By ARTHUR L. ALLAD-IW
www.nordis.net

“Teehnnnnnngggggaaaaaooooooo!” Tengao is an indigenous word repeatedly shouted out by a group of youth early in the morning going around the community. They want to ensure that all the residents would hear their message: that it is a community holiday. As a traditional law, nobody could leave the community whether to tend their farms and fields or travel out of the town.

In the two-year short stay, of my elementary days in Tetep-an, one of the eastern barangays of Kiltepan (Kilong, Tetep-an, Antadao) in Sagada, I was one of the youth shouting to the top of my voice, going around the village calling out to the residents it is tengao. Tengao or the indigenous community holiday is a practice when the elders of the village perform rituals for community concerns. I remember these rituals had something to do with the agricultural cycle. Protection of farm production against natural disasters, against the attacks of rats and other foraging animals.

There are rituals performed before the village starts planting rice, when the grain ripens, and after harvest. In each of these rituals amam-a or the elders butcher the appropriate animal in the dap-ay (the indigenous socio-political institution where issues and concerns of the community are discussed). These rituals are sacred and are strictly observed. Villagers, upon the holiday declaration, will stay home or if one is an adult male and by established village standards is qualified, he participates in the dap-ay.

If a villager, whether he knows the declaration of the tengao or not, has left the village, then sanctions are to be imposed upon him by the elders. Early in the morning , all exit areas are marked with the podong or fresh knotted stalk of the runo (reed). The traditional warning sign that says the community is observing a holiday. By that podong, outsiders cannot enter the village and villagers cannot go out.

During those days of my stay in the village, I enjoyed most the tengao related to thanksgiving, the festival after rice harvest or begnas di say-at. My day starts as I join my peers shouting tengao all over the village. In those days, youngs boys of the community, slept in the dap-ay more as a challenge of our being young. Early in the morning, one of the older boys wakes us up to inform the community.

This practice of the indigenous holiday is done in many village of the region. They call it ubbaya in Central Sagada and Besao, and te-er in Bontoc and Sadanga.

One of my friends who decided to stay and raise his family in our village told me that the youth still come out for the community call for the tengao. He said, however the young boys now no longer sleep in the dap-ay. He explained that the boys are more comfortable at home as houses today are built bigger and are enough to accomodate the whole family.

I asked, if it might be because of the dagdagay (or kulkulis). An established tradition in the dap-ay where the older males require the younger ones to massage their feet with two pieces of twigs. The boys nowadays, usually in jest, accusingly call it a form of child abuse when they are requested by their elders. He answered me, “No”, and laughed.

However. I remember, as a boy that we obliged and usually with enthusiasm and as a matter of a kid’s task performed the dagdagay on the elders who after the hard work in the fields, went to the dap-ay for it. They used to tell us it relaxed the tired body.

In the dap-ay, we enthusiastically accepted the task , without question, as we enjoyed it too especially when they told us stories during the dagdagay. But most of us hated it when they wanted the dagdagay for long periods or until they fall asleep. This is why and when the impatience of being young, we considered it an act of child abuse.

Considering all that adventure, all those stories and being one in the group that I experienced in my dap-ay days. I look back with some sadness at what the young of today are missing by the loss of interest to continue the tradition of growing up in the dap-ay. I could understand it as part of the changing times that an indigenous community is undergoing. But I worry most that these practices, like the indigenous holiday and role of the dap-ay, might pass, lost without at least being documented and runover by the so-called modernization. # nordis.net

By MARY LOU O. MARIGZA
www.nordis.net

In San Mariano, Isabela, we interviewed a woman farmer leader who raises yellow corn on their three hectare farm. The computation below is for one hectare of land:

Total expenses reaches P25,340, the breakdown are: 1 bag corn seeds RRC2 P8,000; 4 bags abono P4,000; 4 bags urea P4,640; Pesticide spraying P1,300; Labor arado, eras @100/day for 2 laborers P400; labor mag-aabono P100; labor magtatanim for 5@100/day P500; snacks of laborer P500; Harvest for 10 persons P1,000; Thresher fee P2,200; Hakot@10/sack P1,000; Drying @100/day x 3 days x 4 persons P1,200; Freight from barrio to Centro SM P1,300; 100 pcs empty sacks P1,000.

