Education for Life Foundation

Ram Pumps and Other Aeta Dreams

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:05:17 +0000

It’s been a long time coming.

More than a year ago, at an evening meeting in Barangay Villar, inside the Aetas ancestral domain, we shared our dreams which started with our partnership for Aeta learning and leadership. After a lot of discussion, they agreed on one priority – water for drinking and for irrigation. But the spring source was 100 meters below the plateau where their huts and farms were.

Fortunately, we got to know about the ram pump technology which has been refined and further developed by the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. (AIDFI)

ELF negotiated for funding from the Department of Agriculture, AIDFI surveyed the water source and the path for the pipes and hoses, and we asked the LGU of Botolan for counterpart assistance. A long, tedious process, not without moments of frustration. Bgy, Villar Chairman Pabalic said that many of his fellow Aetas were skeptical about the project ever happening.

But steadily, though slowly, the negotiations and preparations proceeded. Last January 28-29, I had a chance to visit the ram pump site. At last, the Aetas got a glimpse of a future that is just weeks away.

But the Aetas’ dreams go beyond the water that the ram pump will supply. At the community meeting and in the various conversations, we talked about the organic farms that they would develop, the post-harvest facilities to process and store their surplus crops, a trading cooperative they will set up, barangay and sitio electrification, perhaps even a pool of farm equipment. And still, the constant dream of lifelong learning about their indigenous knowledge and traditions and what they need to learn to interact with the dominant lowland and market society.

Here are a few pictures from the visit:

A Ram Pump for Barangay Villar

admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:17:49 +0000

Posting some pictures for a workshop on Alternative Learning System in Edinburgh.

Using the “Context-Content-Method” framework we developed in 1986-87 for popular education, one of the contexts I selected is “sustainable development of Aetas’ ancestral domain.”

I visited Barangay Villar inside the ancestral domain. In a community assembly, Barangay Chairman Palab identified water supply as their most important need. I told them about the ram pump technology developed by Auke Idzenga (who would later win the Magsaysay Award for his work). The Aetas brought me to a potential water source.

ELF asked Auke for help, and he went to Barangay Villar to check the water source. He said it would be enough for drinking water and irrigation, plus a small “firefly” power system, enough to charge celphones!

While ELF negotiated with the Department of Agriculture for funding the ram pump project, a group of Aetas visited Negros Occidental to see the workshop of the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. which Auke heads, and also a ram pump that he had installed in a nearby village.

We hope that the ram pump project for Barangay Villart will be finished before the end of 2011.

10:30 pm June 15

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 17:23:06 +0000

What happened at 10:30 pm on June 15, twenty years ago?

In fact, something stopped happening at that hour, on that date. According to scientists, that was the official end of the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

What happened since then has become part of one “most significant story” in my life – my lifelong journeying with the Aetas, the “first people” of the Philippines.

The eruption forced the Aetas to leave their homes, farms, and hunting grounds on the slopes of Mt. Pinatubo. Their clans and communities were dispersed into various resettlement areas. Up to now, the original residents of Barangay Villar which is considered the “mother barangay” of Aetas, live in in four or five different sites.

But 150 families belonging to LAKAS (Lubos na Alyansa ng Katutubong Ayta sa Sambales) decided they would stick together, even if it meant transferring 10 times to different temporary sites. They finally settled in a place, sitio Bihawo, from which they could see Mt. Pinatubo, where they believed Apo Namalyari dwelt.

Wherever they settled, they never stopped dreaming and hoping that they would return to the slopes of Mt. Pinatubo.

Aeta participants would draw details of this dream during the visioning exercises in the GLC – the Grassroots Leadership Courses run by ELF. That is where our life stories met.

I wasn’t in the Philippines when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. It was only in 1992 that I managed to return from an informal exile in Europe. That gave me the chance to set up the Education for Life Foundation with Girlie and activist-friends, using funds initially provided from Denmark.

Partly inspired by the ideas of Grundtvig on “education for life” and the Danish folkehojskole residential course, ELF’s core program was, and continues to be “grassroots leadership formation for grassroots community empowerment.”

We decided to start with participants from Central Luzon, because of the region’s history of militancy, and because our NGO partners like PRRM worked there.

We didn’t deliberately seek out the Aetas. NGO partners sponsored two Aeta participants for the first batch Unang Ani. In the succeeding batches, Aetas remained minorities among the mainly lowland participants of the GLCs.

