The top of Mt. Asog was on fire last week.

It was reported that the fire on the Santiago-Sta. Elena side of Asog in Iriga City was caused by slash and burn method (kaingin).

On the other hand, the Santiago-Sta. Elena portion of the Buhi-Iriga road still has a lot of potholes. Grabe alpog sa biyahe. Maray gaye’d nyadi giboon dayaday yo banta’ nyadtong mga taga Sta. Justina kaso nyo di pa natitinampo sa atubang nya Sta. Justina West. E’da’ tinampo e’da’ boto. E’da nakukong boto si Boboy Alfelor.  Nga’min nagboto ki Luis Villafuerte. Pero adi dapat aksyonan nya mga taga Santiago-Sta.Elena man.

The market in Sta. Elena will be transferred alledgedly to Sagrada in the vicinity of the Buhi-Malinao-road crossing. The project is on hold because of election ban.

Also, a new Shell gasoline station is now operational. The Caltex one in Sagrada Crossing is now closed.

Mga tinampo sa poblacion na project pa nyadtong depontong si ex-mayor JYM, ang’gang ngowan ampaw pa man dayaday. Di’ nae’e'rakan na dawa’ aspaltoon tanganing ana mga niparada ag niprusisyon magayagaya ana pag agi.

There is an on-going basketball tournament sa centro. Mga nagiyame’n mga tanod ag mga barangay officials.

A new church will rise in Sagrada beside the Sagrada cemetery. The hilly portion is now being flattened by heavy equipment.

The flagstone quarrying is still unabated in Burocbusoc. Mas lalong grabe na ading paglapastangan sa saton na environment.

***

During our Katon years, we were akin to cherubs in many ways.  Our very young lives were fairytale-like then, I would say, not because of our Maestra’s magic wand but because of our innate childhood innocence.

When I was a Grade-2 pupil at the Buhi Elementary School, the Riprap behind the school campus became my arena and short-time-day spa or resort of sort.

To escape from the manual chore of grass cutting in our assigned patch in the school ‘bull-ground’ my newfound-truant friends and I would surreptitiously ‘escape’.  ‘Mageskip kita sa Riprap’ (Let’s play truant at the Riprap.).

Through a secret hole in the thick-bamboo-twig (kagingking) fence we’d cross the forlorn dirt-road shored up by a high-concrete-riprap embankment spanning perhaps 40-meter long.  Down the Riprap wall’s low portion we would go down to the then pristine part of the Rinaga’ river for a cool-river dip amidst the fast-setting sun.

The Riprap was to boys mainly a trying place of their budding manliness.  A classroom dare from another boy – ‘Sa Riprap kita! Eskwir sana.’ (See you at the Riprap mano-a-mano!).  Thus for many of a boy like me, our ‘manly’ initiation at the Riprap in settling disputes with brute force and violence came to be.

Lately, a new Riprap has wormed into our community sensibilities.  This time no one seems to be able to make sense of it!

While there obviously is a riffraff of corrupt government officials, functionaries or private contractors who obviously botched up the Rinaga River riprap project our extant concerned local government officials and functionaries are obviously unwilling to do something about this.

This is in spite of massive evidence some links of which were posted in Buhi Online Facebook and You Tube by concerned citizens such as:

HOW COULD A 45 MILLION WORTH OF FLOOD CONTROL STRUCTURE AT RINAGA RIVER (POPULARLY KNOWN AS RINAGBA RIVER) RAVAGED AND DESTROYED BY A FLOOD COURTESY OF TYPHOON REMING?

TESS DE LIMA’S PERIODICO SA RADYO COMMENTED ON MAYOR LACOSTE’S FATE AND THE 45 M RINAGA RIVER PROJECT ANOMALIES…

When I posted the link several months ago for the Philippine Commission on Audit’s (COA) Fraud Report site and asked at least for information on the project name and other details so BOL can itself file the COA report, the twits stopped all of a sudden.

Surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly, the blog I wrote with the same title last year in October got merely a lukewarm reaction with  one comment to date coming from Tagasi’rip who obviously uses only a pen-name.

But again last week when the BOL Facebook posts became alive with election issues, the Rinaga’ River riprap scam once again became an active issue in the discussions.  New accusations surfaced on BOL Facebook though from an anonymous person using the pen-name Anthony Francisco.

Though Anthony Francisco’s earlier posts were taken out or deleted already by BOL, his persistence coupled with the lack of BOL Facebook FAN ‘reporting’ his posts as inappropriate, BOL decided to let his succeeding posts remain.  BOL feels that it cannot justly block his posts permanently until it gets sufficient feedback or ‘reports’ that would warrant it to do so.

