Inquirer Northern Luzon
Music fest helps heal Baguio folk
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:10:00 12/08/2009
Filed Under: Disasters (general), Music, Flood
TROPICAL depression Pepeng’s howling winds and heavy downpour had drowned the hymns and chants of the Catholic faithful at the Baguio Cathedral in October. But during starry and moon-lit nights recently, the cathedral reverberated with both sacred and secular classical music.
Classics from Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Rachmaninoff, Christmas hymns, the Hallelujah Chorus and Filipino lullabies and serenades echoed from the Cathedral’s altar during four nights since Nov. 24.
These renditions from world acclaimed performers were treats from the Second Baguio Cathedral International Music Festival, which, organizers say, sought to help heal the typhoon-battered spirits of Baguio residents.
“Music heals and inspires,” says creative director John Glenn Gaerlan. “After the devastation that the typhoons have brought to our city and other places, there is no better way to thank the Lord than through music.”
The festival opened on Nov. 24 with an evening of tenor renditions from Abdul Candao, who had performed in Austria, Canada and Metro Manila. His songs from C. Gluck, V. Bellini, R. Strauss, F. Lehar and the Philippines’ Ernani Cuenco were accompanied by internationally renowned pianist, Mary Anne Espina.
Baguio residents, during the second night, were treated with two concerts. The first was an organ music concert by composer Alejandro Consolacion II, who performed masterpieces from Johann Sebastian Bach, Cesar Franck, Eugene Gigout and Jehan Alain. He also played some of his compositions.
As an organist, Consolacion was invited to perform for Queen Sofia of Spain when she visited Manila in 2001. He regularly performs as a pianist, organist, accompanist and conductor for small and large crowds here and abroad.
Reliving the Renaissance
The second was a chorale concert led by choir master Jose Soliman Jr. The concert featured the Maryknoll Sanctuary Choir, Baguio City National High School Young Minstrels and members of the Festival Choir.
They performed the six-voice Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass), one of the most popular Masses during the Renaissance period.
When they sang Handel’s Coronation Anthems, the Baguio Cathedral audience retraced the celebratory and festive mood during the 1727 coronation in England of King George II and Queen Caroline.
Before he died in 1727, King George I commissioned George Frederic Handel, who was just naturalized as a British citizen, to write the music for the coronation later that year. Handel came out with four hymns, based on texts of the Bible’s Old Testament: Zadok the Priest, Let Thy Hand be Strengthened, The King Shall Rejoice and My Heart is Inditing.
As the resident performing group of the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary, the Maryknoll choir is known for performing “the rhythm and songs of the earth.”
Under the baton of conductor Rosalinda Jamorabon, the Young Minstrels of the Baguio City National High School has been listed in the hall of fame in the Baguio Country Club Choral Competitions and the Aweng Paskuwa Annual Christmas Competitions.
The high school choir was also awarded third place in 2005 during the National Competitions for Young Artists at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
A night of romance
The third night was a special treat of pure violin and piano. Classical music fan Cecile Afable, a local weekly editor, was waxing romantic when violinist Gina Medina and pianist Espina opened the night with Beethoven’s Romance in F Major.
The duo also performed pieces by Fritz Kreisler and Johannes Brahms. They also did Philippine Serenade by Angel Peña, “May Lihim ang Gabi (The Night Has Secrets)” by Cuenco and the folk song, “Paruparong Bukid.”
The fourth night of the music festival was held at the University of Baguio gymnasium, where the Bungkos Palay Performing Arts Foundation of the Science City of Muñoz (Nueva Ecija) presented the Filipino dance “tinikling,” among others.
In 2008, Bungkos Palay performed during Singapore’s annual Chingay Parade of Dreams, which attracted 200,000 spectators.
Big bonus
The well-attended finale of the music festival at the Baguio Cathedral on Nov. 28 was a big bonus. It opened with piano renditions by Baguio-born, and now United States-based, Augusto Cuesta from masterpieces of Rachmaninoff, known for his Romantic-era piano concerts.
Cuesta’s renditions were accompanied by the Manila Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jerome Hoberman, an accomplished and internationally acclaimed American music director.
Cuesta’s numbers were followed by treats from the Manila Symphony Orchestra, which performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, op 125, Choral.
The later part of Beethoven’s ninth symphony integrated the Maryknoll Sanctuary Choir and the UB Voices, filling the cathedral with their rendition of “Ode to Joy,” whose familiar “joyful, joyful we adore Thee …” lyrics kept the audience awake at past 10 p.m. that Saturday.
Reinforcing the two choirs were three world renowned soloists—Janet Sabas Aracama, Camille Lopez Molina and Noel Azcona.
Drawn together by music
Baguio Bishop Carlito Cenzon, Fr. Benedict Castañeda of the Baguio Cathedral and Gaerlan conceptualized the festival in 2006.
Drawn together for their love of music, the three then began to talk about staging a festival for secular and sacred music. This materialized in 2008 during which they invited internationally acclaimed artists and local performers.
Through the first music festival in December 2008, the three also sought to raise funds for the repair of the cathedral’s pipe organ. The organ was first brought to Baguio in the early 1900s by Fr. Raphael Desmedt, a Belgian missionary.
The pipe organ has yet to be fully repaired so part of the proceeds from this year’s music festival will go to this project. The rest will go to funds to help survivors of the recent typhoon and landslides that hit the city.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Baguio City faces garbage challenge
INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : Baguio City faces garbage challenge
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: November 25, 2009
WHEN MONEYSENSE, an independent online publication, published in April last year the “best places to live in the Philippines,” Baguio City, despite its summer capital fame, was not in the top 10. It ranked 16th.
The publication listed Bacolod City as the best place to live in the country, followed by Makati, Davao, Marikina, Iloilo, Las Piñas, Pasig, San Fernando (La Union), Mandaluyong and Quezon City.
MoneySense based its ranking mainly on the Philippine Cities Competitiveness Ranking Project (PCCRP) of the Asian Institute of Management. The ranking considered three components: standard of living, quality of life and cost of living.
Of the three components, quality of life covered, among other things, “environment” and this included “clean air and clean streets.”
A review of the solid waste management systems of Bacolod and other top-ranking cities is revealing. They all have their waste management systems in place.
Baguio residents, on the other hand, have to bear with tons of garbage, much of which have been left uncollected for several weeks now.
The crisis began to be felt in October 2007 when officials realized that the open dump in Barangay Irisan was already full and that the city had to look for long-term measures, such as building an engineered sanitary landfill.
Baguio residents would envy how wastes are managed in Bacolod. The department of public service (DPS) there collects garbage thrice daily—at noon, 7 p.m. and 2 a.m.
A resident with uncollected trash can still call the DPS office and it immediately responds in minutes.
The same is true in Marikina, one of the most frequented venues for educational trips of local governments wanting to learn about solid waste management.
Although still reeling from the heaps of wastes from September’s Tropical Storm “Ondoy,” Marikina’s garbage collection has not been disrupted.
In 2002, a government performance audit team gave Marikina flying colors for its solid waste collection system.
It said the city had “well-defined systems and procedures” in managing its wastes. This was strengthened by “employing enforcers to implement ordinances on the maintenance of physical cleanliness and sanitation, instilling discipline and compelling community participation.”
Not far from Baguio is San Fernando in La Union, which inaugurated in December 2008 a P168-million landfill after starting construction in 2005.
The World Bank, which funded the project, said the 10.7-hectare facility was a model for small landfills.
Institutionalization
Bacolod, Marikina and San Fernando all have ordinances to support Republic Act No. 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000). But they all have graduated from the information and education campaign (IEC) stage and have since buckled down to work to implement their ordinances and policies on waste management.
Their programs have become institutionalized as part of the communities’ way of life.
Every Monday and Thursday in Marikina, green-painted trucks collect biodegradable wastes, which households must properly label and tie with something green.
Every Wednesday, pink-colored trucks also collect nonbiodegradables, which households must tie with something pink. Improperly labeled wastes won’t be collected.
Biodegradable wastes are composted for fertilizer. The nonbiodegradables are taken to a materials recovery facility (MRF) for segregation. Plastics and bottles are taken to a “buy-back center.”
Policy implementation is such a serious business that the city government allocates the funds and resources to make policies work.
Marikina is also so concerned about its solid waste management efficiency that it has installed a mechanism by which residents can give feedback, complaints and requests.
For its part, San Fernando uses different and labeled waste segregation receptacles for different types of garbage.
It has well-established village-based MRFs, where wastes are segregated. One of these is in Lingsat village, which was given a national award for its efficient solid waste management in 2004.
Schools have also established solid waste management systems.
As continuing support to the villages, the city government regularly trains village officials on Waste Analysis and Characterization Survey (WACS) to help local officials determine the total weight and volume of waste disposed of daily. Data from the survey guide local officials in making and implementing policies.
The city government continues to train village officials on how to make ordinances and solid waste plans, and how to compute garbage fees, organize management teams, and monitor and evaluate projects and programs on wastes.
In contrast, Baguio Councilor Fred Bagbagen said the council had filed resolutions directing the city government to focus on developing an ecological landfill and MRFs. None of these, he said, took off.
Hope for Baguio
Amid public ire and warnings from the health department about possible diseases from uncollected garbage, Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr. recently ordered the collection of garbage in villages.
The garbage would be disposed of at the already full Irisan dump. From there, it will be hauled to a landfill in Capas, Tarlac, after the city council allotted P25 million for this.
Bautista said he would invoke the city’s right over the whole 7.5 hectares occupied by the dump, noting that 2.5 hectares of it were being occupied by squatters.
If reclaimed, he said the dump could still accommodate the city’s garbage, estimated at 300 tons daily, while long-term measures are being sought.
But a more strategic solution may yet lie in neighboring Sablan town, also in Benguet.
At least 11 owners have offered to sell a 228,231-square-meter (22.82-hectare) lot for Baguio’s engineered sanitary landfill. The proposed landfill can be used for 50 to 60 years.
“With proper push and determination, negotiation and all the nitty-gritty for the proposed landfill can be done in a month,” said Julius Mandapat, a civil engineer who helped build engineered sanitary landfills, dikes, parks and an airport in the United States in the 1980s.
Mandapat said solid waste management must be part of short-term and strategic urban planning.
“The challenge is how to make urban planning respond to the needs of a growing city and this needs a mix of technical expertise and political will,” he said.
Inquirer Northern Luzon : Baguio City faces garbage challenge
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: November 25, 2009
WHEN MONEYSENSE, an independent online publication, published in April last year the “best places to live in the Philippines,” Baguio City, despite its summer capital fame, was not in the top 10. It ranked 16th.
The publication listed Bacolod City as the best place to live in the country, followed by Makati, Davao, Marikina, Iloilo, Las Piñas, Pasig, San Fernando (La Union), Mandaluyong and Quezon City.
MoneySense based its ranking mainly on the Philippine Cities Competitiveness Ranking Project (PCCRP) of the Asian Institute of Management. The ranking considered three components: standard of living, quality of life and cost of living.
Of the three components, quality of life covered, among other things, “environment” and this included “clean air and clean streets.”
A review of the solid waste management systems of Bacolod and other top-ranking cities is revealing. They all have their waste management systems in place.
Baguio residents, on the other hand, have to bear with tons of garbage, much of which have been left uncollected for several weeks now.
The crisis began to be felt in October 2007 when officials realized that the open dump in Barangay Irisan was already full and that the city had to look for long-term measures, such as building an engineered sanitary landfill.
Baguio residents would envy how wastes are managed in Bacolod. The department of public service (DPS) there collects garbage thrice daily—at noon, 7 p.m. and 2 a.m.
A resident with uncollected trash can still call the DPS office and it immediately responds in minutes.
The same is true in Marikina, one of the most frequented venues for educational trips of local governments wanting to learn about solid waste management.
Although still reeling from the heaps of wastes from September’s Tropical Storm “Ondoy,” Marikina’s garbage collection has not been disrupted.
In 2002, a government performance audit team gave Marikina flying colors for its solid waste collection system.
It said the city had “well-defined systems and procedures” in managing its wastes. This was strengthened by “employing enforcers to implement ordinances on the maintenance of physical cleanliness and sanitation, instilling discipline and compelling community participation.”
Not far from Baguio is San Fernando in La Union, which inaugurated in December 2008 a P168-million landfill after starting construction in 2005.
The World Bank, which funded the project, said the 10.7-hectare facility was a model for small landfills.
Institutionalization
Bacolod, Marikina and San Fernando all have ordinances to support Republic Act No. 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000). But they all have graduated from the information and education campaign (IEC) stage and have since buckled down to work to implement their ordinances and policies on waste management.
Their programs have become institutionalized as part of the communities’ way of life.
Every Monday and Thursday in Marikina, green-painted trucks collect biodegradable wastes, which households must properly label and tie with something green.
Every Wednesday, pink-colored trucks also collect nonbiodegradables, which households must tie with something pink. Improperly labeled wastes won’t be collected.
Biodegradable wastes are composted for fertilizer. The nonbiodegradables are taken to a materials recovery facility (MRF) for segregation. Plastics and bottles are taken to a “buy-back center.”
Policy implementation is such a serious business that the city government allocates the funds and resources to make policies work.
Marikina is also so concerned about its solid waste management efficiency that it has installed a mechanism by which residents can give feedback, complaints and requests.
For its part, San Fernando uses different and labeled waste segregation receptacles for different types of garbage.
It has well-established village-based MRFs, where wastes are segregated. One of these is in Lingsat village, which was given a national award for its efficient solid waste management in 2004.
Schools have also established solid waste management systems.
As continuing support to the villages, the city government regularly trains village officials on Waste Analysis and Characterization Survey (WACS) to help local officials determine the total weight and volume of waste disposed of daily. Data from the survey guide local officials in making and implementing policies.
The city government continues to train village officials on how to make ordinances and solid waste plans, and how to compute garbage fees, organize management teams, and monitor and evaluate projects and programs on wastes.
In contrast, Baguio Councilor Fred Bagbagen said the council had filed resolutions directing the city government to focus on developing an ecological landfill and MRFs. None of these, he said, took off.
Hope for Baguio
Amid public ire and warnings from the health department about possible diseases from uncollected garbage, Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr. recently ordered the collection of garbage in villages.
The garbage would be disposed of at the already full Irisan dump. From there, it will be hauled to a landfill in Capas, Tarlac, after the city council allotted P25 million for this.
Bautista said he would invoke the city’s right over the whole 7.5 hectares occupied by the dump, noting that 2.5 hectares of it were being occupied by squatters.
