Michael Tan: Pinoy Kasi

Filipino cities

2007-08-05T11:44:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Filipino cities
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:47am (Mla time) 08/03/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Whenever I’m in Cebu or Iloilo, I go through the ritual of discussing with my friends the possibility of moving from Manila and living there.

The reactions are always of two kinds. One is great enthusiasm, “Yehey, yahoo, now na,” sometimes accompanied with job offers. The other, which used to surprise me, is: “But why?”

“Why?” I would retort. “Because I’m not sure I want my kids to grow up in Manila.” I would mention all the problems we have: pollution and traffic, malls and fast-food (read junk food) joints on every corner, the extreme consumerism.

I then turn to the attractions of Cebu and Iloilo (and occasionally, Davao). Cebu and Iloilo have a certain Old World charm, metropolitan yet small town, of department store (yes, they still have them) clerks who will engage in a bit of banter, of istorya-istorya while they’re wrapping up your purchases. And I remind my friends of how close they are to nature. You can live in the middle of Cebu and yet see both the mountains and the sea, and if you can’t, well, the sea’s never more than an hour away.

But my friends warn me about not having good bookstores, no good libraries, no good concerts, no good European films and how they look forward to visiting Manila to get those things. I smile back and explain that even in Manila, I don’t have time to watch the not just good but great films and concerts at UP, where I teach. As far as I’m concerned, I could live even in one of the smaller cities like Tagbilaran and still get a cultural life of sorts, via DVD (again, assuming I have the time to watch) and high-speed Internet (these days you can subscribe to Internet services like High Beam Research and Questia and get access to thousands of books and journals).

Some of my friends would persist: “You won’t have anyone to talk to here.” They would claim there’s no intellectual life in Cebu and Iloilo. Perhaps most shocking is, “We don’t have good schools here for your kids.”

So I actually end up defending my friends’ cities: “But Iloilo is like Athens: you have schools on every corner.” And I’m serious, it’s not just the number of schools, but some rather innovative and progressive ones.

Let me assure my friends in Manila that I’m not about to move . . . yet. I have too many commitments here that will make that move difficult. The biggest factor that keeps me in Manila are my parents, who are quite old. Both are big-city people who think of any place outside of Manila as “probinsya.”

‘Balik-Manila’

It’s not snobbery on their part. The paradox is that even if our smaller cities now have malls and other trappings of modernity, they do lag behind in terms of economic infrastructure and many social services.

I’m going to be specific now and refer to the experiences of two of my former employees who did pull up stakes here in Manila to move back to their home cities, one in the Visayas and the other in Mindanao. Both now have regrets about having moved back and are asking me if they can do a reversal, a “balik-Manila.”

Yes, they say, the air is cleaner and they have the mountains and the sea, but they’re overwhelmed by problems. The kids complain all the time, missing Manila. It’s mainly their friends and the malls and “gimmicks” of Manila, but the parents have greater concerns. They moved back thinking that it would be easier to make ends meet, with better prospects for small business ventures amid lower costs of living.

They were wrong on both counts. The costs of setting up businesses, even in small cities, can be quite high. Rent and utilities aren’t cheap, while potential customers haven’t been coming in because the purchasing ability is just too low. And yes, they do see now the problems of lower standards of education, especially as their kids are about to enter college. One of them wonders if her very ill mother might be better off in Manila for specialized care.

Their sad experiences remind me that more than many other countries, the Philippines is plagued by having one primate city while the others remain quite neglected by the national government. In Thailand, Indonesia and China, capital cities are still prime attractions, but they are primus inter pares (first among equals). Shanghai has as much, if not more, allure than Beijing. In Indonesia, Yogyakarta’s Gadja Mada University puts up stiff competition against the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. In the Philippines, the best universities are still concentrated in Manila.

Rethinking cities

The Philippines is supposed to be 64 percent urbanized, but “urbanization” is a relative term. We’ve had an epidemic of municipalities converting themselves into cities, with even the League of City Mayors complaining about the newcomers not coming up to standards.

The UNFPA’s latest yearbook suggests new ways of looking at urbanization. In the past, development planners tried to discourage migration from rural to urban areas, fearful of squatters and urban poverty. Today, the thinking is that we should encourage such migration because it alleviates rural poverty. One interesting research finding is that cities can be more eco-friendly because they can be more efficient in terms of using land and other natural resources.

But poverty alleviation and environmental conservation depend on how much government is committed to ensuring that the cities have adequate housing, jobs and social services. The problems we have today is that city politicians welcome rural migrants because they become cheap labor and bring in more votes during elections, but provide them very little by way of economic and social services.

Another point raised by UNFPA is that countries should develop several urban centers so hordes of rural poor don’t stream into the capital city. I’d add here that we need a major cultural shift as well, to get Filipinos to move away from “Manila imperialism.” We forget that Cebu and Iloilo were originally considered to be more sophisticated and advanced than Manila, centers of “urbanidad” or a sense of civility and civilization. If they’re losing that urbanidad, it’s because they try too hard to imitate Manila. If they could just keep their small-town charm and urbanidad, they might attract more professionals, artists and business people.

Meanwhile, those of us in Manila should also expose our kids to other urban centers, from Vigan and Tuguegarao up north, down to Zamboanga and General Santos in the south, so they can expand their horizons and their ideas of what a city should be. Hopefully, someday they will have more choices and options of where to live. Even better, they can contribute toward recreating and revitalizing our urban areas.

Fat and thin

2007-08-05T11:42:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Fat and thin
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:35am (Mla time) 08/01/2007

Back in the 1980s when I was working with a nongovernmental organization, we had a British volunteer who would occasionally come into the office sulking. We’d speculate, often correctly, that someone had again greeted her, “Uy, Rose, ang taba-taba mo ngayon ah." ["Hey, Rose, you’re become so fat.”]

Sounds brutal, doesn’t it? Rose would always point out that in Britain and in many Western countries, such a remark was rude and offensive.

With time, she did come to accept that such statements, including the converse “Uy, ang payat mo ngayon ah” ["Hey, you're so thin"] are meant as greetings, said only when you’ve acquired some familiarity with the person. It’s a versatile greeting, with different meanings, depending on who says it and in what context. Sometimes it’s just an expression of endearment, usually said by grandparents when they see their favorite "apo" [grandchild]. Other times the statements can be a form of scolding, as when parents (and in our nosey extended family system, uncles and aunts and grandparents) want a child to put on (or take off) weight.

There will be times, too, when it is said in jest, like tricycle drivers would do to Rose, who was well liked in her community, especially because she was so “Kana” and yet could speak Filipino. The tricycle drivers, Filipino-style, would greet her and then rub it in by asking passengers, “Urong nga" ["Move over”], even if there was enough space.

Anorexia

Language has its social and historical context. In the past, if you told a woman, “Ang payat-payat mo,” she’d feel bad because it had connotations of illness. Her husband would feel slighted, too, by the insinuation that he was not a good provider. Today, telling a woman she’s becoming thin -- “Pumapayat ka” -- might get her to profusely thank you, maybe even get her to treat you to a sumptuous meal.

I do worry that in this 21st century, the fat-thin greetings have become counter-productive. We live in an age where we are bombarded, through mass media and advertising, with what society thinks is the ideal body size. For women, that’s usually on the thin side, sometimes bordering on emaciation. For men, it tends toward the hunk, with flat abs and pectorals bordering on ... can I use the term buxom-y?

Imagine then the impact on women when you say, “Ang taba-taba mo ah” or even “Tumataba ka ah.” Think of a woman going through a midlife crisis with a philandering husband.

The excessive attention to body conformation, reinforced by our traditional greeting, can be disastrous as well for very young girls. In Spain, pediatricians last year were able to convince the fashion industry to stop using excessively underweight models in their shows. The pediatricians’ appeal came about because young Spanish girls watching the televised fashion shows with all the very thin models had become excessively anxious about putting on weight, with many lapsing into anorexia nervosa, the eating disorder where they literally starve themselves.

