If a man writes a better book, if he can preach a better sermon, if he can make a better candlestick than anyone else, though he make his home in the woods, the world will beat a trodden path to his door.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Words from the grapevine that our tribal folks, the founding settlers of Magugpo had exchanged their vast plains of land with boxes of canned goods, numerous packs of cigarettes, and cache of liquors called Shio Hoc Tong brought by the business- savvy homesteaders from Luzon and the Visayas. The new settlers were considered as demigods in the eyes of founding settlers and the former had brought with them some strange amenities that enticed the latter to give up their lands in the swampy Magugpo .
Like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, shrewdly promised by the talking serpent, our tribal folks’ ignorance had been betrayed. The perceived demigods had pompously displayed their uncommon wares, and our founding Lumad settlers had witnessed the demigods smoked those unknown cigarettes, drunk liquors from those glistening red bottles of Shio Hoc Tong, and consumed Salmon fish preserved in oblong-shaped canisters, all these had completely impressed the founding settlers.
Our tribal folks willingly exchanged their founded settlement, their vast plains of Magugpo with those strange wares perceived by them as the demigods’ amulets. By their innocence, the founding settlers must have brutishly thought that the vices of the demigods was a talisman that made the latter looked wise and venerable in the eyes of our founding settlers. Just as deception had banished our first parents from the garden of Eden, the same deception had displaced our founding settlers from the plains of Magugpo and they became permanent exiles from their estranged settlement of Magugpo. These were words on the grapevine.
Others have attributed such misfortune of the original settlers to destiny. It was fate that drove those pitiful folks towards the rural highlands, away from the ruthless urbanization. It was destiny that turned them to become strangers to their own original settlements. It was destiny and they must submit.
Many of these folks visit our cities during Christmas season. In large throng, with their babies and children, they seek alms from city dwellers. In the spirit of Christmas and giving of gifts, may the affluent urban settlers remember these mendicants, who were once the original settlers of Magugpo. It was their displacement that had ushered us into our present comfortable and prosperous living in the place called Magugpo.
A tragic accident happened; an aircraft plummeted towards a populated residential place of Tagum. Perhaps many have forgotten that incidence. I was in grade school at that time, we attended public school together with my siblings and neighbors and we witnessed that unforgettable disaster caused by a machine failure on air. It was a traumatic sight for us kids, seeing that single engine aircraft roaming above Tagum on its usual early morning flight and suddenly its engine exploded above air and crashes to a nearby residential area in Gamao. I can clearly remember that site where that aircraft fell; it was at the back of that old Filipinas Theatre then (the place is now occupied by a well known fastfood franchise), the spot where the parking space of the new Mall is now in place, it used to be a nook with cluster of shanties and small stores thrive. Gamao used to have a public market building and a bus terminal at that time.
During those days, there were only two banana plantations that surrounded Tagum: the Soriano Fruits in Pagaran, Apokon Road and the DFC of the JVA Group, its plantation area used to be situated right where the New City Hall of Tagum now is located. Since then, Tagum City is unprecedentedly rising to become a premier city in the South and is becoming less dependent on agriculture as its main source revenues; however the neighboring municipalities are still the home of exportable, dollar earning Cavendish banana and still highly dependent on revenues coming from agriculture.
Today, there are still plantation aircraft hovering above Tagum City every morning, loaded with 300 to 1,000 liters of chemicals, ready for unloading through extensive aerial spraying on banana plantations that surrounded Tagum City. On the safety of its residents and her city dwellers, there are questions that merit an answer. And these answers could perhaps guarantee the safety and protection of Tagumeños against such similar tragic accident which took place 3 decades ago. Do pilots have their flight plans every time they fly their aircrafts? They are professional pilots and they know about that. Do these pilots seriously follow their flight plans? What are the risks if these pilots do not follow their flight plans? Are the local authorities of the city aware about these flight plans? I think they must be aware about these flight plans because the safety of the general public is at stake. Are these aircrafts still safe for flying? I hope they are, even though some of these had undergone engine repairs and an overhaul because it’s 10 times more expensive to buy a new one than to repair the old. Can these aircrafts still perform 100% efficiency? I hope it can, because any margin of inefficiency on its flying performance could be equivalent to the number of lives and limbs that are constantly endangered in areas where these aircrafts routinely passed by.
What about those aircrafts that took off from the airstrips in the neighboring places like Carmen, Kapalong, Sto. Tomas and Panabo City, do they get clearance from our local authorities each time they cross over the airspace above Tagum City? These are well thought questions by a person who bore the trauma of that air accident that happened 30 years ago- an aircraft fell at the residential area and it destroyed houses, fortunately there were no fatalities on that day and the aircraft’s fuel never caught fire maybe because the whole rotary transmission engine and along its fuel tank were all literally buried deeper on the ground when the aircraft coincidentally plunged and dismembered into a toilet hut (it was not like the water sealed toilet that we know today).
God forbid that a similar accident will ever happen again these days, but it needs the awareness of the whole community to be vigilant and cautious always. Whenever the safety and welfare of the general public is under threat, the force of the law should be used to protect and maintain public safety and order. What if some fundamentalist terrorists attack and took over the hangars (these are located at the heart of some remote plantations within the province) and maneuver those aircrafts for a suicidal mission? It happened before and it took place not on a less advance country like the Philippines, it unthinkably happened in the United States of America, a country known throughout the world to be the most sophisticated and most well equipped in terms of national defense program. Far be it from us, to be ignorant and unaware about any ugly eventualities. It helps to be moderately skeptic at times in order to awaken some sleepy heads. I think it's time for Tagum City to be declared a no -fly -zone (NFZ) area.