If reclaimed, he said the dump could still accommodate the city’s garbage, estimated at 300 tons daily, while long-term measures are being sought.
But a more strategic solution may yet lie in neighboring Sablan town, also in Benguet.
At least 11 owners have offered to sell a 228,231-square-meter (22.82-hectare) lot for Baguio’s engineered sanitary landfill. The proposed landfill can be used for 50 to 60 years.
“With proper push and determination, negotiation and all the nitty-gritty for the proposed landfill can be done in a month,” said Julius Mandapat, a civil engineer who helped build engineered sanitary landfills, dikes, parks and an airport in the United States in the 1980s.
Mandapat said solid waste management must be part of short-term and strategic urban planning.
“The challenge is how to make urban planning respond to the needs of a growing city and this needs a mix of technical expertise and political will,” he said.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
‘Pepeng’ draws out best in Igorot culture
‘Pepeng’ draws out best in Igorot culture
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: October 27, 2009
THE SHAKEN EARTH AND floodwaters from Tropical Depression “Pepeng’s” fury may have begun to settle so survivors can now rebuild or relocate homes, replow farms, and repair roads and bridges.
Rehabilitating the damaged infrastructure and property requires billions of pesos, which, officials admit, is a big challenge for a cash-strapped government. The other concern is how to fast-track it so isolated farming communities, such as those in the Cordillera, can resume transporting their chayotes, cabbages, carrots and potatoes.
But there is yet a bigger issue: How to restore hope among orphaned survivors whose dreams were snatched when their elders were buried in landslides or drowned in floodwaters?
The good news is that in all these challenges, something in the culture of northern Luzon folk has not changed. The trait of being each other’s keeper and the tradition of volunteerism have helped the people cope with the extent of Pepeng’s devastation.
Such culture has helped fill in gaps and lapses in governance.
For example, when Pepeng slowed down on Oct. 10, officials and residents of Kibungan town in Benguet came out with shovels and picks to help clear the roads of landslides and debris.
Mayor Benito Siadto says the landslides were so enormous that residents had to augment with sheer brawn the municipal government’s lone pay loader.
Community spirit
The strong sense of cooperative self-help and community spirit is also alive in other Cordillera towns.
Leaders of the towns of Bakun and Kabayan, also in Benguet, report that they used the relief supplies they received for “food-for-work” projects.
Instead of simply doling out to survivors a few kilos of rice, canned goods and instant noodles, Bakun and Kabayan officials say they gave these items as incentives to those who helped repair the roads and bridges.
Kabayan Mayor Faustino Aquisan commends the village chair of Tinongdan in Itogon town for accommodating stranded motorists from Kabayan at the height of Pepeng in their barangay hall and feeding them.
“Please tell us when you (Tinongdan folk) will celebrate your village fiesta so we can bring you cabbages, pising (gabi or yam leaves) and red rice,” Aquisan announced recently over radio station dzWT. It was his way of expressing gratitude to them.
In Sagada, Mt. Province, members of tourist guide organizations lost no time in soliciting help from town mates so they could immediately send relief supplies to survivors of mudslides in Tadian town, the Cordillera People’s Alliance reported.
In upland areas of the Cordillera, the people have resorted to the ob-obfu or binnadang (labor exchange) to repair damaged homes, rice terraces, irrigation systems and bridges.
Rebuilding hopes
But as homes, farms and other infrastructures are being rebuilt, the hopes and dreams of survivors of the last storm must also be restored.
“When the earth and waters settle down, I know for sure that those left behind will be on their own. It’s time for us to come in,” Harry Basingat, a retired Igorot professional based in California, says in a letter to members of Bibaknet, an online network of Igorots here and abroad.
Basingat and his colleagues have been discussing online how best they could help, particularly those who were orphaned after Pepeng triggered killer landslides that left more than 300 people dead, many of them in Benguet and Mt. Province.
“We finally decided to focus on the education of children orphaned by Pepeng,” says Jerome Gawidan, a Baguio City-based Bibaknet member and businessman.
Bibaknet has been setting aside funds for immediate relief supplies, such as food and clothing.
“We also want to provide something to the orphans that will last a lifetime—education,” says Basingat, the online moderator of the Bibaknet e-group.
Immediately after this decision, members started pledging money for its Bibaknet Education Scholarship Fund (BESF). Some have committed from $100 (P4,699) to P100,000, though the network can accept even a peso or a dollar.
“Any amount will be gladly accepted so I don’t see why anyone would ignore this loud call,” says Basingat. “Nothing is too small that comes from the heart. Not getting involved is just another personal option that we can choose.”
The fund began in 2005 to support the education of the orphaned children of Andy Dumawa, a Bibaknet member, who was killed in an accident on the Halsema Highway on his way home to Mt. Province.
As the e-group’s online moderator, Basingat regularly posts all names of donors and the amount pledged, including those of anonymous benefactors.
Warmth of ‘dap-ay’
BESF board member Marilou Delson Fang-asan, who is based at the Benguet State University, is coordinating with government agencies in the affected towns to identify orphaned survivors whom the group can help send to school.
The ease and spontaneity of help from the Igorot peoples for the orphaned could be traced to what Basingat calls the “warmth of the dap-ay, which is meant to be shared for those out in the cold.”
The dap-ay is the basic sociopolitical institution in Mt. Province where elders teach children about social responsibility, among other things.
Fr. Rex Reyes, National Council of Churches in the Philippines general secretary, agrees with Basingat.
Reyes, who visited Mt. Province after Pepeng left, says the Igorot could again pick up the pieces because of their strong community support system of helping each other, in good times and in bad.
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: October 27, 2009
THE SHAKEN EARTH AND floodwaters from Tropical Depression “Pepeng’s” fury may have begun to settle so survivors can now rebuild or relocate homes, replow farms, and repair roads and bridges.
Rehabilitating the damaged infrastructure and property requires billions of pesos, which, officials admit, is a big challenge for a cash-strapped government. The other concern is how to fast-track it so isolated farming communities, such as those in the Cordillera, can resume transporting their chayotes, cabbages, carrots and potatoes.
But there is yet a bigger issue: How to restore hope among orphaned survivors whose dreams were snatched when their elders were buried in landslides or drowned in floodwaters?
The good news is that in all these challenges, something in the culture of northern Luzon folk has not changed. The trait of being each other’s keeper and the tradition of volunteerism have helped the people cope with the extent of Pepeng’s devastation.
Such culture has helped fill in gaps and lapses in governance.
For example, when Pepeng slowed down on Oct. 10, officials and residents of Kibungan town in Benguet came out with shovels and picks to help clear the roads of landslides and debris.
Mayor Benito Siadto says the landslides were so enormous that residents had to augment with sheer brawn the municipal government’s lone pay loader.
Community spirit
The strong sense of cooperative self-help and community spirit is also alive in other Cordillera towns.
Leaders of the towns of Bakun and Kabayan, also in Benguet, report that they used the relief supplies they received for “food-for-work” projects.
Instead of simply doling out to survivors a few kilos of rice, canned goods and instant noodles, Bakun and Kabayan officials say they gave these items as incentives to those who helped repair the roads and bridges.
Kabayan Mayor Faustino Aquisan commends the village chair of Tinongdan in Itogon town for accommodating stranded motorists from Kabayan at the height of Pepeng in their barangay hall and feeding them.
“Please tell us when you (Tinongdan folk) will celebrate your village fiesta so we can bring you cabbages, pising (gabi or yam leaves) and red rice,” Aquisan announced recently over radio station dzWT. It was his way of expressing gratitude to them.
In Sagada, Mt. Province, members of tourist guide organizations lost no time in soliciting help from town mates so they could immediately send relief supplies to survivors of mudslides in Tadian town, the Cordillera People’s Alliance reported.
In upland areas of the Cordillera, the people have resorted to the ob-obfu or binnadang (labor exchange) to repair damaged homes, rice terraces, irrigation systems and bridges.
Rebuilding hopes
But as homes, farms and other infrastructures are being rebuilt, the hopes and dreams of survivors of the last storm must also be restored.
“When the earth and waters settle down, I know for sure that those left behind will be on their own. It’s time for us to come in,” Harry Basingat, a retired Igorot professional based in California, says in a letter to members of Bibaknet, an online network of Igorots here and abroad.
Basingat and his colleagues have been discussing online how best they could help, particularly those who were orphaned after Pepeng triggered killer landslides that left more than 300 people dead, many of them in Benguet and Mt. Province.
“We finally decided to focus on the education of children orphaned by Pepeng,” says Jerome Gawidan, a Baguio City-based Bibaknet member and businessman.
Bibaknet has been setting aside funds for immediate relief supplies, such as food and clothing.
“We also want to provide something to the orphans that will last a lifetime—education,” says Basingat, the online moderator of the Bibaknet e-group.
Immediately after this decision, members started pledging money for its Bibaknet Education Scholarship Fund (BESF). Some have committed from $100 (P4,699) to P100,000, though the network can accept even a peso or a dollar.
“Any amount will be gladly accepted so I don’t see why anyone would ignore this loud call,” says Basingat. “Nothing is too small that comes from the heart. Not getting involved is just another personal option that we can choose.”
The fund began in 2005 to support the education of the orphaned children of Andy Dumawa, a Bibaknet member, who was killed in an accident on the Halsema Highway on his way home to Mt. Province.
As the e-group’s online moderator, Basingat regularly posts all names of donors and the amount pledged, including those of anonymous benefactors.
Warmth of ‘dap-ay’
BESF board member Marilou Delson Fang-asan, who is based at the Benguet State University, is coordinating with government agencies in the affected towns to identify orphaned survivors whom the group can help send to school.
The ease and spontaneity of help from the Igorot peoples for the orphaned could be traced to what Basingat calls the “warmth of the dap-ay, which is meant to be shared for those out in the cold.”
The dap-ay is the basic sociopolitical institution in Mt. Province where elders teach children about social responsibility, among other things.
Fr. Rex Reyes, National Council of Churches in the Philippines general secretary, agrees with Basingat.
Reyes, who visited Mt. Province after Pepeng left, says the Igorot could again pick up the pieces because of their strong community support system of helping each other, in good times and in bad.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Isolated Benguet town rations rice to stave off hunger
Isolated Benguet town rations rice to stave off hunger
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
First Posted 03:10:00 10/22/2009
Filed Under: Weather, Landslide, Disasters (general), Government Aid, Food
BAGUIO CITY—The upland town of Kibungan in Benguet province, which has been isolated since Oct. 9 because of Tropical Storm “Pepeng” (international codename: Parma), has resorted to rationing rice to stave off possible hunger as residents and officials double their time clearing landslides before Typhoon “Ramil” (Lupit) dumps heavy rains on Friday.
For the first time since the town’s isolation, officials and residents—after a six-hour grueling trip from Baguio—transported 200 cavans of rice via the Palina-Bakun-Ampusongan Road and Halsema Highway on Oct. 17 and 18.
Ironically, until the early 1980s, Kibungan (pop: 16,000) used to be self-sufficient in upland rice, which is augmented by sweet potato and other root crops.
The shorter Kibungan-Kapangan-Tublay Road, which is a four-hour drive, remains hardly accessible because of damaged bridges and road cuts, residents said.
The town government, which bought the rice supply, will ration (25 kilos per family) and retail the staple, said Loyda Macario of the Kibungan social welfare and development office.
“We hope this rice supply can tide us over even shortly after Typhoon Ramil,” Macario said in a text message. “We also hope other supplies will arrive for our various sari-sari (variety) stores.”
Macario said residents, with equipment provided by the Department of Public Works and Highways, were rushing the clearing of landslides in the towns of Kapangan and Tublay.
Through cooperative self-help, Kibungan residents cleared landslides from Barangay Poblacion up to Barangay Sagpat in the town’s border with Kapangan and along the road to Barangay Palina.
“But we are worried Ramil’s rains may again delay road repair works,” Macario said.
She said that for the first time airlifted relief goods arrived in Kibungan on Oct. 19 after Mayor Benito Siadto appealed for outside help.
Until now, residents continue to grope in the dark as evening comes because of power outage, Macario said, adding that municipal officials could charge their mobile phones through a generator at the municipal clinic.
Residents from Kibungan and Kapangan are hoping concerned agencies help them restore the vital Salacop Bridge in Balacbac, Kapangan, which tilted to its side during the last typhoon.
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
First Posted 03:10:00 10/22/2009
Filed Under: Weather, Landslide, Disasters (general), Government Aid, Food
BAGUIO CITY—The upland town of Kibungan in Benguet province, which has been isolated since Oct. 9 because of Tropical Storm “Pepeng” (international codename: Parma), has resorted to rationing rice to stave off possible hunger as residents and officials double their time clearing landslides before Typhoon “Ramil” (Lupit) dumps heavy rains on Friday.
For the first time since the town’s isolation, officials and residents—after a six-hour grueling trip from Baguio—transported 200 cavans of rice via the Palina-Bakun-Ampusongan Road and Halsema Highway on Oct. 17 and 18.
Ironically, until the early 1980s, Kibungan (pop: 16,000) used to be self-sufficient in upland rice, which is augmented by sweet potato and other root crops.
The shorter Kibungan-Kapangan-Tublay Road, which is a four-hour drive, remains hardly accessible because of damaged bridges and road cuts, residents said.
The town government, which bought the rice supply, will ration (25 kilos per family) and retail the staple, said Loyda Macario of the Kibungan social welfare and development office.
“We hope this rice supply can tide us over even shortly after Typhoon Ramil,” Macario said in a text message. “We also hope other supplies will arrive for our various sari-sari (variety) stores.”
Macario said residents, with equipment provided by the Department of Public Works and Highways, were rushing the clearing of landslides in the towns of Kapangan and Tublay.
Through cooperative self-help, Kibungan residents cleared landslides from Barangay Poblacion up to Barangay Sagpat in the town’s border with Kapangan and along the road to Barangay Palina.
“But we are worried Ramil’s rains may again delay road repair works,” Macario said.
She said that for the first time airlifted relief goods arrived in Kibungan on Oct. 19 after Mayor Benito Siadto appealed for outside help.
Until now, residents continue to grope in the dark as evening comes because of power outage, Macario said, adding that municipal officials could charge their mobile phones through a generator at the municipal clinic.
Residents from Kibungan and Kapangan are hoping concerned agencies help them restore the vital Salacop Bridge in Balacbac, Kapangan, which tilted to its side during the last typhoon.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Little Kibungan takes comfort in faith
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Little Kibungan takes comfort in faith
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:27:00 10/20/2009
Filed Under: Belief (Faith), Religions
MARSING MALANES LOST a daughter, a son-in-law and four grandchildren, who tried to run to safe ground but instead met an avalanche of raging mud that fateful night of Oct. 8 when Tropical Depression “Pepeng” dumped heavy rain on the province.