The nagging question though is: will we ever get a response or positive action from our local public officials to look into this obvious issue of public-project mismanagement and even the corruption of public officials or what mudslinging candidates of earlier elections refer to as KICKBACK!

The least that I personally could ask from the only openly-identified currently-serving public official of Buhi LGU active in BOL Facebook the Honorable Councilman Edwin Salvamante is his indulgence to bring the clamor of many in BOL Facebook particularly to get the official stand of the incumbent elected officials of Buhi in this issue including the Municipal Council of which he is a member of.

My previous blog with the same title TE’EM NA way back in October last year raised many questions on the Rinaga’ River project and floated suggeted action particularly for the Municipal Council.

Will we ever get answers to these?

Kin indi’ mageskip n asana ako sa Riprap, maray pa… Ay inda baga?

MABALOS,

Al Claveria

Jacqueline Bermejo’s now infamous Facebook entry on Typhoon Ondoy’s devastation and human catastrophe in the Philippines:

[SIC]“buti n lng am hir in dubai! maybe so many sinners bak der! so yeah deserving wat hapend!” [SIC]“

Whoever authored such calloused statement quickly went down in infamy especially with the Filipino-web community and immediately caught Philippine-media attention.

In Biblical times sinners were punished swiftly with tangible wrath of God – as an example, The Great Flood that only Noah and his kin survived.

The righteous Noah, his family and select menagerie of animals had a second chance to restart in a new world without sinners.  We don’t have that second chance.

In Buhi’s mainly-countryside belief, that many so called learned people refer to as superstition, supernatural entities are the unseen guardian of the integrity and purity of the natural environment.  Or perhaps their conscience’s alter ego.

Defilers and destroyers of their natural environment right away are dealt with with unexplained illness, insanity or even death.

‘Nae’stapan’ is the Boie’nen concept of the supernaturals’ manifestation of their warning or punishment to offending mortal for spoiling the supernatural’ and even the natural worlds of mortals.

Supernaturals such as the ‘Enkanto’, ‘Taong Liped’, ‘Doende’ and the like are all around us. They are unseen lurking especially in remote places such as in jungles, desolate-cool streams and potable-water springs or ‘burabod’.

Perhaps if people start considering the defilement and destruction of our natural heritage such as the Lawe’d, Kaoma-an and Kabokiran as sins and punishable transgression of the Enkanto, Dwende and Taong Liped domains, many Boie’nen will have to think twice first not to be lax or derelict with their responsibilities for the protection and preservation of Boie’s environmental endowments.

Environmental transgressors will burn with unexplained fever at night, go suddenly insane or worse die of unexplained causes.  Such are how God  and the Supernatural manifest their wrath and punishment.

Such would be the fate of many elected public officials, public servants, unscrupulous businessmen who manage to elbow their fish-cages or illegally buy their way in unauthorized areas in Lake Buhi, the illegal loggers, and those who toss their garbage anywhere convenient to them and similar unconscionable people.

Sinners they are, sinners they shall be in our eyes and heart for the sake and assurance of our good-environmental posterity.

The incorrigible sinners in Noah’s time were timely served ultimatum before their final punishment – death by drowning.

Who will deliver the ultimatum to these sinners in Buhi? God? Enkanto? Taonglipe’d? Dwende?

For now let’s just wish:

Magkae’re’stapan sana adding mga bagading tawo, na sabi ngani’ ni barkadang Chris Edward P. San Luis:

MGA BAKOON NA E’DA’ PAKI LABE’T!

Below is my interpretation of Jose Rizal’s poem ‘To the Philippine Youth’ .  I do not read and understand Spanish so I relied only on several authors’ English translations of his poem in writing mine.

I titled it with a concocted Boie’nen-English title as follows:

AYKO! (OUCH!) HAIKU

Oh children heed thy native land’s place in the sun

Hold your head high, go maximize your potentials

Your motherland’s future rests in your very hands!

Raise your standards, your impressionable mind

Fight your lot with sheer intellect and inventiveness

With talented passion banish oppressions of all kind

With focused industry, your mind rises above the petty

Your natural ingenuity ensures good posterity you’ll see

At the end of the day your future brightened it would be!

Rizal it seems expected the Philippine youth to completely take our Motherland’s future in their very own hands. I cannot find in ‘To the Philippine Youth’ poem any reference to parental care and guidance – wetnursing their potentials’ bloom?

It is not easy for me to write about things that are troubling especially to me.

The recent day’s deluge of media images and sounds had just been overpoweringly disturbing.  Still greatly confusing even for someone of my age who I can say have already seen much from deeper and wider perspectives from all over.

It may not be so with most of us who may only perceive events constricted by the proverbial frog’s mouth-of-the-well habitation concept of the sky.

Could many of us be now so emotionally calloused as a result of the constant bombardment especially by daily news media of killings, deaths and violence especially lately from our streets and waters including floodwater?

