Only in the Philippines

Note: This is a reprint from an email from Jojo Lamaria. I'm not sure if Jojo penned it, but I'm reprinting it anyway here because the piece defines the country of our hopes and sorrows.


PHILIPPINES - The only place on earth where......
Every street has a basketball court.
Even doctors, lawyers and engineers are unemployed.
Doctors study to become nurses for employment abroad.
Students pay more money than they will earn afterwards.
School is considered the second home and the mall considered the
third.
Call-center employees earn more money than teachers and nurses.
Everyone has his personal ghost story and superstition.
Mountains like Makiling and Banahaw are considered holy places.
Everything can be forged.
All kinds of animals are edible.
Starbucks coffee is more expensive than gas.
Driving 4 kms. can take as much as four hours.
Flyovers bring you from the freeway to the side streets.
Crossing the street involves running for your dear life.
The personal computer is mainly used for games and Friendster.
Where colonial mentality is dishonestly denied!
Where 4 a.m. is not even considered bedtime yet.
People can pay to defy the law.
Everything and everyone is spoofed.
Where even the poverty-stricken get to wear Ralph Lauren and
Tommy Hilfiger ("peke" or fake)!
The honking of car horns is a way of life.
Being called a bum is never offensive.
Floodwaters take up more than 90 percent of the streets during
the rainy season.
Where everyone has a relative abroad who keeps them alive.
Where wearing your national colors make you baduy (poor dresser).
Where even the poverty-stricken have the latest cell phones.
(GSM-galing sa magnanakaw or great stealing maneuvers)
Where insurance does not work.
Where water can only be classified as tap and dirty - clean water is
for sale (35 pesos per gallon).
Where the government makes the people pray for miracles.
(Amen to that!)
Where University of the Philippines is where all the weird people go.
Ateneo is where all the nerds go. La Salle is where all the Chinese
go.
College of St. Benilde is where all the non-intelligent Chinese go, and
University
of Asia and the Pacific is where all the irrelevantly rich people
go.
Fast food is a diet meal.
Traffic signs are merely suggestions, not regulations.
Where being mugged is normal. It happens to everyone.
Rodents are normal house pets.
The definition of traffic is the 'non-movement' of vehicles.
Where the ! fighter planes of the 1940s are used for military
engagements,
and the new fighter planes are displayed in museums.
Where cigarettes and alcohol are a necessity, and where the lottery
is a commodity.
Where soap operas tell the realities of life and where the news
provides the drama.
Where actors make the rules and where politicians provide the
entertainment.
People can get away with stealing trillions of pesos, but not a
thousand.
Where being an hour late is still considered punctual.

("Grabe talaga 'to!" The following is plain ludicrous:) Where the squatters have more to complain (even
if they do not pay their taxes) ---- than those employed and
have their taxes automatically deducted from their salaries....

and where everyone wants to leave the country!

FILIPINO SIGNS OF WIT:
The sign in a flower shop in Diliman called Petal Attraction;
a 24-hour restaurant called Doris Day & Night;
Barber shop called: Felix The Cut;
a bakery named Bread Pitt and another, Anita Bakery;
food place selling 'maruya' (banana fritters) called Maruya
Carey.
Then, there are Christopher Plumbing;
a boutique called The Way We Wear;
a video rental shop called Leon King Video Rental;
a restaurant in the Cainta called Caintacky Fried Chicken;
a l! ocal burger restaurant called Mang Donald's;
a doughnut shop called MacDonuts;
a shop selling 'lumpia' (egg roll) in Makati called Wrap
and Roll;
and two butcher shops called Meating Place and Meatropolis.
Smart travelers can decipher what may look like baffling signs to
unaccustomed foreigners by simply sounding out the 'Taglish' (the
Philippine version of English words spelled and pronounced with a
heavy Filipino such as, at a restaurant menu in Cebu : 'We hab
sopdrink
in can an in batol' [translation: We have soft drinks in can and
in bottle].
Then, there is a sewing accessories shop called: Bids And Pises
[translation: Beads and Pieces --or-- Bits and Pieces].
There are also many signs with either badly chosen or! misspelled
words, but they are usually so entertaining that it would be a
mistake to 'correct'
them like.......

In a restaurant in Baguio City , the 'summer capital' of the
Philippines :
'Wanted: Boy Waitress';
on a highway in Pampanga:
'We Make Modern Antique Furniture;'
on the window of a photography shop in Cabanatuan :
'We Shoot You While You Wait';
and on the glass front of a cafe in Panay Avenue in Manila :
' Wanted: Waiter, Cashier, Washier.'
Some of the notices can even give a wrong impression, such as,
a shoe store in Pangasinan which has a sign saying:
'We Sell Imported Robber Shoes' (these could be the
'sneakiest' Sneakers, eh)!;
and a rental property sign in Jaro, reads:
'House For Rent, Fully Furnaced' (it must really be hot
inside)!
Occasionally, one could come across signs that are truly unique--if
not
altogether odd.
City in southern Philippines , which said:
'Adults: 1 peso; Child: 50 centavos;
Cadavers: fare subject to negotiation.'
European tourists may also be intrigued to discover two competing
shops selling hopia (a Chinese pastry) called Holland Hopia and
Poland Hopia, which are owned and operated by two local Chinese
entrepreneurs,
Mr. Ho and Mr. Po respectively--(believe it or not)!
Some folks also 'creatively' redesign English to be more efficient.
'The creative confusion between language and culture leads to more
than
just simple unintentional errors in syntax, but in the adoption of
new
words,' says reader Robert Goodfellow, who came across a sign .....
'House Fersallarend' (house for sale or rent). Why use five words
when two will do? !
According to Manila businessman, Tonyboy Ongsiako, there is so much
wit in the Philippines because '. . . we are a country where a good
sense of
humor is needed to survive. We have a 24-hour comedy show here called
the government and a huge reserve of comedians made up mostly of
politicians and bad actors.
Now I ask you where else in the world would one want to live?

Self-rule Goal Not Yet Lost on Cordillera Folk

INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON Inquirer Northern Luzon : Elusive Cordillera autonomy Self-rule goal not yet lost on the people