Despite the tragedy, Malanes’ faith in God stays stronger than the wrath of Pepeng, whose nonstop downpour triggered a mudslide that swept away houses along a creek in Barangay Puguis’ Little Kibungan in Benguet’s capital town of La Trinidad.
A three-story concrete house was also brought down some 200 meters into the La Trinidad Valley.
“How could my children and grandchildren survive such a powerful mudslide?” asks Malanes, 58.
Although still mourning, she takes comfort “in the Lord’s promise that my children and grandchildren are now in His bosom and are now helping keep watch over us who survived this tragedy.”
“This promise is what continues to lighten our load and burden,” says Malanes, a member of the Church of Nazarene in Puguis. “Now, my children and grandchildren are at peace with the Lord. They are actually now in a better position than we are, who have to experience pain and suffering in this world.”
Malanes lost her daughter Minda, 38, Minda’s husband, Santiago Valdez Jr., 39; and their four children—Ruthi Fe, 14; Von Timothy, 10; James Francis, 2; and Josh Mark, 1.
They were among the 76 people who were killed by the landslide in Little Kibungan.
Swallowed by mud
The Valdez home remains intact, but accounts from neighbors and from Ruthi Fe’s text message before they were swallowed by mud indicated that they met their fate while on flight.
At past 10 p.m. on Oct. 8, Ruthi Fe was able to tell her aunt, Mercedes Cadley, in a text message that her father roused them from sleep so they would evacuate to their grandmother’s house on upper ground in Little Kibungan.
Neighbors say the Valdezes might have thought that the mudslide was coming from above their house instead of the other way because the village was pitch-dark as a result of a power outage, thick clouds and heavy rains.
The family would have survived the avalanche had they not gone down a road along the creek.
Mission and purpose
Despite all, Malanes thinks that “with God, everything must have a purpose.”
Minda and her family’s death “all the more strengthened our faith in God and helped us look deeply into what is more important in life,” says Malanes.
This faith is shared by the woman’s eldest son, Fernando, 40, and his wife, Edwina, 41, who also had a close brush with death that night. “God must have a mission and purpose for us that we have yet to fulfill,” says Fernando.
On Oct. 7, Edwina said she had an “uneasy, bad feeling” so she urged her husband that they leave an extension room near their kitchen in the basement, and be with their three children on the second floor.
That premonition saved them; the mudslide wiped out their room. Amid the heavy downpour, the rescuers arrived and guided them to the house of Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan, southeast of Little Kibungan.
Moving on
Malanes, her son Fernando and family, two unmarried children and two grandchildren left to her care are now occupying a space in the house of a friend in the valley.
The widowed grandmother looks forward to meeting with local officials this week for a possible relocation site where they can rebuild their houses and lives. She seeks to find a place where her grandchildren need not fear the rains and storms.
One of her grandchildren, Clever, 14, the youngest of Fernando and Edwina, remains traumatized, she says. He wouldn’t even want to go back to Little Kibungan and retrieve his things.
“Just get my school ID and school uniform. You don’t have to get my other clothes because I have already received some clothes from relief supplies,” Clever told his grandmother and mother.
Fernando continues to earn for his family’s upkeep as a construction worker.
While looking for a job, Edwina, a preschool teacher, earns extra as a hired hand in La Trinidad’s strawberry and vegetable farms.
If they strive to move on, credit that to “our faith,” says Malanes.
“Laton, ilab-lab-ak tako (It’s OK. We shall overcome),” she says.
Determination
That same faith and determination strengthen the Kankanaey people of Kibungan town, 60 kilometers north of La Trinidad, where Malanes and family hail from.
Kibungan has been isolated since Oct. 9 because of road cuts and landslides that block major roads.
But the hardy Kankanaey, led by Mayor Benito Siadto, renewed their cooperative self-help tradition and volunteerism and have been clearing the roads with shovels and picks.
But so they won’t starve, they have appealed for immediate food aid and heavy equipment to repair eroded and washed-out roads, including a key bridge in the village of Balacbac in Kapangan town.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A mix of ecology, culture, business
Inquirer Headlines / Regions
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/regions/view/20090916-225361/A-mix-of-ecology-culture-business
INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : A mix of ecology, culture, business
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 16, 2009
TUBLAY, Benguet—Like a 100-year-old man, Baguio City, which just celebrated its centenary, must be sought for its wisdom in urban development.
But the traffic, land zoning, squatting woes, garbage and central business district congestion are getting harder to manage than ever. The city born out of a colonial American-initiated mining boom in neighboring Benguet towns at the turn of the century is no longer seen as a model for urban development.
So couple Wilson and Narda Capuyan made a wise move when they embarked on a business enterprise, which is away and different from the usual sights and smell of an already congested place.
Just more than a 30-minute drive from Baguio is the Capuyans’ Winaca Eco-Cultural Village, a 31-hectare forested enclave in Tublay town in Benguet, which mixes ecology, healthy dining, Cordillera culture, adventure and pure, clean fun.
They acquired a five-hectare property in 1984, which was foreclosed by a bank, until they eventually bought the adjoining lots, which remain forested until now.
Here, birds chirp, cicadas and crickets sing, a nearby spring and brook murmur, and trees and bamboos sway with the wind.
Terraced and flat areas are devoted to organic gardens, which teem with lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and herbs, such as coriander, parsley, mint and wheat grass.
Interspersed with some of the trees are fruit-bearing ones, such as lemons and oranges.
These gardens and orchards supply the ingredients of organic recipes served fresh at a restaurant within the eco-cultural village.
Products from the gardens are also sold at the couple’s other business outlets, such as Narda’s Trading Center in Baguio. The center also has a restaurant, which sources its vegetables from the eco-cultural village.
Elderly visitors may just want to relax and chat over cups of Arabica coffee or glasses of wheat grass or carrot juice after a meal at the village’s café and restaurant.
But the Capuyans made sure the young would enjoy some adventure at the hiking trail, hanging bridge and cove.
Both young and old guests can also be treated to, if not participate in, cultural shows at a natural amphitheater.
Guests can learn to sing or chant Cordillera tunes and dance to the beat and rhythm of drums and gongs.
The village has a place for those who want to stargaze before they retire at their tents, which they can install at a camping ground.
Or they can share poems, puzzles, prayers and promises with an Igorot elder around an evening bonfire at a dap-ay (a circular meeting venue where people can sit on stones) in the yard of a Sagada hut.
In December last year, Wilson transported to the village the grass-thatched hut, where he was born 62 years ago in Sagada town in Mt. Province. He and his workers reconstructed the dap-ay, where, as a boy, he listened to stories and advice from elders.
He bought other native huts from Benguet, Ifugao and Kalinga. He seeks to complete a representation of the traditional houses from each of the Cordillera provinces, including Abra and Apayao.
“Winaca” means “bound by vine” (its root word, waca or waka, is the Kankanaey term for vine). Winaca also binds the first syllables of the Capuyans’ first names and surname.
But there’s more to Winaca, which, an elder says, represents the business and development philosophy of the Capuyans.
“The Winaca philosophy of human living stresses on developing human resources, building environment-friendly communities and establishing a seat of clan culture to which the young can trace their roots,” says Ventura Bilot, an elder and cultural consultant of the Capuyans.
He describes the Capuyans as coming from humble roots and who developed a “down-to-earth discipline.”
“As true disciples of Kabunian (Igorot term for God) spirituality, Wilson and Narda are responsible trustees to the land,” says Bilot.
Wilson, an engineer, is guided by what Bilot calls the “Winaca formula” of development.
The eco-cultural village is also a real estate business so portions of the area are up for sale for those who wish to build their homes or rest houses within the forested enclave.
But there are conditions and terms for those seeking to build their homes here. One is that Winaca management takes care of the construction so it ensures that “green architecture and engineering” are followed, says Wilson.
This means avoiding cutting trees and moving earth when building a house. A lot must be at least 750 square meters and a house must be built only on a small portion. The bigger portion must be allotted to trees and other vegetation, says Wilson.
Houses cannot also be built in portions with steep slopes. These are instead reserved as part of the enclave’s forest area.
As part of his “green architecture,” Wilson incorporates indigenous materials, such as rono reeds for ceiling and as accents for walls and cabinets and other furniture.
Narda, a native of Besao town, also in Mt. Province, seeks to continue promoting Igorot weaving and other crafts by employing weavers right in the village.
This initiative continues the success story of Narda’s Handwoven Arts and Crafts, which started in 1970 in La Trinidad, Benguet. From weaving blankets from recycled acrylic yarns, Narda moved on to weaving items for home furnishing, fashion and accessories.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Before Facebook, Benguet had ‘man-ayag'
Before Facebook, Benguet had ‘man-ayag’
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 02, 2009
KIBUNGAN, BENGUET, Philippines—Each summer until the 1970s in Benguet, a man on errand called the man-ayag would go to another village or town, if not another province, to invite relatives to attend a festive and religious ceremony called the sida.
He had to carefully watch his way, always looking for signs that could mean success or failure in his mission.
If he would see a flock of birds of various species (locally called the kekesyag and the kalimbabanga) led by a brown, dark gray bird called the lapit or the labeg flying ahead as though leading him, this was considered a good sign. It meant that he would be able to return to his village with a big group of relatives to partake of the sida.
But if the birds crossed his path as if blocking him, he must rethink his task and return to his village to discuss with elders when to resume his journey.
Elders viewed these signs as precautions or warnings for both the man-ayag and the people he would invite. For them, the signs should be auspicious to ensure a smooth and safe trip.
The sida was usually hosted by a family, which prospered in livestock raising and upland farming. As a religious rite, it was a way by which family members would thank the gods and the spirits of their ancestors, who were believed to have given them their bounty.
The sida would also be done when a family member gets sick. The family had to hold the elaborate event to appease the gods and spirits.
Animals, usually pigs and cattle, were offered during the festivity. Tapey (rice wine) flowed as people danced the tayaw and the sadong to the beat and rhythm of gongs and the solibao, an indigenous drum made up of an elongated hollow wood and cow hide cover.
The sida also served a social function, as people discovered relatives while tracing common ancestors.
Defining wealth
The festive rite indicated social status. The more feasts people hosted, the more they were looked up to as the community’s rich.
But they gained respect not because of their accumulated wealth but how much they had given to and shared with relatives and the community.
They lived as simple as their neighbors—they did not have mansions but grass-thatched, single-room huts like those of the other families. The only difference was that their abode would be adorned by the skulls of pigs, which were offered as sacrifices to the gods and spirits, and reminders of how much of their possessions they had shared.
The sida tradition, also called the pedit, is very rarely practiced now because people just can no longer afford it. It is withering away with the introduction of Christianity and the attraction of modern education.
Replacing the sida is the clan reunion, during which members contribute to buy food and gather in a clan leader’s house, on the grounds of a rented school, or inside an auditorium to trace roots and socialize.
Instead of the man-ayag of old, clans now have designated leaders who use mobile phones and AM radio stations to invite members to attend the reunions, which are usually held during summer or Christmas holidays.
They have yet to use Facebook and other Internet social networks because not all clan members have online access.
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 02, 2009
KIBUNGAN, BENGUET, Philippines—Each summer until the 1970s in Benguet, a man on errand called the man-ayag would go to another village or town, if not another province, to invite relatives to attend a festive and religious ceremony called the sida.
He had to carefully watch his way, always looking for signs that could mean success or failure in his mission.
If he would see a flock of birds of various species (locally called the kekesyag and the kalimbabanga) led by a brown, dark gray bird called the lapit or the labeg flying ahead as though leading him, this was considered a good sign. It meant that he would be able to return to his village with a big group of relatives to partake of the sida.
But if the birds crossed his path as if blocking him, he must rethink his task and return to his village to discuss with elders when to resume his journey.
Elders viewed these signs as precautions or warnings for both the man-ayag and the people he would invite. For them, the signs should be auspicious to ensure a smooth and safe trip.
The sida was usually hosted by a family, which prospered in livestock raising and upland farming. As a religious rite, it was a way by which family members would thank the gods and the spirits of their ancestors, who were believed to have given them their bounty.
The sida would also be done when a family member gets sick. The family had to hold the elaborate event to appease the gods and spirits.
Animals, usually pigs and cattle, were offered during the festivity. Tapey (rice wine) flowed as people danced the tayaw and the sadong to the beat and rhythm of gongs and the solibao, an indigenous drum made up of an elongated hollow wood and cow hide cover.
The sida also served a social function, as people discovered relatives while tracing common ancestors.
Defining wealth
The festive rite indicated social status. The more feasts people hosted, the more they were looked up to as the community’s rich.
But they gained respect not because of their accumulated wealth but how much they had given to and shared with relatives and the community.
They lived as simple as their neighbors—they did not have mansions but grass-thatched, single-room huts like those of the other families. The only difference was that their abode would be adorned by the skulls of pigs, which were offered as sacrifices to the gods and spirits, and reminders of how much of their possessions they had shared.
The sida tradition, also called the pedit, is very rarely practiced now because people just can no longer afford it. It is withering away with the introduction of Christianity and the attraction of modern education.
Replacing the sida is the clan reunion, during which members contribute to buy food and gather in a clan leader’s house, on the grounds of a rented school, or inside an auditorium to trace roots and socialize.
Instead of the man-ayag of old, clans now have designated leaders who use mobile phones and AM radio stations to invite members to attend the reunions, which are usually held during summer or Christmas holidays.
They have yet to use Facebook and other Internet social networks because not all clan members have online access.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Growing fuel for rural dev’t
Growing fuel for rural dev’t
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: August 19, 2009
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet, Philippines—When environmental scientist Michael Bengwayan and his staff succeeded where government scientists had failed in propagating an upland petroleum-rich tree, he had in mind forsaken rural communities.
“Rural communities must learn to propagate this indigenous tree, extract its fuel and use it to spur their own development,” he says.
Bengwayan, executive director of the Pine Tree, a nongovernment ecological education, training, research and information center in La Trinidad, Benguet, was referring to the “petroleum nut” or resin cheesewood (Pittosporum resinferum).
The plant, which is native to the Cordillera and other upland areas in the Philippines and a few other countries such as China, has an octane rating of 54, compared to jatropha’s 41 to 43. Fossil fuel has an octane rating of 91.
Octane rating is a measure of the ability of a liquid motor fuel, such as gasoline, to prevent pre-ignition or knocking. Fuels with higher octane rating are less likely to cause knocking.
