Talicud
Island could be an ideal place for an incommunicado, away from the fast- pace urban life which is now slowly contaminating Davao region, the once touted backdoor economy of the South. And such inevitable change will drastically result to a demand of unimaginable ecological sacrifice, unknown to many. This could be our last glimpse
of the untouched rural in this part of the region. An islet, approximately
2,000 hectares in area, consisting of four barangays, and can be reached by two
known routes, one, through a 20 minutes
boat ride from Kaputian, a district of Island Garden City of Samal and the
other one is through an hour and half ferry -boat ride from mainland Davao City
at Sta. Ana wharf.
Within the islet, a strange sights of protruding fossils of coral reefs can be seen everywhere. Most households in the place are literally building their houses upon a rock! (I surmised that these are not sedimentary rocks as commonly seen in most coastal areas in the region; these are remains of some century old coral reefs). The clay type soil of the islet is identical with the soils of the mining sites of coastal Davao City, where a world renown multinational cement manufacturer sprawl over the industrial estate in the coastal Tibungco, and operating an open pit mine that have radically changed the landscape of northern Davao City into a bald, disrobed and bulldozed mountains, disrupting the ecological balance of the place.
The old and abandoned open pit mine of the then Bacnotan cement now stands as an ugly remembrance of the once rich ecology of coastal Tibungco where my grandfather, a pioneer from Bohol, adding variety to his agrarian endeavor in the highlands of Mahayag, alternating his activity from farming to fishing, and vice versa, it is a kind of breaking the monotony of livelihood, sagely trying to arrest that pernicious effect of boredom which had killed many at young age. Such stress- busting work- variation could also be an attribute to the veritable long life that my grandfather had enjoyed before he died at the rich age of 95!
Those abandoned Bacnotan Cement open pit mine also depict a silence known only in cemeteries and memorial parks, a graveyard where repose is the past rich ecology of the area, buried in the place were the following: the pristine river teemed with fresh water fishes, the forest trees where flocks of birds safely perching for a respite from a daylong food gathering, wild cats intently crouching, set for an ambush for their long awaited prey, reptiles awaiting for scavenging of the left over by other carnivorous predators that have frolicked over the forest, and the priceless heritage that could have been enjoyed and utilized by the present generation. That sanctuary was also the fishing and hunting ground of my kindred who came over to find assortment to their seemingly perpetual dish of Law-oy in their farmlands.
Samals are the local natives of the place and they peacefully cohabited with the Dabawenyos and the fisherfolks adventurers Tausugs or Jolohanos that generously thrived in the shorelines of Talicud.
Talicud island has preserved its agrarian living that dates back countless decades before the arrival of the first Bisaya in the area. One pioneer from Cebu, Pedro Tangag arrived in the island during the late 30’s, barely a decade earlier before the Second World War broke out. Only a handful of landowners owned the island and they are mostly residents of Davao City, a positive reality that have temporarily put on hold the irreversible industrialization and urban living that currently infeasting the nearby across- the- gulf cities of Davao, Panabo, and Tagum. The strait that lies between Samal and Talicud islands may have kept at bay all the unstoppable consequences of urban development and the inevitable destruction of untold Million dollars worth of ecology of Talicud.
But I surmised to conclude that nobody has the power to stop the future imminent ecological change of Talicud Island. There is no cul-de-sac or some kind of dead end to all this unstoppable motion towards “development”. Even though there could be some Zealots among us who would act as vanguards for this cause, but mortality makes it impossible for us to perpetually guard the unavoidable future displacement and the tearing down of the natural Talicud.
Talicud could be described by experts as the last remaining frontier of Davao region. There was this amusing theory about the existence of Talicud Island. About million years ago, an unprecedented climate change have killed innumerable species of Dinosaurs, unimaginably wiping them out from the face of the earth.
The theory was that a gigantic sea creature died in this part of Davao Gulf and during its postmortem decay, it became a fertile host of millions of soil and marine microbes that readily thronged and thrived. The complete details of the birth of Talicud as explained and told. The death of a sea creature comparable in size to the much publicized Lochness Sea monster had served as the biological corner stone that hosted millions of microorganisms (our unseen microscopic earth janitors, also known as saprophytic microbes) that in turn hosted also a variety of macro organisms and ultimately hosted the original flora and fauna species in the area. It took countless number of years until the completion of such complex biological construction that gave birth to the natural Talicud Island. One should check on these things when visiting the Island.
Some readings could be worth doing on the subject of ecocriticism like the one published by a bioengineer writer, the late Mia Erdmann whose first book, Hitched to Everything: Literature and the Unseen World. The best quote from such work is:
“Living things, faced with the pressure of changing habitat, must adapt or move.The only third choice is death. If the literary mode wants to survive the catastrophic climate change we ourselves have engineered, it must do the same.”