Man barges into house, stabs widower dead as kids watch
In Gawad Kalinga villages in Tarlac, something truly positive is happening to over 100 Aeta families who are the beneficiaries of GK houses, free pre-school education and additional sustainable livelihood.
Not far from the GK village in Burog, Bamban town, bubbly Aeta children can be found inside a Sibol classroom, GK’s pre-school facility, listening intently to their teacher as she counts numbers and reads fairy tales.
Their fathers, meanwhile, are in the field, harvesting fruits and vegetables, while their mothers tend to their brightly colored, clean and sturdy homes. Just nearby, elderly Aetas make a beeline at the GK clinic for medical checkup.
Far from the image of poor and neglected Aetas who roam around city streets in tattered clothes, barefoot and begging for food, the Aetas in the Tarlac GK villages are a picture of productive, happy and proud indigenous people.
“The Aetas have been neglected for so many years, but through Gawad Kalinga, we have shown them they deserve to be given love, care and attention and a helping hand out of poverty,” says Lito Policarpio, project director of the GK Burog Seattle Washington State village in Tarlac, home to 72 Aeta families.
The GK Burog village is considered a model indigenous community where Aetas have come to embrace the GK life. The Aetas’ homes are part of GK’s Kalinga Indigenous People (IP) program, which aims to help indigenous communities build ecologically sound and sustainable villages, sharing a common vision that is economically progressive, promoting social equity and providing good quality of life.
The program also aims to preserve indigenous culture consistent with sustainable development, achieving this through values formation and building communities that care for their members and for others as well.
Jon Ramos, GK regional coordinator, says GK has five existing villages in Tarlac: Batal Bato, Sta. Juliana with 44 homes; Burog, Bamban, 72; Sta. Rosa, Bamban, 50; San Martin and Sto. Niño, both in Bamban, 13 each (construction ongoing). He says the villages are 90 percent complete.
GK Village in Burog
Lito Policarpio says members of Couples for Christ (CFC) in
Policarpio, a CFC member, recalls he was with his fellow CFC members when they looked for potential sites for the GK village in Bamban.
The sorry living conditions of the Aetas caught their attention. “The Aetas lived in a barong-barong, whose roof was made up of banana leaves. Their small houses had no floors and comfort rooms. We thought how could they live in sub-human conditions. What would happen to them in case of strong typhoons, flooding, and other calamities? Surely their houses would be blown away, so we thought they should be given help,” Policarpio says.
He recalls talking to the Aetas and asking them about their livelihood and if they wanted to have concrete houses – and they said yes.
Aetas traditionally subsist on farming, particularly planting bananas, papaya and other fruits in their ancestral land. They also occasionally hunt for wild boars in the forest.
But even though they were self-sustaining, the Aetas still lived a hand-to-mouth existence, lucky to have one meal a day. But that was before GK came into the scene. Slowly but surely, GK has been trying to transform the lives of the Aetas but still mindful of their culture and traditional way of life, continuously interacting and consulting them.
Policarpio says the Aetas have greatly appreciated their decent houses, additional livelihood and free pre-school education for their children.
“I saw the change in them. You can see their sense of pride and dignity, seemingly very inspired to be better persons and citizens of their community. I also noticed na tumataas ang pagtingin sa kanila ng mga tao sa bayan (they are increasingly gaining the respect of people in the town). With the help of GK, their dignity and self-respect were restored. People respected them more,” he says.
The good news is the Aetas are encouraging their young to go to school to learn how to read, write and count.
Out of the 72 families in the GK village in Burog, only one was able to graduate from high school.
With newly opened pre-school center Sibol, GK targets to give education to all Aeta children. “Right now, there are about 50 children who go to Sibol,” Policarpio says.
There are four Aetas going to a high school near the
Aetas in the GK villages have shunned begging and focused more on planting for their livelihood. GK volunteers taught them how to cultivate other crops, aside from bananas. They gave them seeds and taught them how to maximize the ancestral land – about 10,600 hectares – given to them by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
In another noticeable change, the Aetas stayed more in their communities and took care of their homes. The Aetas are traditionally nomadic, moving from one place to another, which explains why, according to Ramos, many people discouraged GK from building houses for them.
“We initially received criticism and discouragement from people who thought that building houses for the Aetas was a useless effort since they would leave them anyway,” Ramos recounts.
But their detractors were proven wrong. The
Aetas did not leave their GK homes. Since the GK Burog village was established in January 2005, the 72 families have not left their homes and in other villages, Aeta communities continue to flourish.
“In fact, when we talked to them, they told us they used to transfer from one house to another because they had no choice; they lived in shanties and during typhoons, when their houses were destroyed, they had to move to another place. But because they were assured of sturdy houses, they no longer moved,” Ramos says.
“They said they would no longer transfer and would just take care of their homes,” he adds.
Another positive thing: the Aetas have learned to mingle with other people. And since they have experienced how a comfortable life is like, they have learned to aspire for better things like furniture for their new homes.
Ramos says helping the Aetas debunked the volunteers’ pre-conceived notions about the indigenous group.
He, too, recounts some funny experiences like having to teach the Aetas how to use the toilets, which they had made as storage room for their unripened bananas.
Until now, Ramos says they are still teaching the Aetas a lot of things. “It’s a learning process,” he says.
Both Ramos and Policarpio say that helping the Aetas has been a very rewarding experience.
“Of course, they are worth helping; our roots are here, they are our ancestors, they should not be neglected. The sad story is they own 12,000 hectares of ancestral land, but… people abuse them, scare them, and most of them cannot do anything. But we are trying to help them not to be used and abused by powerful people,” Ramos said.
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