But after a few courses, the Aeta leader-graduates requested for an All-Aeta course. We did, and that eventually led to the setting up of PBAZ – Paaralang Bayan ng Ayta sa Zambales – organized by Aeta leader-graduates of the GLCs.

Earlier the Aeta leader-graduates talked of starting an “Aeta Survival Folkschool.” The name reminded me of stories about Aetas training US soldiers in jungle survival skills during the Vietnam war.

Carling Domulot, the current president of LAKAS (the fifth in a series of elected leaders), is clear about what the Aetas need now and in the future: “We need to keep alive our indigenous culture and history, but we also need to acquire the knowledge and skills from the formal schools.”

Last week, we reminisced about our first encounters and the years of journeying together. He talked about a recent trek with a group of LAKAS and PBAZ leaders to the crater of Mt. Pinatubo, to develop a route for future eco-tourists who may want to climb from the Botolan side, rather than the existing route from Capas, Tarlac.

“We found clear running waters two hours from the crater,” he said. “It is in Yamot, the sitio of LAKAS before the eruption. That is where we can set up the nursery for indigenous trees, build huts and a community center, for our Aeta folkschool.”

In early 2010, the Aetas of Barangay Villar, Belbel, Burgos, and Moraza finally got their CADT – Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title – to over 15,000 hectares that include the crater of Mt. Pinatubo. Like other indigenous peoples communities that have acquired legal rights, the Aetas face the challenge of how to develop their ancestral domain.

There are denuded areas that need “rainforestation.” There are upland areas that are suitable for sloping agriculture. The twenty years since the eruption make the farm lands ideal candidates for organic agriculture.

But only a few families have settled back in their ancestral domain. Most remain in the resettlement areas. The older Aetas are eager to return as soon as we can build the ram pump that will bring water for drinking and irrigation to the chosen site for the barangay and their farms. But they acknowledge that many of the younger Aetas are ambivalent, wondering if they still want go back to the life their elders remember, before the eruption.

I asked Carling how he feels about what happened in 1991 and its aftermath.

“At first, I wondered what wrong we have done for Apo Namalyari to allow such suffering to happen to us,” he said. “But after 20 years, I think Apo Namalyari may have used the eruption as a way to broaden our world, and to learn new things that we need, so that we will survive.”

He enumerated the different people he has met, the different places he has visited, the different challenges he has met and different lessons he has learned. “Because of the eruption,” he added, “we have met. And I have learned a lot from you, and ELF, and those we have met through you.”

So did I, from Carling and the Aetas, and the learning still continues.

Looking back on the 20 years, I think of Soren Kierkegaard and his aphorism: “Life can only be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards.”

A Young Aeta’s Farewell Talk

admin — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:36:44 +0000

Christopher “Butog”Domulot is a young Aeta who has been studying at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan. In a few weeks, he will be returning to the Philippines, to apply what he has learned. The following is his last “morning talk” to his classmates at ARI.

At this time I want to be slightly serious in as much as this is my last morning gathering. Everyone knows I’m naughty. Yes I admit that I acted as a naughty boy. But this is my own way to express my closeness with other people and provide little comfort though. However, this seems to have become serious for me to be kiddin. I’m very sorry to all who were affected by my jokes. I’m sure that many of you are offended by my jokes, and I would like to apologize.

In every place I go, I always carry with me my culture-my way of life and the way I relate with other people. It is the identity of my tribe. Culture is what everyone of us can afford and not afford to discard. Being part of the new generation in our tribe, I should appreciate it because it is our inheritance from our ancestors. Even in a cold place like Japan, I endeavored to display my identity, though it became a discomfort to others, because I am proud of being a member in my tribe. Though I am already accustomed to wear branded clothing, I cannot afford to let go of my traditional way when the situation demand for it.

Do you still cherish your local culture? Are you proud of your own culture? Or have you discarded it because you are ashamed to be identified with your local people and community? Do you respect others’ culture? If you don’t have respect for your own culture, lets us respect each other’s culture.

Our parents dreamed of our own community school, which we called School of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition. Learning is based on the life situation through our life. It means that learning is available in our daily life, not only in books, but in everyday life, lived and incorporated in our culture. This dream is gradually carried out because of the sustained efforts of our community.

Right now our community school (Folk School) is prospering and continues to grow. The students are excelling as proven by over ten graduates who passed the Accreditation & Equivalency Test. Now they continue their formal studies such as high school and college level studies. The school also assists many out-of-school-youth in other communities, not only in my community. Although they are not tribal members, they are welcome in our school.