Sixty-five (65) sacks will fetch P39,325 (each sack contains 55 kilos and each kilo sells for P11).

The net income (income P39,325 less expenses P25,340) is P12,985.

In four months, the average monthly income for a hectare is P3,426.25. Her family plants corn in three hectares so roughly they could get P10,000 monthly on corn alone. Their family holdings consists of another hectare planted to rice for family consumption while another hectare is planted to bananas, cassava, other root crops and vegetables and yellow corn for food.

However, she said this is hardly enough since she has three children going to school who need daily “baon” and expenses for school projects. And planting corn like planting rice is never fun! It is labor intensive and the harvest is not for consumption but for feeds for animals. Cassava is also a problem. There are only three traders in San Mariano who dictate the selling price of cassava. If it is dry, the traders buy it for P8.00 per kilo but if it is fresh it sells for only P2.70 per kilo. It takes about four days to dry the cassava if the sun shines the whole day.

So she was enticed to contract her land for “ethanol” planting. Initially, the Green Future Innovations Inc contracted their land for P5,000 as nursery for the sugarcane they need to produce. The GFII is experimenting on which of the four varieties of sugarcane they have chosen would be the best suited for ethanol production. The woman farmer regretted having to lease her land to ethanol. The work is still backbreaking and requires a lot of input.

After the national fact finding mission in February where the land and contracting problems surfaced, she joined others who had contracted with GFII in a rally in the municipal hall of San Mariano to ask for better conditions and better pay for the laborers. As a result, they were able to ask for an increase of P5,000 to the original P5,000, so now the new leases are for P10,000 a hectare of sugarcane planting. She contracted for three years with GFII.

She said she wants out, but she has to stick it out with “ethanol” for two more years. Good for her, the family only leased three hectares. Others were less fortunate. They leased all their land for the ethanol nursery. # nordis.net

By ALDWIN QUITASOL
www.nordis.net

Society comprises two classes:  those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food.  — Sébastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort, Maximes

The headline of one of the nation’s leading daily papers said the Filipino rich grew richer with Henry Sy as top grosser thanks to the “booming stock market”. Sy is in his fourth year as top billionaire according to Forbes magazine. His net worth is 7.2 billion not in Philippine peso but US dollars. The last in the said list’s net worth is pegged at $1 billion.

A low wage earner, an ordinary worker, can say that Sy and other business tycoons got rich and became even richer thanks to his hard labor. The workers have the right to claim that because their wages are pegged at meager amounts; the rights to organize into unions, to negotiate for higher pay and more benefits are suppressed. The government of the yellow-ribbon president does not give a damn for workers welfare, so the rich business owners continue to cut their pay checks and accumulate bigger profit.

These few business tycoons remains in the list of the richest while more and more Filipinos adds to the lengthening lists of debtors. Due to their meager income, they have to borrow money from the “bumbay” or list their name in the neighborhood sari-sari store list of “utangeros”.

While names of Sy, Tan, Cojuangco, Ayala, Zobel and a few others comprise the smallest percentage of Philippine society who live comfortably, most of the Filipinos who are largely workers and peasants comprise the bigger chunk who suffer from the rise of prices basic commodities and services, and the commercialized backward Philippine education.

As this elite group are warm and secure in their mansions and palaces, the Filipino poor are always nervous and worried when typhoons and heavy rain come. Just like the traumatic experience when typhoon Ondoy lingered in “the Philippine area of responsibility”.

What would the world be where the rich elite give a portion of their wealth to the poor, not only to feed them but give them the right to partake equally in the country’s riches, where they cooperate with the government to look for ways to uplift the lives of the poor masses? But this is just wishful thinking because it will not happen under this present system. These few rich are the real bosses of this administration and not the poor whom the yellow-ribbon president assumed that the“wangwang” was among their big problems.

The list of people fed-up by the unfair government system is gettting longer. The list of people who seek real change and not just words and promises is getting longer. The list of reasons why social transformation is needed is also getting longer.

Soon, the lessons from this decadent society will just be noted for the people of a new one to learn from and build a world that would benefit the majority. # nordis.net