A river once ran through it

Finally, After 16 years, Navy Ensign Philip Pestaño will get justice. Sixteen years is a long time for the government to verify something that we in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi already knew right after news of Pestano’s murder broke out. The Senate and the United Nations found out the truth about the murder only after finishing their own investigations, but their findings amounted to nothing under the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and it had to take a new ombudsman, Conchita Carpio-Morales, an appointee of President Aquino, to right something heartrending and unjust.

The murder of the young Navy officer unmasked the military, political and bureaucratic connivance responsible for the environmental degradation in the South, particularly the destruction of its forests—yes, it was a conspiracy too powerful that nobody foolish enough dared to expose it. For aside from being used for gunrunning and carrying prohibited drugs, Navy ships were said to transport illegal logs—precious Philippine hardwood from the virgin forests of the southern islands.

But this is only part of a most dreadful and very uncomfortable truth: Sulu and even Tawi-Tawi—with what used to be their lush forests of hardwood and fruit trees, precious medicinal plants and herbs—will soon be erased from the face of the earth due to the merciless greed of the very people mandated to protect them.

I know of a house in Jolo built almost entirely with lumber from ilang-ilang trees.

Somebody who calls himself “Eryneon Wave” on our Facebook page has taken it upon himself to update us on what’s happening in Jolo by regularly posting pictures that speak louder than words. The more recent photos are, in his usual dry humor, captioned “waterways used as streets.” These were streets that those of us who grew up in Jolo never could imagine, not even in our worst nightmares, would someday get flooded.

“Any solutions?” Eryneon pleaded almost in desperation, because the picture showed only the most recent of a series of floods that hit the town of Jolo, the worst of which lasted for days and at peak reached eight to 10 feet high.

If solutions are to be found, one does not have to be a rocket scientist—as young people like to say—to pinpoint what needs to be done, although finding solutions to the problem and actually implementing them are two entirely different things.

Solving the problem of flooding in Jolo is not that difficult, for the solutions are very obvious in the problem itself: informal settlers building their dwellings on waterways, a poor garbage disposal system especially for non-biodegradables and a host of other problems common to almost all areas that now get flooded with every typhoon.

Yet a closer look will reveal a more complex tangle of factors that led to this present state, the most daunting of which are the powerful forces that have contributed to what can now be called a certified environmental disaster.

Worst of all, this has been going on for decades and you cannot implement quick fixes to a problem that has taken a life of its own.

The decades-long peace and order problem in Jolo forced many from the countryside to evacuate to the town whose land area is too small to accommodate that kind of instant population explosion. These evacuees had to look for available spaces on which to build their houses—some of them with enough means to build permanent ones, believing (and encouraged by political patrons) that they could not be driven away from where they have constructed permanent structures.

There used to be a river that ran through the town of Jolo, its waters coming from historical Bud Dahu. Homegrown researchers say that the  river gave the town its name.

If one were to trace the scant material evidence remaining, it is not farfetched that this claim may be true. Beside the river is a road, said to have been built by the early Chinese traders. The road starts from the docking area of a wharf that the Chinese also constructed, which to this day is known as Chinese Pier. Presumably, through this road, the Chinese brought their goods to the river.

Think of that scene in the movie “Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?” where pig-tailed Chinese helped Kulas, the main protagonist, to get to Manila on their banca filled with goods sailing down the Pasig, and you will have the picture.

Ganoon din noon in this river.  Ngayon, toilets have been built over it and garbage, mostly plastic, clog its flow. Its water is dark and murky, and just its stench can kill whatever life remains there.

In my childhood, a certain Mr. Viray, the owner of the lone bus company in town (which was all that we needed), operated a thriving fishpond  with water diverted from this river.

There used to be a pond, whose water came from the same spring in the same mountain, where the river drew its water. It was so clear that the community used to drink from it; there were boulders around it and a clump of slim bamboos at its edge.

I used to go and bathe in the pond when it was dark, hoping to catch a glimpse of the water fairy that the elders said guarded it. The informal settlers have covered its source of water with cement.

The same is true with the other source of the town’s water system—Bud Tumantangis, a source of pure spring water. The swimmers have long gone. The swimming pool is now almost a cesspool.

Solutions?

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