Fuel for countryside
Bengwayan and his technicians discovered how to extract oil from the petroleum nut fruit, which, they said, could be used for cooking, lighting and running simple machines and gadgets, such as water pumps and grinders.
For cooking, petroleum nut oil is not only more efficient and cheaper than firewood or charcoal. Three to five trees can yield about 15 liters of oil per harvest, and since harvest is twice a year, these amount to 30 liters, which a family can use for cooking for three to four months, says Bengwayan.
Fifteen to 20 trees can already supply a family’s year-round cooking fuel needs.
Three parts of petroleum nut oil, however, have to be blended with one part of kerosene if used for cooking.
Once it becomes popularized as cooking fuel, petroleum nut oil can free upland people from cutting trees for firewood or charcoal. This can help save and enable critical forests and watersheds to regenerate, Bengwayan says.
For lighting, two parts of petroleum nut oil can be mixed with one part of kerosene to fuel a Petromax lamp. But petroleum nut oil need not be blended with anything if used for a simple oil lamp.
As water pump fuel, petroleum nut oil can enable upland residents to draw water from lower elevations for irrigation or household use.
The possibilities that petroleum nut oil can do to propel rural industries are endless, says Bengwayan. Upland folk can use the tree oil for blacksmithing, food processing, milling grains, threshing rice and grinding reeds, grasses and weeds for compost, among other things.
With its higher octane, petroleum nut oil can also be tapped as alternative fuel for vehicles.
But Bengwayan is keen on propagating the plant for simple industries in neglected rural communities than promoting it as alternative fuel for vehicles, which only a few rural residents can afford.
This, he says, is in consonance with his organization’s mission of fighting poverty and environmental decay through scientific research and innovations.
Community control
But rural communities must secure and take control over this highly priced tree, which, Bengwayan says, is a rare species also under threat from biopirates.
For this to happen, they must learn the basics of propagating and planting the tree through seed-banking, extracting the oil and finally documenting these, he says.
“Documenting the tree’s traditional and new uses is the communities’ means of protection against outsiders who may attempt to patent its properties and uses,” he says.
Under patent rules, applicants can only seek patents for those that are new. So outsiders cannot patent uses or properties which communities have already discovered and documented.
Bengwayan says the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) can help communities protect their endemic resources through documentation before “biopirates” come in.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act and Article 8(j) of the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity protect traditional knowledge against those who seek to steal the resources of indigenous communities and its accompanying traditional uses.
As a rare species, petroleum nut is best propagated through seeds.
The Forest Research Institute of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has succeeded in propagating petroleum nut through cutting, using tissue culture.
But Bengwayan discourages this because taking the branches of the few remaining petroleum nut trees in the forests for tissue-culture will all the more lead to their extinction.
He says the best way is to propagate the oil tree through seeds and bring back the seedlings to the forests.
Propagating the seeds, however, is challenging and it requires patience. Bengwayan and his technicians almost gave up in their experiment of propagating oil tree through seeds in 2005.
But just as when they almost lost their patience, the petroleum nut seeds they sowed began to germinate after almost three months. “We found out the seed of this tree had a long dormancy (temporary cessation of growth or metabolism),” he says.
They lost no time in propagating petroleum nut seeds starting 2006, securing these in nurseries.
They have since propagated more than 30,000 seedlings, which they have scheduled to give to some 23 farmers in the upland towns of Kibungan and Kapangan in Benguet. These will be planted during the rainy season.
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: August 19, 2009
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet, Philippines—When environmental scientist Michael Bengwayan and his staff succeeded where government scientists had failed in propagating an upland petroleum-rich tree, he had in mind forsaken rural communities.
“Rural communities must learn to propagate this indigenous tree, extract its fuel and use it to spur their own development,” he says.
Bengwayan, executive director of the Pine Tree, a nongovernment ecological education, training, research and information center in La Trinidad, Benguet, was referring to the “petroleum nut” or resin cheesewood (Pittosporum resinferum).
The plant, which is native to the Cordillera and other upland areas in the Philippines and a few other countries such as China, has an octane rating of 54, compared to jatropha’s 41 to 43. Fossil fuel has an octane rating of 91.
Octane rating is a measure of the ability of a liquid motor fuel, such as gasoline, to prevent pre-ignition or knocking. Fuels with higher octane rating are less likely to cause knocking.
Fuel for countryside
Bengwayan and his technicians discovered how to extract oil from the petroleum nut fruit, which, they said, could be used for cooking, lighting and running simple machines and gadgets, such as water pumps and grinders.
For cooking, petroleum nut oil is not only more efficient and cheaper than firewood or charcoal. Three to five trees can yield about 15 liters of oil per harvest, and since harvest is twice a year, these amount to 30 liters, which a family can use for cooking for three to four months, says Bengwayan.
Fifteen to 20 trees can already supply a family’s year-round cooking fuel needs.
Three parts of petroleum nut oil, however, have to be blended with one part of kerosene if used for cooking.
Once it becomes popularized as cooking fuel, petroleum nut oil can free upland people from cutting trees for firewood or charcoal. This can help save and enable critical forests and watersheds to regenerate, Bengwayan says.
For lighting, two parts of petroleum nut oil can be mixed with one part of kerosene to fuel a Petromax lamp. But petroleum nut oil need not be blended with anything if used for a simple oil lamp.
As water pump fuel, petroleum nut oil can enable upland residents to draw water from lower elevations for irrigation or household use.
The possibilities that petroleum nut oil can do to propel rural industries are endless, says Bengwayan. Upland folk can use the tree oil for blacksmithing, food processing, milling grains, threshing rice and grinding reeds, grasses and weeds for compost, among other things.
With its higher octane, petroleum nut oil can also be tapped as alternative fuel for vehicles.
But Bengwayan is keen on propagating the plant for simple industries in neglected rural communities than promoting it as alternative fuel for vehicles, which only a few rural residents can afford.
This, he says, is in consonance with his organization’s mission of fighting poverty and environmental decay through scientific research and innovations.
Community control
But rural communities must secure and take control over this highly priced tree, which, Bengwayan says, is a rare species also under threat from biopirates.
For this to happen, they must learn the basics of propagating and planting the tree through seed-banking, extracting the oil and finally documenting these, he says.
“Documenting the tree’s traditional and new uses is the communities’ means of protection against outsiders who may attempt to patent its properties and uses,” he says.
Under patent rules, applicants can only seek patents for those that are new. So outsiders cannot patent uses or properties which communities have already discovered and documented.
Bengwayan says the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) can help communities protect their endemic resources through documentation before “biopirates” come in.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act and Article 8(j) of the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity protect traditional knowledge against those who seek to steal the resources of indigenous communities and its accompanying traditional uses.
As a rare species, petroleum nut is best propagated through seeds.
The Forest Research Institute of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has succeeded in propagating petroleum nut through cutting, using tissue culture.
But Bengwayan discourages this because taking the branches of the few remaining petroleum nut trees in the forests for tissue-culture will all the more lead to their extinction.
He says the best way is to propagate the oil tree through seeds and bring back the seedlings to the forests.
Propagating the seeds, however, is challenging and it requires patience. Bengwayan and his technicians almost gave up in their experiment of propagating oil tree through seeds in 2005.
But just as when they almost lost their patience, the petroleum nut seeds they sowed began to germinate after almost three months. “We found out the seed of this tree had a long dormancy (temporary cessation of growth or metabolism),” he says.
They lost no time in propagating petroleum nut seeds starting 2006, securing these in nurseries.
They have since propagated more than 30,000 seedlings, which they have scheduled to give to some 23 farmers in the upland towns of Kibungan and Kapangan in Benguet. These will be planted during the rainy season.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Cory's speech that conquered America
(Note: I am reprinting this transcript of Tita Cory's speech, which I got from the blog of another fan of the woman in yellow. I also came to appreciate the speech after I watched Jessica Soho's 2008 interview with our former president, which was shown (3 or 4 August) after our beloved Tita and mother succumbed to cancer 1 August 2009. This was a speech, which, some said, conquered America. This is a speech, which we can let our children read so they will learn to appreciate the freedom they are currently enjoying and will be ready to protect this freedom when it is subverted. s.)
(Complete Transcript of President Corazon C. Aquino’s Speech before U.S. Congress
Pres. Aquino’s interview back in 2008 with Jessica Soho revealed that one of the highs during her Presidency was when she spoke before the U.S. Congress, another was when she made the cover of Time Magazine as Woman of the Year.
A commenter requested for a copy of the Full Transcript of Pres. Aquino’s Speech but I could not find one online. I took the liberty to watch and listen as I transcribed her speech from Youtube videos.
Some of the words may have been misspelled since I couldn’t make out the words properly. Please feel free to send in corrections if necessary and I would be happy to correct it.
In honor of Pres. Corazon Aquino, I am presenting the transcript of her magnificent speech before U.S. Congress. The speech was so eloquently delivered by Pres. Cory Aquino that I wanted to capture every word. As I was reading through the written words, it reminded me why I rallied behind her, why every Filipino did as well. We will surely remember her forever. She was a woman of integrity and strength. As a tribute to my beloved President, here’s the full transcript.)
President Corazon C. Aquino’s Historic Speech before the joint session of the United States Congress,
Washington, D.C. - September 18, 1986
Mr. Speaker, Senator Thurmond, Distinguished members of Congress.
Three years ago I left America in grief, to bury my husband Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also, to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the President of a free people.
In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him by that brave and selfless act of giving honor to a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future, founded in a faithless and brazen act of murder. So, in giving we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat we snatched our victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom.
For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives was always a deep and painful one. Fourteen years ago this month, was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator and traitor to his oath, suspended the constitution and shutdown the Congress that was much like this one before which I’m honored to speak. He detained my husband along with thousands of others - Senators, publishers, and anyone who had spoken up for the democracy as its end drew near. But for Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy was not a body merely to be imprisoned but a spirit he must break. For even as the dictatorship demolished one-by-one; the institutions of democracy, the press, the congress, the independence of a judiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights, Ninoy kept their spirit alive in himself.
The government sought to break him by indignities and terror. They locked him up in a tiny, nearly airless cell in a military camp in the north. They stripped him naked and held a threat of a sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully under all of it. I barely did as well. For forty-three days, the authorities would not tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I felt we had lost him.
When that didn’t work, they put him on trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a military commission. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then he felt God intended him for another fate. We had lost him again. For nothing would hold him back from his determination to see his fast through to the end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed his brain. And so, with barely any life in his body, he called off the fast on the 40th day. God meant him for other things, he felt. He did not know that an early death would still be his fate, that only the timing was wrong. At any time during his long ordeal, Ninoy could have made a separate peace with a dictatorship as so many of his countrymen had done. But the spirit of democracy that inheres in our race and animates this chamber could not be allowed to die. He held out in the loneliness of his cell and the frustration of exile, the democratic alternative to the insatiable greed and mindless cruelty of the right and the purging holocaust of the left.
And then, we lost him irrevocably and more painfully than in the past. The news came to us in Boston. It had to be after the three happiest years of our lives together. But his death was my country’s resurrection and the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again. The dictator had called him a nobody. Yet, two million people threw aside their passivity and fear and escorted him to his grave.
And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, The Congress of the United States.
The task had fallen on my shoulders, to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people. Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms, and with truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won. I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy. I held out for participation in the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers of the opposition, that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the foregone results of elections that were clearly going to be fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers but for the people in whose intelligence, I had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for democracy when it came. And then also, it was the only way I knew by which we could measure our power even in the terms dictated by the dictatorship. The people vindicated me in an election shamefully marked by government thuggery and fraud. The opposition swept the elections, garnering a clear majority of the votes even if they ended up (thanks to a corrupt Commission on Elections) with barely a third of the seats in Parliament. Now, I knew our power.
Last year, in an excess of arrogance, the dictatorship called for its doom in a snap election. The people obliged. With over a million signatures they drafted me to challenge the dictatorship. And I, obliged.
The rest is the history that dramatically unfolded on your television screens and across the front pages of your newspapers. You saw a nation armed with courage and integrity, stand fast by democracy against threats and corruption. You saw women poll watchers break out in tears as armed goons crashed the polling places to steal the ballots. But just the same, they tied themselves to the ballot boxes. You saw a people so committed to the ways of democracy that they were prepared to give their lives for its pale imitation. At the end of the day before another wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced the people’s victory.
Many of you here today played a part in changing the policy of your country towards ours. We, the Filipinos thank each of you for what you did. FOr balancing America’s strategic interest against human concerns illuminates the American vision of the world. The co-chairman of the United States observer team, in his report to the President said, “I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon Aqauino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the Philippines.”
When a subservient parliament announced my opponent’s victory, the people then turned out in the streets and proclaimed me the President of all the people. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of their own. It is on that faith and the obligation it entails that I assumed the Presidency.
As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with a lash shall not in my country be paid by blood drawn byh the sword but by the tearful joy of reconciliation. We have swept away absolute power by a limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every Filipino.
Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. Again as we restore democracy by the ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill of Rights. A jealously independent constitutional commission is completing its draft which will be submitted later this year to a popular referendum. When it is approved, there will be elections for both national and local positions. So, within about a year from a peaceful but national upheaval that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional government.
Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small achievement. My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than five hundred. Unhampered by respect for human rights he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than sixteen thousand. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it grows. I don’t think anybody in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local re-integration programs, we must seek to bring the insurgents down from the hills and by economic progress and justice, show them that which the best-intentioned among them fight. As president among my people, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. Yet, equally and again, no friend of Filipino democracy will challenge this. I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers and threaten our new freedom.
Yet, I must explore the path of peace to the utmost. For at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there is the moral basis for laying down the Olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war.
Still, should it come to that, I will not waiver from the course laid down by your great liberator.
“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds. To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and for his orphans to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Like Abraham Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.
Finally may I turn to that other slavery, our twenty-six billion dollar foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it. Yet, the means by which we shall be able to do so are kept from us. Many of the conditions imposed on the previous government that stole this debt, continue to be imposed on us who never benefited from it.
And no assistance or liberality commensurate with the calamity that was vested on us have been extended. Yet ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. With little help from others, we Filipinos fulfilled the first and most difficult condition of the debt negotiation, the full restoration of democracy and responsible government. Elsewhere and in other times, a more stringent world economic conditions, marshal plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy.
When I met with President Reagan, we began an important dialogue about cooperation and the strengthening of friendship between our two countries. That meeting was both a confirmation and a new beginning. I am sure it will lead to positive results in all areas of common concern. Today, we face the aspiration of a people who have known so much poverty and massive unemployment for the past 14 years. And yet offer their lives for the abstraction of democracy.
