Dacawi: An unlettered farmer’s legacy
(Again, I turn this story for the simple message: we are not what we own.)
Dacawi: A world full of heroism
AS DID then United States Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney, I, too, rooted for Efren Penaflorida, the pushcart teacher who was CNN’s “Hero of the Year” in 2009. Since then, it’s been a year-end treat to watch the giant television network’s annual tribute to ordinary people who...
Dacawi: Officer Bugasto
BAGUIO has just lost one of its outstanding citizens. Former city police chief, Colonel Quintin Madrid Bugasto died early the other Sunday morning, five days after he was brought home from the hospital where he was confined for a lingering illness. He was 86.
“He remained alert 12 hours...
Dacawi: Peppot is happy
THE late football coach and Gold Ore weekly paper editor Jose “Peppot” Ilagan must be smiling from up there in the great newsroom and playing field in the sky. Things are looking up from down here, at least for three reasons.
Dacawi: What if…
(WITH five of the Cordillera representatives to Congress having signed the third draft for autonomy in this upland region, the debate on self-rule is again heating up. Joining the discussions, I recall this piece on this space a few months back.)
The “what if” questions about Cordillera...
Dacawi: The faces of Santa Claus
A SAMARITAN who declined to identify himself appeared last Monday morning at the Benguet Renal Center in La Trinidad, Benguet. He asked the costs and then deposited P17,600. He said it was for end-stage kidney patient Genevieve Gano.
Dacawi: Smart-looking guy turns Santa
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet - A Samaritan who declined to identify himself appeared last Monday morning at the Benguet Renal Center here, asked the costs and then deposited P17,600. He said it was for end-stage kidney patient Genevieve Gano, so she could have her twice-a-week hemodialysis treatment...
Dacawi: Fragile relief and hope
SAMARITANS delivered relief and hope to a family beset with medical woes and condoled with another whose four-year old boy just lost his brave and protracted battle against cancer.
Dacawi: When patients come knocking
BECAUSE their number is apparently increasing, chances are you’ve met or know one or two of these patients. They’re those endlessly at a loss on how to fund those never-ending thrice- or twice-a-week blood-cleansing sessions for them to survive.
Dacawi: Plugging a special kid’s bleeding
WHEN his second of five children was diagnosed for cerebral palsy shortly after birth, Famorca Bannog, a laborer from Banaue, Ifugao, knew there was nothing much he could do except to raise the kid the best he and his wife Shirley could.
Dacawi: Images still haunt
IT’S been 20 years since, yet the image still haunts. The picture never blurred. It’s still all too clear and real, enough to still blur the eyes.
We were then weeks into “Operation Sayote”, the Baguio media-initiated relief operation launched on Independence Day with the pony boys at...
Dacawi: Giant tablet helps restore Dominican Hill’s spiritual significance
THE Guinness Book of World Records has certified a wall bearing the Ten Commandments mounted on Dominican Hill here as the biggest of its kind, triggering celebration when the official record was presented last Wednesday morning.
Dacawi: A salmon run (Benchwarmer by Ramon Dacawi)
(This article is memory, a retrieval from a travel made three years back, to where, at least from the perspective of this visitor, nothing much has changed since then, notwithstanding the so-called “bad economy”.)
I've just been to where visitors from the so-called Third World can’...
Dacawi: Cordillera is a state of mind
Traveling simply overwhelms that it can only be written about when one is back home. Still on the road with youthful Baguio journalist Harley Palangchao, we feel refreshed by the renewal of kinship with expatriate Cordillerans who make you feel they never left home as they again open their...
Dacawi: Development from and for the Cordillera
THERE’S wisdom in the push by the City of Tabuk, Kalinga to construct a mini-hydroelectric plant as a renewable energy resource. The local government had applied for a bank loan to build the facility which, when operational, will ensure years of power to the people of Kalinga, literally and...
Dacawi: Hierarchies turning upside down
WHEN exploited mainly for its tourism and commercial potential, the lure of a place triggers its own undoing.
Dacawi: Expanding view of disaster
FOR quite some time now, our official, legal and actual view of what makes a disaster is anchored on its immediate impact on human life, limb and property.
Dacawi: Police and media slant = ethnic slur
LABELS can hurt.
I used that lead sentence for a news story several years ago. That was after Thomas Killip, then the mayor of Sagada, Mt. Province, hastily called for a late afternoon press conference at Mandarin Restaurant along Baguio's main street.
Killip, eventually the...
Dacawi: On road quality
WE CRINGE each time we see a concreted road with hardly any visible sign of damage being torn down by jackhammers, only to be rebuilt with new mix. In a few years, it's destroyed again, and then replaced with new concrete again. Highway travelers, snagged and halted by blocks posed by road...
Dacawi: My brother Joedax
ELDEST of five siblings of an unlettered Ifugao gardener at the Pacdal Forest Nursery, my brother Joe was laid to rest last week-end. He lies beside my elder brother Danilo and Danilo’s daughter Janet, on a choice plot by the first gate, behind where a mausoleum is being built in the overcrowded...
Dacawi: The angle after the storm
(The mind gets splayed in this season of death's bountiful harvest of fellow mortals - Kapitan Bernardo "Peping" Calatan of Irisan who propped me up as electric cooperative director years ago, my economics teacher Benny Areola, Kapitan Perfecto Jose of Pinget, rescuer and Engr. Archie Ellamil...
Dacawi: Field of dreams
(Having seen the original Askals - the multi-titled Baguio Ladies (Cinderella) Football Team - in their campaign for two decades, I deeply appreciate the sacrifice of couple Alex and Annabelle (nee Codiase) Bangsoy in sponsoring and personally managing the multi-bracketed Mayor Mauricio...
Dacawi: Culture, language and pattern of development
THAT news item about the difficulty of delegates to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meeting in Bali to demystify acronyms like SEANWFZ and ZoPFF/C inspired this revisit to a piece I wrote two years ago. (Lest we also "drown in Asean's alphabet soup", the acronyms stand for...
Run-for-a-cause for ailing rescuer slated
THE shoe is on the other foot, making this coming Sunday morning's three-bracket run-for-a-cause doubly significant, a race for the health of one who has led in racing against time to save lives during calamities.
That's why volunteers of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Mitigation...
Dacawi: Roberta's blind courage
(We continue from last week's narrative of the over 20-year romance of the original Askals, a.k.a. Baguio Cinderellas, with the beautiful game of football that is finally catching the attention of this country of midgets hopelessly hooked to basketball.)
THE multi-titled...