Anorexia is no joking matter. It can kill, slowly and painfully for both the patient and family members. This eating disorder, together with bulimia (excessive eating), has arrived in the Philippines. I know of middle-aged women who are anorexic and trace it back to a childhood when people were always commenting about their being “taba.”

Paradoxically, the “taba-taba mo” barrage can also drive people to bulimia or excessive eating. In this case, the person feels so frustrated and helpless that she turns to food, and more food, for comfort.

Body image

I’ve always been thin, and on the receiving end of “payat-payat mo ngayon” and “pumapayat ka” greetings. My grandmas and aunts always did that affectionately, forcing me to eat more but not quite succeeding in getting me to gain weight. Metabolism, I’d explain to them when I was older—if I eat more, I just end up becoming more physically active. The only time I gained weight significantly was when I stopped smoking, quickly gaining 15 pounds, and then shedding five and settling in.

I know my weight, and I’m happy with it, these days with a vengeance. I run into long-lost friends who used to go, “Ang payat payat mo” in a “You’re-so-skinny” tone. Now they make the same statement in a “I-hate-you” tone, followed by a green-with-envy question “How do you manage to keep so slim?”

But I did resent it when people used to do that you’re-so-skinny statement because there were many times when it was inappropriate. That was usually when I’d be under great stress from work and so getting a remark like that wasn’t helpful.

Body image ties into self-esteem. If a person is already stressed out, it doesn’t help when your comments make them feel even more downtrodden. Learn to say something else like, “Daming trabaho yata, ano (Lots of work)?” said in a sympathetic tone, rather than “Pumapayat ka,” which comes through as tacky and critical.

I thought about that again recently when an older relative went into a battery of medical tests simply because people kept greeting him, “You’re losing weight.” He had asked me about it and I assured him he was just the right weight. In fact, I felt he could actually lose a few pounds and be healthier. Unfortunately, our society still expects older people to be on the heavy side, a sign of affluence.

Anyway, this older relative went through the expensive and excruciating tests only to find there was nothing wrong with him. But there, that’s where “You’re losing weight” remarks can be thoughtless, even harmful. Be especially careful if the person does have an illness like cancer; commenting on how thin he is would be outright cruel.

It will take time for us to get rid of this nasty tradition of fat-and-thin remarks, but meantime, I’d advise you to watch out with younger and older relatives, making sure they don’t take such statements too seriously. If you’re the one on the receiving end, remember people’s intentions with the greetings are usually benevolent. I’d also do a bit of reconfiguring with the words: when they say “taba,” think of yourself as “voluptuous” and when they say “payat,” think “slim, sensual, sexy.” Smile back and retort (silently, of course), “Eat your heart out.”

Dormant accounts

With some space to spare for today’s column, I felt I had to warn readers about dormant bank accounts. Many of us rely now on ATM accounts without bank books and sometimes even without mailed statements or correspondence of any kind. So you might not be aware that under new central bank regulations, a checking account that has not been touched for a year becomes dormant. (For savings account, the old rule of two years still holds.) After that, your bank begins to deduct P250 a month from your funds.

I found out the hard way. Worse, with that one bank, they changed the minimum maintaining balance without notifying account holders, so besides the P250-a-month deduction, they began to deduct another P550. Their way, I guess, of telling us to eat our hearts out.

Folk knowledge

2007-08-05T11:41:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Folk knowledge
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:57am (Mla time) 07/27/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Is there any scientific basis for the belief that mushrooms emerge after thunderstorms? What about the belief that planting fruit crops at early dawn increases the chances for larger fruits?

A book published back in 1998 by the University of the Philippines (UP) Institute for Science and Mathematics Development (now Nismed, the “N” for “National”) reviews the empirical basis for such beliefs and practices from agriculture, fishing, food and nutrition and medicine. I’ll get back to the mushrooms and planting in a while, but let me first talk about the book’s focus, captured in its title: “Philippine Folk Science: A Sourcebook for Teachers.”

I bought the book many years back and remembered it recently while preparing a paper for a conference organized by the International Organization for Science and Technology Education (IOSTE). Appropriately, UP Nismed hosted the conference, which had sustainable development as its theme. I was requested to deliver a paper on the relationship of culture to science education and sustainable development.

Culture and knowledge

As a medical anthropologist, I’ve been training medical students and physicians to become culturally sensitive in their clinical practice. The IOSTE request was somewhat more challenging, but the links were still fairly easy to make. Sustainable development means development in a way that does not jeopardize future generations. That does become a challenge especially because our development models have always emphasized massive consumption of resources. It was presumed that the more you consume, the more rapid the development.

When sustainable development came around, science educators found out that they had to rethink their curriculum. Can you do “modern” science using smaller-scale technologies? Maybe even more radically (and this was where my presentation came in), can we return to local beliefs and practices -- the ones so often labeled as “backward” and “primitive” -- to advance science?

For several decades now, even before sustainable development came into vogue, anthropologists have been exploring “indigenous knowledge” (yes, with its own abbreviation, IK), arguing that such knowledge has much to offer. Some of the earliest work around IK was conducted in the Philippines by anthropologists. In 1957, for example, the Food and Agriculture Organization published a book, “Hanunoo Agriculture,” by Harold Conklin, describing the agricultural practices of the Hanunoo, an ethnic group living in Mindoro. Conklin documented the Hanunoo’s vast knowledge of their natural environment, which they applied to shifting agriculture, or "kaingin."

I’m sure some readers reacted to that word, thinking immediately about soil erosion and destructive floods. But kaingin need not be destructive. When populations were smaller and people had access to large tracts of land, they knew how to move from one part of their land to another, planting in some plots and allowing others to rest. It was a system that worked, with its own IK.

This is a good time to return to the examples I gave at the beginning of this column. Why the field of mushrooms after thunderstorms? Because the sudden downpour causes dormant mushroom spores, already in the soil, to germinate. The lightning fixes atmospheric nitrogen, which, when it reaches the earth, is used as a nutrient by the growing mushrooms.

And planting at dawn? The authors of “Philippine Folk Science” say it makes sense because that’s when soil is moist and solar radiation is low.

Folk science

“Philippine Folk Science” was compiled by a team of Filipino scientists that included Dr. Vivien Talisayon, dean of the UP College of Education and one of the conveners of the IOSTE conference. She told me that some Western scientists dislike terms like “folk science,” pointing out that “science is science.”

They do have a point. You have science when people formulate a hypothesis (in Tagalog, "kutob") that is tested by observation and experimentation, and when they’re open enough to revise those hunches based on empirical evidence.

Business corporations have always been quick to recognize the value of folk science and IK, sending expeditions out to remote areas to gather information about medicinal plants, food crops and other natural products that have commercial potential.

In my IOSTE presentation, I reminded the science educators that tapping into IK isn’t a matter of extracting knowledge, it’s also being open to new ways of looking and thinking. Paul Sillitoe, in his book “Local Science vs. Global Science,” points out that Charles Darwin got some of his ideas about evolution from the natives of the Galapagos Islands. The natives could tell which islands tortoises and finches (a type of bird) came from, by looking at parts of their anatomy. Darwin realized, from those observations, that the anatomical differences were actually adaptations to different environments.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in traditional “wellness” practices. The example I gave at the IOSTE meeting was Buddhist meditation. Formerly scoffed at as a faddish practice that worked only on the gullible, meditation is now the subject of research by neurologists and psychologists. Monks are wired up with electrodes so researchers can figure out what goes on in their brains and their bodies as they meditate. The studies show there are very real physiological changes during meditation, with many favorable effects. The most startling are findings that meditation (and, we know now, mental exercises) allows the central and autonomic nervous systems to “regenerate” or compensate for damaged parts. Medical scientists now talk about “neuroplasticity,” or how the nervous system can be trained and exercised to prevent or slow down dementia and senility.