I dream that one day my tribe will return and occupy again our ancestral land and restore its beauty and abundance. My succesful completion of ARI Rural Leaders Training Program will not only benefit me personally but most specially for the development and integrity of my community.

What I learned here in ARI is incomparable to other trainings I attended. These learnings cannot be grabbed or can not be stolen from me by other people. I believe that the application of these knowledge will be pretty hard for me, but when it continues to be applied or practiced it will become more and more sharp.

I would like to end my sharing this morning with a glimpse of my memories when I arrived here in ARI, when I met you, shared with you, and now I have to be back home in a few weeks to be with my community…..but I would like to tell you that you are all part of my learning …..that have shaped my past, present and future journey. It is a photo movie and you are all included in my my dreams for the future – My Journey.

Aetas and the Time Paradox

admin — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 14:27:23 +0000

For two days and two nights, I had a non-stop conversation with Aeta leaders of LAKAS and PBAZ inside their ancestral domain.

We planned our trip to be a “visioning walk and talk,” and we did talk a lot about the future. But our conversations also shuttled back and forth, to the past, the present, and the future.

That may be the reason why on the first night, before falling asleep in the hut of Mulo, I recalled Philip Zimbardo’s book The Time Paradox. His thesis is that people can have three time perspectives: Past-oriented, present oriented, or future-oriented.

The Aetas, especially their leaders, have a strong past-orientation. They reminisced a lot about their life before Mt. Pinatubo erupted, how they grew enough food in the 10-hectare lots they assigned to each clan, and how they were free to hunt labuyo, baboy damo, and even some deer. In Zimbardo’s categorization, their time orientation is more past-positive than past-negative.

But their memories of the remote past are not about unalloyed freedom and self-sufficiency. They told stories of a lowland lawyer who took advantage of their illiteracy, and tried to grab their land, and of traders who paid a pittance for their surplus produce.

They have grateful memories of the FMM sisters, especially Sr. Menggay, who taught them literacy and their rights in the early 1980s, and helped them federate into LAKAS. A number of them were trained to be literacy facilitators, starting with the very first – Tay Ben Jugatan.

Their more recent past is also a mix of negative and positive. The eruption of Mt. PInatubo dispersed them from their four barangays of Villar, Belbel, Moraza and Burgos to the different resettlement sites.

Only the 150 families of the LAKAS organization managed to stay together in Bihawo. The rest of the residents of the four Aeta barangays do not live together in one place. But they have maintained their identities as residents of their original barangays, even if these have no legal status.

ELF is part of their recent past, as well as their present. When we first met the Aetas in 1993, they told us stories about how, after the eruption, many relief and rehab agencies descended on them, each one claiming their share of beneficiaries: “Their competition added to our divisions.” By 1993, most had stopped working with the Aetas, and had moved on to the next post-disaster area.

I asked what they value most from the ELF leadership course. They said that they learned how to deal and negotiate with authorities, and speak to them without feeling like beggars.

The course included visioning exercises, and they always expressed a longed-for return to their original sites. In their present resettlement sites, all their skills cannot expand their small home lots and farm lots. When they work in the bigger farms, their daily wage is a mere 100 to 150 pesos. Aeta children are often discriminated against in the schools. Despite this, Aetas are not “present-fatalistic.” They do not accept that they can’t do anything about their present situation.

Botolan Mayor Roger Yap used to tell me how he had tried, in vain, to convince the Aetas, especially of Barangay Villar, to come to terms with reality, and not insist on voting for their own barangay officials, even though they reside in different resettlement sites.

Happily, they got their CADT. The Mayor launched a program of “balik-barangay” for the residents of the four barangays. The most enthusiastic response came from Barangay Villar; majority of the barangay council including the chair are also LAKAS leaders. Bgy. Villar’s territory includes 10,000 out of the 15,000 hectares. They have identified the site for their new barangay center, in place of the old site that has been completely buried by the lahar flows.

For the Aeta leaders, “Balik-barangay” is not a mere return to the past. It is a move “back to the future.”

I went to the ancestral domain with visions of organic farms, community-based reforestation, a learning center, even a wellness center. For the Aetas in Villar, these are all part of their desired future. But at our Monday evening meeting, they unanimously agreed that their most immediate need is water, for people to drink, and for watering the plants. Without access to water, they would have difficulty convincing their fellow Aetas to move from their resettlement lots, back to the mountain sites.

