Back Issue (April 2005)

April Showers

Maurice Malanes

It has started drizzling. In some parts it actually rained. Amid the dust of summer, the showers of April signal the coming of the rains in May when we expect our meadows to be green again.

For us in rural farming communities, the showers of April and the rains in May signify hope and rebirth. The regular rains can enable us to prepare again the fields and nem-a (upland swidden) and sow our corn and peanut seeds and other grains and legumes and our betang or camote cuttings.

By August, we can already harvest what we have sown in May. By then, we have food on our table to keep us warm and strong as we wrestle with the storms and typhoons of August.

For us in the farming village where we have to live by the sweat of our brows, such cycle of the changing seasons has taught us early on in life how to prepare for the months ahead. The cycle of the changing seasons has thus tempered our spirits so we can adopt ourselves to changing situations.

And that’s the beauty of the seasons. The seasons, whether they are two or four, remind us that there’s a time for everything – a time to sow and reap, to rejoice and mourn, to die and to be born.

The seasons are the actual metaphors of our lives. That’s why the sages teach us to learn how to weather the storms of our lives. When we are lonely or when we face some trials, we are also taught not to despair because behind the stormy or cloudy skies is a smiling sun. For other people who experience the blues of winter, they always have spring to look forward to.

The seasons have also taught us that life is not 100 percent summer. And yes, life is not 100 percent picnic at Boracay or at Hundred Islands. The ants and bees know this. This is why ants store as much food and bees gather as much nectar during summer so they have something to sustain them during the rainy days.

For our officials, bureaucrats and technocrats, the seasons must be a good guide in governance. The dry season, which starts in December and ends in April, for example, is the best time to repair and build roads and school buildings and to unclog canals and drainage systems.

But government in this country apparently is not sensitive of the seasons in the same way that it is usually insensitive to the needs of citizens, whose taxes sustain the national coffers. Those who allocate budget for public works do so when the rains come. This makes repair works much more complicated and costlier. Contractors are happy for this, but not for us, the tax-paying citizens of this republic.

Although we are (to borrow the phrase of one commentator) a country of wonderful people, we are still run by an awful government. Yet, we like to believe that for starters our government can become as wonderful as the citizens of this Pearl of the Orient if those involved in governance learn at least to read the seasons. (15 April 2005, Cordillera Today)