The television image of that little girl unusually sitting calmly it seems on top of house debris swiftly being carried by the raging-flooded river under a concrete bridge with disastrous consequences obviously. May the Almighty bless her cherubic soul and all other victims.

The images of youngsters clearly having fun and even horsing around safe in the safety of shelter while taping people outside trying to frantically survive in the rampaging flood.  Such dirty laundry hung on You Tube for the world to see!

The overall inappropriate demeanor of Chris Aquino in the Television telethon with Tina Monson Palma, Fr. Tito and Pokwang and her inappropriate side comments.

I have more respect now for Pokwang and highly empathize with Tina if she was indeed sarcastic when she said in effect: ‘We have received many donations thanks to Chris.’ These are confusing scenes.

The more I believe we may indeed now are wanting in decorum and sensibility as a people.

But perhaps no. Thanks to Jessie James Nealega’s Matobato Prayer Warrior children video and written post especially on the Buroc’busok Flagstone Flak – the sad exploitation of children there.

LISTEN! Little voices.  Little children. Not to be belittled.

If only I could hit a single musical note, I would sing in sincere prayer the song below popularized by The Carpenters.

BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN

Bless the beasts and the children

For in this world they have no voice

They have no choice

Bless the beasts and the children

For the world can never be

The world they see Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them

Give them love

Let it shine all around them

Bless the beasts and the children

Give them shelter from a storm

Keep them safe

Keep them warm

Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them

Give them love

Let it shine all around them

Bless the beasts and the children

Give them shelter from a storm

Keep them safe

Keep them warm

The children

The children

***

Tsynos\’s Birthday Song (at 4 yrs old)

Let’s all stop bawling about Lake Buhi and other similar environmental issues back home!

It is not our fault that Buhi is endowed with natural geologic prettiness. Lake Buhi is smack-snug practically in the bottom half of a pretty-mountain-lipped bowl – the other half is plane arable land and gently rolling hills where the town-proper sits.

Just like the mythical Narcissus in Greek mythology,  Buhi’s God-given or godforsaken environmental endowments and beauty will only bring it its very own demise.

Not as single-good-hearted Boie’nen can stop it.

One Boie’nen folklore suggests that the bottom of the lake is the graveyard of an ancient thriving community of people. These were the whole community and its people who supposedly were rapidly submerged there - frozen in time in the cataclysmic formation of the lake.

We were told of ghastly silhouettes of human and human-habitation forms glimpsed in the then clear-water lake bottom by local fishermen in the light of a full moon.  When we were young this story and the like of it would unendingly spin our imagination, awe, admiration and titillation.

Perhaps that’s how stories, folklore and mythology made us one as a people – Boie’nen all.  The stories our elders told us that we in turn retold to our children connected us all – we had a holistic soul.

We love telling stories of what we commonly share as a people.

That’s why perhaps those of my generation who are past the golden age of fifty want to hear and re-tell those stories again, and again.

My generation cannot perhaps more effectively relate to our younger progenies – what is called the X-generation. They in turn may not see the value of the stories we tell and still seek to hear – our history as a people.

With all available modern-day gadgetries and tools of immediate gratification, they are the victims of the latest western-mercantilism and constant commercial bombardments. While my generation’s and earlier ones’ victimization came first on historical records in galleons, the X-generation’s come in light-speed and terabyte billions.

They make their own stories or perhaps what they believe as their own stories – perhaps justly so. The spool they wind their stories on are made by wily-modern cyber merchants and manipulators.

Many of the X generation exchange virtual gifts, fight virtual wars and boast of virtual achievements.

So who among them would care for something so mundane and physically tangible as Lake Buhi’s people-accelerated eutrophication? This is supposed to happen naturally anyway in thousands of years as the natural cycle that lakes have to undergo.

At the last stages of Lake Buhi’s euthrophication, we will again see all those shoreline green vegetation that are all gone now. The thick almost impenetrable anginglit patches  of Purong Kasabangan and the trailing long leaves of the linamon water plant gracefully undulating in the water surface and others that I don’t anymore know the names of will again thrive – let’s hope.

These beneficial-water plants will come back when the whole lake will inevitably shrink and turn into a shallow wetland – filtering all the rubbish and impurities that Lake Buhi and even some Boie’nen now are unfortunately full of.

That wetland will naturally shrink and turn into a nice shallow pond.

The rest of our elderly generation and I then will be able to truly enjoy our final-fading days On Buhi-Golden Pond.

by Stella Dasmarinas-Roig

These are worth saving Boie’nen icons…

I think the local government and the private sector should work together so that sustainable development can be achieved.

