over 1700. There were other bombings in retaliation to Mr Bush’s war on terror, exacting more collateral damage in Bali, Morocco, Istanbul and elsewhere.

Bush has tried to demonize Osama bin Laden, picturing him as a creature with horns and a thorny tail. But in many sidewalk shops in Bangkok, the portrait of a handsome bin Laden with the charisma of a Che Guevarra is painted on T-shirts for sale, along with other idols of some youth such as Bob Marley and, of course, Che Guevarra. So we are in a world where one person’s demon is another person’s legendary hero. And that is how the world has become after 9/11.

September 11, however, is remembered in a different light elsewhere. For some simple folk in far northern Philippines, whose lives revolve around sowing their seeds and reaping the fruits of their toil, September 11 is a day of hope. It was September 11, 2002 when the indigenous Mabaka folk of Apayao Province, for example, stopped living literally in the dark.

On the evening of that day, the Mabaka folk for the first time switched on their electric bulbs and bade goodbye to their kerosene lamps. Thanks to a 7.5 kilowatt-microhydro power plant, which a UN agency, a development NGO, and the Catholic Church supported. And thanks specially also to the determination and perseverance of Mabaka folk themselves. They had to haul on their shoulders iron bars, cement, pipes, and other materials and equipment from the nearest road because their home community of Buneg is a seven-to-eight-hour hike from the nearest road. All members of the community – men, women, and children – all coordinated to dig canals, haul stones and sand to help build their dream of seeing the light from Thomas Alva Edison’s invention.

Each September 11 since four years ago, the Mabaka folk would gather around their community in celebration to dance their traditional tadek to the tune of gongs as their way of thanking the heavens. So while the rest of the world’s peoples mourn 9/11, the Mabaka folk celebrate September 11 as that day when they have seen the light, both literally and from a much deeper sense.