Our mother country

To tell you the truth, it’s been so difficult to write this column with texts coming in for and against every candidate. Everyone is distracted, jittery for Monday. So am I. 

Mother’s Day makes me feel brand new and revitalized… But I wonder how my country feels about it — she is called “mother country,” after all.

“You trod over me, destroy and reject me. I gave you 15 million hectares of lush trees to keep you cool. Yet, 116 hectares a year of rainforests are disappearing because you chop my leafy offspring down to make money.” She must be very lonely. “I have been abandoned by tired, indigenous Mandayas who can’t lie on my feet to rest from the heat, and hawks that cannot now perch on my extended arms.”

 “No, ma’am, wala po,” a Badjao told me when I asked if I could buy natural pearls from his daily dives. “Dynamite bursts even my eardrums,” he added. Pearls under the Sulu Seas — how blessed we are. The largest pearl was found in the Philippines in a giant clam or mollusk in Palawan in 1934. It measured 24x14 cm. and weighed 6.4 kg. This pearl has since been known as the “Pearl of Allah.” Our magnificent pearls made us known worldwide as the “Pearl of the Orient Seas.” All we have now are cultured pearls raised in Palawan and Davao. That’s so sad. Rajahs and caliphs used to be photographed in their finery dripping with Sulu pearls.

Back to the seas I love: the Philippine Sea, South China, Sulu, and Celebes Seas that surround us. During the T’ang period, Chinese import of luxury and prestige goods were aromatics, drugs, and exotic forest and ocean products. They bought and sold for wealth and status. Peacock feathers were decorative household products; pearls, coral and ivory were treasured and exhibited to prove prestige. Arab, Persian and Indian merchants sailed over pristine seas during the earliest Chinese-Philippine days to trade. Malay traders from Johore brought Islam to Cotabato and Jolo.

Our waters are precious yet we throw garbage into them. Waters where Chinese and Southeast Asian ships traded directly with coastal settlements in coastal ports. The largest was Ma-i or Mindoro, where Chinese trading ships transported their cargos like porcelain and were shipped to other settlements, even to Batangas.

Underneath these deep waters grew our corals of red, peach and white, now all damaged in Sulu and Batanes. We have poisoned them like we did our natural pearls. We allow ships to spit oil, coal, and gas in exchange for cash and altered reports to cover up sea damage that kill our fish with lead. The fish we eat can even poison us. Poor mother country, blamed for our health.

The endangered species — green sea turtle and hawksbill — olive ridley, and leatherback pawikan are found in Turtle Island, Tawi-Tawi. Many eat their nutritious eggs. If we cared and bred these pawikans instead of stuffing them for souvenir stores, we’d have more turtle eggs to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and tourists who would want watch turtles dig into sand to lie lazily.

How refreshing it was to speak to barangay captain Jesus Dulaza of Mampong, Zamboanga City. He plants 300 hectares of mangroves near Blanco Arena for the fish to be protected and breed to feed his constituency. Mangroves in Taluksangay, Zamboanga City were abundant just a few years ago in 1987. Today, barren land creates dust and an empty sea causes extreme heat on the townfolk. Taluksangay is where the Sulu Samals found refuge and were expatriated from Isabela province to Zamboanga City to begin a new life in 1911 to plant seaweeds. Mangroves acted as natural barriers, like a fence around the island’s borders, so its inhabitants were secure. Not anymore.

“Why am I being left alone?” Mother Country asks. “Thousands are packing up their bags to bid adieu. Two million Filipinos live abroad in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Qatar, Singapore, Japan and Europe to earn, away from family and me, the mother country.” 

Foreigners arrive and earn their keep here, even terrorists. In September 2008 there were more male OFWs at 51.7 percent than females at 48.3 percent. More than one-fourth of the OFWs, 25.7 percent, were from ages of 25 to 29 years, while female OFWs’ ages ranged from 25 to 45 years old. From a report by Carmelita Ericta of the Overseas Filipino Workers, the OFWs from Calabarzon, Central Luzon and National Capital Region are laborers, domestic helpers, cleaners and manufacturing laborers, shop and market sales workers, plant and machine operators and assemblers who remitted P141.9 billion in September 2008. 

Moms leaving to work abroad happens in numerous countries. I know two moms who left their children to help them survive to be educated. One hasn’t seen her child in three years. The other since two years ago because they’re “hiding.” They work silently and secretly. Until their papers are ready, they have conditioned themselves mentally not to miss their children and be emotionless. 

We need bamboo trees to stop flashfloods. Artists need inspiration from these spindly trees as they draw rural scenes. Me? I need to hear the comforting swish of bamboo trees. They shouldn’t just stand still and erect as they guard houses in Dasmariñas Village and be confined to decorating walls. “I have 54 species of them throughout our islands. I grow them for houses, hanging bridges, fish traps, and flutes for music. Yet, I am losing her. No one plants them at all.” 

Mother Country mourns. There are beautiful legends on bamboo trees. The Philippine version of the bamboo origin of the human male and female — si lalaki and si babaye — emerged simultaneously from a single bamboo node. In Magindanao the bamboo was split in half and the female emerged. Out came a woman, Putri Tunina, who was offered to Sharif Kabungsuan to be his wife. There occurred a fusion between the indigenous female and the foreign male. Her blood was as noble as his. Their union produced the purest nobility.

I used to smell sampaguitas and buy leis from sidewalk vendors to put around Mama Mary’s statue. Leis are just all green ilang-ilangs with their pungent smell. In fact, our sampaguita is immortalized in police uniforms because it is our national flower. One sampaguita is embroidered on the shoulder board for a police chief inspector; two for police superintendents; and three for police senior superintendent. 

Each rank carries expertise in public safety.

Mother Nature must be saying: “You annihilate me. No one will know my sampaguita’s existence that brings peace and security to communities and the sweet scent in your handkerchiefs.”

I used to count fireflies in our home in Paco, Manila, when I was in grade school. They flickered inside my room like stars above, keeping me company at night. I used to try to catch one and rush inside the closet and let her go and see her sparkle. What a joy!

I brought my grandchildren years ago to the Quezon City butterfly farm. Before we left the house I told them to put lots of cologne and hair polish. Without knowing why, they obeyed me. Arriving at the farm all the butterflies flew on their hair, shoulders and head and remained there during the duration of our visit, like crowns of beautiful flowers and rainbows. They found joy in nature, God’s abundant flighty objects.

Our rewards from Mother Country may not be visible immediately but in due time our children will enjoy these marvelous, bountiful presents.