I don’t want to romanticize all that indigenous knowledge; certainly, there are many irrational beliefs that persist, but you find them as well among “modern” scientists, even with doctorate degrees, who stubbornly cling on to outdated theories.

Science -- “indigenous” or “modern” -- thrives best in an environment where there is dialogue and peer review. At the UP College of Medicine, I’ve convinced professors not to use terms like “primitive” and “superstitious” to refer to folk practices. We’re making some progress there, a recent example being a group of medical students looking into “pasma,” a folk illness. I’m going to describe their fascinating findings next month.

Yes, “Philippine Folk Science” is still available at UP, but I hope we’ll see more publications of that type. IK and folk science consist of accumulated experiences through several generations that need to be validated, but the first step is to rediscover them, together with our young so they take pride as well in things local. Unless we do that, we’ll lose all that knowledge, together with all their potential contributions to sustainable development.

Children’s medicines

2007-08-05T11:40:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Children’s medicines
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:38am (Mla time) 07/25/2007

The first bill filed in the new Congress was the proposed Cheap Medicines Act. More accurately, the bill was re-filed since it had been proposed in the last Congress but didn’t make it as a law. The bill went through rough sailing, facing tough opposition from multinational drug companies.

Among those lobbying heavily for passage of the bill are advocacy organizations working with the elderly. They’ve rightly pointed out that the country’s expensive medicines have been a terrible burden especially for the elderly, and the families that have to foot their medical bills. Because the elderly are more vulnerable to chronic ailments, they have much greater dependency on medicines, many of which have to be taken on a daily basis. Even with the 20-percent discount offered to senior citizens, the monthly bills for medicines easily run into the thousands, wiping out their savings. The elderly are literally held hostage by the drug industry with a grim message: Pay up, or suffer.

How costly is costly?

But sometimes we forget that there’s another large segment of the population that’s also held for ransom: the children. About 100,000 Filipino children die each year, many from diseases that are preventable and curable.

Let’s tackle the preventable deaths first. Vaccines play a key role in preventing many of these deaths. Fortunately, the government does provide free BCG (for tuberculosis), DPT (diphtheria, pertussis or whooping cough and tetanus), OPV (oral polio vaccine) and hepatitis B vaccines. Additional vaccines for flu, chickenpox, MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) have to be paid for with private physicians, and these can run into several thousand pesos. As far as I know, they’re not reimbursable with PhilHealth or with private health maintenance organizations.

There are many other diseases that are not preventable through vaccines. The leading cause of illness and death among children are acute respiratory infections. Children are also especially at risk for gastrointestinal infections that can cause life-threatening diarrheas.

Aldrin Santiago, a pharmacist friend of mine, and his wife, a pediatrician, helped me to look at some of the costs of treating infectious diseases. The most common antibiotic used for respiratory tract infections is amoxicillin. More or less, for a seven-day treatment course, you would need two 60-ml bottles of the 125 mg/5 ml suspension, for a total cost of about P140 if you buy Amoxil, one of the brand name products.

In cases where there is resistance to amoxicillin, doctors might prescribe cefaclor, which is more expensive. A 60-ml bottle of the branded preparation Ceclor costs P274 while a 100-ml bottle is P466. For upper-class Filipinos, that may not seem a lot, but for most Filipinos, that wipes out more than a day’s wages, if they are fortunate to even have a job in the first place.

Children also have their share of chronic ailments, asthma being the most common. A 60-ml bottle of Ventolin (salbutamol) costs P108, good for about four days. That’s P25 a day. Consider yourself lucky if your child responds to the oral dose. Others have to use rotahalers, with one cap costing P80.

Even multi-vitamins can set back a family’s budget. A 250-ml bottle of Enervon-C syrup costs P165. That’s about 50 daily doses, each of which would be about P3. The poor will probably buy the smaller 60-ml bottle for P52, which works out to P4.30 for a child’s daily dose, about the price of a pack of instant noodles that poor families use as a meal.

And if they find their child isn’t gaining weight despite a voracious appetite, they’ll probably think of intestinal parasites. But a single dose of albendazole suspension, sold under the brand name Zentel, is P47.

Cutting costs

If you work out unit costs, children’s medicines are always more expensive than those for adults. This is because the medicines come as drops for infants and suspensions or syrups for older children. For example, a 15-ml bottle of Biogesic Drops costs P50. The bottle contains 1500 mg of paracetamol. This is equivalent to three Biogesic adult tablets, which cost P8.25!

My pharmacist friends say you can buy the adult preparations and then mix your own suspensions but there are problems here about making sure the ingredients are evenly mixed and giving the right dose to the patient.

A safer cost-cutting measure is to look for generic preparations, but the range of generic alternatives for children is actually smaller than that for adults. And where they are available, the differences in costs may not always be significant. For example, a 60-ml suspension of Amoxil (125 mg/5 ml) costs P69.50 while its generic equivalent from Ritemed is actually more expensive at P70.25. On the other hand, the 250 mg/5 ml version of Amoxil suspension is P102 while Ritemed’s equivalent is P99.25.

With cefaclor, you have a choice. A 60-ml bottle of Ceclor (125 mg/5 ml) is P274.50, while Ritemed-Cefaclor is P137.50, exactly half the cost of the branded preparation.

Compare the following costs of salbutamol (60 ml suspension): Ventolin is P108, Asmalin P80 and Ritemed P48. Once when I was buying Ventolin at a drugstore, the woman next to me whispered: “It’s cheaper at Children’s Medical Center.” She was referring to the parallel imports the government is doing, where the same brand name, brought in from India, costs less. These drugs are sold in government hospitals.

Parallel imports are in fact part of what the Cheaper Medicines Bill hopes to do. Before the last Congress ended, there were two versions of the bill, with different ways of dealing with patents and other controversial issues. The new Congress will have to tackle all these issues again, but in the long run, let’s hope lawmakers will also begin to look at the long-standing question of production. We still are almost totally dependent on imports of pharmaceuticals. It’s time for the government, or for a large Filipino company like United Laboratories, to come up with genuine competition against the multinationals. In Thailand and India, low-cost medicines from government and from local companies have forced multinationals to bring down the costs of their products.

The President referred to medicines in her State of the Nation Address last Monday, claiming that in 1999, only 11 percent of Filipinos said medicines were affordable, while today the figure is about a half. The President did not indicate who conducted the survey, but even if we take that 50 percent figure to be true, we still have to ask: Why does half of the population still have to suffer because they can’t afford medicines?

Public spaces

2007-08-05T11:39:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Public spaces
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 06:43am (Mla time) 07/20/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- “And some of them are even locked,” Gilda Cordero Fernando texted, in response to my article last Wednesday about how the few playgrounds we have are not very child-friendly.

Politicians, and often parents themselves, do not see how important it is to have children’s playgrounds, especially in cities. In rural areas, children at least have the space to run around in, to explore and to socialize. In urban areas, without playgrounds, children are confined to homes, munching away on junk food while watching television. When they do go out, it’s to the malls. Then when they grow up, we wonder why they’re obese and asocial, if not downright hostile to people.

We hear all kinds of excuses for not having playgrounds: no budget, no personnel, no space. Corollary to this, I hear people often complaining that Filipinos have no sense of public responsibility. Create a park and they’ll vandalize it and litter and spit and pee on it, expecting government to clean up after them.

I’d argue that our lack of a sense of public responsibility is directly linked to our lack of designated public space. I’m using the term “designated” to emphasize how we can make spaces meaningful to people, to the point where they begin to care for those spaces. And if we have enough of these meaningful public spaces, then we encourage people to care for them.

Sidewalk gardens

I actually see this happening in urban poor areas, including those with informal settlers (the current politically correct term for “squatters”). I’ve been working in Quezon City in some of these places, which are densely populated with very little open space left. To give you a concrete idea, in one lot that was less than 1,000 sq m, I found 18 households with a total population of 127, plus assorted dogs, cats, chickens, pigeons and one pig.