After water, what next? They want a tractor, to clear at least 500 hectares of land that families can farm. For this they need carabaos, and plows, and carts, and hoes.

The barangay leaders have built three classrooms from their own funds. In appreciation of their efforts, the DepEd ofered to build a full elementary school, provided the barangay donated a two-hectare lot. They quickly agreed, and even added a third hectare for future expansion.

Zimbardo advises us to have a bit of past orientation, a bit more of present orientation, and even more of the future. Although people who have a negative past can not change their past, they can practice reframing their past by changing their attitude toward what happened. People who want to become more future- oriented can write down their goals, chart their progress, make to-do lists, and work toward long-term rewards.

Changing one’s time perspective requires much effort , but such a change is achievable, and people who achieve it have happier lives. Zimbardo could be talking about the Aeta leaders when he writes: “Our ability to reconstruct the past, to interpret the present, and to construct the future gives us the power to be happy.”

A Visit to an Ancestral Domain

admin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:54:43 +0000

October 11-12, I joined 25 Aeta leaders of LAKAS and PBAZ to visit their ancestral domain. We crossed the river of mud and lahar on a three-hour trip to Barangay Villar, and had an evening assembly to discuss their priorities. The next morning, we went on a two-hour hike to Yamot, one of their original sitios, to visit the hot springs where they want to plant a sacred grove and build cottages for a Wellness Center.

Last stream to cross before Barangay Villar and a welcome merienda of camote and cassava

We went down to a spring water source of drinking water, the priority of the barangay.

Barangay Chair Palab opens the meeting with prayers

Palab, Ben, Raul, and Letty speaking at the meeting. All are ELF leader-graduates

Walking with the Aetas

admin — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 16:41:03 +0000

Girlie has just finished packing my bag for my early morning bus trip to Zambales tomorrow, for a two-day visit to the Aetas’ ancestral domain.

She always helps me pack for any trip I make. Though she doesn’t say so, I sense that she worries about this trip. Perhaps she’s thinking of my legs; I’m 67 and have not climbed any mountain in decades.

“Why are you going up the mountain with the Aetas?” she finally asked. “They can just give you whatever information you need.”

My immediate answer was that I really want to see for myself their ancestral domain, including their settlements that they had to abandon when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. I can better help them negotiate with DENR and DA for support, if I have seen the place.

But I realize that the reason for my trip is not merely to familiarize myself with future project sites. The reason I’m going is to have a two-day “visioning walk and talk” with the Aetas.

Together with Carling, Letty, and other LAKAS and PBAZ Aeta leaders, we will be looking at sites where they will build new settlements, where they will have organic farms planted to upland rice, vegetables, and fruit trees, where they will have nurseries for “rainforestation.”

The Aeta barangay officials have already designated 2 hectares for building a primary school. But the Aeta leader-graduates also share the dream of ELF to build a “folk school,” which they have expanded to an Aeta Heritage and Learning Center. Carling wants to take us to the hot springs near Mt. PInatubo, where a future Wellness Center can rise.

It is not the first time ELF has been exchanging with the Aetas our dreams of a better future. From 1993, when we had the first Aeta participants in our Grassroots Leadership Course, and especially in the all-Aeta GLCs that followed, we would visualize our desired future in small groups and in plenary sessions. Their dreams always included a return to their mountain settlements.

Now that they have successfully negotiated to get a CADT for their ancestral domain, they have more solid grounds for their dreams. Tomorrow and the day after, I will walk with them on those grounds, while we talk about their dreams, our dreams.

More than 40 years ago, I walked up another mountain in my home island of Mindoro. I was a seminary student, assigned to teach basic literacy to the Mangyans. When my Mangyan guide showed me the house where I was to stay, I was surprised to find a Peace Corps volunteer, who immediately engaged me in conversation.

He asked, “Why are you here?” I gave him the simple answer, that I was a seminarian studying to be a missionary and this was part of my training. But that wasn’t really what he was asking about. As we talked, I realized that he was using me to find an answer to that same question posed to himself.

At some point, he admitted that he was there with the Mangyans possibly because he needed to be needed, or even because it made him feel somewhat messianic. That turned me off, and I don’t remember how we ended our conversation.

I don’t think I found a definite answer for myself then. And 40 years later, if I were asked the same question, I still wouldn’t have a definite answer. After 40 years, I know that there is usually not one definite answer. There is more than one answer.