By Maurice Malanes Inquirer

Posted date: September 19, 2007

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – They did not beat gongs and dance the tadek on Sept. 13 when they commemorated the 21st anniversary of the first peace agreement in the country signed between an armed group and the government under then President Corazon Aquino. Instead, surviving leaders and members of the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA) and the Cordillera Bodong Administration (CBA) sat down with government officials in a “peace and development forum” and reflected on the ultimate aim of what is now known as the Mt. Data Peace Accord of 1986. That aim was regional autonomy. Although it remains a dream, it has become the cause of those who pushed for the accord. They still consider autonomy or self-rule, especially in terms of managing and using the region’s land and resources, as the path to peace and development that can check a long history of neglect. That dream was the desire of the late CPLA chief, Fr. Conrado Balweg, and of his followers when they forged the pact with Aquino. At that time, the Aquino administration, which promised “democratic space” after strongman Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in a civilian-backed military revolt in February 1986, provided an auspicious opportunity for peace making. Talking peace During the signing of the accord in Mt. Data in Bauko, Mt. Province, “we, in a way, taught the national government how to talk peace,” Gabino Ganggangan, CBA secretary general, told the well-attended forum in La Trinidad, Benguet. “Former President Fidel Ramos himself acknowledged that the government learned a lot from the Cordillera’s peace initiative,” said Ganggangan. Unlike other armed groups, the CPLA immediately made peace with the government after it was formed in 1986, when its pioneers led by Balweg broke up with comrades in the New People’s Army due to political and ideological differences. “To set the record straight, those of us who joined the NPA [during Marcos’ martial law regime] did not fight for communism. We fought mainly for our ancestral lands and resources,” Ganggangan said. He cited how under Marcos, wide swaths of forest and rice lands in Abra, Mt. Province, Kalinga and Apayao were threatened by Cellophil Resources Corp., a paper mill owned by a Marcos crony, and by the planned series of World Bank-funded dams in the Chico River. Through Marcos’ regionalization law in 1972, the provinces of what is now the Cordillera were politically divided. Benguet, Mt. Province and Abra became part of Region 1 (Ilocos) and Ifugao, Kalinga and Apayao belonged to Region 2 (Cagayan Valley). This setup, according to Ganggangan, was aimed at “dismembering” the Cordillera, which was regarded as a vital resource base for the national government. After the separation of the provinces, Marcos’ controversial development programs followed and pushed the likes of Balweg to join the NPA. The division of the Cordillera and Marcos’ “development” programs led to the “one region, one people” battle cry of Balweg and other Igorot activists. “This battle cry was the seed of what is now called Kaigorotan consciousness and the dream for regional autonomy,” said Ganggangan. The desire soon found its way into the peace agreement that Balweg signed with Aquino. To fulfill her pledge to give flesh to the accord, Aquino signed Executive Order No. 220 on July 15, 1987, which gave birth to the Cordillera Administrative Region. The CAR was established in preparation for its autonomous status. Unfortunately, the Cordillera electorate rejected two proposed autonomy laws in two plebiscites—on Jan. 30, 1990 and on March 7, 1998. But advocates, including Balweg’s followers and those in government, maintain that the rejection of the proposed laws did not mean the death of autonomy itself. Juan Ngalob, National Economic and Development Authority regional director, cited lack of information—if not misinformation—for the losses. Kabayan (Benguet) Mayor Ernesto Matuday, who joined the peace and development forum in La Trinidad, Benguet, agreed. During the past campaigns before the plebiscites, “I heard that some people came over to my town and butchered a pig but they never informed us about the benefits of regional autonomy,” said Matuday. “Another reason [for the rejection] was public distrust of some politicians who were already positioning themselves if the autonomous region was created,” said Ngalob, chair of the Regional Development Council (RDC) which is now preparing the ground for another campaign. Actually just a few steps away, autonomy can still be achieved through a “more scientific approach,” Ngalob said. He cited a tedious poll survey which the RDC would undertake to determine the reasons the electorates had voted against autonomy. Campaign materials will be prepared based on the survey results, he said. “Let us take our steps slowly but surely,” said Ngalob. “If the people of Quebec (in Canada) are still not giving up hope in their cause for independence (which began shortly after World War II), why should we easily give up our dream for autonomy after 21 years?”

Igorot documentary captures ‘battle among the clouds’

Igorot documentary captures ‘battle among the clouds’
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer
Last updated 02:56am (Mla time) 08/22/2007

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – They often tell of their trials and triumphs during World War II over cups of native coffee or tapuy (rice wine) at social gatherings. But old Igorot soldiers of World War II are not just fading away; they are also dying and their heirs worry that nobody is left to tell their stories.

Fortunately for the veterans, some of their grandchildren, anxious that such part of Benguet’s historic gem will be forgotten altogether, have thought of documenting in film their grandfathers’ stories of valor, courage and sacrifice.

The premier showing of the first documentary about Igorot war veterans was the highlight of a series of activities honoring Benguet’s World War II heroes on Aug. 15, the day the province was liberated from the Japanese Imperial Army 62 years ago.

Thanks to the initiatives of ResearchMate, a local research group, and the Outstanding Students of the Cordillera Administrative Region (Oscar) Alumni Community Inc., which produced the documentary, Aug. 15 from now on may yet be institutionalized as an important Benguet historic holiday.

Many members and associates of ResearchMate and Oscar are either children or grandchildren of World War II veterans. Their common interest in local history finally led them to embark on a film project about their forebears’ heroism even with a shoestring budget.

The 45-minute “Our Igorot Fathers, the Heroes: The Untold Story of the 66th Infantry Regiment, USAFIP-NL” chronicles how, six months after the fall of Bataan in April 1942, Igorot soldiers returned to Benguet to help build the resistance movement until the Japanese finally surrendered in 1945.

The film seeks to tell more comprehensively what used to be vignettes of the whole story of the Igorot resistance against the Japanese Imperial Army in the last war.

Turning north towards Benguet and other parts of the Cordillera was the wisest decision for the resistance movement after the fall of Bataan on April 9, 1942. For one, the rugged and forested terrain of the mountain region was ideal for guerrilla warfare.

The other reason, which the film also noted, is that Benguet and the other mountain provinces had self-sufficient sweet potato and upland rice-producing communities to support the guerrillas in hiding.

Battle trails

In making the documentary “we had to follow and visit the trails of actual battles, which still have traces of foxholes, as we interviewed surviving veterans and reenacted encounters (between the Japanese and Igorot guerrillas),” says Betty Lestino of ResearchMate.

The filmmakers visited actual battle sites in the towns of Sablan, Tuba, La Trinidad, Bokod, Kabayan, Buguias, Mankayan and Kapangan.

“In the process, we were able to collect bomb and ammunition shells and other war gear, which we plan to put in a museum,” says Lestino.

To reenact the battles, the filmmakers had to employ 35 volunteer talents from Benguet and Mt. Province, who underwent a weeklong military training under the La Trinidad police and a consultant from the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The 66th Infantry

Given the filmmakers’ meager budget, which they solicited from the Benguet provincial government and other donors, the documentary may not have the perfect simulation of war battles shown in well-funded movies.

But the documentary sufficiently shows how the 66th Infantry Regiment of the USAFIP-NL (United States Armed Forces in the Philippines-Northern Luzon) liberated Baguio City and Benguet.

Composed mostly of soldiers from Benguet and Mt. Province, the 66th Infantry had to face a well-entrenched and battle-tested enemy.

When the USAFIP-NL set its D-Day on Jan. 4, 1945, the Japanese had already established strategic defense lines in Benguet, which they had practically controlled since after the war broke in 1941.

The Japanese had controlled Naguilian and Kennon roads, the Mountain Trail (now Halsema Highway), and the gold and copper-rich Lepanto area.

But there was no stopping the 66th Infantry, which was attached to the US Sixth Army Division. The Igorot soldiers launched their assault along the Japanese’s Rosario-Damortis line of defense so they could approach Baguio City through Naguilian and Kennon roads.

Simultaneous assaults

The infantry’s simultaneous assaults against the Japanese in these two main roads finally liberated Sablan on April 10 and Tuba on April 26. All these led to more assaults that finally liberated Baguio City on April 27 and La Trinidad on May 3.

In June 1945, the USAFIP-NL mother unit ushered in the 66th Infantry to reinforce the 121st and 15th Infantry in a battle with the Japanese at Bessang Pass, Ilocos Sur.

The 66th Infantry was again assigned for combat operations in the Tagudin to Cervantes Highway at the right flank of Bessang Pass.

On June 14, after more than five months of armed clashes at and around Bessang Pass, where almost all soldiers of the 121st Infantry were killed, this “bloody and decisive battle among the clouds” (as a war chronicle described it) was finally won, “swinging open Yamashita’s western door.”

After the battles at Bessang Pass, all units of the USAFIP-NL continued their assault into the Mt. Province (at that time Mt. Province comprised what is now the provinces of the Cordillera).

For its part, the 66th Infantry tested its mettle in the villages of Comillas and Lepanto in Mankayan up to Abatan and Loo Valley in Buguias town. Here the 66th Infantry, after launching its assault on June 17, 1945, faced the regular and battle-tested 19th Division, also called the Tora Division, of the Japanese army numbering about 2,000 troops.