Maybe there should be a separate department under the local government that should be responsible for these – like a Buhi Redevelopment Agency - whose efforts should focus on the preservation of the lake, the sinarapan, the pili nuts and other similar noteworthy projects.

There are many foreign grants available for projects like these. All we need is a good leader who has the vision and dedication to make this happen.

There is also a need to preserve Buhi’s cultural heritage that is very unique to Buhi – like the “tanggal”during the Holy Week and “pastoras” during the Christmas season.

I feel sad for the younger Buhi generation who wouldn’t have the chance to know about these when they are older.

Again, the local government and the private sector should work hand in hand to set up an organization – maybe a Buhi Cultural Heritage Foundation – for this purpose.

I’m pretty sure there will be many Buhinos who will generously give their time, treasures and talents for this good cause.

After all, wherever we are, Buhi will always be our home.

So let’s all unite!

Mabalos:

We live in a small community in Sagrada otherwise known locally as the ‘Tokyo Valley’ of Buhi.

Our major problem is the ready availability of safe drinking water.

To get it, we have to walk  for about a kilometer to take water from a ‘burabod’ or ‘water spring’. There are no roads or decent pathway to reach this ‘burabod’.

Just imagine during the rainy season – we have to wade and plod through slippery and sticky  mud to go to the main road too.

There are two favorite-night haunts of some Boienen men and a cockpit arena very close to our community.  So I am not convinced my Barangay is poor that it cannot look at our basic needs, like for potable water.

Or could there be a deeper politics behing this neglect?

Buhi Online encourages everyone to join this worthy cause for the protection and rehabilitation of Lake Buhi now and for future generations.

To join this commendable cause on Facebook CLICK HERE.

This cause’s POSITION SUMMARY:

• Each and every Buhinon should put it upon himself/herself not to contribute further to the sorry state of Lake Buhi.
• It is imperative that every environmentally inclined Buhinon convinces at least one degradation contributor to mend his/her ways now.
• Individually and/or collectively, Buhinons in or out of town have the moral duty to put some pressure on concerned agencies for proper actions.

Your help would be highly appreciated.

Mrs. Trini Dautil Watkins sent the email below to BOL several months ago. Trini has a very simple but equally brilliant idea. I share a related story postscript to her email below.

From: Trinidad Watkins
Date: Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 1:32 AM
Subject: Re: Pili Nut Tree Preservation
To: webmaster@buhi.com

To: Mayor Rey Lacoste and Other Elected Officials:

I am Trini (Ining) Dautil-Watkins. I live in Savannah, Georgia with my family. I would like you as Mayor of our town to tell the farmers and for those who own land to preserve the Pili Nut Trees. It has unique taste compared to other kinds of nuts in the world. I believe it only grows in the Bicol Region. If all the land owners will be interested in planting more pili nut trees; in 15-25 years we will have an abundance of pili nuts. This can create jobs in our very own town. Farmers can export the raw peeled products or make them into different kinds of sweets/delicacies for sale in tourist areas, etc.

I believe that all of you are working very hard to develop Buhi and become one of the famous tourism areas in the Bicol Region.

Kumusta and maray na aldaw sa ngamin!

Trini (Ining) Dautil-Watkins

P.S. by Al Claveria

In the early ‘70s, Cody Best, a Boie-based U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, and I had a meeting with an American World Bank ‘environment/agricultural-development expert’ in one of the hotels in Naga City.

This expert’s suggestion: the ‘air-seeding of pili-nut’ seedlings all over the mountains primarily of the Bikol region.

It was the same brilliant idea as Trini has in her email above.

The only thing different between their suggestions: Trini has a very practical idea of encouraging people, particularly manga Boienen, to start and keep propagating pili-nut trees for environmental and economic gains.

The American-expert’s idea is similar to Trini’s. Except that he wanted to use a C-130 or Hercules plane to air-seed the mountains of the Bikol region with pili-nut ‘bomblets’.

Just imagine if a to’nas pili coming from several-hundred meters from the sky hit one on the ground! It could be worse than being hit by a bullet from a gun! I told that expert so. To Cody’s amusement, I’d say.

So if they have a JOHNNY APPLESEED in America, we have in Boie a TRINI TO’NAS PILI that every one of us could be proud of someday.

Go figure! Give your SPIN on this topic.

Worth Getting Information for BOL Publication:

- the Pili-nut Alley in U.P. Los Banyos which is planted with rows of pili tree on both sides;

- WIKIPEDIA on Pili Nut CLICK HERE

- pictures, illustrations and videos.

LINK: Boienen-English Dictionary CLICK HERE:

New Words: to’nas – whole pili-nut shell without the husk or ‘obak’; with the pili-nut ‘elog’ still inside the shell; opened pili-nut shell without the nut or any shard or sliver of it is called, pine’ne’