Perhaps I will find a few more tomorrow, while walking with the Aetas.

Aetas Go Organic

admin — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:02:34 +0000

Last September 23 and 24, ELF brought four visitors from Bangladesh to Botolan Zambales, to meet the Aeta leader-graduates of our Grassroots Leadership Course. Imon, Aman, Bashir, and Rosy work with Protiggya Parishad, an NGO that is focused on the Comilla district in Bangladesh.

We first met the Aeta basic literacy facilitators and A and E instructional facilitators (they prefer this term to that of Instructional Manager) of PBAZ, led by Letty Gomez. The young leaders of LAKAS who hosted us were led by Tubag.

They shared with our visitors their story of how lowlanders exploited their illiteracy, and how the FMM sisters led by Sr. Menggay trained them and eventually helped them federate into LAKAS even before Mt. Piinatbo erupted. Letty continued their story after the eruption, with the training they got from ELF on leadership, especially in communications and negotiations.

The following day, we met the older leader-graduates at the organic farm of Carling, the president of LAKAS. His predecessor Tay Ben was also there, together with the very first president of LAKAS, Paylot. Their retelling of the many years of struggle was both lively and poignant.

Our lunch was mainly freshly harvested vegetables from Carling’s farm, and he proudly led our visitors on a guided tour of the six hectares that the LAKAS leaders had converted to organic agriculture. We ended with a planning session on how to negotiate for support from the Department of Agriculture, so that we can use their farms to train other Aetas in organic farming, which they will implement in the upland farms they will start in their ancestral domain.

Here are some pictures from that visit.

Organic lunch at Carling’s farm

Carling acts as tour guide

PBAZ and LAKAS leaders with new friends

Tay Ben recalls the early years of struggle

Our visitors pose with organic upo and squash

Education and Camotes: A Korean Story

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:42:26 +0000

You need not be as old as I am to have heard about this rude remark directed by Filipino teachers at slow learners or stubborn learners: “Go home and just plant camote!”

Education is directly counterposed to camote: If you can’t study, then go farming. Not just any kind of farming, but primitive low-level farming, represented by planting the lowly camote.

After all, camotes grow even on poor soil, and do not need much care or skill. It’s a root crop associated with poverty, and low esteem. It’s image only slightly improves when we call it ” sweet potato.”

In fact, a Filipino metaphor for underachievement is “nangangamote.”

These past two days in Korea, Girlie and I have been fortunate to learn about a different relationship between education and camotes.

We are here because I am one of three recipients of the 20th annual ILGA awards. The award is in honor of Kim Yong-ki, 1966 Magsaysay Awardee, whose adopted pen name is “Ilga.”

Kim Yong-ki is called the “Korean Grundtvig” and I thought that may have been the reason why I was getting the ILGA award, since my work in ELF is partly inspired by Gruntvig’s ideas on education.

From what I have learned about Ilga’s educational practice and thinking, he does share Grundtvig’s philosophy of “education for life,” which we in ELF translate into Filipino as “hango sa buhay, tungo sa buhay.“

But the uniqueness and depth of his educational thinking is best appreciated in relation to the “lowly” camote or sweet potato.

As a young man of 23, Ilga inherited from his father a small piece of barren unproductive land. He believed that through example and hard work, he could influence and change the plight of the common farmer, and build a model village. He set out to develop a farm that would offer training to other farmers as well as help them adopt a new way of life.

Since the farm was wasteland, he chose to plant sweet potatoes because they grow in poor soil and under any climatic conditions. Men, women, and even children could easily learn to plant and cultivate them, and they are nutritious.

After years of hard work (he woke up daily at 4:30 am and went to bed at 10 pm) and experimentation, he became the best sweet potato farmer in Korea.

After seven years of experimentation, Ilga solved the problem of storing sweet potatoes for 12 months which highly trained Japanese farmers had failed to do. (I didn’t know that storing camotes is such a problem.) He achieved the needed steady temperature by storing them underground.

But his success in growing and preserving camote was not simply an expression of his technical dedication. Choosing to grow camote was a political act. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, the soldiers would confiscate rice grown by Korean farmers. So Ilga promoted the growing of camotes to protect his family and his fellow farmers from hunger.

His “underground” work was not limited to storing camotes. He gave shelter to anti-Japanese resistance leaders, while overtly remaining apolitical.

