AS WE get used to this new reality that engulfed almost everyone on earth as a result of this pandemic, we are somehow being ushered into a new normal that eventually be a way of life.
Last week, I drove for about 12 Km past La Trinidad to the next town of Tublay in Benguet to cover an office-related activity while the whole of Luzon is still on an enhanced community quarantine. My travel was unhampered despite few checkpoints and disinfection sprays to passing cars, particularly on the tires at the town boundaries.
Prone to fog and often hard to cruise when the road is like zero visibility, I chanced upon a vehicular accident and saw a blue light truck that fell down a deep roadside being towed. Such kinds of accidents in the Cordillera are not remote because of the usual rough and curvy roads and hilly terrains. As most vegetable haulers, we had bigger delivery trucks before that we acquired as refurbished or second hand and we often had problems with parts replacements and worse is the snapping of axles and braking problems due to heavy loads. Also noticeable along the check-points are men clad in coveralls wearing face-masks almost looking like the characters of the Netflix Movie La Casa de Papel or Money Heist.
So I checked on our DTI Rolling Store activity which is likewise beefed up by DA's Kadiwa on Wheels, a program meant to bring necessities closer to homes so that family members need not have to leave their towns and barangays just to buy the goods like groceries and food items that they need.
I paid a courtesy call to Mayor Armando Lauro and reached him wearing a tangerine coverall while he is on the phone. Having met him before, I gestured pointing at the cups and thermos vacuum bottle for coffee. We had a cordial chat as I was also instructed by my wife to get her order of 30 pcs of facemasks made of handwoven cloth from the mayor.
I refilled my cup with un-sugared coffee while we discussed things about their local industry and my offer to conduct a workshop on how to promote their locality using available technology such as the use of smartphones and social media.
Towards midday, the mayor who is younger than me ushered me to their multi-purpose building next to the newly built fire department structure.
He then toured me to the multi-purpose building where a group of women weaves local tapestries. I took a few videos and snapshots of them working on their fabric and shuttling yarns in every snap of the loom foot pedal. The womenfolks of the WACOT Weaving Arts and Crafts were happy to receive the payment of the facemasks that they produced.
There was an ongoing vegetable packing by the locals and I learned that the ABS-CBN Foundation has ordered five tons of mixed items such as carrots, cabbages, potatoes and broccoli with a thousand dozens of flowers consisting of roses, anthuriums and chrysanthemums.
After our short talks, the secretary of ABS-CBN I Love Foundation Celina Rotea called the municipal agriculturist and we heard her enthusiasm over a speakerphone despite the sad cease and desist order that the network received recently. Miss Rotea is coordinating with the municipality on behalf of the late Gina Lopez who happened to have visited Tublay during her erstwhile stint as DENR Secretary. It came to mind that smartphones' internet connections can actually make-up for non-appearances and remote teleconferences.
Following an impromptu program where the mayor spoke about the convergence of public and private entities including the support of people's organization and the academe like the Benguet State University. I was given the floor so I talked about our DTI livelihood programs supporting MSMEs including coffee growers and weavers. Tublay is a recipient of DTI's shared services facility or SSF and I also encouraged coffee farmers to be entrepreneurial by engaging in post-harvest activities such as coffee roasting, packaging, or coffee shop management and also being a barista.
My graduate school adviser and BSU Vice President Dr. Ruth Batani also spoke about the agricultural extension programs of their institution seconding what I discussed on the new normal that is coming out as an offshoot of this pandemic that we are experiencing.
As we were about to conclude our midday impromptu program, a big butterfly hovered over our shoulders and Mayor Lauro whispered to me that it must be the spirit or emissary of Gina Lopez seeing to it that the vegetables being prepared as food-packs and flowers of Tublay will have an unhampered journey as it reaches its destinations... the tables of Filipinos in need of support and love.
So, because of this Covid-19 pandemic and the ECQ lock-downs, we are learning new things in social media and not much from the mainstream industry as field reporters cannot go on the field as a team. Because not all news reporters can travel and cover their beats, many local papers except Baguio Midland Courier resorted or turned to online publication. Like most correspondents who are well-positioned in every corner of the globe, netizens to are also providing alternative sources of information other than the food they eat, the TikTok movement that they imitate, and the pet that they huddle with. In the past, segment producers from the country's leading television network requested some of the images that they saw on my social media page.
Today, I am now producing short day-to-day video essays and travelogues using only my smartphone which I can later put together as a Covid Diary Documentary.