One day on my way to visit that community, I noticed on the sidewalk right outside their settlement that there was a whole bunch of “alugbati” (a native vegetable) growing. I asked around and found out the informal settlers had planted it, together with “malunggay” (horse radish). As I looked closely, I realized they also had two “sampalok” (tamarind) seedlings.

Don’t think of the sidewalk as a concrete walkway. It was actually a patch of soil, about half a meter wide and two meters long, already with an old tree. I’m certain it’s public property yet the community had appropriated it. There were no set rules on who would care for the patch, but the plants, which are really quite hardy in the first place, were thriving and people would come and harvest as they wished.

All over Metro Manila, I’ve found similar patches, with all kinds of stuff being grown in them. In one place in Malate area, a barangay (village) even allowed someone to begin selling seedlings from the plants he had cared for.

All this reminds me of the “allotment” system in Britain and the Netherlands, where cities have certain areas, divided into little parcels, where people can plant. It’s not surprising you have that in Western Europe, because these are highly urbanized, very densely populated countries. Yet they also have a long tradition of social democracy, which includes looking for ways to provide public space, with services, to everyone.

‘Tambayan’

Now why couldn’t we have that here as well? Each barangay could have their public space, which could then be planned in such a way that it becomes space for people of all ages. Public spaces, especially those in cities, shouldn’t be an extension of the concrete jungle outside. They should offer a safe oasis for both parents and children. In China, many playgrounds end up as a place for the elderly as well, who bring their grandchildren to play while they themselves socialize with the other elderly, under the trees. The playgrounds come to life because with so many people, you have vendors coming in, even musicians and “installation artists” like the ones who pretend to be statues. Oh the children love that.

Parents complain all the time about their adolescent children going off and disappearing. Yet if you did have public spaces, they’d use them. Never mind if they disappear from time to time behind a tree; if it’s a public space with many people, there’ll be enough social control to limit their activities. The problems arise when there is no public space and adolescents have to create it for themselves. They’ve been known to use even cemeteries for that.

Public space is “tambayan” (hangout) space, that term derived from the English “standby.” And standby need not be idle. People will assume responsibilities, looking after the children, cleaning up, maintaining a garden.

Rules would help: no work, no share in the bounties of such a multi-purpose public space. Again, I’ve seen how people volunteer for barangay work; they’d be as enthusiastic caring for public property. Urbanites would rediscover food plants, maybe even medicinal plants. Many plants, “tanglad” (lemon grass) for example, are both for eating and for medicine anyway.

Environmental groups could come in teaching recycling and garbage segregation and composting. And the children would have a playground that exposes them to nature as well, even as they learn that vegetables grow on land, not in a grocery freezer.

There’s something called the social cascade effect, where people imitate others when they see a good thing going. I suspect we’ll end up having a problem of having too many people wanting to get into the act.

I have a friend who lives in a subdivision. She owns two adjoining lots, one with her house and the other an empty piece of land. She began to plant vegetables and flowers on one empty lot and soon people were asking if they could get a cutting of one plant, seeds from another. Then she had people offering to help her water the place, in exchange for the right to harvest some of the plants.

Continue with our present system of private space, including locked playgrounds, and the young will retreat even more into their MP3 cocoons. Give them public spaces and they will develop a greater sense of communal responsibility. Who knows, maybe we’ll even end up with a nicer, kinder nation.

Missing email

To a different matter, my friends and I have started noticing disappearing email. Many email servers that deal with corporations or institutions (the University of the Philippines, for example) now have a spam filtering system so any incoming email that seems like an ad or a chain letter automatically goes into a separate folder besides the regular “Incoming Mail.” It’s a good service, but it can be annoying too in the way it can sequester important correspondence, including memos from your boss! It’s happened to me many times in the last few weeks so I’ve made it a habit now to check other folders. If you use Norton Anti-Spam, that program also creates its own folder so check that too.

To run, to fly

2007-08-05T11:37:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

To run, to fly
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:23am (Mla time) 07/18/2007

For years now, traveling around the country, what has disturbed me most about our governance is the lack of priority given to public spaces. In many towns, the most conspicuously absent are children’s playgrounds, an absence made even more alarming by the presence, in every town and city, of a huge cockpit arena. Cockfights over children’s play -- no wonder the country is so messed up.

In fairness, I’ve noticed that in the last few years more cities and towns, as well as richer subdivisions, have put up playgrounds. Sadly though, these playgrounds often seem underused, or even avoided. My article today will look at some of the reasons this happens, reasons that are so basic they end up being overlooked.

‘Mainit’

I’ll use Manila as an example. Sometime last year, I noticed that playgrounds had popped up throughout the city. They had swings and other play equipment, painted with eye-catching colors. Yet I could sense immediately that something was wrong. Most times when I would pass through, even on weekends, they only had a few children playing.

One weekend, I decided to put on my anthropologist-journalist hat and do a bit of cultural investigation. I visited three playgrounds and began interviewing the people there.

The parents and children did appreciate the playgrounds. What was so interesting was that several parents explained that they had grown up in rural areas and wanted their children to have a taste of their own childhood when they had spaces where they could run.

The children echoed their parents’ sentiments, and I could understand why. All of them were from urban poor communities, where there was no space at all to run, except the streets, which were too dangerous.

This doesn’t mean that playgrounds are only for urban areas. The need to run is so much part of our human evolution. (Why do you think people get such a high when they jog?) For children though, running is all the more important for conditioning their muscles and fine-tuning their motor coordination. Yet notice how in Filipino families we’re always warning children: “Don’t run, don’t run.”

Let me get back to the interviews. I asked the parents what they thought about the swings, slides and seesaws, some of which were quite fancy, even imported. “Maganda,” most of them replied, in a tone that suggested a polite “nice.” With more probing, I realized that some of them were actually afraid of the equipment. They feared the children falling. I assured the parents that children are usually quite good about calculating their risks, but I could see why they were worried, and I will get back to that point shortly.

I also asked the parents how often they came to the playgrounds. “Paminsan minsan" ["Occasionally"], most replied, citing busy schedules, whether in offices or in homes, as their main reason. But several also mentioned something I had been anticipating: “Masyadong mainit.” ["It's too hot."]

The heat. One could argue that there’s nothing you can do about that considering this is a tropical country. But I could see -- no, feel -- what the parents were saying. Even toward the end of the day, the playgrounds were hot and, worse, there was no shade. The playgrounds were actually built on places that used to have trees but our wise city officials cut them down. So what we now had were (I can’t call them playgrounds) empty lots with play equipment. This is in a country where parents fret not just about the heat but also about their children (daughters especially) becoming “maitim” [dark-skinned].

Modernity

Here then is some friendly advice to our local government and subdivision officials: Don’t drive nature out when you build playgrounds. It’s better for the children and it actually costs less to build ecologically friendly playgrounds.

The problem with many of our playgrounds is that they build on distorted concepts of “modernity.”

There’s a particularly useful Internet site (www.freeplaynetwork.org.uk) that interested mayors and parents can visit. Click first on “Places of Woe,” where they have pictures of what a playground should not be, and you’ll find they look exactly like our playgrounds: some steel swings and slides, no trees, and concrete floors.

Cemented grounds are said to be “safer” but I wonder. I thought about the parents I had interviewed in Manila’s playgrounds and realized their fears were not so much of the swings and slides per se than of the possibility that their children would fall off and land on concrete. It’s different if they fell on grass, or even on gravel and pebbles, which you find in natural settings.

All over the world, there’s been a trend toward playgrounds for “environmental learning” that sees the value of playgrounds with grass, stones and trees. The freeplaynetwork site describes playgrounds as places to engage with nature, to be sociable and solitary, to create imaginary worlds, to test boundaries, to construct and alter surroundings, to experience change and continuity, and to take acceptable levels of risk. All those functions can be reduced to one objective: preparing our children for adulthood and the real world.