After 27 days of fierce fighting, Lepanto in Mankayan was finally liberated on July 20, eliminating what the film noted was “one of the best fortified enemy positions in Northern Luzon, nay, the whole Southwest Pacific area.”

From Lepanto and Mankayan, the 66th Infantry pursued the enemy to Abatan in Buguias, securing the area on July 27.

While the 66th Infantry was pursuing the remaining Japanese at Loo Valley on Aug. 15, Emperor Hirohito of Japan went on radio for the first time to order all Japanese to lay down their arms.

With this, USAFIP-NL commanding officer, Col. Russell W. Volckmann, issued a ceasefire order. Japan surrendered, and after five years of conflict Benguet was finally liberated on Aug. 15, 1945.

The documentary has helped remind Benguet’s officials to celebrate for the first time the province’s liberation anniversary.

“Benguet’s celebration of its Liberation Day serves as a reminder of the gallantry and sacrifices of our own local heroes,” says a flyer of ResearchMate and Oscar. “The trails (the 66th Infantry) left reflect the Igorots’ inherent bravery, love for family, and love for freedom.”

Singing the Blues under the Rain

After a two-month dry spell, the rains brought by two storms finally fell. The storms came shortly after Manila Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales encouraged his parish priests to lead their parishioners in praying for rain. The rest of us, particularly our Ilocano and Cagayan Valley brothers and sisters, have also been praying for rain for their parched farmlands.

As a result of typhoons Chedeng and Dodong, some lowland regions were flooded, forcing villagers to evacuate. But parts of northern Luzon, particularly Ilocandia and Cagayan Valley, reports say, need more rain so rice farmers can finally plow their fields and plant their seedlings. Other reports say water levels in our dams and reservoirs are still below minimum capacity.

This is the challenge: How can we distribute rain? How can we ensure that the torrents brought by typhoons fall on the parched rice fields of Ilocandia and Cagayan Valley rather than on flood-prone Manila and its adjoining towns? This can be a challenge for our science and technology department and science schools. And this certainly requires no emergency power, which Malacañang (the presidential palace) has claimed it needed to address the ensuing crisis brought about by the dry spell. The best that the presidential palace may yet have to do is to exercise its political will in helping mobilize the necessary human resources and funds to support initiatives addressing our water needs.

Other countries like India have proactive measures in addressing their water crisis. They, for example, have developed technologies that can harvest rain and water from fog. So during the dry months they have water to use at home and in their farms.

The idea of harvesting rain is putting to good use what Nature freely provides. My German neighbor, a retired NATO personnel married to a Filipina, can teach us a lesson or two in maximizing one of Nature’s important gifts. He has built at his yard an underground water reservoir designed to collect water from his house’s roof. Through an electric pump, the collected water is pumped into the kitchen and bathrooms. The collected rain water supplements an electric generator-run deep well water system.

Like other cities, Baguio is actually wasting plenty of rain water. Nature has so designed our land in such a way that when it rains these free universal solvent should be caught in our catch-basins or valleys and plateaus. Through our catch-basins rain water percolates underground, finding its way through our aquifers and into our springs. (An aquifer is an underground bed or layer of earth, gravel, or porous stone that yields water.)

But with so much cement covering wide swaths of our lands in Baguio not all rain water percolates underground to supply our aquifers. This is simply because almost every square inch of Baguio is cement. Every square meter of cement-covered land deprives every cubic meter of rain water from percolating into the ground. Since rain water no longer percolates into our grounds, what we have during the rainy season is water runoff that floods our drainage, creeks and City Camp Lagoon. This runoff ends up causing soil erosion and landslides, resulting in damage to human lives and property.

One challenge for the city government is to protect whatever has remained of its vital catch-basins. Maybe the city government, with the help of the environment and natural resources department and barangay (village) officials, can start identifying whatever remaining watersheds or catch-basins at the barangay level. And the barangay governments that can really protect and sustain (through proper reforestation and barring squatting) identified catch-basins and watersheds can be given some kind of incentives.

Water, not oil, is seen as the bone of conflict in the future. So it’s time to start looking for ways to put to maximum use the rains that come to us in abundance during the typhoon season. Otherwise, we’ll just end up singing the blues under the rain.

Planting Trees

One has succeeded in life, says a Chinese adage, if he has climbed mountains, written a book, planted trees and has sired a son.

Climbing mountains, however, does not necessarily and literally refer to Mounts Pulag or Everest. But of course, it’s a great bonus if we conquered even some less popular mountain peaks within our lifetime. Mountains could also refer to big obstacles in life such as dilemmas and other psychological, emotional and spiritual battles, in which we emerged victorious even if we stumbled along the way.

Writing a book has long been part of Chinese civilization. Whether they used to write on a roll of sliced bamboos or on a scroll of paper, the Chinese have long valued writing down knowledge and ancient wisdom to be passed on to future generations.

And why is planting trees included in the Chinese proverb? Trees have to be felled to produce paper for one’s book. So it’s just proper that one should replenish the trees that were used to produce his book.

Fathering a son, if not a daughter, has something to do with the continuity of the human race.

But let’s zero in on planting trees. The rains, although irregular until this writing, have come and it’s the right time to plant those seedlings. Before we know it, it’s going to be summer again and trying to plant seedlings for photo opportunities won’t do our environment any good.

Planting materials is no problem. One can ask seedlings from the environment and natural resources department.

If you wish to plant Benguet Arabica coffee, you can look around for seedlings growing randomly under the shade of mother trees in a neighbor’s yard. Some few Arabica coffee plants in our backyard, which now heave with green beans, actually came from a neighbor’s backyard in my hometown of Kibungan.

Or better yet – produce your own seedlings. Some of the fruits that you buy from the market such as jackfruit and star apple have plenty of seeds, which can easily germinate. Just put some soil even into recycled plastic bags or tetra-pack juice containers and the seed shoots are eager to break free from the good brown earth to embrace the sunshine.

If you sowed the seeds of the jackfruit you ate six months ago, you already have some seedlings to plant this rainy season. It’s a pity if these seeds would just end up at the garbage dump in Irisan. Mother Nature has designed that every tree or plant must be propagated through their seeds, if not through cuttings or tubers, in the same way that we humans continue to sire sons and daughters for the continuity of the human race.

Choking up our City

Our own perverted view of ourselves and of the world continues to choke up our city.

Take the case of my favorite neighbor. My neighbor, whom we can call Xman, has his own justification for building his junk shop beside a creek where all members of the neighborhood pass through to check their water pipes upstream.

“Look at Brookside (a village in Baguio), all houses and shops crowd both banks of the river,” Xman retorted, when reminded of a Department of Environment and Natural Resources policy, which bans any structures within six meters from a creek or river. He typifies the ‘everybody-is-doing-it-and-the-government-is-not-implementing-its-laws anyway’ disease, which has infected many of us. No wonder many of us have become incapable of making a positive dent in our community even in our own little way.

Xman could be credited for engaging in the business of buying and selling junk – from bottles, plastics and papers to scrap metal. He is actually helping recycle what would have ended up at a garbage dump, thus reducing wastes and maximizing resources.

But he built his junkshop at a place where it should not be. His junkshop is choking up the creek and has practically blocked the whole neighborhood members’ passage way to their water sources upstream. The whole neighborhood has been using the passage way for decades. But Xman and his family arrived in the neighborhood just two summers ago and started appropriating for themselves the community’s path way. Where in the world have you seen this? In our culture back home, we cannot just do this because of our culture of bain. Other cultures have their own hiya. But Xman seems to be lacking in this.

Xman began his junkshop business without first surveying where to properly put it. He and his family came to the neighborhood and made sure their presence was felt by making life inconvenient for their neighbors.

