It is ironic that while water flows seemingly endlessly into the faucets and huge tanks of plush subdivisions in the Philippines’ big cities and urban centers, which are far from water sources, those in upland areas whose houses practically seat on vast water reserves half a mile below them often live without water.
BY KARL G. OMBION
Bulatlat
It is ironic that while water flows seemingly endlessly into the faucets and huge tanks of plush subdivisions in the Philippines’ big cities and urban centers, which are far from water sources, those in upland areas whose houses practically seat on vast water reserves half a mile below them often live without water.
In two upland villages I traveled to recently, the reality speaks of the contrast of abundance and scarcity.
In the mountain village of Bagacay, which is composed of 70 poor households and is located around 39 kilometers south-east of Kabankalan City in southern Negros island, Minda Bulosan, a 47 year-old mother and farmer, had to slide through bushy steep slopes down to a river three quarters of a mile away everyday to do her laundry chores, and then climb back with 5-6 kilos of laundry on her back with her two hands carrying two containers with 20 gallons of drinking water. She repeated this routine for practically half a day each day of the week, and spent the afternoons tending to farm work.
“I had done that since I started living here more than 40 years ago. When I got married here and had children, my three children did the same routine, and oftentimes had to skip classes in order to help do the laundry and fetch water,” Melvin said.
Farmer couple Rogelio and Melvin Fernando, 65 and 63 years old, respectively, narrated that since they settled in the village around 35 years ago to escape harrowing poverty from their native province of Aklan in neighboring Panay island, they had always dreamed of having water in their backyard.
“For 20 years or so, we had to pay P15.00 ($.30c) a day or at least P450 ($10) a month to a water-fetcher to deliver us two containers of 10 gallons a day for our drinking and washing. Sometimes we had to spend more if we had to water our backyard root crops,” Rogelio said.
“Most of the time we had to be exact in spending our daily water consumption so as not to incur wastage or run out of water ahead of the next day schedule; life was really hard for us without water,” Melvin added.
Ramon Igmedio, a 69 year-old farmer in the neighboring village of Kauswagan, had spent almost half of his entire life in the village fetching water in the river below their place in the hill for his family’s drinking and laundry use.
This condition had caused Ramon woes as he had lesser time for farming and other economic activities.
But Ramon has always resorted to a consoling experience to lift up his battered spirit: “Until now I couldn’t believe how I have sustained the hardships, but I feel relieved everytime I think that I have almost known every tiny stone on my path to the river, memorized every steep and gliding slope on the way even if I had to close my eyes, differentiated sounds crackled by different insects.”
Great divide
The stories of Minda, Rogelio and Melvin, and Ramon, depicting the great divide of ecological richness and human poverty, of abundance and scarcity, are common scenes in Negros upland areas, as well as elsewhere in the country.
The Negros uplands, which remain as the source of abundant water being supplied to urban areas, are hardly able to provide water for its farmers and settlers, keeping thousands of farms dry and unproductive for most months of the year.
Water seems like gold in upland areas. It is not very easily available to those who just need it for survival. Upland folk have to spend so much time and effort to get it “just beneath their ground”, and then agonize with the fact that after they have consumed what they have labored for so much in a day, have to repeat the same ordeal of getting it the next day and so on.