If you use this environmental learning philosophy, then you realize you don’t need to buy expensive steel play equipment. So much of our “junk” could be recycled for the playgrounds as raw materials that the children can use to play with, from box crates (do you see kids building their own playhouses?) to used tires (do you see swings?). Last year, after the supertyphoons, we could have harvested the trees that fell. Branches as well as the trunks, when sawn off with different heights, are wonderful for children to climb, balance themselves on and jump off from.

Our skills at improvising should extend into play equipment, and we shouldn’t worry about imitating those expensive imported stuff. The Europeans emphasize the need to mimic the realities of natural environments in playgrounds: using uneven terrains for example, and in play equipment, having ladders with uneven spaces in between. That way, children develop not just their motor skills but also their ability to recognize depths and distances.

I’m going to talk more about these playgrounds on Friday, showing how they can be integrated into a broader plan of public spaces. For now, I hope our local government officials will get people to think more about properly designed playgrounds. For better or for worse, children never forget their childhood. Years from now, they will be telling their children, maybe even grandchildren, about the good mayor who first created this wonderland of a playground for them.

Maybe Unicef, the European Union and other European embassies can think of how they can help our officials to access materials on creating safe learning spaces for children, places where you can tell the kids: “Go run! Go fly like the wind!”

Crossing borders

2007-08-05T11:36:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Crossing borders
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 01:51am (Mla time) 07/13/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- For many years now, I have been hearing Filipinos joking about the need to grow a moustache or beard before going off to work in the Middle East because, they claim, without the facial hair, a man becomes too “feminine” and, by extension, attractive prey for men looking for male sexual partners.

Nadya Labi, writing in the May 2007 issue of the American magazine, The Atlantic, describes how amid the extreme sexual repression in Saudi Arabia, there’s actually a frenzy of homosexual activity. One reason is that access to women is so restricted, and so the men turn to each other. Many of the men do not think of themselves as homosexual, and rationalize that they are going after men who look like women.

Appropriately, Labi’s article is titled “The Kingdom in the Closet” to highlight the many paradoxes surrounding homosexuality in Saudi Arabia. Men openly look for other men in shopping malls, and through the Internet, yet they are always in danger of being arrested by the "mutawwa’in," the religious police fielded by the Committee on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Labi describes the atmosphere in Saudi as one of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the phrase originally used to describe the US policy about homosexuals in the military. Officially, homosexuals were barred from the US military, but everyone knew they were there, and as long as they kept quiet, they wouldn’t be expelled. In Saudi, it’s an entire nation that works on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, keeping all its homosexuals in the closet.

Now comes the overseas Filipino worker (OFW). I once attended a "despedida" [farewell party] for a very flamboyant Filipino "bakla" [gay man] who was leaving to work in Saudi and remember how his aunt sternly reminded him “to behave,” with the threat: “Sa Saudi, pinupugutan ang ulo ng mga bakla" ["In Saudi, they behead homosexuals”]. Several months later I asked how “Jun” (not his real name) was and his relatives showed me pictures of him in drag (dressed as a woman) in Saudi. He was apparently having the time of his life, with claims that Saudi men were queuing for him (“pila-pila sila”).

I thought of Jun reading The Atlantic article, especially because it had a photograph of someone with long flowing hair, a crown and a bouquet of flowers. The caption read: “Francis, in drag, the winner of a private beauty pageant held by Filipinos in Jeddah.” Such beauty pageants are common, but not without risks. There have been raids and arrests and if participants are caught having sex, they could be liable for very severe punishments. Saudi law actually prescribes death for sodomy or anal intercourse.

Perhaps the out and out Filipino bakla are lucky in that they know how to skirt the rules. The Philippines isn’t exactly that liberal so life here gives sufficient practice for the bakla when in comes to a life of happy subterfuge.

Labi mentions Filipinos several times, including one hilarious story about how 23 of them were arrested while holding a drag beauty pageant. They were dragged (pardon the pun) to the police station together with the evidence of their crime: wigs and makeup and photographs. Herded into a cell, the drag queens began to argue among themselves about who looked “the hottest” in the photographs.

Then there was Jamie who grew his hair long and kept it under a baseball cap, but still ended up arrested by the religious police who saw the long hair as “proof” that he was homosexual. At the police station, the police challenged Jamie to prove he was not homosexual -- by walking. Jamie apparently flunked the test but he was lucky: his employer came to his rescue. He has since cut his hair. And maybe grown a beard.

The ones who face greater perils are the non-bakla Filipinos, especially if their physique leans toward what might be perceived as “feminine”: slimness, a beardless face, maybe a bit too light-footed when walking. If they do get seduced or propositioned, they might not know how to respond. Just a few weeks ago, a Filipino OFW was beheaded in Saudi. His crime? He had killed a Pakistani taxi driver who tried to sexually assault him.

Illegitimate

OFWs need to be prepared for other forms of sexual repression. Filipina nurses learn to practice their profession wearing a "hijab," or veil, or even the "burqa," which shields the body from head to toe. They learn to avoid looking straight at a man, because that could be misinterpreted as seduction. Those working as domestic helpers are vulnerable to sexual harassment, and even if the sex is forced on them by the employer, they can still be accused of adultery or fornication. Again, every move is suspect: one Filipina told me how, working in a home, she had once come out from the bathroom with her hair wet, and this was interpreted by her male employer as a “signal” that she was available, i.e., her wet hair indicating she had bathed and was ready.

Woe to the Filipina who has children out of wedlock, since the baby can be used as evidence of sexual misbehavior. Fortunately, the authorities in the Middle Eastern countries seem to have become lax on this point; usually they just deport the women back to the Philippines, together with their babies. Literally hundreds of such illegitimate children have been deported back to the Philippines together with their mothers.

And they’re the lucky ones, considering that adultery is punishable by death.

Solutions? I’ll admit I’m at a loss here except to say the pre-departure orientation seminars given by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) should emphasize discussions of differences in sexual norms across the world, and the consequences of breaking the rules.

Perhaps OFWs can be taught some strategies for dealing with sexual harassment, maybe even invoking religious conservatism to defend themselves. They can tell the seducer that their behavior is “haram” [forbidden] and that they will be reported to the religious police.

I know though that’s easier said than done since many OFWs are not in the position to defend themselves.

We also need to consider the broader context of OFW sexuality. One of my colleagues, Dr. Sol Dalisay, is involved in a Southeast Asian research study of “cross-border sexuality” and finds that the overseas escapades of Filipinos aren’t a simple matter of libido. The Filipino is so used to having large groups of friends here at home. When they leave to work overseas, they suddenly find themselves isolated. Incurable romantics, the Filipino will fall in love easily, with fellow Filipinos, with people from their host country, or other expatriates. Sex will often come into the picture. Many will be able to deal comfortably with the cross-cultural divide when it comes to sex, but others may have to pay for their attraction -- not fatally, we all hope.

‘Sipsip, sulsul’

2007-08-05T11:35:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Sipsip, sulsul’
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 11:53pm (Mla time) 07/10/2007

I’ve been asked to prepare a paper for a conference on management and culture, with a particular focus: What are the main challenges that face leaders in the Philippines when it comes to organizational dynamics? When I was first asked that question, two words flashed immediately in my head: “sipsip” and “sulsul.”

Sipsip and sulsul (imagine them as terrorist twins or a two-headed monster) make no distinctions, feasting on small, medium and large offices; government and private organizations; businesses, political parties and religious groups. They’re also a plague in many families and clans, turning even the closest siblings into the worst of enemies.

The sipsip and sulsul certainly aren’t specific to the Philippines. You find them everywhere, but in the Philippines, they seem to thrive particularly well because of a particular configuration of social and historical circumstances.