Wherever I went in the campaign, slum area or impoverished village. They came to me with one cry, DEMOCRACY. Not food although they clearly needed it but DEMOCRACY. Not work, although they surely wanted it but DEMOCRACY. Not money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn’t expect me to work a miracle that would instantly put food into their mouths, clothes on their back, education in their children and give them work that will put dignity in their lives. But I feel the pressing obligation to respond quickly as the leader of the people so deserving of all these things.
We face a communist insurgency that feeds on economic deterioration even as we carry a great share of the free world defenses in the Pacific. These are only two of the many burdens my people carry even as they try to build a worthy and enduring house for their new democracy. That may serve as well as a redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner as one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, two billion dollars out of four billion dollars which is all we can earn in the restrictive market of the world, must go to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received.
Still we fought for honor and if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to ring the payments from the sweat of our men’s faces and sink all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two-hundred fifty years of unrequitted toil. Yet, to all Americans, as the leader to a proud and free people, I address this question, “Has there been a greater test of national commitment to the ideals you hold dear than that my people have gone through? You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it. And here, you have a people who want it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it.”
Three years ago I said, Thank you America for the haven from opression and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today I say, join us America as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the opressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.
**********
After the speech, Sen. Bob Dole said to President Aquino, “Mrs. President, You’ve hit a home run.”
“I hope the bases were loaded.”, she replied.
Later that day, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to give the Philippines an assistance package of $200 million dollars.
(Complete Transcript of President Corazon C. Aquino’s Speech before U.S. Congress
Pres. Aquino’s interview back in 2008 with Jessica Soho revealed that one of the highs during her Presidency was when she spoke before the U.S. Congress, another was when she made the cover of Time Magazine as Woman of the Year.
A commenter requested for a copy of the Full Transcript of Pres. Aquino’s Speech but I could not find one online. I took the liberty to watch and listen as I transcribed her speech from Youtube videos.
Some of the words may have been misspelled since I couldn’t make out the words properly. Please feel free to send in corrections if necessary and I would be happy to correct it.
In honor of Pres. Corazon Aquino, I am presenting the transcript of her magnificent speech before U.S. Congress. The speech was so eloquently delivered by Pres. Cory Aquino that I wanted to capture every word. As I was reading through the written words, it reminded me why I rallied behind her, why every Filipino did as well. We will surely remember her forever. She was a woman of integrity and strength. As a tribute to my beloved President, here’s the full transcript.)
President Corazon C. Aquino’s Historic Speech before the joint session of the United States Congress,
Washington, D.C. - September 18, 1986
Mr. Speaker, Senator Thurmond, Distinguished members of Congress.
Three years ago I left America in grief, to bury my husband Ninoy Aquino. I thought I had left it also, to lay to rest his restless dream of Philippine freedom. Today, I have returned as the President of a free people.
In burying Ninoy, a whole nation honored him by that brave and selfless act of giving honor to a nation in shame recovered its own. A country that had lost faith in its future, founded in a faithless and brazen act of murder. So, in giving we receive, in losing we find, and out of defeat we snatched our victory. For the nation, Ninoy became the pleasing sacrifice that answered their prayers for freedom.
For myself and our children, Ninoy was a loving husband and father. His loss, three times in our lives was always a deep and painful one. Fourteen years ago this month, was the first time we lost him. A president-turned-dictator and traitor to his oath, suspended the constitution and shutdown the Congress that was much like this one before which I’m honored to speak. He detained my husband along with thousands of others - Senators, publishers, and anyone who had spoken up for the democracy as its end drew near. But for Ninoy, a long and cruel ordeal was reserved. The dictator already knew that Ninoy was not a body merely to be imprisoned but a spirit he must break. For even as the dictatorship demolished one-by-one; the institutions of democracy, the press, the congress, the independence of a judiciary, the protection of the Bill of Rights, Ninoy kept their spirit alive in himself.
The government sought to break him by indignities and terror. They locked him up in a tiny, nearly airless cell in a military camp in the north. They stripped him naked and held a threat of a sudden midnight execution over his head. Ninoy held up manfully under all of it. I barely did as well. For forty-three days, the authorities would not tell me what had happened to him. This was the first time my children and I felt we had lost him.
When that didn’t work, they put him on trial for subversion, murder and a host of other crimes before a military commission. Ninoy challenged its authority and went on a fast. If he survived it, then he felt God intended him for another fate. We had lost him again. For nothing would hold him back from his determination to see his fast through to the end. He stopped only when it dawned on him that the government would keep his body alive after the fast had destroyed his brain. And so, with barely any life in his body, he called off the fast on the 40th day. God meant him for other things, he felt. He did not know that an early death would still be his fate, that only the timing was wrong. At any time during his long ordeal, Ninoy could have made a separate peace with a dictatorship as so many of his countrymen had done. But the spirit of democracy that inheres in our race and animates this chamber could not be allowed to die. He held out in the loneliness of his cell and the frustration of exile, the democratic alternative to the insatiable greed and mindless cruelty of the right and the purging holocaust of the left.
And then, we lost him irrevocably and more painfully than in the past. The news came to us in Boston. It had to be after the three happiest years of our lives together. But his death was my country’s resurrection and the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again. The dictator had called him a nobody. Yet, two million people threw aside their passivity and fear and escorted him to his grave.
And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, The Congress of the United States.
The task had fallen on my shoulders, to continue offering the democratic alternative to our people. Archibald Macleish had said that democracy must be defended by arms when it is attacked by arms, and with truth when it is attacked by lies. He failed to say how it shall be won. I held fast to Ninoy’s conviction that it must be by the ways of democracy. I held out for participation in the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers of the opposition, that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the foregone results of elections that were clearly going to be fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers but for the people in whose intelligence, I had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for democracy when it came. And then also, it was the only way I knew by which we could measure our power even in the terms dictated by the dictatorship. The people vindicated me in an election shamefully marked by government thuggery and fraud. The opposition swept the elections, garnering a clear majority of the votes even if they ended up (thanks to a corrupt Commission on Elections) with barely a third of the seats in Parliament. Now, I knew our power.
Last year, in an excess of arrogance, the dictatorship called for its doom in a snap election. The people obliged. With over a million signatures they drafted me to challenge the dictatorship. And I, obliged.
The rest is the history that dramatically unfolded on your television screens and across the front pages of your newspapers. You saw a nation armed with courage and integrity, stand fast by democracy against threats and corruption. You saw women poll watchers break out in tears as armed goons crashed the polling places to steal the ballots. But just the same, they tied themselves to the ballot boxes. You saw a people so committed to the ways of democracy that they were prepared to give their lives for its pale imitation. At the end of the day before another wave of fraud could distort the results, I announced the people’s victory.
Many of you here today played a part in changing the policy of your country towards ours. We, the Filipinos thank each of you for what you did. FOr balancing America’s strategic interest against human concerns illuminates the American vision of the world. The co-chairman of the United States observer team, in his report to the President said, “I was witness to an extraordinary manifestation of democracy on the part of the Filipino people. The ultimate result was the election of Mrs. Corazon Aqauino as President and Mr. Salvador Laurel as Vice-President of the Philippines.”
When a subservient parliament announced my opponent’s victory, the people then turned out in the streets and proclaimed me the President of all the people. And true to their word, when a handful of military leaders declared themselves against the dictatorship, the people rallied to their protection. Surely, the people take care of their own. It is on that faith and the obligation it entails that I assumed the Presidency.
As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it. That is my contract with my people and my commitment to God. He had willed that the blood drawn with a lash shall not in my country be paid by blood drawn byh the sword but by the tearful joy of reconciliation. We have swept away absolute power by a limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every Filipino.
Now, we are restoring full constitutional government. Again as we restore democracy by the ways of democracy, so are we completing the constitutional structures of our new democracy under a constitution that already gives full respect to the Bill of Rights. A jealously independent constitutional commission is completing its draft which will be submitted later this year to a popular referendum. When it is approved, there will be elections for both national and local positions. So, within about a year from a peaceful but national upheaval that overturned a dictatorship, we shall have returned to full constitutional government.
Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small achievement. My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than five hundred. Unhampered by respect for human rights he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than sixteen thousand. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it grows. I don’t think anybody in or outside our country, concerned for a democratic and open Philippines doubts what must be done. Through political initiatives and local re-integration programs, we must seek to bring the insurgents down from the hills and by economic progress and justice, show them that which the best-intentioned among them fight. As president among my people, I will not betray the cause of peace by which I came to power. Yet, equally and again, no friend of Filipino democracy will challenge this. I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers and threaten our new freedom.
Yet, I must explore the path of peace to the utmost. For at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there is the moral basis for laying down the Olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war.
Still, should it come to that, I will not waiver from the course laid down by your great liberator.
“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds. To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and for his orphans to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Like Abraham Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy. Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it. Yet, I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.
Finally may I turn to that other slavery, our twenty-six billion dollar foreign debt. I have said that we shall honor it. Yet, the means by which we shall be able to do so are kept from us. Many of the conditions imposed on the previous government that stole this debt, continue to be imposed on us who never benefited from it.
And no assistance or liberality commensurate with the calamity that was vested on us have been extended. Yet ours must have been the cheapest revolution ever. With little help from others, we Filipinos fulfilled the first and most difficult condition of the debt negotiation, the full restoration of democracy and responsible government. Elsewhere and in other times, a more stringent world economic conditions, marshal plans and their like were felt to be necessary companions of returning democracy.
When I met with President Reagan, we began an important dialogue about cooperation and the strengthening of friendship between our two countries. That meeting was both a confirmation and a new beginning. I am sure it will lead to positive results in all areas of common concern. Today, we face the aspiration of a people who have known so much poverty and massive unemployment for the past 14 years. And yet offer their lives for the abstraction of democracy.
Wherever I went in the campaign, slum area or impoverished village. They came to me with one cry, DEMOCRACY. Not food although they clearly needed it but DEMOCRACY. Not work, although they surely wanted it but DEMOCRACY. Not money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign. They didn’t expect me to work a miracle that would instantly put food into their mouths, clothes on their back, education in their children and give them work that will put dignity in their lives. But I feel the pressing obligation to respond quickly as the leader of the people so deserving of all these things.
We face a communist insurgency that feeds on economic deterioration even as we carry a great share of the free world defenses in the Pacific. These are only two of the many burdens my people carry even as they try to build a worthy and enduring house for their new democracy. That may serve as well as a redoubt for freedom in Asia. Yet, no sooner as one stone laid than two are taken away. Half our export earnings, two billion dollars out of four billion dollars which is all we can earn in the restrictive market of the world, must go to pay just the interest on a debt whose benefit the Filipino people never received.
Still we fought for honor and if only for honor, we shall pay. And yet, should we have to ring the payments from the sweat of our men’s faces and sink all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two-hundred fifty years of unrequitted toil. Yet, to all Americans, as the leader to a proud and free people, I address this question, “Has there been a greater test of national commitment to the ideals you hold dear than that my people have gone through? You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it. And here, you have a people who want it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it.”
Three years ago I said, Thank you America for the haven from opression and the home you gave Ninoy, myself and our children and for the three happiest years of our lives together. Today I say, join us America as we build a new home for democracy; another haven for the opressed so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.
**********
After the speech, Sen. Bob Dole said to President Aquino, “Mrs. President, You’ve hit a home run.”
“I hope the bases were loaded.”, she replied.
Later that day, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to give the Philippines an assistance package of $200 million dollars.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Tita Cory, democratic space, and a wedding
Tita Cory, democratic space, and a wedding
By Maurice Malanes
3 August 2009
Let me remember President Corazon Aquino through my own life.
The call of the 1970s and early 1980s had thrust me into activism. The country was under a dictatorship, which pushed many youths not only to activism but also to extreme options like going to the hills to take up arms. I didn’t choose such extreme option.
After finishing my undergraduate course, I became part of a church-based ecumenical institution, which sought to challenge church leaders and laypersons to live out their Christian faith in service to the least of their brethren. That was mid-1982.
I was not much of an activist while in college. I was more inclined towards spiritual pursuits. Books on Oriental philosophies and religions appealed more to me than Das Capital or Philippine Society and Revolution. So the Buddha’s middle way or the path of moderation became as appealing as Lord Jesus Christ’s admonition of loving God with all of your being, loving your neighbor as you love yourself and loving even one’s enemy. As a seeker, I also tried listening to the doctrines of various groups such as the Moonies, the Mormons, the Iglesia ni Kristo, and the following of a spiritual teacher who stressed on the spiritual path of bhakti or devotional service to God. I later appreciated how the path of bhakti reinforced the path of servant-leadership Lord Christ himself lived and showed.
These spiritual pursuits in a way helped prepare me when I became part of this church-based ecumenical institute. This institute sought to challenge church leaders and laypeople to transcend their God-and-me mindset and broaden this towards a God-me-and-society kind of faith. The country was under martial law so the challenge our educators at the institute often posed was: How can you live out your faith in the face of excesses, killings and other human rights abuses, oppression, hunger and poverty amidst abundance, plunder and corruption? The institute in a way helped mold activist priests, pastors, nuns and other church workers.
At that time talking about and defending human rights would put you in danger. Small wonder, the lives of church people who did advocate about human rights and social justice were at risk. Some had been summarily killed or had disappeared without a trace. (Unfortunately, these things still happen and remain among the tragic ironies of our time more than 20 years after the ouster of the Marcoses.)
In the course of my work with this ecumenical institute, I met my would-be life-time partner and friend. That was 1985 and the protest against strongman Ferdinand Marcos rule was mounting. The protest against the dictatorship began to rise after the assassination of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on 21 August 1983 at the Manila International Airport during his return following a three-year exile in the U.S. He was assassinated while being escorted by soldiers sent by Marcos.
Under Marcos, life was difficult for activists. Still, even under difficult times, love and courtship had a way of entering our lives. But at that time the future seemed uncertain so the thought of marriage and the desire of settling down and living normal lives seemed remote. Marriage and raising a family had to wait.
But unknown to me, a significant phase of history was unfolding. The heightening protest against 20 years of authoritarian rule, 14 years of them under martial law, forced Marcos to hold a snap presidential election in 1985. Reports say the election was also pushed by the US. Sen. Aquino’s widow, Corazon, after too much prodding from oppositionists and critics of Marcos, finally accepted to challenge Marcos in the elections.
The state-controlled election commission declared Marcos the winner in that election. But tallies of the independent election watchdog, Namfrel (National Movement for Free Elections) showed otherwise.