Xman also had a junked jeep, which has been permanently parked beside the public road a few meters from where he and his family now live. That space and part of his junkshop used to be where young boys in the neighborhood played basketball at a single basketball ring. The space also used to be where cab drivers would maneuver when they would bring passengers to our neighborhood. Xman appropriated all these spaces for himself.

Xman must be making good business because just recently he acquired a second-hand or third-hand pickup truck. The truck is now parked on one side of a bridge also not far from Xman’s home. When asked if he could do something so the truck wouldn’t obstruct traffic, he boastfully retorted: “Why are you complaining when you have no vehicle?”

His message is clear: those who have no vehicles in the neighborhood have no right to complain against Xman, who has appropriated again for himself another big chunk of a nearby bridge.

So how can you solve a problem like Xman? Frankly, I don’t know. You try to talk it out with him but you discover he and you have different wavelengths. His line of reasoning defies everything that is ethical. A Bayani Fernando in our village or in the city might know. Unfortunately, we don’t have a Bayani Fernando here.

Xman’s case is amusing. He typifies the person who has nary any sense of community or sensitivity to the rights of others. Parking his pickup truck and another junked jeep on a public road and expanding his junkshop beside the creek must be his way of flaunting what he has materially.

People from other provinces, including us, come to this city to seek livelihoods we cannot find back home. This city may not be the hometown of our birth so we may not have a close affinity to it. But this city is also our home. Home is where our family is. And since this city is our home, it is expected of us to help in our home’s good housekeeping.

But our experience with Xman and how some enterprising people have appropriated sidewalks for their vulcanizing or auto-mechanic shops and other businesses even at the heart of the city continue to show us that we no longer treat Baguio as our home. Apparently, we are treating the city like a lemon, which we can squeeze dry or a cow that we can milk to our hearts’ content without taking care of the lemon tree or the cow.

Such attitudinal or behavioral disease of people plus the apparent lack of political will of officials to implement laws are creating a disaster now choking up our city.

Respect for Life

In Europe one does not have to tremble in fear while crossing a pedestrian lane. Motorists there shift to low gear and immediately stop to allow pedestrians to cross even if the traffic light turns green. There’s courtesy and etiquette on the road.

It is different here. A pedestrian must turn his head twenty times to ensure that he doesn’t get run over by speeding vehicles. In fairness, however, there are some motorists who do care and who deserve our commendation.

European motorists’ respect for and courtesy towards pedestrians reflects their respect for human life.

It is thus not surprising that Europeans have long abolished the death penalty for criminals. The European Union now helps other peoples of the world who advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. One of the Philippine private organizations that advocated for the abolition of the death penalty was actually funded by the EU.

The Philippines finally abolished the death penalty, but Ms Gloria-Macapagal Arroyo was pressured to do so when she was about to visit the Pope last year. Although the death penalty has been abolished, human life remains cheap in this country. Many Filipinos still fear for their lives as they walk into valleys of extrajudicial killings. Others fear for slow, agonizing death as hunger and poverty stare them in the face.

For us who have been through martial law and for our surviving elders who have been through World War II, we all continue to ask the same question Bob Dylan had asked in the 1970s (or was it 1960s?): “How many deaths will it take ’til they know that too many people have died?” The answer, my friend, it seems, is, again as Dylan says, “blowin’ in the wind.”

While our Buddhist brothers and sisters are practicing ahimsa (non-violence, which includes respect for all life forms), we, as a dominantly Christian nation, are not also lacking in doctrines or tenets about reverence for life. We have the biblical Ten Commandments, which commands us not to kill. Even under our indigenous culture, human life is precious.

But something continues to defy our Christian and indigenous respect for life. In the dead of night, a beloved son gets shoved into a van and disappears without a trace. To her credit, the mother, although grieving inside, prays for the abductors of her son, invoking the Holy Spirit to soften their hearts so they may finally release him. Based on her instincts, the mother believes her son, who must have suffered a lot under his captors, is still alive.

If only the abductors could put their feet in the shoes of their captive and remember their own mothers, maybe they can have a better view of human life, which we have no right to snuff out.

Freedom

As a country, we are just 109 years old. We were supposed to have been the first republic in Asia on 12 June 1898. But the freedom our first revolutionary heroes fought for and won from the Spaniards, who controlled our minds and souls for more than 300 years, was short-lived. The Americans came to wrest the freedom we just won.

One tragedy in our history is that we have been turned over from one colonial master to another. The Spaniards and the Americans finally left, but we have yet to free ourselves from the enslaving impacts of colonization.

Now we are still struggling to free ourselves from the impact of being cloistered in a convent for almost four centuries and for being bombarded with Hollywood for almost a century, not to mention decades of IMF and the World Bank.

But within and among us, we have yet to free ourselves from other forms of slavery and subjugation. We have to liberate ourselves from ghosts of the past, which were never exorcised and which continue to resurrect and haunt us.

Very much around us is the ghost of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose martial law regime brought a climate of fear. Such climate still remains and no other than Supreme Court Justice Renato Puno had expressed concern and alarm over the still many unsolved political killings and other human indignities still happening in a supposed democracy.

Puno cited other ghosts – the ghosts of Garci and the ghosts of poverty. Even as Garci continues to haunt us, another Garci incarnate surnamed Bedol has come out to make us puke.

Puno was right about poverty. While top officials thump their breasts and congratulate themselves for what they claim is a booming economy, the poor continue not to feel the impact of so-called economic growth. A tank of liquefied petroleum gas remains expensive at P550. No wonder my neighbors, in search of firewood, continue to cut the branches of the trees in our neighborhood, threatening the remaining trees in our village.

There are other various forms of slavery from which we should free ourselves. We still have to outgrow and transcend our bigotry, prejudices and intolerance.

As we have said in past columns, the world is better seen from the prism of a rainbow. But many of us still view the world in black and white.

And there’s our slavery from our own materialist and consumerist ways. We think the planet is something we can squeeze like a lemon for our greed. Now the planet is getting warmer and our climate is changing, bringing disasters of catastrophic proportions.

With the way things are, we have yet to win our real freedom, individually and collectively.

Environmental Blues

We pay lip service to the environment each time we celebrate World Environment Day on June 5 or World Earth Day on April 23 in the same way that we do to health during World No-Smoking Day. And we get to see ceremonial tree-planting here and there by officials under the glare of news cameras.

In fairness, the seedlings, which officials plant -- even if done for the cameras -- may yet grow to become tall, proud trees on which birds could nest. This is if the seedlings are planted in June, the start of the rainy season. Otherwise, any ceremonial tree planting done during the dry months is just for photo opportunities.

Yes, we need to plant more trees rather than build more and more gasoline stations or concrete pine trees and arches. We need to plant all those seedlings before summer sets in again.

And we need to protect the mountainsides where we planted our seedlings. One irony in this country is that we plant seedlings on our mountainsides during the rainy season but we burn them down during summer. Worse, these tree-planting efforts may have been funded by multi-million-dollar loans from the World Bank.

Given the reported hectares upon hectares of mountainsides reforested through World Bank funding in the 1980s and 1990s, the country must be turning lush green again. But we have yet to see a forest that resurrected through these World Bank loans. In this country, there are ghost forests as there are ghost employees and ghost voters.

But if forests have become ghosts, this is not so with our garbage and the thick smog that we have to wrestle with each day. Our garbage is mounting as our air is becoming thicker and thicker with pollutants. Just expose yourself at the busy streets of Baguio’s heart and belly and your head aches after getting exposed to all those fumes from passenger jeeps and taxis.