Let me first describe the two creatures and their feeding habits, and then talk about the environment that allows them to do so well.

‘Sipsip’

Sipsip is actually the younger of the twins, and the more visible and audacious. Literally translated as “to suck,” sipsip means sycophancy, an excessive and insincere flattering. An American slang term, “brownnose,” is particularly graphic in the way it describes how the sycophants stick to you, the brown nose the result of the way they follow you, from behind, to demonstrate their loyalty.

Much of sipsip is verbal, often conducted by several people who form a hallelujah chorus of sorts. In the Philippine setting, sipsip is also often acted out, the sipsips trying to outdo each other to do things for the big boss.

Psychologists know that the exuberance one feels after getting praise is always fleeting, which is why leaders can develop an addiction to their sipsip brigade, constantly in need for additional and larger doses of adulation.

Sipsips can be dangerous because they form a cordon sanitaire, shielding their master from any kind of bad news. The sipsip is there to assure the leader that he (or she) can do no wrong. Often employed to do public relations as well, the sipsip takes care of assuring the public -- whether constituents of a politician or clients of a corporation -- that all is well under the helm of the Great Leader. Eventually, a leader surrounded by sycophants loses touch with reality, which is why the family, the corporation or even an entire nation, begins to fall apart.

There are two kinds of sipsips. One is the underdog sipsip who is fairly low in the pecking order and simply needs to survive by licking the boots of whoever is higher up. He is usually the backup voice in the hallelujah chorus and doesn’t do too much harm, except to his own self-esteem.

The more dangerous sipsips are the ambitious ones, trying to worm their way into the power structures. They’re usually not too competent in what they do, and therefore have to find other ways to get promotions. By currying favor with the gods and goddesses, they often end up not as wielders of power themselves but as influence peddlers. The organization then begins to fall apart because a premium is placed on whom you know within, rather than on job performance.

‘Sulsul’

Sipsip’s twin is "sulsul," a difficult term to translate. The closest English translation is “to goad” but sulsul also has connotations of constant, incessant intrigue. Like sipsip, sulsul goes for the ego but beyond that ego, it feeds also on a leader or administrator’s insecurities. Sulsul is an older twin of sipsip, tending to be more cunning in a vicious way.

A "sulsulero" [person that does "sulsul"] is usually already unpopular in the organizational structure, so to survive, he or she has to find ways to shield the boss (or, in families, a patriarch or matriarch) from those enemies. And what better way to do this than to identify the boss’ insecurities, and to paint a picture of the office under siege from particular enemies -- the sulsulero’s adversaries, of course?

Like the sipsip, the sulsulero works on the boss day in and day out so that even a fairly smart administrator might eventually wonder if perhaps there’s some truth to what the sulsulero is saying. Who was it that said that if lies were repeated often enough, people would believe them?

The character Golum in “Lord of the Rings” comes to mind when one tries to picture a sulsulero, a pathetic, sneaky weakling of a character. To some extent, yes, many sulsuleros are that way, but the more dangerous ones are those who come through with a benevolent demeanor. First, the sulsulero convinces the administrator that there are serious problems caused by certain people, and then he presents himself as the one and only reliable person to solve those problems, or to protect the leader from the enemies. In the end, the leader relies on a small cabal of sulsulero advisers, not knowing that they are the biggest scoundrels of them all.

The irony is that often, the sulsulero works on the staff as well, using gossip to create more intrigues and discontent sometimes against the very leader for whom they proclaim their loyalty. Like the sipsip, the sulsulero ingratiates himself to both the leader and co-workers as an intermediary who will bring the solution to all their problems.

Twins’ father

As I mentioned earlier, sipsip and sulsul are not unique to the Philippines, but they do become greater problems in our setting because the two trace their paternity back to our feudal structures. Our social structures -- from the family to the most modern corporations -- are rigid hierarchies that are mainly based on age, class. It is not easy to access superiors, and to be frank in bringing up problems so such hierarchies create spaces for sipsip and sulsul.

How do we break that cycle? Leaders themselves, and that includes heads of clans, should be more discerning, learning to detect the empty praise of the sipsip and the vicious intrigues of the sulsulero. Because our feudal structures are so built on age and seniority, an older administrator should be especially aware of his vulnerability to becoming surrounded by the sipsip and sulsulero, and eventually becoming isolated from the world.

Even more importantly, we need to move away from the transactional politics that characterizes our feudal politics. Transactional politics is based on an exchange of favors, which encourages the sipsip and the sulsulero. We need to move toward a meritocracy that rewards competence and performance rather than praise and intrigue. When that happens, people will be motivated to be good at their work, rather than spending time on sipsip and sulsul.

Sure, there will always be Golum-type sycophants and sowers of intrigue lurking around, but they will be hard pressed to find a sympathetic ear, from fellow workers, or from the boss when everyone’s too busy working.

‘Tom yum’ talk

2007-08-05T11:33:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Tom yum’ talk
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 00:44am (Mla time) 07/06/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- One of my joys in life is having a Southeast Asian "barkada" [group of close friends], and being able to have meetings with them a few times each year. The "barkada" consists of professors from various universities in the region -- the Philippines, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam -- that have formed a consortium on gender and sexuality.

We greet each year with a "wai," the Thai way, bringing the palms together like the Indian "namaste," or with a handshake followed by a hand brought back to the heart, the Muslim way. We ask about each other’s families and exchange photographs. I’m the late starter with parenting, so I get to boast more about my babies.

Even if we live in a region where honorific terms are important -- Pak (Uncle), Ajan (Professor), for example -- we greet each other by first names. Yes, congratulations were still in order such as when Darwin of Gadja Mada University became a full-fledged Professor Doktor, even as we wait for two more junior colleagues -- Giang of Vietnam and Irwan of Indonesia -- to finish their doctoral studies.

Away from each other, we send greetings for the many holidays of our diverse cultures: the Filipino Christmas, the Muslim Eid Al Fitr, the Thai and Lao Songkran (New Year’s Day in April!). We sent regrets to Pim of Mahidol for not being able to join her wedding on a cruise down the Chao Phrya River.

Then, too, we’d dash off anxious e-mails and phone calls for less auspicious events: the tsunami that hit Thailand and Indonesia, the earthquake in Yogyakarta, Philippine typhoons, the Thai coup, the attempted Philippine coup (led by now-senator Antonio Trillanes IV).

GNP, corruption

Sometimes we sit and compare GNPs (gross national product) growth rates, not actual figures but rough ones. One time, Giang of Vietnam told us about how their newspapers were always comparing the Vietnamese GNP with that of Singapore, and how many decades it would take to catch up. Other times, we’d compare perceived corruption ratings from Transparency International, again kidding each other, hey, has the Philippines overtaken Indonesia yet? We know the rankings are relative. Corruption is corruption, whatever the rank, and the ones who suffer most in all our countries, regardless of ranking, are the poor.

Liberals all, we worry about the rise of fundamentalism in our countries, particularly the Islamic variety in Indonesia and the Christian version in the Philippines. We share common stories of conservatives blocking HIV/AIDS education campaigns, of bars being closed down only to drive sex workers underground and beyond the reach of educators. We worry about how women are once again becoming sequestered with the same kind of “save the family” rhetoric, even as thousands of our women are exported as domestic help, caregivers, entertainers.

In fairness, the Indonesians are impressed with what the Philippines has done for overseas workers. Even with all our problems, we do have more regulations and safety nets in place than the Indonesians, who entered the overseas labor export market much later than we did.

Interestingly, the Thais are worried not about the exported labor but about the illegal migrants who stream into their country, mainly from Burma, and who are always vulnerable to abuse.

Tsunami and fog

At a recent meeting, we remembered the Asian financial crisis that began in Thailand in July 1997, 10 years ago. Dubbed as the Asian flu, the crisis began when foreign investors lost confidence in the region and began to pull out their speculative investments from the stock market and from foreign exchange dealings. The first tremors were in Thailand and then spread like a tsunami to neighboring capitalist countries: Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia.