The questionable results of that snap election angered a nation yearning for freedom and democracy. Protest rallies swelled on the streets of Manila and other cities. Meantime, soldiers led by constabulary chief Gen. Fidel Ramos and then defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile revolted against Marcos in February 1986.
Corazon Aquino and Manila Cardinal Jaime Sin called on Filipinos to mass on the streets of EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) to support the Ramos-Enrile-led military revolt. The throngs of people did not only save the necks of the revolting soldiers, who, without "people power," could have been sitting ducks for Marcos’ soldiers. The “people power” peaceful revolution finally convinced Marcos that his time was up.
My girlfriend still takes pride in recalling that she was part of the throngs of Filipinos who trooped to EDSA to drive away a dictator. I was also in Baguio City, 250 kms north of Manila, participating in a counterpart “people power” vigil at the Baguio Cathedral. With the Marcoses ousted and exiled to Hawaii on 25 February 1986, Corazon Aquino was proclaimed president at Club Filipino in San Juan. Marcos’ so-called New Society era was over, and another era just began.
Under Tita Cory, anti-Marcos activists enjoyed a reprieve. Cory’s government provided some kind of a democratic space, which enabled a number of activists to rethink and re-plan their lives. For my part, that democratic space became an auspicious time to get married. So one fine morning on 7 June 1986, my fiancée and I were wed at the Church of the Risen Lord at the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus in Quezon City. The wedding was ecumenical. Jesuit priest Carlos Abesamis (now deceased) of Ateneo’s Loyola House and United Church of Christ in the Philippines’ bishops Juan Marigza, Ben Dominguez, and Erme Camba officiated our wedding.
After our wedding, I focused on journalism, which I failed to practice full-time under Marcos.
For Tita Cory, who left us 3:18 early morning of 1 August 2009 when all of us were sound asleep, I join the rest of the nation in saying, “Thank you very much.” Without the democratic space Tita Cory’s government provided, my wedding could have been postponed indefinitely or could have been scuttled outright. With that democratic space, I have since been practicing my journalism, writing for newspapers also borne out of people power.
My wife and I now have two sons, whom we are struggling to support until they can stand on their own toes. Through them, we continue to relay the story of our lives, which, like those of the rest of the nation, Tita Cory helped shape and influence in a positive, loving way.
By Maurice Malanes
3 August 2009
Let me remember President Corazon Aquino through my own life.
The call of the 1970s and early 1980s had thrust me into activism. The country was under a dictatorship, which pushed many youths not only to activism but also to extreme options like going to the hills to take up arms. I didn’t choose such extreme option.
After finishing my undergraduate course, I became part of a church-based ecumenical institution, which sought to challenge church leaders and laypersons to live out their Christian faith in service to the least of their brethren. That was mid-1982.
I was not much of an activist while in college. I was more inclined towards spiritual pursuits. Books on Oriental philosophies and religions appealed more to me than Das Capital or Philippine Society and Revolution. So the Buddha’s middle way or the path of moderation became as appealing as Lord Jesus Christ’s admonition of loving God with all of your being, loving your neighbor as you love yourself and loving even one’s enemy. As a seeker, I also tried listening to the doctrines of various groups such as the Moonies, the Mormons, the Iglesia ni Kristo, and the following of a spiritual teacher who stressed on the spiritual path of bhakti or devotional service to God. I later appreciated how the path of bhakti reinforced the path of servant-leadership Lord Christ himself lived and showed.
These spiritual pursuits in a way helped prepare me when I became part of this church-based ecumenical institute. This institute sought to challenge church leaders and laypeople to transcend their God-and-me mindset and broaden this towards a God-me-and-society kind of faith. The country was under martial law so the challenge our educators at the institute often posed was: How can you live out your faith in the face of excesses, killings and other human rights abuses, oppression, hunger and poverty amidst abundance, plunder and corruption? The institute in a way helped mold activist priests, pastors, nuns and other church workers.
At that time talking about and defending human rights would put you in danger. Small wonder, the lives of church people who did advocate about human rights and social justice were at risk. Some had been summarily killed or had disappeared without a trace. (Unfortunately, these things still happen and remain among the tragic ironies of our time more than 20 years after the ouster of the Marcoses.)
In the course of my work with this ecumenical institute, I met my would-be life-time partner and friend. That was 1985 and the protest against strongman Ferdinand Marcos rule was mounting. The protest against the dictatorship began to rise after the assassination of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on 21 August 1983 at the Manila International Airport during his return following a three-year exile in the U.S. He was assassinated while being escorted by soldiers sent by Marcos.
Under Marcos, life was difficult for activists. Still, even under difficult times, love and courtship had a way of entering our lives. But at that time the future seemed uncertain so the thought of marriage and the desire of settling down and living normal lives seemed remote. Marriage and raising a family had to wait.
But unknown to me, a significant phase of history was unfolding. The heightening protest against 20 years of authoritarian rule, 14 years of them under martial law, forced Marcos to hold a snap presidential election in 1985. Reports say the election was also pushed by the US. Sen. Aquino’s widow, Corazon, after too much prodding from oppositionists and critics of Marcos, finally accepted to challenge Marcos in the elections.
The state-controlled election commission declared Marcos the winner in that election. But tallies of the independent election watchdog, Namfrel (National Movement for Free Elections) showed otherwise.
The questionable results of that snap election angered a nation yearning for freedom and democracy. Protest rallies swelled on the streets of Manila and other cities. Meantime, soldiers led by constabulary chief Gen. Fidel Ramos and then defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile revolted against Marcos in February 1986.
Corazon Aquino and Manila Cardinal Jaime Sin called on Filipinos to mass on the streets of EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) to support the Ramos-Enrile-led military revolt. The throngs of people did not only save the necks of the revolting soldiers, who, without "people power," could have been sitting ducks for Marcos’ soldiers. The “people power” peaceful revolution finally convinced Marcos that his time was up.
My girlfriend still takes pride in recalling that she was part of the throngs of Filipinos who trooped to EDSA to drive away a dictator. I was also in Baguio City, 250 kms north of Manila, participating in a counterpart “people power” vigil at the Baguio Cathedral. With the Marcoses ousted and exiled to Hawaii on 25 February 1986, Corazon Aquino was proclaimed president at Club Filipino in San Juan. Marcos’ so-called New Society era was over, and another era just began.
Under Tita Cory, anti-Marcos activists enjoyed a reprieve. Cory’s government provided some kind of a democratic space, which enabled a number of activists to rethink and re-plan their lives. For my part, that democratic space became an auspicious time to get married. So one fine morning on 7 June 1986, my fiancée and I were wed at the Church of the Risen Lord at the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus in Quezon City. The wedding was ecumenical. Jesuit priest Carlos Abesamis (now deceased) of Ateneo’s Loyola House and United Church of Christ in the Philippines’ bishops Juan Marigza, Ben Dominguez, and Erme Camba officiated our wedding.
After our wedding, I focused on journalism, which I failed to practice full-time under Marcos.
For Tita Cory, who left us 3:18 early morning of 1 August 2009 when all of us were sound asleep, I join the rest of the nation in saying, “Thank you very much.” Without the democratic space Tita Cory’s government provided, my wedding could have been postponed indefinitely or could have been scuttled outright. With that democratic space, I have since been practicing my journalism, writing for newspapers also borne out of people power.
My wife and I now have two sons, whom we are struggling to support until they can stand on their own toes. Through them, we continue to relay the story of our lives, which, like those of the rest of the nation, Tita Cory helped shape and influence in a positive, loving way.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Boycott bottled water to save earth, urges Filipino bishop
Boycott bottled water to save earth, urges Filipino bishop
ENI-09-0597
By Maurice Malanes
Baguio City, Philippines, 28 July (ENI)--As a boy, Carlito Cenzon drank water straight from springs so he knew what it meant to feel connected with the planet.
Now, as the Roman Catholic bishop of Baguio in northern Philippines, Cenzon laments, "People have lost their interconnectedness with Mother Earth ever since bottled water became another well-advertised commercial consumer item." He was speaking at a 28 July forum in Baguio.
Cenzon recalled how, as a boy, he and his playmates would wander in the mountains without having to bring any packed lunch or water because, "we could always drink from springs and eat wild berries and other wild fruits".
The forum was to tackle ways in which citizens could get involved in protecting this city of 400 000 people from environmental decay. Asked what citizens could do to help their city, Cenzon, aged 70, said, "We can do simple, practical things like boycotting bottled water."
He cited studies saying bottling water leads to unnecessary use of plastics, as well as fuel for transport, which ultimately contribute to climate change.
A report published by the Department of Environment and Climate Change of the state of New South Wales, stated that in 2006, consumption of 250 million litres of bottled water by Australians was responsible for releasing 60 000 tonnes of CO2 emissions, blamed for global warming.
Cenzon said an expert analysed the tap water at a centre from by the Catholic Church in Baguio and said it was cleaner and had more minerals than bottled water.
But in this city where leaking, poorly maintained pipes sometimes contaminate tap water, Cenzon said that citizens must be vigilant in asserting their right to clean and safe water.
"We must demand from our officials that providing us safe water must be part of good governance," said the bishop. But just to be sure, Cenzon said he invested on a portable filtration equipment to filter tap water "so I don't need to buy bottled water".
The bishop's bottled-water boycott drive supplements other similar initiatives elsewhere. In early July, Agence France-Presse reported that the Australian town of Bundanoon was set to ban bottled water over concerns about its environmental impact.
In Geneva, the Ecumenical Water Network, an international network of church-linked agencies campaigning on water, urges people to avoid bottled water wherever possible.
An environmentalist, Bishop Cenzon has also helped lead a drive to rehabilitate and reforest threatened watersheds in this city 250 kilometres (150 miles) north of Manila, whose water demand increases to more than 100 000 cubic metres a day during the tourist season from December to May.
In Baguio, the war for water has just begun
INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : In Baguio, the war for water has just begun
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: July 28, 2009
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—Baguio will be 100 years old by September 1, and already, it is experiencing signs of decay, which, experts say, can be stopped by long-term planning that transcends the terms of its elected officials.
The experts cite the dilemma of handling 144 tons of garbage daily, which calls for a more lasting solution than spending P65 million in seven months to haul these to a dump in Capas, Tarlac, about 100 kilometers away.
Be it garbage disposal system or other aspects of urban development, a lesson learned after 100 years stood out during a conference on the summer capital’s centenary at the University of the Philippines Baguio early this year.
This was the need for an urban development planning that would look beyond the three-year terms of elected officials.
Beyond a lifetime
UP Baguio economics professor Arturo Boquiren zeroed in on Baguio’s “carrying capacity,” particularly how it could provide water to a growing population.
Boquiren urged officials and planners to look farther ahead of their lifetimes and anticipate the city’s water needs a century hence.
Based on a 2.15-percent growth rate (1995-2000 census), Baguio’s 252,386 people in 2000 could swell to 2,510,784 in 2109. The population doubles every 32.5 years.
The 2.5 million people would require 180.7 million cubic meters of water yearly, based on a 220-liter per capita for both domestic and industrial uses, Boquiren said.
“Given Baguio’s land area of 57.49 square kilometers and 1.430 meters of rainfall per annum, rain could provide only 82.2 million cubic meters, even if we assume all lands of Baguio are utilized for rainwater capture,” he said.
“Thus, we will be about 100 million cubic meters of water short. This implies that we need more than double of Baguio’s land area devoted for rain capture to supply water for 2.5 million people.”
Following this scenario, Boquiren asked: “Do we want the [current] trend of development in the city to continue? What are our options?”
As it is, development continues to be concentrated within city environs. Boquiren thus supports the idea of dispersing development to neighboring towns so they can also benefit from the fruits of economic development.
Baguio has something to start with. After it was devastated by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in 1990, European and local experts were mobilized to draw up plans to help rehabilitate the city. They came out with what was called the BLIST Structural Plan. (BLIST refers to Baguio and its neighboring towns—La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan and Tuba, all in Benguet.)
The kernel of the plan is to bring development throughout BLIST so that people will not flock to an already congested central business district and university belt.
Except for La Trinidad, the other BLIST members have sufficient water resources, which can sustain population growth.
Water governance
Supplementing the BLIST plan are recommendations by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (Iclei), which was established in 1990 when more than 200 local governments from 43 countries met during the first World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future in New York.
The Iclei studied Baguio’s water situation in 2004 and proposed a Sustainable Water Integrated Management (SWIM) program.
To institute the SWIM, then Mayor Braulio Yaranon signed Executive Order No. 4 in 2005, which seeks to strengthen coordination between national agencies, such as the National Water Resources Board, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and a yet-to-be-created City Resources Board.
The program includes the establishment of a Local Water Environmental Trust Fund to lock in eco-corporate responsibility over the use and pollution of water resources.
The BLIST and the SWIM remain on paper, waiting for the political will of officials to push serious long-term planning.
Threats
As more people occupy Baguio, the city faces threats and challenges, among them water-related.
Early this year, the Baguio Water District reported 800 illegally operated deep wells, which, it warned, would destroy the city’s aquifers, the ground sources of water.
People have already encroached on vital watersheds, building houses and other structures that threaten clean sources of a vital resource.
On the strength of a recent Supreme Court decision, the city government has scheduled the demolition of 34 houses in the Busol watershed reservation this week. Busol supplies 30 percent of the city’s water needs.
But the city government expects a confrontation with residents, who are decrying a supposed injustice and a selective process. Why out of hundreds of houses, only 34 were given demolition orders, they ask aloud.
They have vowed to put a fight.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Simplicity theology' for sustainable future
(Reprinted from Maurice Malanes'file)
Simplicity theology' for sustainable future
By Maurice Malanes, Ecumenical News International |
MANILA (ENI, 1/8/09) — A group of Christian leaders is pushing for a "theology of simplicity and caring" to bring hope to a "prodigal world" teetering under a burden of widespread economic crisis, and climate change that could submerge small islands in the Pacific.
"It is time to challenge the growth-is-success myth, which also has contaminated the Church, and shift to a more transformative way of thinking and lifestyle in tune with God's creative order and purpose," said Daniel Kim Dong-Sung of the Saemoonan Presbyterian Church in Seoul, which is said to be the oldest Protestant congregation in South Korea.
Linda Mead, a lay leader of the United Reformed Church in Britain, said the call of the times is for Christians to help lead the way in "living more simply amidst climate change."
Dong-Sung and Mead proposed actions such as taking public transport instead of using cars, recycling, and re-using products like old clothes, plastics and paper to reduce wastage and to help prevent unnecessary exploitation of resources.