We need not be surprised if our city’s garbage is mounting. Much of the central business district’s solid wastes come from the Styrofoam and plastic containers used by fast-food chains. That’s why I still bow my head to all the old-style restaurants, which use porcelain plates and other dishes that need the services of a dishwasher.

Much of the threats and damage to our environment and to Mother Earth as a whole actually comes from a highly consumerist and throw-away lifestyle. The biggest polluter in the world, for instance, is the US because it is the biggest consumer of fossil fuels.

Baguio, especially its central business district, has poor air quality, according to a World Bank study. This is not surprising. Given its small area, Baguio has one of the most numbers of taxis and passenger jeeps in the country.

So how do we reduce our fuel consumption? On a collective and individual level, the less fuel we consume, the better for our community and our planet. From using plastics and Styrofoam to giving out franchises to taxi and passenger jeep applicants in such a small city as Baguio, we can seek the wisdom of the sages who admonish us that “less is more.”

Less is more also means simple living and high thinking and being able to choose the more essential to the gross and vain.

Health Hazard

On national television we saw the mess and violence that accompanied the special elections in some parts of Mindanao. Supporters pulled each other’s hair as they raged in shouting matches while guns were tucked in the waists of some men. These guns didn’t include the long firearms of soldiers who seemed helpless in keeping the peace and order during the special elections there.

This lack of order and discipline, the alleged vote-shaving and vote-padding, and the reported manipulated vote for sale from some COMELEC officials there make us sick. The news reports about all these make us puke. All these raise our blood pressure, giving more reasons for other Filipinos to leave this cursed country for good.

Small wonder election commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who was assigned to supervise the special elections in Maguindanao, resigned for “health reasons.” Among the few credible persons within the Comelec, Sarmiento was sent to Maguindanao to help give credence to the special elections. But apparently he could not stomach what he personally saw and got sick in the process.

Also sick and tired of all these mess and chaos in those parts in southern Philippines, one commentator suggested that these communities be segregated from the country and be called “Command Votes Territory.” Similarly, some quarters here in the Cordillera proposed that Abra, where some towns become a Wild Wild West during elections, be deleted from the Cordillera Administrative Region.

Of course, such suggestion doesn’t help. But it shows a growing frustration over why the Comelec and other concerned authorities failed to institute a credible way of electing our officials.

With all the mess and violence accompanying elections in other parts, I began to appreciate and value the discipline and good manners and right conduct of voters in my hometown of Kibungan in Benguet. There, we would queue up and we would even let the elderly vote first. Yes, in Kibungan, we still respect our elders. This is most common in Benguet and other parts of the Cordillera.

The mess in Mindanao all the more suggests that we need to modernize our stone-age electoral system.

But even if we computerize our electoral system, we are not sure if the violence and anomalies that accompany our elections will automatically disappear. Maybe the next irregularities will be more high-tech. Maybe they won’t burn ballot boxes, but CPUs. And watch out for computer hackers.

One big step forward is to clean up the Comelec. Remove the likes of Ben Abalos and his ilk, who have made the Comelec very partisan. Putting in credible persons like Sarmiento won’t help. Like the Supreme Court, the Comelec should be beyond question.

Even if we put fresh tomatoes in a basket of rotten ones, the fresh, good ones will also rot. We put some good, credible men like Sarmiento in a ‘Hello Garci’-infested Comelec, but they, like Yoyoy Villame, would end up wailing, “O Mother, Mother I’m sick, O call the doctor very quick. Doctor, doctor shall I die? O tell my mama do not cry.”

As Sarmiento found out, working with Abalos’ Comelec is hazardous to a credible person’s health.

Winners and Losers

In life we win some, we lose some. In the last elections, more aspirants lost than those who won. There were more who lost because there simply were just too many candidates vying for few positions. This reminds us of the hordes of jobless applicants, who would queue up for a single vacant job position in a government or private outfit.

Victory in the elections is definitely as sweet and as ecstatic as the triumphant joy of a winning soccer team in the World Cup. But for those who won in the last election, victory can be genuinely sweet if they won cleanly and honestly. Otherwise, their victory is as bogus as the pirated CDs and DVDs that now litter our sidewalks.

For those who lost, don't despair. Loss or failure can still be turned into victory. Abraham Lincoln failed several times before he was finally elected president of the United States. Those who lost in the last political exercise now have three years to assess and re-examine themselves and to device strategies for the next elections. That is if they'll make politics their career or vocation. Otherwise, God may have other purposes for them, a realization that the likes of Manny Pacquiao must reflect on.

The biggest losers in the last elections are actually not the losing candidates. The biggest losers are the families of those who lost their lives while serving as members of the election board of inspectors. We mourn with the families of Leticia Ramos and Nelly Banaag, the teachers of Taysan, Batangas who were burned to death as they protected ballot boxes from the evil intent of those who sent five masked men who torched two classrooms of the Pinagbayanan Elementary School there.

Many lives were lost before, during and after the elections, which police and election officials have described as “generally peaceful.” The generally-peaceful assessment of the last elections was based on comparative figures of casualties in the 2004 and May 14 elections.

A Catholic Media Network priest-commentator noted that the shooting spree of a deranged youth that claimed 32 lives at Virginia Tech in the US was considered a “massacre” while a stampede during a Manila noontime show where scores were killed and wounded was described as a “tragedy.” Ironically, amid election-related killings that reached more than 100, a top police official and even COMELEC officials had declared that the last elections were “generally peaceful,” the priest-commentator pointed.

We are lucky in Baguio and Benguet because -- unlike in some Wild, Wild, West towns of Abra and in Mindanao -- our board of inspectors and canvassers need not cower in fear as they manually count and tally votes. Despite allegations of vote-buying, Baguio and Benguet are some of the lucky places where losing candidates would immediately reconcile with and hug their political opponents. Except Abra, the elections in the Cordillera were indeed generally peaceful.

But the total picture shows that our country is still run like hell.

The elections are the means by which ordinary citizens participate in a supposedly democratic process of choosing men and women to represent them. But the widespread reports of vote-shaving, vote-padding, and other irregularities plus the accompanying violence and terror all show that we still have a long way to go as a democracy.

We may not even qualify as a democracy because the names of persons, which we write on the ballot every election, are not always correctly counted and tallied. In some towns, a candidate may have won through the ballot, but he may not survive his political rival’s bullet.

That a few powerful people continue to make a mockery of our elections prevents us from evolving as a true democracy. It is this mockery that continues to send more and more brothers and sisters to leave the country for good. The big losers in the process are us, ordinary folk, who are forced to bear the consequences and curse of misrule and bad governance.

War is over, but not the Battle

By midnight on May 12, we expect that all will be quiet and calm – no more blaring loudspeakers with tired political jingles, no more annoying TV and radio commercials, and no more boring speeches of politicians courting our precious votes. By that time there will be no more printed campaign materials littering our streets and backyards. By that time only tweeting birds, singing crickets, croaking frogs, crowing roosters, barking dogs, pounding carpenters’ hammers and children’s laughter will reverberate in our otherwise quiet neighborhood.

We are glad the war of all the political candidates to win our hearts and minds is over. It’s time for all of us to rest from all the noise pollution of campaign promises, which didn’t only deafen our ears but also nagged us to death. It’s time no more papers are wasted on campaign materials so we can save on trees. It is better that these papers be used for our school children’s textbooks in June.

But while the war of our political candidates -- be they losers or winners -- is over, our battle as citizens will again begin. Our battle starts on the day of election. The battle starts from our choices as we enter the voting precincts. Making a choice is sometimes a tyranny in itself because we are forced to choose from among lesser evils, not from among good men and women, who are as rare as the monkey-eating eagle.