The Thais called it the "tom yum" crisis, referring to a soup made from galangal ginger, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, fish sauce, chili pepper and various other condiments. The blend is hard to describe: hot but mildly sweet.

Which was how the effects of the financial crisis were characterized. Bangkok’s infamous traffic disappeared overnight as millionaires found themselves laden with debt, trying to get rid of their luxury cars, condos and jewelry at rock-bottom prices, often with no takers. There were bargains to be found everywhere, including five-star hotels offering rooms for as low as $40, cheaper than our three-star establishments, but again there were few takers.

The Philippine peso dropped from about 25 to the dollar to 48 within a year. Inflation and unemployment rose. If it had not been for remittances from overseas workers, our GNP would have turned negative.

The crisis alerted us to how closely interconnected Southeast Asian countries had become. If one country sneezed, we’d all come down shortly with flu.

A few years ago, we did have another kind of experience with that interconnectedness, when Indonesian smog from forest fires reached neighboring countries, causing local outbreaks of asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Sometimes though we shouldn’t wait for actual physical contagion to learn lessons. During our last consortium meeting, Darwin told me about a disaster in East Java last year, when a company drilling for natural gas somehow triggered mud flow from a nearby volcano. One village ended up covered by six meters of mud. Some 400 hectares of farmlands ended up inundated. The culprit, a company called Lapindo, eventually promised to pay $420 million for reconstruction.

I thought about that mudflow recently, after reading about how a South Korean company was trying to set up a spa by tapping into Taal volcano.

Recovery?

Ten years after the "tom yum" crisis, Thailand has recovered and so have we. Back in the late 1990s, we all wailed about our deteriorating currencies. These days we cry about how the US dollar has become too weak, to the point where I’ve had Manila taxi drivers offering change in US dollars. No one wants the greenback.

Today my Southeast Asian "barkada" sees some similarities with 1997, when foreigners were coming in with hot money to play with our currencies and stocks. When they lose confidence, they can just pull out, and leave us wondering what hit us. One country messing up could mean the entire region suffering.

I try to be optimistic, arguing that reforms have taken place in the banking system, in government regulations, but I know there’s a bit of whistling in the dark there.

Good times and bad, we’re in it together, and the “club” is expanding. China and Vietnam, newcomers to the global market system, are developing almost recklessly. When China’s stock market dipped a few months back, the New York Stock Exchange followed suit, and so did the Philippine Stock Exchange.

One time over lunch and yes, "tom yum," we talked about governance in the region and wondered that maybe we do live now in a post-State era, in which we manage to survive not because of, but in spite of our leaders. "Tom yum" talk, pungent and spicy.

Good food

2007-08-05T11:32:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Good food
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 01:40am (Mla time) 07/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The squeeze continues on Chinese exports, this time with the United States imposing stricter guidelines on the entry of five types of farm-raised seafood because of fear of contamination from unapproved drugs and food additives.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an “import alert” last week on shrimp, catfish, eel, basa (a fish similar to catfish) and dace. Under the import alert, importers must provide independent testing to prove the seafood does not contain contaminants. The FDA said they took action after years of warnings and visits to Chinese fishponds showed no signs of improvement.

I suspect the US government has other political reasons behind the all these restrictions, but this does not mean we should be taking the US moves for granted. There are very real issues of safety, especially for food, that need to be confronted. With our close trading ties with China, we should also be looking at what they export to us. I’ve already written several columns about this, including one just last Friday about the growing list of countries taking action against Chinese products, from toothpaste to car tires.

The latest US restriction, however, brings up still another issue, specifically around food. Just what is it that makes us want to keep importing food, and what should we be doing, for the long term, to cut down on this dependence?

'De lata'

After my column came out last Friday, I got feedback from different people, mainly expressing concern that our government might be too lax about imported items. Over the weekend, I read that our Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) was checking out reports about the Chinese government closing down 180 food manufacturers using formaldehyde and other contaminants.

A BFAD official pointed out that we are not even sure if these products are exported. I agree, but that doesn’t mean we should let our guard down. It would be useful for the BFAD to check with the FDA’s database of banned imports. According to The New York Times, in May alone, the United States turned away 165 shipments from China, including monkfish that was “filthy and unfit to be eaten,” frozen catfish nuggets with animal drugs and tilapia contaminated with salmonella (a kind of bacteria). In April, 257 shipments were rejected, including 68 involving seafood. That included frozen eel with pesticides, catfish with salmonella again and “filthy” frozen yellowfin tuna steaks.

Our desire for imported foods dates way back to, or maybe even before, the colonial period, when we began to equate “good” food with imported products. Under the Americans, “good” food meant processed foods, with the wonders of food processing dazzling Filipinos as a sign of modernity. To this day, many Filipinos still crave imported canned foods like "carne norte" (corned beef, christened as meat from the north) or Spam (which always shocks Americans, because the food has a totally different class connotation in the United States).

Christmas was a time when the imported foods were at an even greater premium: apples and oranges and "keso de bola" (cheese). Today, it doesn’t have to be Christmas before one finds these imported items. With import liberalization, we have opened our doors to all kinds of products, from Thai fish sauce ("patis") to dried apricots from Turkey and fruit juices from South Africa.

The variety can be enticing, especially with the aura of exoticism attached to these foods, but we forget that together with the exotic qualities, we might want to know more about the imports: Where were they planted? How much pesticides were used? What preservatives and additives were used? Have the foods expired? Did the foods go through our regulatory boards, or were they smuggled in?

Another issue is the impact of these imports on local agriculture. We are flooded with Chinese fruits, many cheaper than local ones. Instead of supporting our farmers with better roads so they can get their fruits quickly and more efficiently into the markets, we’ve allowed the imports to come in with no limits. The results can be disastrous: We’ve seen how cheap vegetables from Australia have practically killed our own vegetable industry in La Trinidad, Benguet, with many farmers now shifting to cut flowers.

If you like some of the imported fruits, vegetables and herbs, find ways to grow them here. Recently a neighbor gave us luscious longan, a Chinese fruit, grown from seeds of imported fruits that they had bought locally. Last weekend, too, I found some mouth-watering canistels being sold in the Lung Center Sunday market. Canistel? That’s the English name for "tiesa." The ones being sold in the Sunday market were big and sweet, foreign varieties but grown locally. I’m open to that kind of experimentation, so long as local varieties are not displaced.

Safety

Let me deal now with the recent US Food and Drug Administration’s import alert. The issue here is the way Chinese farmers have been raising fish and shrimp. These are farmed in ponds in large numbers, which make them prone to disease. To prevent the disease outbreaks, the farmers use antifungals and antibacterials that are banned by the United States. These include nitrofurans, malachite green and gentian violet, long-term exposure to which have been correlated with cancer in laboratory animals. The Chinese farmers also use fluoroquinolone antibiotics, which the US government bans for aquaculture because of fears this will bring about antibiotic resistance in the future.

The new FDA directive alerts us to the growing fears in developed countries of the links between bad livestock and aquaculture practices and public health. In the Philippines, we have to worry not just about Chinese imports but also about local products and contamination by hormones, steroids and other drugs. There are laws regulating the use of these pharmaceuticals and other food additives, but implementation is not easy.

As in agriculture, there is a tiny but growing organic movement with livestock raisers. You can find products now like free-roaming chickens, meaning poultry allowed to roam freely rather than being kept in cages and fed hormones and antibiotics. There are also eggs from free-roaming chickens. These products are still very expensive because of economies of scale, but maybe in the future, with a greater demand for them, we will see prices coming down.

That’s going to take time, since we still need to re-educate ourselves and our taste buds to redefine good food as fresh food, preferably grown locally and organically. Sometimes, I wonder if that will ever happen, given the barrage of mass media messages pushing the imported, processed foods and the lack of government support for small farmers who want to go organic with agriculture and livestock.