"Let's recycle everything but sermons," urged Jione Havea, originally from Tonga and currently with the Charles Sturt University and the United Theological College near Sydney in North Parramatta, Australia.
The three Christian leaders were among participants from 24 countries who met from Dec. 12 to 16 in Manila to launch a global ecumenical movement for "economic and ecological justice" called Oikotree.
Mead reported that in Britain many churches are seeking to lower carbon emissions, to make lifestyle changes and to work with local communities. She noted that churches are looking at the theology behind climate change and how it will affect Bible studies and liturgy.
Edith Rassel of the United Church of Christ in the United States said her involvement in the movement for economic and ecological justice was not limited to resisting "neo-liberalism." It also includes promoting spiritual practices and lifestyles such as vegetarian meals and biking instead of driving.
Referring to small Pacific islands under threat of disappearing due to climate change, Makoni Pulu, a Pacific Conference of Churches youth leader, urged Christians to "see things in a new way as we wrestle to cleanse injustice and greed in our hearts."
Christians may also learn from indigenous and rural communities where sharing and caring are part of life, said Josephine Muchelemba, a Zambian theologian and church leader from Lusaka. "As children, my sister and I would share a blanket and our parents and neighbors would work the farms through the exchange of labor," said Muchelemba.
In the search for alternatives, Park Seong-Won of the Young Nam Theological University in Kyeong San, South Korea urged Christians "not to grow tired and weary in doing good" and to search for better alternatives to humanity's current rut.
Simplicity theology' for sustainable future
By Maurice Malanes, Ecumenical News International |
MANILA (ENI, 1/8/09) — A group of Christian leaders is pushing for a "theology of simplicity and caring" to bring hope to a "prodigal world" teetering under a burden of widespread economic crisis, and climate change that could submerge small islands in the Pacific.
"It is time to challenge the growth-is-success myth, which also has contaminated the Church, and shift to a more transformative way of thinking and lifestyle in tune with God's creative order and purpose," said Daniel Kim Dong-Sung of the Saemoonan Presbyterian Church in Seoul, which is said to be the oldest Protestant congregation in South Korea.
Linda Mead, a lay leader of the United Reformed Church in Britain, said the call of the times is for Christians to help lead the way in "living more simply amidst climate change."
Dong-Sung and Mead proposed actions such as taking public transport instead of using cars, recycling, and re-using products like old clothes, plastics and paper to reduce wastage and to help prevent unnecessary exploitation of resources.
"Let's recycle everything but sermons," urged Jione Havea, originally from Tonga and currently with the Charles Sturt University and the United Theological College near Sydney in North Parramatta, Australia.
The three Christian leaders were among participants from 24 countries who met from Dec. 12 to 16 in Manila to launch a global ecumenical movement for "economic and ecological justice" called Oikotree.
Mead reported that in Britain many churches are seeking to lower carbon emissions, to make lifestyle changes and to work with local communities. She noted that churches are looking at the theology behind climate change and how it will affect Bible studies and liturgy.
Edith Rassel of the United Church of Christ in the United States said her involvement in the movement for economic and ecological justice was not limited to resisting "neo-liberalism." It also includes promoting spiritual practices and lifestyles such as vegetarian meals and biking instead of driving.
Referring to small Pacific islands under threat of disappearing due to climate change, Makoni Pulu, a Pacific Conference of Churches youth leader, urged Christians to "see things in a new way as we wrestle to cleanse injustice and greed in our hearts."
Christians may also learn from indigenous and rural communities where sharing and caring are part of life, said Josephine Muchelemba, a Zambian theologian and church leader from Lusaka. "As children, my sister and I would share a blanket and our parents and neighbors would work the farms through the exchange of labor," said Muchelemba.
In the search for alternatives, Park Seong-Won of the Young Nam Theological University in Kyeong San, South Korea urged Christians "not to grow tired and weary in doing good" and to search for better alternatives to humanity's current rut.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Baguio's Ibaloi street names
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/regions/view/20090610-209669/Ibaloi-street-names-also-replaced
INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : Ibaloi street names also replaced
Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: June 10, 2009
FROM SESSION ROAD and Leonard Wood Drive to Governor Pack and Harrison Roads, many of Baguio City’s streets have been named after American colonial officials who became the icons of a history still dominantly written and taught from the colonizers’ viewpoint.
But a few street names in Ibaloi reveal something else.
Before it was transformed into a hill station for colonial officials to escape the heat, humidity and dust of Manila, Baguio was home to the indigenous Ibaloi with their herds of cattle.
Many parts of what is now the business district used to ooze with springs where carabaos (water buffaloes) wallowed. Just a few meters from City Hall, a street was thus named Chanum (water).
Intersecting Chanum are Chugum (Wind) and Chuntug (Mountain) streets. These names may appear simple, but water, wind and mountain (or earth), besides fire, are considered among the essential elements of life.
So it was not surprising that Ibaloi and other Igorot peoples would build their homes near springs where they could have access to water.
Also near City Hall and behind Abanao (Wide) Street is a narrow street called Otek (Small). A street that goes uphill from Abanao is also called Kayang (High).
Other streets or roads and villages with Ibaloi names include Kisad (a condition when a priestess is possessed by a spirit during a religious rite), Bokawkan (wherever something has been removed), Lucban (orange), and Guisad (the same as Kisad and the name of a valley at the head of which the early Filipinos lived).
Some Ibaloi place names, however, have been replaced by colonial names and no longer evoke memories of the old topography and Ibaloi past, says Laurence Wilson, a former Presbyterian minister who moved to Baguio and became a mining prospector in the 1930s.
The market site used to be called Javjavan (native blacksmith shop); Cathedral Hill was called Kampaw (a social gathering place reminiscent of the Bontoc ato or Sagada’s dap-ay, a place where elders meet for dialogues and meetings); Teachers’ Camp used to be called Urengao (oily water); and below City Camp was Oliveg (whirlpool where rainwater runs out through a channel in the limestone).
Only a few Ibaloi street and place names have been retained. But Wilson’s study of these names, including those already replaced, shows that the Ibaloi knew and understood well every nook and cranny of their abode like the palm of their hands, something that got blurred as a result of colonization and urbanization. Maurice Malanes
INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : Ibaloi street names also replaced
Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: June 10, 2009
FROM SESSION ROAD and Leonard Wood Drive to Governor Pack and Harrison Roads, many of Baguio City’s streets have been named after American colonial officials who became the icons of a history still dominantly written and taught from the colonizers’ viewpoint.
But a few street names in Ibaloi reveal something else.
Before it was transformed into a hill station for colonial officials to escape the heat, humidity and dust of Manila, Baguio was home to the indigenous Ibaloi with their herds of cattle.
Many parts of what is now the business district used to ooze with springs where carabaos (water buffaloes) wallowed. Just a few meters from City Hall, a street was thus named Chanum (water).
Intersecting Chanum are Chugum (Wind) and Chuntug (Mountain) streets. These names may appear simple, but water, wind and mountain (or earth), besides fire, are considered among the essential elements of life.
So it was not surprising that Ibaloi and other Igorot peoples would build their homes near springs where they could have access to water.
Also near City Hall and behind Abanao (Wide) Street is a narrow street called Otek (Small). A street that goes uphill from Abanao is also called Kayang (High).
Other streets or roads and villages with Ibaloi names include Kisad (a condition when a priestess is possessed by a spirit during a religious rite), Bokawkan (wherever something has been removed), Lucban (orange), and Guisad (the same as Kisad and the name of a valley at the head of which the early Filipinos lived).
Some Ibaloi place names, however, have been replaced by colonial names and no longer evoke memories of the old topography and Ibaloi past, says Laurence Wilson, a former Presbyterian minister who moved to Baguio and became a mining prospector in the 1930s.
The market site used to be called Javjavan (native blacksmith shop); Cathedral Hill was called Kampaw (a social gathering place reminiscent of the Bontoc ato or Sagada’s dap-ay, a place where elders meet for dialogues and meetings); Teachers’ Camp used to be called Urengao (oily water); and below City Camp was Oliveg (whirlpool where rainwater runs out through a channel in the limestone).
Only a few Ibaloi street and place names have been retained. But Wilson’s study of these names, including those already replaced, shows that the Ibaloi knew and understood well every nook and cranny of their abode like the palm of their hands, something that got blurred as a result of colonization and urbanization. Maurice Malanes
What’s Baguio to Wood and Wood to Baguio
INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : What’s Baguio to Wood and Wood to Baguio
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: June 10, 2009
AUTHOR and former University of the Philippines Baguio Prof. Ricardo Torres Jr. has long been familiar with Leonard Wood Drive in Baguio City, but he discovered something that awakened his basic “researcher’s instincts.”
The road was named after the American colonial governor general who helped establish Baguio as a hill station where he and other colonial officials, sick soldiers, sojourning colonials, mine prospectors and bored wives of colonial masters in Manila would come to relax and recuperate.
But Torres, who authored books on development, had an interesting discovery about Wood, which, he said, could make the colonial official “a stuff of legends” and possibly “a perfect material for Regal Films.”
Wood captured Torres’ enthusiasm in 2007 when he visited Culion, Palawan.
Culion in Philippine history books is described as a “leper colony.” The place used to carry a stigma as the island was developed as a sanitarium to segregate and find the cure for people affected with the Hansen disease or ketong (leprosy).
On his last day in Culion, Torres was walking toward the old town and in the middle of the old plaza, he saw a big monument under the shade of old acacia trees. On the faded memorial plate of the monument reads: “Dr. Leonard Wood: Built by patients and friends of Dr. Wood.”
“I didn’t know Leonard Wood was a physician. I only knew him as a road,” Torres said in a paper he read during the Baguio Centennial Conference at UP Baguio in March.
Torres was among dozens of academics, researchers and historians who presented papers—all valuable fragments of Baguio’s history—during the conference, which was UP Baguio’s contribution to the city’s celebration of its centenary this year.
“I was intrigued why Leonard Wood deserved a road in an upland city and a monument in a far-flung, God-forsaken island town,” he said.
Awakened instincts
He typed “Leonard Wood biography” on Google and it provided 239,000 search results in 0.23 seconds. “Leonard Wood” alone had 1,160,000 results in 0.15 seconds.
Among other things, Torres discovered a Fort Leonard Wood for military personnel in Missouri and a Leonard Wood Institute that does military researches to help the US Army brace for the future.
Closer to home is a Leonard Wood Leprosy Research Center in Cebu. And it was Wood who advocated the search for cure and care of leprosy in Culion, ordering the allotment of a big chunk of the colonial budget for this.
Torres discovered that Culion was Wood’s “second Cuba.” Described as a physician with a passion, Wood helped eradicate yellow fever in Cuba.
But Torres’ search always points to Philippine history when nationalism and the clamor for independence from the United States was a raging movement.
Wood had strongly opposed this movement because the soldier and physician, Torres noted, believed that the Philippines was not ready for independence as the country and its people had a very poor and pathetic public sanitation.
Torres had another interesting note: Upon Wood’s advice, his wife got hold of the largest gold tiara that was unearthed in Butuan in southern Philippines in 1922.
Many colonial faces
History described Wood as harsh, heartless, ruthless, uncompromising and tactless. As governor general from 1921 to 1927, Wood was “impatient” with Filipinos agitating for independence. In 1923, he banned the display of photographs of Filipino heroes in public schools.
The famous remark of Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon, “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans,” was said to have been made in reference to Wood.
And Wood’s dispute with Quezon included Baguio, said Torres. While Wood was advertising Baguio as the year-round national capital, El Debate, a magazine that Quezon controlled, “expressed that it is wrong to [advertise] Baguio since it is already popular and needs no propaganda” from someone like Wood.
The famous American writer Mark Twain also characterized Wood as a “colonial savage.” Twain cited how Wood in 1906 ordered and later justified the massacre of 600 Moro men, women and children in Mindanao.
Despite Wood’s ruthlessness and heartlessness, Torres noted another side of the colonial ruler, which could be worth considering at least in terms of governance and exercising political will.
Wood did not only push to develop Camp John Hay when he was commanding general of the Philippine Department from 1906 to 1908. He strove to develop Baguio as “an educational center of forum” for indoctrinating Igorot peoples.
When the basic infrastructures for the city were being built, Wood persuaded Mayor Eusebius Julius Halsema and the city council to fund a nursery for pine and eucalyptus trees to reforest barren areas, expressing alarm over the massive cutting of trees in the city.
He was said to be so concerned about the health of the population that, during one visit here, he dismissed the city physician for failing to contain 15 cases of typhoid fever.
Wood has ambitions, too
“Wood was a man with many colonial faces; a dedicated physician, a ruthless soldier and a military administrator with ambitions to be the next president of America,” Torres said.
He was a dedicated part of America’s Manifest Destiny. On a crusade and on the road to be a legend, Wood imposed a cure for countries that were, in his opinion, unable to govern themselves, Torres said.
Interestingly, Baguio helped cool Wood’s head. Torres noted how Wood and his wife would drive to Baguio “to relax from the rigors of colonial administration.”
He would take long walks and plan for its development and “you can perhaps hear him—no cutting of trees or I’ll shoot you,” Torres said.
According to him, Wood embodies one of the “idols of history” and perhaps the history of Baguio and the Philippines gives an “overemphasis on great men.”
Wood’s monument in Culion, said Torres, is an “idealized representation” of the ruthless man that was friend to the lepers but a burden to public finance.
“From another angle, Wood was made part of history by the councilors of Baguio, those who defined power,” he said. “In Culion, however, it was powerless Hansenites (lepers) that enshrined him to be part of history.”
In Baguio, Wood deserves that road named after him only if roads are for legends, Torres said.
After independence and after Wood, Baguio, he said, is now being built for lowland migrants, tourists, visitors, excursionists, traders and the ukay-ukay (used clothes) crowd.
As Baguio celebrates its centenary, Torres has posed a challenge as the city continues to idolize Wood: “Has anyone asked what happened then to the home of the Ibaloi? Is this part of history now just a mere representation?”
Inquirer Northern Luzon : What’s Baguio to Wood and Wood to Baguio
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: June 10, 2009
AUTHOR and former University of the Philippines Baguio Prof. Ricardo Torres Jr. has long been familiar with Leonard Wood Drive in Baguio City, but he discovered something that awakened his basic “researcher’s instincts.”
The road was named after the American colonial governor general who helped establish Baguio as a hill station where he and other colonial officials, sick soldiers, sojourning colonials, mine prospectors and bored wives of colonial masters in Manila would come to relax and recuperate.
But Torres, who authored books on development, had an interesting discovery about Wood, which, he said, could make the colonial official “a stuff of legends” and possibly “a perfect material for Regal Films.”