After we made our choices, we are asked to guard our ballots. We are asked to keep vigil over the counting and canvassing of our votes. So we are asked not to sleep until we are assured that our votes are counted correctly. Why? Can’t the commission mandated to count our votes master their simple arithmetic? Don’t they know their addition? They don’t have to solve algebra or trigonometry problems, do they?

There was this effort to computerize our electoral process. But the election commission screwed up the effort towards computerization. It wanted to stick to the antiquated manual counting, which is vulnerable to dagdag-bawas (vote-padding) anomalies.

We had learned about bad precedents, which continue to haunt, hound and threaten our so-called democracy. The ghost of the “hello Garci” fiasco has yet to be exorcised. So we are asked to watch out and guard against this ghost.

And granting that our votes are correctly counted, we are also asked to do another task: to monitor whether or not our elected officials fulfill the promises they made before us when they were politely but persistently courting our votes. Some of them may even have signed covenants arranged by church and civil society leaders.

For us, ordinary citizens, the war won’t be over after May 14. For us, the war continues and so we have to always gear up for battle in this country, which is still a babe in the woods in terms of democracy.

Farewell to a Village Folk's Midwife

From the early 1960s up to 1971, she was the midwife of almost every family in Poblacion, Kibungan and in neighboring villages. All of my younger siblings who were born from 1963 up to 1971 were delivered at home with the help of Flora Wachina-Lagdao, the municipal midwife my relatives and town mates would never forget for her dedicated service.

I still remember those times when we had to knock at the door of the Lagdaos even in the dead of night when my expectant mother was in labor. Like a girl scout, Auntie Flora would immediately pack her black rectangular leather bag, which contained a stethoscope and other medical gadgets, and we would hie off to our house to help my mother deliver another “visitor” (as my lolo and lola called a newly born member of the family).

To my big family and to my village mates in Poblacion, Kibungan, Auntie Flora was the midwife of every home who helped deliver a new child into the world to the delight of parents and grandparents ready to celebrate the coming of another blessing. In Kibungan, children are considered blessings from the heavens. Auntie Flora had helped ensure that these blessings would successfully arrive with their loud, shrill cries amidst the night's sound of silence.

Auntie Flora was well-loved even by former pupils of the Kibungan Elementary School. During the regular vaccination for school children, many of us would hope and pray that Auntie Flora would be the one to administer the vaccination and not the other Rural Health Unit personnel. For most of us then, the vaccination injection was less painful and less scary through Auntie Flora than through the others.

A doctor rarely visited our upland town. But we were lucky to have Auntie Flora, who, along with the late Hencio Monte, our municipal sanitary inspector, were always on call to help attend to our health and medical needs.

A native of Natonin, Mountain Province, Auntie Flora was married to my uncle, Pepito Lagdao, a public school teacher who rose to become a principal until he died of a lingering illness in the 1980s.

In 1971, Auntie Flora went to Germany where the pastures for midwives were greener. She worked and lived there until she retired, coming over to the Philippines from time to time to visit her children and relatives. Finally last April in Germany, Auntie Flora succumbed to a heart ailment. She was 70.

Auntie Flora's remains were cremated in Germany and brought home here last April 29 before the ashes were interred at the Pyramid Memorial Park in Kias, PMA, Baguio City last May 1.

From the wake until the burial, not only Auntie Flora's relatives from Natonin, but many of her late husband's relatives and town mates from Kibungan came over to pay their last respects. They came to thank the midwife who helped secure the lives of home-delivered babies in a town, which used to have only an RHU (rural health unit), which we called a dispensary.

Auntie Flora is survived by her children – Jeryl Marie, Jurgenson, Rhea Joy, and Leilani; daughter-in-law Eulina; and grandchildren – Samantha, Yvonne, Yorg, Liam and Desiree.

To the well-loved midwife who became part of our lives in Kibungan, goodbye. But we'll continue to thank you as we remember you through every shrill, loud cries of the babies of parents, who used to be the babies you helped deliver into the world.

Wedding Magic

The sitio (sub-village) of Tamog-o in the village of Poblacion in Kibungan, Benguet was the happiest place on earth last April 14, at least for the people gathered there. In Tamog-o, throngs of community people and guests from as far as Bicol and Apayao shared lunch together and established and renewed ties after a young man and a young woman exchanged “I do’s.” For the new couple, their families and for the community itself, that day was most historic.

Under a blistering summer mid-morning sun that second Saturday of April, Epifanio ‘Jhun’ Macario, Jr. and Loyda ‘Loydz’ Malanes exchanged marriage vows at the grounds of the Kibungan municipal hall. Officiated by pastors from the Free Believers in Christ Fellowship, the wedding transformed the municipal hall compound into hallowed ground as well-wishers participated in a lively praise and worship that accompanied the wedding rites.

The praise and worship were even more enlivened by local and “imported” singing talents from the mining community of Philex in Acupan, Itogon town, whose golden voices were accompanied by electric guitars and drums. Even the shy or reluctant, who were used to often drab traditional church hymns, were enticed to clap their hands as they swayed their hips to the upbeat rhythm of the praise songs.

Weddings are usually held in churches or cathedrals. And weddings become unusual when a couple decide to wed under water or inside a jungle. But Jhun and Loydz’s wedding was equally unusual in a way.

That it was held at the municipal grounds made the wedding distinct. Other couples get married under civil rites at the municipal hall with the mayor or municipal judge officiating. But a religious wedding rite at the municipal hall ground was something new for the community folk of Kibungan.

Courtesy of supporters, flowers, palm leaves, banana plants, and ferns adorned the wedding venue. Instead of a red carpet, the path through which the new couple and the whole wedding entourage walked was blanketed with green moss and ferns.

The shaded main entrance to the municipal hall was transformed into an altar where its backdrop announces in a mural the wedding rites of two young adults who finally decided to bid goodbye to single-blessedness. Besides announcing the Macario-Malanes Nuptial of Jhun and Loidz, the mural also carried “Heaven knows I treasure you in my life” and a painting of two flying white doves about to kiss each other.

For the simple Kankanaey folk of Kibungan, the transformation of the municipal hall grounds into a wedding resort, even for half a day, was a spectacular, if not dramatic, event, which they would talk about for weeks.

After the wedding rites, the community folk and guests were treated to lunch at the Malanes’ ancestral home in Tamog-o. The celebration continued after lunch as messages of best wishes and advices from elders and more golden voices and drama talents pre-occupied the whole afternoon. Some people stayed on until the night, singing and dancing under the peaceful Kibungan sky.

The wedding of Jhun and Loydz in a way had broken the monotony of rural life in a sleepy town, which becomes noisy only during electoral campaigns or during the town’s founding anniversary in November.

But most important of all is how weddings help establish ties between in-laws and next of kin. Because of the wedding, the sisters and other relatives of Jhun Macario’s mother, who hails from Bicol, came over to witness the recent historic event. Loydz’s grandfather (the uncle of her mother) and uncles and cousins from as far as Apayao (where they migrated) and other relatives also sacrificed their time to also witness the wedding and reunite with their long lost kinfolk in Kibungan.

Such is the magical impact of weddings, which also help make us closer as a people. We don’t only improve our genetic make-up as a people through inter-marriages. Through inter-marriages, we are also building bridges and so we are in a way helping promote peace and harmony in a world still divided by walls.

Political Maturity

For their supposed “political immaturity,” Filipino voters are often easily blamed for electing people who end up making public office a public mistrust. But this is tantamount to blaming the victims of a tragedy for what befell them rather than what or who caused the tragedy.

I tend to agree with a friend’s assertion that most Filipino voters today have reached a certain level of political maturity. The problem, my friend says, is that even if they vote with their conscience and vote for principled candidates, voters are not assured if their votes get counted correctly.

