Friday, April 04, 2008 Wenceslao: Rice field in Talisay By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
TALK about the rice problem, crisis, shortage or whatever had me joining people of my generation and older reminiscing about “the old days” when Cebu was less urban than it is now. I don't know, but when you get older you tend to appreciate more past events than recent developments. It’s probably because we “elders” don't want to feel irrelevant.
I remember staying for a few months in a hut in the middle of a rice field in, yes, an area straddling the boundary of Cebu City and Talisay (then a town). That was in 1983 or 1984? We were actually a group of four persons who stayed there to reproduce some materials, with permission from the couple who rented the hut from the rice field owner.
My recollection of those days is hazy, but I can still recall the faces of the couple and their children and how they struggled to make both ends meet. The hut was cramped, what with the mimeographing machine, typewriters and reams of paper taking up space in the separate room that we used. But there was the surrounding green to calm us down.
The place did surprise me when I arrived there. I was born in the city and largely grew up in an urban setting. I did not think then that rice fields existed in Talisay. I often would stand in the yard of the hut and savor the calm conjured by the moon and stars on clear nights, the darkness that descended on the field and the sound of vehicles from afar.
I could not precisely pinpoint the place now. But I remember riding jeepneys plying the Inayawan-Colon route in going there, disembarking in Greenfield in Laray and getting lost in the footpath under coconut palms. Another entry point was Tabunok where I would ride a tricycle to San Roque and again follow a footpath leading to the hut.
I understand no rice field exists in the area now. I used to jog in a portion of the South Coastal Road in San Roque passing by Greenfield in Laray and tried pinpointing the place, but all I can see there are houses and vacant lots. Whoever was the owner of that rice field, I won’t blame him/her for the shift in direction. Metro Cebu is changing.
Transforming rice lands into residential areas is one of the reasons cited for the rice production problems we are in. Indeed, in the decades past, what happened to that Talisay rice field was replicated in hundreds of other areas in the country, yet government has not done much to arrest the shift. Now it is reaping the fruits of that utter neglect.
My wife’s kin on her mother’s side have a land in Inayawan that I understand is still being planted with rice. But I doubt if that setup would last long. I would even say the days of the rice fields in the towns like Carcar are numbered. Once land speculators invade these places nothing can be done to prevent the shift. That’s how things crumble.
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Jesusano “Jess” Villarba, Bantay Radyo news director who is also from Camotes (Pilar town), clarified that Engr. Tibo Serato, whose information about a reunion at the Camotes Visayan Institute in Poro town I wrote about in this column earlier, is from Cawit, Pilar. “Anak na siya ni anhing Nido Serato nga nangugos nako sa bunyag. Basin tua na siya sa Poro nipuyo,” he said.
