Innate practical wisdom

I was looking in my parents’ house for an old pair of boots that I planned to wear anew when I stumbled upon a very small plastic box.  I immediately knew what it was; the holder of some of the business cards that I collected through the years; mostly from fellow development workers.  I also instantly recognized the one on top.  It was from an Australian NGO worker working in the Solomon Islands that I’d met when we both attended an international short course on food security in Bangkok, Thailand sometime in 1999.

He was the Agriculture Program Manager of Appropriate Technology for Community & Environment (APACE).   I don’t know why he was in this supposedly gathering of Southeast and East Asian government organization (GO) and non-government organization (NGO) workers jointly organized by the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) and a Thai NGO founded by IIRR alumni and their friends.  As the only white, he appeared like a sore thumb in a group of nearly 20 brown-skinned participants.  But what really made him to stand out, well to me, at least, was his insinuation that slash-and-burn farming—kaingin in our vernacular—was sustainable and could not be the cause of deforestation as generally accepted belief wanted us to believe.

According to him, this much badmouthed farming system was sustainable until the greedy white man’s logging corporations started their operations in the then mostly virgin forests of the Solomon Islands.  The local inhabitants, portrayed as uncouth and uncivilized by the white intruders, moved freely in their forests, cut a few trees from a sizable swath of land that when planted to their desired crops would produce enough for the sustenance of their tribe or group.  They’ll move on to an adjacent lot once telltale signs manifest that the soil could no longer nurture their crops. 

This process would be repeated over and over until they landed back on their original plot.  By that time, the soil has rejuvenated; has regained its fertility and is again ready to nurture the food crops the inhabitants needed for their nourishment.  This explained why they're nomadic.  While their unhampered movement was vital in keeping their slash-and-burn farming practices sustainable. 

While sharing his argument, I cannot help but be reminded of our own Aytas.  I’d realized that I’d been gullible too  long to accept hook, line and sinker the contention that these acknowledged first settlers of the country had been responsible for the deforestation of our mountains, particularly in the Zambales ranges.  Growing up in a rural barrio of Bacolor, my friends and I would marvel at the sight of summer nights forest fires from the mountains where Mount Pinatubo, we would learn later, is situated.  Old folks who caught us gazing in awe at these nearly nightly events would joke that Aytas were partying around their bonfires.

With the soundness of his argument, I’d realized that the nearly nightly “bonfires” can never be part of slash-and-burn farming.  Moreover, it was impossible that the Aytas were the ones responsible for these forest fires.  It’s definitely more likely the lowlanders—the unats (straight-haired) in contrast to the kulots (curly-haired)—scavenging for left-over woods on logged over timber concessions of logging companies that did.   These lowlanders turned the collected wasted logs as well the secondary growth timbers that they cut into charcoal.

Furthermore, the kulots, by that time, had already been driven mostly into the deeper reserves of the mountains by the big commercial loggers.  We can recall that in earlier historic times, these gentle people were uprooted from their lowland settlements by waves and waves of more politically, economically and socio-culturally advanced latter day settlers, like the Malays.

Those who opted not to go deeper into the forests, suffered worse fate from the operations, whether legal or illegal, of these logging companies and other lowlanders.  They were left with no other option but to live in the periphery of lowland settlements, beg for their survival and become mendicants.  This, in turn, led to a worst predicament.  This once self-sustaining people, now deprived of their means of productions, fall prey to criminal syndicates who took advantage of their vulnerabilities and their gentle ways. 

                                            

Who have not heard of how these criminals would collect them early in the morning from their lowland settlements, bring them to busy urban commercial centers to beg and return them to their villages at the end of the day sans the alms they were able to solicit.  They would suffer from this and other indignities until some crusading media practitioners exposed their sad plight and forced concerned government agencies to act.

But why is this old man writing on this?

Well, for one, he’s annoyed why it took time before he realized he’s been had for accepting as gospel truth the contention that such gentle people, as the Aytas, are the culprits of the massive deforestation in our mountains and forests.  But he’s more bothered that respected academics, especially from the premier national university in the country, which he attended for seven long years, did nothing to correct this.  If ever they did, he’s not heard of it. 

And it took a non-academic Aussie to open his mind.

This however made him to realize that one can learn as well and as much, if not more, from ordinary people.  He’s met a lot of educated people, some were with three-letter titles after their names.  But none has made him think just as deeply as this Aussie development worker.  Or, the old farmer-leader he’d met when he was a young social activist.  This farmer-leader taught himself to read and write while fighting the Japanese imperial army as a young Hukbalahap guerilla but, by being observant, he could easily diagnose what plaguing his crops, just as effortlessly, the Philippine society.

Or, a young executive director of a rural development NGO whom he observed holding his torch against the mostly academics-members in a board of trustees meeting where he was taking the minutes.  This was long before the former earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the well-respected London School of Economics.  The dean of UPLB College of Agriculture, was so impressed that he inquired why his analysis and information on recent social and political developments about the country and Eastern Europe had not been heard of in the academe or found their way in academic journals.

How I wish I could be like them, in how they think.   On second thought, how I wish we all could be like them.  Especially, like that old man.

Why that old man?

That old man, most importantly, did not allow his lack of formal education to keep him ignorant; he humorously jested that he’s an alumnus of the Stalin University at (the bosom of) Mount Arayat.  That despite his ominous evaluation of his farm and country, he had kept his sense of humor and had not allowed this to dampen his positive outlook for his farm, country and life.  And like the young executive director, he’d hold his torch to whoever would debate him on subjects he loved and knew.  Moreover, similar to the Aussie NGO worker, he’d challenged long established and generally accepted ideas.

Better still, that old man had not allowed himself to be submissive and apathetic to the wrongs prevalent in Philippine society.  Like that old man, this old man wants to remain lucid and critical of what’s happening around him.  That he’ll continue to stand up against small evils he’ll see in the small world he now moves around.

This old man positively thinks he can still live up to some of the maxims he took up as a young social activist and do these.  If he's not too old to rock and roll no one can bar him from doing these.  (30)