Wood captured Torres’ enthusiasm in 2007 when he visited Culion, Palawan.
Culion in Philippine history books is described as a “leper colony.” The place used to carry a stigma as the island was developed as a sanitarium to segregate and find the cure for people affected with the Hansen disease or ketong (leprosy).
On his last day in Culion, Torres was walking toward the old town and in the middle of the old plaza, he saw a big monument under the shade of old acacia trees. On the faded memorial plate of the monument reads: “Dr. Leonard Wood: Built by patients and friends of Dr. Wood.”
“I didn’t know Leonard Wood was a physician. I only knew him as a road,” Torres said in a paper he read during the Baguio Centennial Conference at UP Baguio in March.
Torres was among dozens of academics, researchers and historians who presented papers—all valuable fragments of Baguio’s history—during the conference, which was UP Baguio’s contribution to the city’s celebration of its centenary this year.
“I was intrigued why Leonard Wood deserved a road in an upland city and a monument in a far-flung, God-forsaken island town,” he said.
Awakened instincts
He typed “Leonard Wood biography” on Google and it provided 239,000 search results in 0.23 seconds. “Leonard Wood” alone had 1,160,000 results in 0.15 seconds.
Among other things, Torres discovered a Fort Leonard Wood for military personnel in Missouri and a Leonard Wood Institute that does military researches to help the US Army brace for the future.
Closer to home is a Leonard Wood Leprosy Research Center in Cebu. And it was Wood who advocated the search for cure and care of leprosy in Culion, ordering the allotment of a big chunk of the colonial budget for this.
Torres discovered that Culion was Wood’s “second Cuba.” Described as a physician with a passion, Wood helped eradicate yellow fever in Cuba.
But Torres’ search always points to Philippine history when nationalism and the clamor for independence from the United States was a raging movement.
Wood had strongly opposed this movement because the soldier and physician, Torres noted, believed that the Philippines was not ready for independence as the country and its people had a very poor and pathetic public sanitation.
Torres had another interesting note: Upon Wood’s advice, his wife got hold of the largest gold tiara that was unearthed in Butuan in southern Philippines in 1922.
Many colonial faces
History described Wood as harsh, heartless, ruthless, uncompromising and tactless. As governor general from 1921 to 1927, Wood was “impatient” with Filipinos agitating for independence. In 1923, he banned the display of photographs of Filipino heroes in public schools.
The famous remark of Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon, “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by Americans,” was said to have been made in reference to Wood.
And Wood’s dispute with Quezon included Baguio, said Torres. While Wood was advertising Baguio as the year-round national capital, El Debate, a magazine that Quezon controlled, “expressed that it is wrong to [advertise] Baguio since it is already popular and needs no propaganda” from someone like Wood.
The famous American writer Mark Twain also characterized Wood as a “colonial savage.” Twain cited how Wood in 1906 ordered and later justified the massacre of 600 Moro men, women and children in Mindanao.
Despite Wood’s ruthlessness and heartlessness, Torres noted another side of the colonial ruler, which could be worth considering at least in terms of governance and exercising political will.
Wood did not only push to develop Camp John Hay when he was commanding general of the Philippine Department from 1906 to 1908. He strove to develop Baguio as “an educational center of forum” for indoctrinating Igorot peoples.
When the basic infrastructures for the city were being built, Wood persuaded Mayor Eusebius Julius Halsema and the city council to fund a nursery for pine and eucalyptus trees to reforest barren areas, expressing alarm over the massive cutting of trees in the city.
He was said to be so concerned about the health of the population that, during one visit here, he dismissed the city physician for failing to contain 15 cases of typhoid fever.
Wood has ambitions, too
“Wood was a man with many colonial faces; a dedicated physician, a ruthless soldier and a military administrator with ambitions to be the next president of America,” Torres said.
He was a dedicated part of America’s Manifest Destiny. On a crusade and on the road to be a legend, Wood imposed a cure for countries that were, in his opinion, unable to govern themselves, Torres said.
Interestingly, Baguio helped cool Wood’s head. Torres noted how Wood and his wife would drive to Baguio “to relax from the rigors of colonial administration.”
He would take long walks and plan for its development and “you can perhaps hear him—no cutting of trees or I’ll shoot you,” Torres said.
According to him, Wood embodies one of the “idols of history” and perhaps the history of Baguio and the Philippines gives an “overemphasis on great men.”
Wood’s monument in Culion, said Torres, is an “idealized representation” of the ruthless man that was friend to the lepers but a burden to public finance.
“From another angle, Wood was made part of history by the councilors of Baguio, those who defined power,” he said. “In Culion, however, it was powerless Hansenites (lepers) that enshrined him to be part of history.”
In Baguio, Wood deserves that road named after him only if roads are for legends, Torres said.
After independence and after Wood, Baguio, he said, is now being built for lowland migrants, tourists, visitors, excursionists, traders and the ukay-ukay (used clothes) crowd.
As Baguio celebrates its centenary, Torres has posed a challenge as the city continues to idolize Wood: “Has anyone asked what happened then to the home of the Ibaloi? Is this part of history now just a mere representation?”
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Thinking of the Filipino palate amid Mad Cow disease scare
(Reprinted from archive)
Thinking of the Filipino palate amid Mad Cow disease scare
By Maurice Malanes
Northern Luzon Inquirer--Thursday 29 March 2001
Time was when the traditional Filipino diet depended on where one lived.
Those who lived along the coastlines would rely mainly on fish and other seafood for their protein sources. The Igorot folk of old would get their protein mainly from wide varieties of upland beans and grains, and occasionally from meat when they would hold their traditional thanksgiving feasts called ca�ao or pedit.
Until now, most Igorot folk, particularly those in the hinterlands, still rely mainly on plant proteins and freshwater fish.
So traditionally the Filipino diet has been plant-centered. But thanks to the proponents of the steak and burger religion, the Filipino's healthier vegetable-fish-oriented taste buds shifted toward something meaty as steakhouses and burger chains continued to mushroom in urban areas from Tuguegarao City in Luzon to Davao City in Mindanao.
And proof that these establishments are cashing in on the Filipino's changing taste buds is that they now belong to the country's top 1,000 corporations.
With the Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth diseases now threatening cattle and livestock in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, which export a substantial amount of their livestock products to the Philippines, Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor has advised Filipinos to patronize locally raised cattle and livestock.
Problem is how can Filipino consumers be assured that the processed meats they buy from the groceries, such as sausages, hotdogs and hams, or the burgers they eat in fastfood chains are not tainted?
Advice
One good advice comes from Dr. Micaela Defiesta, Cordillera director of the National Nutritional Council.
"If it's not possible to eat beef and pork, we can go for fish," she said.
Fish, the traditional protein source in this archipelago, "unfortunately is not given priority," she said. "More and more Filipinos now go for burgers and steaks."
With the Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth diseases, Defiesta agrees with the suggestion that it is time for Filipinos to re-educate and re-orient their palates.
"If our forebears had simple but healthier taste buds, why can't we?" she asked. "My advice is for parents to put more fish in the diet of their children."
Fish, she said, has the same quality of protein as meat and has healthier polyunsaturated fats, which the body can easily absorb.
Other Filipinos, she said, can go for grains and legumes, and legume derivatives, such as tofu or soybean curd.
Defiesta said she saw the Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth diseases as an opportunity for concerned officials to look for, if not innovate, appropriate technologies and food security programs for various regions in the country.
Concerned government agencies and local government units, she suggested, could look at the prospects of further popularizing rice-and-fish culture which can help ensure food self-sufficiency in the localities, particularly in a landlocked region such as the Cordillera.
She also suggested the protection of the Cordillera's river systems that are rich in exotic fish species.
The Cordillera has seven major river systems and several tributaries, which have helped provide the protein sources of villagers since time immemorial. The rivers teem with eels, lobsters and various fish.
Mining operations and big dams, however, have threatened some of the river systems.
Still recovering from the pollution of a copper mine in the 1970s, for example, is the Amburayan River, the source of protein for villagers from Kapangan and Atok in Benguet and those in the uplands of La Union.
The Agno River has also lost its exotic fish species because of mining operations in Itogon town and after the Binga and Ambuklao dams were built in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mining operations in Mankayan town also continue to threaten the Abra River.
If only to secure and ensure the health and nutrition of rural folk, Cordillera's river systems must also be secured and protected, Defiesta said.
Thinking of the Filipino palate amid Mad Cow disease scare
By Maurice Malanes
Northern Luzon Inquirer--Thursday 29 March 2001
Time was when the traditional Filipino diet depended on where one lived.
Those who lived along the coastlines would rely mainly on fish and other seafood for their protein sources. The Igorot folk of old would get their protein mainly from wide varieties of upland beans and grains, and occasionally from meat when they would hold their traditional thanksgiving feasts called ca�ao or pedit.
Until now, most Igorot folk, particularly those in the hinterlands, still rely mainly on plant proteins and freshwater fish.
So traditionally the Filipino diet has been plant-centered. But thanks to the proponents of the steak and burger religion, the Filipino's healthier vegetable-fish-oriented taste buds shifted toward something meaty as steakhouses and burger chains continued to mushroom in urban areas from Tuguegarao City in Luzon to Davao City in Mindanao.
And proof that these establishments are cashing in on the Filipino's changing taste buds is that they now belong to the country's top 1,000 corporations.
With the Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth diseases now threatening cattle and livestock in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, which export a substantial amount of their livestock products to the Philippines, Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor has advised Filipinos to patronize locally raised cattle and livestock.
Problem is how can Filipino consumers be assured that the processed meats they buy from the groceries, such as sausages, hotdogs and hams, or the burgers they eat in fastfood chains are not tainted?
Advice
One good advice comes from Dr. Micaela Defiesta, Cordillera director of the National Nutritional Council.
"If it's not possible to eat beef and pork, we can go for fish," she said.
Fish, the traditional protein source in this archipelago, "unfortunately is not given priority," she said. "More and more Filipinos now go for burgers and steaks."
With the Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth diseases, Defiesta agrees with the suggestion that it is time for Filipinos to re-educate and re-orient their palates.
"If our forebears had simple but healthier taste buds, why can't we?" she asked. "My advice is for parents to put more fish in the diet of their children."
Fish, she said, has the same quality of protein as meat and has healthier polyunsaturated fats, which the body can easily absorb.
Other Filipinos, she said, can go for grains and legumes, and legume derivatives, such as tofu or soybean curd.
Defiesta said she saw the Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth diseases as an opportunity for concerned officials to look for, if not innovate, appropriate technologies and food security programs for various regions in the country.
Concerned government agencies and local government units, she suggested, could look at the prospects of further popularizing rice-and-fish culture which can help ensure food self-sufficiency in the localities, particularly in a landlocked region such as the Cordillera.
She also suggested the protection of the Cordillera's river systems that are rich in exotic fish species.
The Cordillera has seven major river systems and several tributaries, which have helped provide the protein sources of villagers since time immemorial. The rivers teem with eels, lobsters and various fish.
Mining operations and big dams, however, have threatened some of the river systems.
Still recovering from the pollution of a copper mine in the 1970s, for example, is the Amburayan River, the source of protein for villagers from Kapangan and Atok in Benguet and those in the uplands of La Union.
The Agno River has also lost its exotic fish species because of mining operations in Itogon town and after the Binga and Ambuklao dams were built in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mining operations in Mankayan town also continue to threaten the Abra River.
If only to secure and ensure the health and nutrition of rural folk, Cordillera's river systems must also be secured and protected, Defiesta said.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Donors help keep school for blind afloat
Donors help keep school for blind afloat
By Maurice Malanes
Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: June 02, 2009
TWO years ago, a US Navy retiree was looking for the Tahanang Walang Hagdanan, a house for persons with physical disabilities, in Baguio City so he could offer his help, but the driver of the cab he took brought him instead to the school of the Northern Luzon Association of the Blind (NLAB).
The man did not turn his back, however. After assessing the needs of the blind children, the retiree, who preferred not to be named, volunteered to supply the school with four sacks of rice monthly and to provide dinner every Monday for the 39 children under its care.
He has been doing this since and has pledged to continue helping when the school year opens this month.
For Dona Rosario, NLAB president and executive director, the taxi driver’s mistake was serendipity. “Who knows the retiree was led by the Holy Spirit?” she says.
Quiet benefactors
An Indian couple has been doing the same thing, providing snacks or lunch once a week for the children.
This breed of quiet benefactors has kept afloat northern Luzon’s only school for the blind, especially at a time when its overseas donors had reduced their funding, says Rosario.
The school offers free elementary education to visually impaired children in northern and central Luzon and continues to encourage parents to enroll their blind children there.
Graduates cross into regular high schools and later pursue university or college education, or technical or vocational courses, such as health massage.
Economic crisis
The NLAB’s future, Rosario says, is at stake because its donors are also affected by the global economic crisis. The school is supported by the Christoffel Blinden Mission (CBM), a church-based German donor; Heinz Woelke Foundation; the Diocese of Baguio-Benguet; and other local civic, educational and religious groups and individuals.
Last year, the CBM provided nearly half of the needs of the pupils. This school year, it pledged only 33 percent, saying the current economic crunch affected its supporters among the low-income European parishioners, says Rosario.
The NLAB spends P6,500 for each child monthly or P253,500 for the 39 pupils enrolled last school year. With the reduced funding, it has to initiate fund drives to sustain its mission.
Rosario is hoping that more people will follow the examples set by the Navy retiree and the Indian couple. “Many people in both government and the private sector have yet to appreciate that if these visually impaired are educated they can become productive [members of society],” she says.
She cites blind couple Rolando and Martha Bitaga, who teach academic subjects, including music, at the NLAB school. Both are graduates of the school.
Other graduates have established their own massage clinics, helping reduce the number of beggars in the city, says Rosario.
The NLAB faces another difficulty this school year. Its lease on the lot along the Marcos Highway, where its two-story school has stood since 1985, will expire this month, forcing the school to relocate to a smaller house on Bokawkan Road.
Repair work of the practically dilapidated house is not Rosario’s only concern. She also has to face complaints of neighbors who claim that the front fence mended by the NLAB workers was illegal because it was not covered by a building permit.
The irony of it, says Rosario, is that the complainants are encroaching on parts of the NLAB property.
Rosario did her homework. Citing a historical document showing the original fence, she explained to city authorities that the NLAB was just involved in restoration work.
At times, Rosario feels like giving up. A former nun who refused to get paid for her services, she says her difficulties and trials sometimes stress her out, giving her hypertension.
“I cannot just abandon these children,” she says. “They are my inspiration.”
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