Roaring trucks that were hauling tons of logs from forest sites of Laak in Davao, Melale in Davao Oriental and Santa Josefa of Agusan and other nearby places had regularly passed by Tagum in the 60's up to the early 80's. Back in those days, cutting logs for export was a booming business in the region. For almost three decades logging business had thrived here, until its decline in the late 80’s. I grew up in the highway section of Magugpo where logging trucks made its usual stop-over before unloading cargoes at the saw mill in Maco, a town approximately 30 minutes drive from Tagum.
Many town folks during the late 70’s and the early 80’s had a unique source of livelihood: peeling -off the barks of those century old logs carried by those scary-looking, mud-covered trucks. Dried barks were good for fueling in many households back then and sold as uniformly-cut and chopped firewood. Barks were also used as walling for town folks' makeshift houses. In the 80's, a pioneer restaurant in Tagum called Kamalig had used barks for its walling and had an elegant look after painted with natural varnish.
Tons of logs passed the town back then but only after it was stripped-off of its dried barks. Logs were carried and unhauled for wood treatment at the pond located in Maco. I had witnessed the daredevil moves of those “mamanitay” (local folks whose main livelihood was peeling barks of logs). When trucks carrying logs were slowing down for its usual stop-over at the sideway of Gamao up to Chinese school and beyond Assessor’s Village, those mamanitays carrying their custom-made peeler blades, made from junked leaf spring of trucks, the latter could take the risk of running after those moving trucks while bringing with them their sharp peeler blades. Like competing warriors they would throw their blades like javelin to the logs mounted at the back of moving trucks. At the full stoppage of truck, the log where the peeler blade hit shall be claimed and exclusively peeled by the owner of the blade. Today, there are no logging trucks passing Tagum, in fact the depleted forest in the region is a proof to that and our mamanitays are nowhere to be found.
The noise of logging trucks plying over Tagum had been silenced. What remain are these disrobed mountains and bald forests found all over Mindanao.
Reaching the top of the high-altitude Kalsangi Point, a small village of expatriates working for the multinational company, Dole Philippines, that was one of my unforgettable travel in the late 90s. Kalsangi Point is an exclusive village with their own golf course, swimming pool, and overlooking the town of Polomolok, South Cotabato. Polomolok is the home of the biggest pineapple plantation and cannery in southern Philippines. That hour of stay at the place was like visiting a foreign land, it makes one forget that you are still in the Philippines.
Mount Matutum’ s peak was just a mile above Kalsangi Point, at the background, a dormant volcano which provided rich soil for a vast pineapple plantation. One policy to note upon entering Kalsangi Point was: “No Taking of Photos Inside”. It’s an eyebrow raising warning for us Filipinos to set a foot on our own soil and to be told by foreigners to back off from their self-proclaimed “sovereignty”. I wonder if our Filipino countrymen in the US could also do such drastic pronouncement on American places without the risk of being deported immediately.
On September 16, 1991 the Philippine Senate voted NO to the ratification of the Treaty for the lease extension of US Military Bases in the Philippine soil. That unpopular decision had costs the presidential ambition of then Senate President Jovito Salonga in the 1992 national presidential election. Senator Salonga, a no nonsense nationalist was unfortunately depicted as a villain during those days. It was the Senator's vote that finally put the fierce debate of whether the American military bases should remain or it must leave.
It was a historic 12-11 votes, with the 12th crucial vote came from Senate President Jovito Salonga, outrightly rejecting the Treaty. American forces had been in the Philippines since the latter's liberation from Spain's domination. It was the United States of America which redeemed the Philippines from Spain's enslavement for the huge sum of Twenty Million Dollars.
In the university, members of League of Filipino Students had published a famous break-up letter from fictitious lovers Philip and Amy, a satire written by a former student activist, and member of the League, the late Othello Cudal of MSU Marawi Campus. That letter was written in a 2 feet by 3 feet Manila papers and posted on many dormitories and halls in the campus.
A parody of farewell note by a boy named Philip to his former girlfriend Amy. Student activism was no longer as intense as compared to the Martial law years of Ferdinand Marcos, many veteran street parliamentarians had confessed that most of them student activists of the 70’s have mellowed down, others became members of the Ramos cabinet. They had shifted paradigms and became fervent defenders of their once-hated government.
Twenty six years ago, I was in college when the first- ever internet cafe, Weblink had opened in Davao City. It was located at Magallanes Street (beside the current location of Museo de Davao building). Reading about it from a national newspaper, I had to travel all the way from Tagum just to have a glimpse of such new technology available for public use.
I had followed all those write ups, columns and news features about the internet technology, the popular terms then were: Cyberspace, Information Technology (IT), Virtual Reality, and Electronic Superhighway; all of these only mean one thing, the Internet. This technology was once a military property used by the US Pentagon and was transformed for civilian usage.
My first internet surfing in Weblink costs me Thirty pesos for an hour with my foremost intent of satisfying personal curiosity about the technology. After that experience, I initially found it cumbersome maybe because I had difficulty in using that particular mouse and keyboard then. During those days our computer skills were a bit clumsy and archaic with mastery on basic programs like Wordstar, Cobol and Pascal. We used to memorize those weird Disk Operating System (DOS) commands like ^K, ^B, ^KB and more.
There were few internet servers or hosts then, I remember in Davao City, it was Mozcom, and only very few can afford the monthly rates.