This brings us to an uneasy feeling once some administration national candidates who, even if they are faring poorly in poll surveys, boast of making it on election day because of what they claim as the comparative edge of government machinery.

With the “hello Garci” scandal still fresh in the public memory, we couldn’t help but suspect that the machinery that some government bets boast about also refers to machinery, which can turn around what voters actually write on their ballots.

Machinery also includes money. And there’s no doubt, government has the advantage of disbursing funds to aid or influence election results. The “fertilizer scam,” for example, is also still fresh in the public memory, at least for those who don’t have amnesia. The “fertilizer funds” disbursed during the 2004 presidential campaigns became scandalous and questionable after it was found out that congress representatives in non-agricultural districts were also given millions in fertilizer funds.

Additional pork barrel funds are often released and increase in government workers’ pay is often announced during the electoral campaigns. These are part of government machinery.

This early, meanwhile, no less than Department of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales pledged to give barangay (village) captains in Ilo-ilo P10,000 each if they give a clean sweep for the administration’s 12 senatorial bets. Even if the P10,000 for each barangay captain would come from Gonzales’ own pocket, the controversial promise from Gonzales tells much about how government is using its machinery of which Gonzales’ office is a part.

Since Gonzales’ offer has already been out in the open, our hope is that the barangay captains won’t play Judas. Let’s hope these barangay captains and the electorate of Ilo-ilo won’t be blinded by a few pieces of silver.

So I often cringe each time the electorate, including you and me, are often blamed for our “political immaturity” in electing candidates who end up squeezing us like lemons.

After the Marcoses were ousted in February 1986, one of our aspirations was that the electoral institution in this country would unfold as one of the true pillars of democracy. But election commissioners, with backing from some top guns, screwed up the public clamor to computerize our elections. The commission prefers our antiquated election system, which is vulnerable to irregularities such as vote-padding.

So are Filipino voters immature? Tell that to the marines.

Prayers and Topping the Bar

Lawyers swear the bar is the most difficult, if not the most torturous, exam on earth. The torture starts during the preparation until the actual exams. The Latin words that they have to memorize and the volumes of books they have to read is torture enough. Reading is important for everybody who values continuing education. “Reading,” Francis Bacon says, “maketh a man.” But reading volumes of books to the point that one deprives himself of required sleep, leisure, and other activities for mind-body-and-soul balance is torture indeed.

The torture continues during the exams staggered on four Sundays. After the exams, the examinees cannot just sit back and relax. Waiting for the results, which get released after five to six months, is part of the agony. I know somebody who secluded himself in his wife’s village while waiting for the bar results. He showed up in town only when the result of the bar came out and he was one of those who passed.

Under this torturous situation, the best weapon, as new bar topnotcher Noel Neil Malimban of the University of the Cordilleras proved, was prayer. Having reviewed all by himself in a one-room space, Malimban would have been likened to a prisoner in solitary confinement. But he was not alone in that single room. Besides his law books, he had company from an infinite resource, which he tapped through prayers.

Prayers and meditation have long been part of the lives of sages, spiritual teachers and practitioners of all various faiths. One spiritual teacher says prayers and meditation help cleanse the mind from all the confusion and illusion of this material world in the same way that water and soap can cleanse one’s physical body from dirt. So a prayerful and meditative person, the spiritual teacher says, can think clearly and can say what he means and means what he says. It thus follows that if one thinks clearly, one can act accordingly.

After using some brain wave devices on Buddhist monks, scientists recently have conceded that prayers and meditations have a positive impact on a person’s mental and physical well-being. Of course, the sages and spiritual teachers have long known this fact besides other phenomena, which scientists have not yet discovered through their gadgets.

In resorting to prayers, Malimban had actually tapped an infinite resource, which actually helped him through the torturous road toward becoming a bar topnotcher. Prayers and meditation must have helped cleanse the dust from Malimban’s mind so he could think clearly as he remembered clearly what his law professors at the University of the Cordillera had taught him.

It is thus not surprising that when he was taking the bar exams, Malimban felt it was lawyer Reynaldo Agranzamendez, UC acting president and law dean, who formulated the questions in the exams. All the tips from Agranzamendez and other law professors came into play when Malimban was reviewing for and taking the bar exams. Malimban clearly remembered the advice that he must be straight to the point and concise in his answers to the questions.

There was no doubt that Malimban studied hard and had an excellent discipline as he was also a working student. He definitely needed a lot of stamina and multi-vitamins on which, he said, he probably overdosed. But he also prayed hard. This must be his secret, and his topping the bar exams was a good testimony on the strength and power of prayers.

Water and Life

When we moved to our new place in a sub-village of Baguio City three years ago, we had no access to any piped water. But all our neighbors had their water tapped from a nearby spring and creek and conveyed to their houses through PVC pipes. They told us not to worry and that we could also look for some spring to access about 300 to 500 meters away from where we live.

Tired of fetching water from a neighbor, I ushered in my three brothers from the neighboring town of La Trinidad to help me explore a spring to which we could connect our own PVC pipe. My three brothers and I distributed ourselves over a Y-shaped creek above our sub-village. And presto, just before noon one Saturday more than three years ago, one of my brothers discovered a small spring, which other neighbors had ignored.

As we dug a well around the spring, we found a couple of vigilant mountain crabs, which – with their claws ready -- declared to us that they were the original and rightful inhabitants of that small water system. The presence of the dominantly orange-red creatures also made us understand that the spring was a living one, part of an oasis of life.

With stones, we built a terrace around the small well, which now catches the spring oozing from the grass- and reed-covered hill where an alnus tree and an endemic water-bearing tree proudly stand. From the well, we laid out a five-meter half-inch-diameter PVC pipe connected to a more than a cubic-meter rubberized plastic drum. Just a few inches lower in elevation than the water level of the well around the spring, this drum now serves as our main tank from which a 250-meter half-inch-diameter PVC pipe conveys water right into our yard.

That spring had provided our water needs for the last more than three years. On dry months starting February to May, however, the spring would shrink. So I’ve to readjust the flow of water from the well to the plastic drum tank. Through trial and error, I discovered that the rate of water flow to the tank must be equivalent with the rate of water coming out from the foothill spring.

How do I adjust the rate of water flow? During the rainy season, I can lower the end of the pipe connected to the tank. But during summer I’ve to elevate the other end of the pipe so even if the water flowing is as small as a rat’s tail, we are still assured that water continues to flow into the tank.

But something happened just this February. A neighbor dug a well just two feet away from my own well. Since the new well my neighbor dug was lower, the water supplying my well decreased. I could have complained but I just shrugged my shoulders, fully understanding that my neighbor was also in dire need of water. In other communities, this could have led to a fist fight or even a tribal war.

In our sub-village, we feel blessed for having free water. But as our neighborhood is growing, it would not be advisable for every new neighbor to dig his own well. The wisest thing is to have one big reservoir and equally distribute the water to all households. But this needs more logistics and members of the neighborhood have to be organized. This can be a prospective community project in coordination with the Barangay (village) captain and with some government or donor agency.

In the meantime my family and I still try to conserve water as much as possible. We close our faucet when our drum is full. It is better that what overflows is the tank that catches water from the spring because what overflows also goes to the creek where farmers have tapped their irrigation source. The water used to wash dishes can be used to water the plants and the water used for laundry can be used to flush the toilet.

While others welcome summer, I dread it because this is a time of uncertainty for our water source. But thanks to a recent cold front, it has rained recently for three days, including during the World Day of Water on March 22; thus reinforcing our spring, our source of living water, and one of our intimate links to our dear Mother Earth.

Power Shift and Big If

The landed and other top economic elites, many of them in extractive industries, have lorded it over our electoral politics since after World War II. Economic wealth for a long time has been the twin of political power in this country.

