Salubrious Living by Claudio V. Tabotabo, MA (January, 2008)

Across the sea, south of the Philippines there is a patch of land the early people called “Menelangan”. The Subanun who lived a semi nomadic life around the place are bewildered by the beauty of the sun when it appears above the ridges of mountains. It became their land mark and when their fellow villagers asked them where they go, they said, “to the place where the sun is born”.

Menelangan means sunrise, but the early Visayan who migrated to Mindanao misheard the word to Sindangan. The Visayan did not bother themselves by checking the word. They immediately accepted and used the word. It was further solidified by the existence of a giant fish they called Indangan back to their island of birth, the Visayas. So the name was approved. The migrants in Mindanao latter carried the name Sindangan up to the present generation. The place had turned into a town with its life vested on the fertility of its land.

It is a place of tranquility, the artists’ chosen place to work; a place free from the madding crowd, far from the grating of machines, far from the saturnine look of drug addicts and hold up gangs, far from swindlers and far from the police men. The place is very kind to its people so that everyone is pleased with his assigned lot; there is more than enough what the family needs. And in that place of the world my father farms.

My boyhood experience in the place is always associated with the pulverized farms and the joyous faces of farmers during harvest time. In that place the morning announces its coming by the moaning of pigeons on the branches of the Santol tress surrounding our house, the endless murmur of the brooks as they joined to the wide Talinga River. And I could hear the shuffling of leaves that mingled with the tickling of spoons and plates from the kitchen which told me breakfast is ready.

I just could not explain why men had to leave the pastoral life to suffer in the urban centers. I also could not explain why civilization as men called it, always relates to the destruction of the Earth. The industrial revolution destroyed what God has created, and this technology that we have now is the descendant of that revolution. Technology hastens business but lessens the meaning of life.

Some experts put the solution of economic problem by making the country industrial. Though the Philippines remain in its pre-industrial period, it cannot be classified agricultural because the government has no plans and investment in agriculture. Even the Coco-Levi fund, the money that belonged to the farmers had gone into the some pockets of the government. The farmers suffer and they are branded ignorant and backward.

We must learn the lesson of the New Zealanders. Today they enjoy the life style of the Americans and Europeans yet they remain agricultural. We have the land and human resources; we only do not have the initiative to improve and develop what is indigenous because we always consider ours as inferior compare to something foreign.