This morning after the awarding ceremonies, a pastor-member of the ILGA Foundation told this story. Every August 15, the families that belong to the Canaan Farmers School celebrate the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation with a simple ritual: They eat sweet potatoes and wash them down with water.

Of course, Ilga’s life story is not just about camotes. He developed the diversified Canaan Farm system, named after the biblical description of Canaan as a land “flowing with milk and honey.” He has set up two Canaan Farm Schools. He is the key inspiration of the New Vilage Movement. Ilga’s philosophy of education was to “do it and prove it,” for others to learn. But he also insisted that changing the mind was as important as changing the land, if not more important.

Stimulated by this new appreciation of the camote, I searched the web and found these tidbits:

In 1992, a study compared the nutritional value of camotes to other vegetables. “Considering fibre content, complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins A and C, iron and calcium, the sweet potato ranked highest in nutritional value. According to these criteria, sweet potatoes earned 184 points, 100 points over the next on the list, the common potato.”

Surprisingly, despite the “sweet” in its name, it may be a beneficial food for diabetics, as preliminary studies on animals have revealed that it helps to stabilize blood sugar levels and to lower insulin resistance.

In Korea, Pizza Hut and Domino’s Pizza use camotes as one of their popular toppings.

Does this mean that we should take to planting and eating camotes?

As Ilga said, first a change of mind. Then perhaps a change of diet.

Herbal Medicine from the Aetas

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:52:12 +0000

The Philippine Daily Inquirer had this news item to day, August 29, 2010. It includes a story from Carling Domulot, Aeta leader and ELF leader-graduate.

Some years ago, when ELF, in partnership with PBAZ, started an Alternative Learning System (ALS) for Aeta out of school youth and adults, the PBAZ leaders asked why the modules of the Department of Education did not include any on indigenous peoples’ rights, or on Aeta culture, including their health practices. We asked them (and helped them) to produce special learning modules on these topics.

I think we should ask them to produce additional modules on herbal medicine.

In villages of Aetas, cure found in plants

Tonette Orejas

MABALACAT, Pampanga, Philippines—Villagers in Barangays Marcos and Macapagal here boil the leaves of acacia and roots of cogon together. The mixture is an old solution to high fever and malaria and is used to wash the patient down to lower his body temperature.

It is now being used to combat dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

Patients are made to drink a concentrated version of the mixture, according to Robert Serrano, a tribal leader in the two villages.

Acacia and cogon abound in the area.

But Aetas do not rely only on this indigenous cure, he added. They avail themselves of medical help and medicines at the provincial government-run Mabalacat district hospital in the town proper.

The Aeta way

In Barangay Bihawo in Botolan, Zambales, the 150 Aeta families there keep dengue away by keeping their resettlement site clean, according to Carlito Domulot, chair of the Lubos na Alyansa ng mga Katutubo Ayta sa Sambales (Lakas).

For two years now, they have maintained an organic farm in nearby Barangay San Juan where they grow 100-percent chemical-free vegetables.

“There is not one case of dengue in our tribe for years,” Domulot, 55, said in a phone interview. “Mosquitoes are rare here,” he added, referring to the carriers of the dengue virus.

Should a dengue case occur, Domulot said he would go up their old village at Villar near Mt. Pinatubo to look for “kupit-kupit,” a highland grass that rises to a person’s knee.

The leaves are heated and pressed on the forehead of a sick person. The roots are boiled to produce a mixture for drinking, Domulot said.

Other cures

For Aetas originally from Barangay Poon Bato in Botolan, Zambales (they now live in Itanglew resettlement), the big leaves of a tree called “dita” is a cure for high fever and malaria.

Elsa Novo, a village councilor, said old folk used dita during the malaria outbreaks in evacuation centers from 1992 to 1994. The tree is difficult to find in the upper slopes of Mt. Pinatubo, she said.

Aetas have growing trust for modern medical help, Novo said. Last week, a 17-year-old boy survived dengue because his parents immediately took him to a local hospital.

In Ifugao, which recorded 187 dengue cases from January to July this year, indigenous communities have also resorted to their old remedies against malaria-carrying mosquitoes, which used to be their bigger seasonal health problem.

Santos Bayucca, an Ifugao environmental advocate, said villagers have started burning dried peelings of locally grown pomelo. The smokey pomelo aroma had been credited for warding off mosquitoes and other insects, Bayucca said. With a report from EV Espiritu, Inquirer Northern Luzon