WITH the setting in of the “ber” months started by month No. 9 in the Gregorian calendar, fond memories have sprouted between these two ears like the shoots in my bamboo grooves in Camp 7, the “last frontier” of lower wooded lands in our City of Pines.
I say “last frontier” because the fauna that attracted me there in 1984 are practically gone to I know not where. Good that high degreed environmentalist Mike Bengwayan has not set foot anymore on those areas called by one name, Panchay or Mangitit, all part of Lower West. If he did, he would surely feel sore with the ravages perpetrated on Kabunian’s mountainsides there by two-footed mammals in ways much more thorough than by the bigger four-footed ones.
Gone are the remnants of hardwood greeneries that I’m certain gave reason for Baguio to be known by what it is now, derived euphonically from the pristine “bagiw” of Ibaloy jungles completely different from what we now know as Jungletown, where I was given a lodging accommodation by the very kind Virgilio Hidalgo family when I first came to Baguio in 1963 in compliance to an instruction from then Education Secretary Narciso Albarracin to help turn SLC to SLU.
Oh, those were heydays then! Baguio was much cooler than what it is now. Thin sheets of ice would lace the green, green grass that matted the Burnham Athletic grounds many an early mornings. How the Everlasting Flower used to be looked upon with pride as Baguio flower. But it was soon superseded by the likes of anthurium because of man’s greed for fast buck. For to get fast return, commercial vendors started selling the Everlasting from the vending areas of the Summer Capital of the Philippines to right in then Dewey Boulevard in Manila so that it became an ordinary floral décor in man’s estimate. No more the vaunted exoticness! Chrysanthemum would gradually take its place in welcoming visitors, in graduations and other rites or ceremonies, religious or secular.
But why dwell in negative thoughts? Kafagway may be in the twilight but Baguio is strongly here, in fact gaining strength as days pass for its hardy inhabitants. The ethnics of the populace hung on proudly to ethnicity but warmly embrace modernity. The Benguet State University, an avowed educational institution for culture-conscious Cordillera and neighboring territories, has scientifically demonstrated the good points of hybrid to inbreeding, meaning in the realm of the physical as well as the intellectual. By the way, BSU has just celebrated the terminus of its centennial year. The punctuation was done with a town parade and an awarding program on campus for recognized supporters of the state school, which is at the same time an official regional university of CAR
(Cordillera Administrative Region).
Congratulations to the highest to all the awardees and to the entire BSU family and sympathizers. Of course, not to forget the ancestral land claimants led by no other than legally consistent Madame Vicky Tumbaga, herself a BSU faculty retiree. Every party concerned must feel at last at full ease with the wise stand of the local government unit to avoid respective lots to original ancestor owners now that these lots do not fulfill what they are supposed to do for the school. Happy, too, must Fr. Conrado “Ka Ambo” Balweg be, well satisfied watching the happy event of “all’s well that ends well.” Many do not know that he rightly influenced the gavel to give the singular honor of serving as the first native president of Benguet State University to an Ibaloy among strongly qualified applicants foremost of whom was an MSAC professor from Mountain Province. In a sort of Solomonic reasoning, the revolutionary priest reasoned that since BSU is situated in La Trinidad, Benguet, which is an Ibaloy Land, the honor must be given to an Ibaloy among the candidates. Fortunately, there was one among them, no other than Dr. Lucio Bagni Victor. From that day on, BSU started March to another phase of its unique destiny. As of now, to be a premier university in a competitively globalized world.