Although we have seen in recent years the rise of relatively poor politicians like former Senator Juan Flavier and Sen. Joker Arroyo (now seeking reelection), political power in this country remains largely in the hands of economic elites.

So I don’t mind really if movie stars, some of whom had started small before reaching stardom, are now entering electoral politics. They could use their popularity to invade a realm, which used to be monopolized by the traditional political big guns.

By sincerely putting to heart the interests of their thousands of fans, who include the ordinary masses, these movie stars seeking electoral positions may yet make a difference. As more movie and television personalities enter politics, political power in this country may yet shift from the landed and other wealthy elites to the hands of movie and television stars-turned-politicians.

But movie stars entering politics may have to educate themselves about the sanctity of a public office as a public trust. Former president Joseph Estrada had proved that movie stardom could pave one’s way to the top electoral position. Something, however, went wrong along the way, which had something to do with violating the sanctity of a public office. He may have started with sincere, good intentions. But he became infected with the usual politician’s disease in which absolute power could absolutely corrupt even the best of intentions.

So here’s an unsolicited advice to Goma, Cesar Montano and other movie idols entering politics: learn legislation and governance not from the usual traditional politicians, but from other models. Japanese politicians may yet offer some tips. Because the values of honor, accountability and integrity are part of Japanese political behavior, some Japanese politicians would rather commit hara-kiri if they could not stomach a wrongdoing they committed.

Not in the Philippines. Many Filipino politicians are known, if not perceived, as the most thick-skinned species in the animal kingdom. They can go around town promising the moon and the stars when they are courting for our votes but continue rob us dry when they get elected.

With the proper moral formation coupled with sufficient capacity-building in governance, movie stars turned politicians, as they do on screen, may yet help rescue the suffering and downtrodden from the villains who, with forked tongues, have long deceived us.

And if the new breed of politicians from the movie world really put the general interests of their lowly fans above theirs, the process of a shift of political power from the usual traditional political dynasties to this new breed may have begun. Be cautioned, however, that this is still a BIG IF.

Making Decisions

Two major sections of our population have to make major decisions at this point. They are our graduating high school students and our voting population.

Many graduating high school students already may have made up their minds in choosing what to pursue in college. They may have based their choices on aptitude tests or college entrance examinations they have already taken. Or they may have based their choices on what they, as children, have long dreamed of doing during the rest of their lives. But there still are many who have yet to decide on what to pursue.

Under our current situation, one major factor that influences the choice of young people is the global job market. The growing job market for nurses, for example, in recent years has led to the rise in enrolment of those taking up nursing. Like herds of animals lured by the scent of greener grazing land, hordes of our young people have been enrolling in nursing schools, prompting many colleges and universities to open up new departments for nursing students. This herd does not include physicians, lawyers, and other professionals who had enrolled and continue to enroll in nursing schools.

I don’t know if the job market should be the overlying force to help young people choose what to pursue. But given our current situation in which young people are left with few choices, choosing a college course that will most likely enable them to land a job in the future is probably the most practical to consider.

Ideally, young people should choose a career path in which they can fully develop their potentials as total persons, and not simply as an employee or OFW. One, for example, can opt to become a farmer who at the same time can teach others about farm and business management and who can promote his products through his own website and who, on the side, can sing songs he himself composed to the accompaniment of a violin or bamboo instrument.

To enable young people to be able to have wider choices may yet need a rethinking of our educational system. For a long time, our educational system has been geared towards producing employees and workers. We have yet to have schools that train young people to become employers and business tycoons. And most of those who get to become business magnates did not learn the ropes of managing businesses in school. Many of these successful entrepreneurs were those who learned what it meant to “get out of the box.”

We had cited before Narda Capuyan who would jokingly say she learned her trade from the non-existent University of Besao. Another is Jack Dulnuan, a successful businessman, whose secrets of success didn’t come from a university but from experience and sheer hard work.

Amidst the limited choices and opportunities we have for our young people in this country of our hopes and dreams, we now have politicians bombarding us with advertised promises to help fulfill our dreams once they get elected. This brings us to another major decision, which we have to make through our ballots on May 14.

In choosing whom to vote for in May, Adrian Cristobal’s advice that the biblical Ten Commandments should be the practical guide for voters may yet work. The first commandment, for example, forbids idolatry. But even candidates who claim to be “pro-God” are relying on the idolatry of machinery and money to win the elections. So we must be wary of those who make machinery and money their idols as they court us for our votes.

The other commandments that forbid killing, stealing, coveting your neighbor’s wife and goods can also guide us in choosing whom to vote for. Killing does not only mean extra-judicially snuffing out lives through the barrels of guns. Killing is also making life harder for some people so much so that they die from the slow death of poverty or from the murderous threats of environmental destruction as a result of legal or illegal logging or other destructive extractive industries. The impact of these destructive industries is magnified during the typhoon season when flashfloods and mudflows bury whole communities. And the culprits conveniently blame nature for the tragedies in which they actually have blood in their hands.

So beware of those who promise to fulfill our dreams. The multi-million funds for a sweet-talking politician’s campaign may have come not from blood diamonds (because obviously diamonds are found in abundance only in Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa), but from blood logs and blood gold.

Another challenge, however, to our decision-making process as citizens is that there actually are a few candidates to choose from. If the Ten Commandments are strictly followed as guide for voters, there might be no one to choose at all. So we have to settle for the choosing-the-lesser-evil formula.

But let’s hope whoever we choose to write on our ballot gets counted correctly by the election commission, which, upon the manipulation of some top guns, has become notorious for not knowing how to count.

21 Years Ago

Twenty one years ago this Sunday, Filipinos became a proud race after they ousted a dictator who ruled the country for more than 20 years, 14 years of which were under martial law.

Ruled by the barrels of guns, Filipinos could only say yes and amen to the dictates of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his generals. Those who dared to say no and defied him, including the late Senators Benigno Aquino and Jose Diokno and many others who included journalists, were thrown into cold prison cells. Worse, many were also tortured and summarily killed, if not made to disappear without a trace. Those were the days when we first heard of extrajudicial killing, which the military termed as “salvaging.”

The critical situation at that time prompted many youths to become activists. Some chose the extreme – they went underground and took up arms.

When Marcos was finally ousted through what has become popularly known as the EDSA Revolution (which others say was actually a people-backed military revolt), many Filipinos thought the country would become a paradise regained. We all were upbeat about our country and its future as we were able to elect our officials and as the press regained its freedom.

But after four presidents took turns to govern us, the ghost of martial law apparently continues to haunt and hound us. We thought extrajudicial killings, for example, were things inherent only under a military regime. But these continue up to now when we are supposed to be more concerned about democracy, responsible governance, and civil liberties.

The European Union, international human rights groups and church organizations, and the UN are now alarmed about how human life has become cheap in this country as activists, journalists, church workers and judges are being eliminated from the face of the earth. The Philippines now ranks second to Iraq, as the most dangerous place for journalists. Just recently, a community editor from southern Philippines was shot to death while taking his early morning coffee. He was the 50^th journalists to be killed since 2001.

Charges of libel also continue to send chills in the spines of many journalists, who dared to expose what the public needed to know about the shenanigans and excesses of some top guns in government.

That extrajudicial killings and threats to journalists continue under a supposed democracy only shows that the country, to paraphrase UN human rights special rapporteur Philip Alston, still has a very long way to go.

So instead of celebrating the return of democracy through that People Power Revolution in 1986, we now have confused and mixed feelings. The difficult and dangerous situation we are in prompts us to extend our mourning and grieving, which we thought ended in February 1986. We still have a very long way to go, indeed.