IF YOU feel like jumping into the water by the river, are you certain it is clean - good to your health even your limbs. A lot of things are not what they seem since you last reckoned them, mind you.
The waters in our rivers during my youth were good and the same all throughout. Back then, it was cool and clean in Fedilisan, Sagada where my parents came from. I never took a dip in the Chico, but I imagined the coolness and sparkle of the Chico water was not different from how I experienced it back home. In Itogon and later in Mankayan the creeks and rivers that I frequented also flowed clean and alive. I spent time swimming with indigenous fishes, crabs and frogs, also shells that inhabited the waters of old.
Before, there is some stability to how a person perceives the waters in his environment as his community experienced and encountered it. In any season he can trust his guts and instinct while wading or swimming in the river. The current and volume of water does not rise suddenly. Now, it may not be raining where you are but a rampaging flow of silt and water from a river’s headwaters can overrun you if you are not careful and observant. People today die because of this phenomenon.
I guess, I learned about these changes becoming real in my third year in high school in Lepanto, Mankayan, Benguet. On a weekend, I visited a grandfather down in Paco posted as a security guard of the Lepanto Mines for their construction properties there. Feeling hot after a long hike, I obliged the body’s panting for a dip into cool waters of a dam that is accessible a few steps and clothes stripped away. The water splashed as I dived and in a few seconds, I was five meters away from the shore. I already decided to cross to the other side of the dam.
Half way to my goal, I got tired and felt dazed. I realized something was not right. The water was quite heavy and it smelled foul. It was a first experience for me wondering if I will get drowned. I rested by floating on top of the water, face up. I needed my normal breathing back and calmed my nerves by thinking about the warmth of sun while peeling oranges in our home backyard. I prayed hard and regained myself back. I got out of the dam quite disturbed alright, otherwise, there was nothing to it, I thought.
Really, we take things and events for granted until they return and remind you some other time in the future when similar situations arise. I was part of a group from different nations on training in Israel in 1988.
After visiting Masada, we went down to the “Red Sea” in the border with Jordan. The sun was hot and the water beckoned for a dive. I didn’t. This time around, I smelled the water was really different. You can jump on the water feet first but to dive with your head up front would either break your neck, if not both your ear drums. Too much salt dilutes in the Red Sea water and no matter what you do, you float. Diving into the water initiates violence – force reacting with force. In such circumstances, life usually is affected or leaves.
As in nature, it is also true with the ways of human kind in our highlands. As the waters in our rivers are becoming more murky and violent in their seasons, so goes politics, for instance. Our age of innocence and its sweetness has gone except some few remnants.
Before, the elections, the elders in Tubo, Abra, have already decided with the local folks who will run and replace the town’s three-term chief executive. In Boliney town, father and son fought it out for the position of Mayor. Nearby in Sallapadan, husband and wife run and won as Mayor and Vice Mayor respectively. Elsewhere in that corner of this region, the motive for fighting during the elections is to be enthroned in a position to (....). The election Tubo town stands out different in many ways compared to its neighboring towns where fear continues to grip the citizenry right after the elections.
The election in Tubo is reminiscent of how older politicians experienced politics in Mountain Province until someone introduced vote-buying (everybody if not many knows the guy). Politicians who respected and upheld their culture did not undertake expensive campaigns. They sought out the elders, introduced themselves and explained to them the nature of the position they are seeking and why the community folks should support his or her cause. The village folks will soon know from their elders whom to vote for. They may disagree but they keep their opinion to themselves and vote for their own choice. Much later, politicians began introducing gimmicks that would call the people’s attention to their cause by entertaining the locals with movies. That was before the floodgates opened with bribes in kind. Last April, in a barangay near Kalinga, I asked an elder why the fields are not being worked out at this time of the year. He responded saying that “the locals are lazy because it is election time. The politicians will bring the rice supply, you know.”
On a more recent note, there was also a time, when neighbors in the bank houses of the mines openly talked about the candidates that they will vote for without rancor. The candidates came and went in their cars and we kids shouted their names depending on who was passing by. The old folks laughed with us in unison as we constantly changed the names of our candidates shouted at the top of our voices. You cannot do that now. The division is deep and hostile even to children.
Today, throughout the region, everything is being promised or threatened including cash, on-going projects and the doorway to Malacañang Palace as if the people’s well-being and survival depended on who goes and comes out of there. See, the political quest for power has become not only harsh and dangerous to our social existence and well-being but real expensive too. In reality, it borrows and spends the future and makes the citizenry dependent and enslaved to the people who control the machinery of government power.
We are not getting any better then. We are taking steps in this case to cruder times using modern tools and copied rules to our own peril. Oh, that the rivers of life in our highlands, watershed of Northern Luzon, will once more flow gently into our heart and minds as real men and women.