If you’re wondering, yes, native chickens have always been free-roaming.

Imported

2007-08-05T11:31:00.002+08:00

PINOY KASI

Imported
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:46am (Mla time) 06/29/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- A few months ago, I wrote about the need for the Philippines to be more vigilant about imports from China. Since then, there has been a number of exposés and scandals that raise even more questions about the safety of such imports.

Just yesterday, the Chinese government closed down 180 food factories after their inspectors found that industrial chemicals -- formaldehyde, illegal dyes, industrial wax -- were being used to make candies, pickles, crackers and seafood products. Formaldehyde and its derivative formalin are preservatives used, for example, on textiles (which makes your eyes water when you go to a textiles shop). Formalin is also used in embalming.

Yes, I did note the macabre metaphors, linking Chinese exports to death. This is not an exaggeration. Note some of the other recent incidents:

This week, the US government ordered a New Jersey importer to recall 450,000 radial tires used for pickup trucks, sports utility vehicles and vans. The tires had come in from China and lacked a safety feature that prevented the tires from separating. The tires were being sold in the United States under the brand names Westlake, Compass, Telluride and YKS.

In April, pet food ingredients sent from China to the United States were found contaminated, causing the deaths of several animals. The following month, three states in America banned catfish imports from China because they were found to have been fed an unauthorized antibiotic. (The Americans are careful about these antibiotics in human food because these can cause antibiotic resistance.)

In Panama, more than 100 people died last year after consuming cough syrup laced with diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical. The same chemical has also been found in Chinese toothpaste, prompting Australia, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua to ban such imports.

The Chinese government is responding, aware of the growing backlash against their products. In May, they actually sentenced to death Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of their food and drug safety agency, for corruption. Zheng was an executive of a pharmaceutical firm before he became the first director of the food and drug safety agency. He headed the agency from 1998 to 2005, and was convicted for accepting bribes from pharmaceutical companies, but during his administration, there were numerous other scandals involving food and drug safety.

With all these exposés, we need to be checking on our own imports. They do not necessarily have to come in directly from China; some of these products may even come in through the United States considering how so many “stateside” goods are now actually made in China.

Questioning imports

Certainly, unsafe imports aren’t limited to China. They can come from one of many of our other trading partners, including the United States and other developed countries. One recent example was the problem of rusty infant formula tin cans from Wyeth, a large American multinational. Wyeth had to recall thousands of these products. (If you were away the last week, do look up the last few days’ newspapers, where the serial numbers of the cans were published in full-page ads paid by Wyeth.)

In 2000, Firestone had to recall millions of tires that had the same problem as the Chinese tires being recalled now. Firestone’s tires were linked to increased risks of rollover of light trucks and sports utility vehicles with some 271 documented deaths and hundreds more injured before the tires were recalled.

When you get down to brass tacks, our vulnerabilities go back to the way we look at imports. Anything imported, especially from Western countries, is seen as superior to our own. We need to be more critical about these products and realize that West is not necessarily best. I’m thinking now of food supplements, touted as “natural remedies” and “herbal drugs,” with suggestions that these are completely safe. The “Made in the USA” print further glorifies these products. The fact is that food supplements are coming under greater scrutiny now in the United States because of problems of safety and efficacy.

Under current laws, these products are not subject to the strict rules applied for regular pharmaceuticals, which is why the laws in the United States (and in the Philippines since we copied the American regulations) stipulate that such products should not make any therapeutic claims. Yet I’ve actually caught local radio ads for these imported products, where they rattle off all kinds of illnesses that the supplements supposedly prevent or cure ... and then ended it all with “No Therapeutic Claims Approved”!

Given our weak regulatory environment, consumers need to be very vigilant and critical. I want to give one more example here, and this is the problem of steroids being used for weight gain and bodybuilding. Just this week, American wrestler Paul Benoit strangled to death his wife and son, before committing suicide. Steroids are suspected in this bizarre case because they can cause psychosis.

Yet steroids are easily available in the Philippines, sold even in sporting supply stores. Even in urban poor areas, men can buy steroids a few tablets a time, thinking they’re for weight gain or to put on muscles. And what’s striking is how the buyers will say, “Ay imported ’yan, Stateside,” to suggest that they’re very effective -- and safe.

The flood of Chinese imports raises another issue: People will argue that these products are priced low and therefore allow even the poor to avail of more consumer items. I will not debate the cheapness (and I mean cheap) of the products, but have two very simple questions.

First, what are these cheap imports doing to our own fledging industries? Our local industries, ironically owned by ethnic Chinese as well, have closed down, unable to compete, with some of the businessmen ending up now as importers.

Second, does cheap really mean lower costs in the long run? I’ve bought some of these products and because they break down so quickly, I’ve realized you actually end up spending more because you have to keep replacing or repairing them. Worse though are the inferior products that you might end up taking only once, the foods and medicines, with not too pleasant results. Cheap? It’s your call.

I’m hopeful that China will get its act together, partly because of pressure from outside. As more countries and governments complain, and ban its shoddy products, China will have to raise its manufacturing standards and clean up its corrupt bureaucracy. Just as “Made in Japan” moved from its shabby connotations in the 1950s to excellence today, we just might find “Made in China” meaning high quality in the future.

But even if that happens, I still hope we don’t end up continuing as mere importers of these products.

Formula wars

2007-08-05T11:31:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Formula wars
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:13am (Mla time) 06/27/2007

It’s almost formulaic, the way the drug companies argue their case for advertising and promotions, whether for medicines or for breast-milk substitutes (milk formula). I’m saying formulaic because they use the same scripts over and over again, whenever there are attempts by governments to regulate their advertising and marketing strategies: “People need access to information, and we’re providing it through our advertising and marketing campaigns.”

The current battle over milk formula started last year when the Department of Health issued new and stricter regulations on the promotion of milk formulas. There were already existing rules and regulations under a Milk Code, but the provisions were frequently being violated, with the Bureau of Food and Drugs handling 63 reported violations of the code between July 2001 and December 2004. After the government issued the new regulations, the drug industry took it to court on grounds that this violated their right to free trade. As the case dragged on in the Supreme Court, the industry shifted its focus, arguing now that the new rules will prevent the companies from providing information about child nutrition and impeding free choice among mothers.

Let consumers decide, industry will argue. They should add, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). The playing field here is just too skewed. Advertising is powerful because it uses mass media, taking on a semblance of expert authority and finding its way into our subconscious because of its frequency. Think of some of the drug ads you’ve seen, and their claims. I can hear “Ako pa,” a macho guy attributing his virility to a vitamin. And from way back in childhood, I can still hear the catchy tune for Tiki Tiki vitamins. (See? You’re humming it now, aren’t you?)

A 2006 report of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (pcij.org/i-report/2006/breastfeeding.html) cited AC Nielsen figures showing that P2.3 billion was spent for advertising infant formula during the first half of 2006 alone. Note that's half a year, and only for advertising in the media. The health department’s entire budget for one year is only P13 billion, so there’s hardly anything for education on infant and child nutrition.

During the last few days, local media have been featuring a clinical professor from the Ohio State University, who argues in behalf of the companies that many mothers will find themselves in situations where they choose not to breastfeed, or cannot breastfeed, and that they will need access to information, provided by the companies, to make the right choices.

Informed choices

I can accept that many mothers will indeed find that they cannot breastfeed, not so much for physiological reasons than because of having to return to office work. But the question for the drug companies is simple: Is their information really going to help mothers make informed choices? If, for example, a mother has to return to work, are the drug companies actually providing information about the options for the mother besides infant formula -- for example, using a breast pump to get the milk and storing this in the refrigerator?

The industry’s “information” is just too skewed toward promoting milk formula, from infant booklets given in hospitals to new mothers, with advertisements for milk formulas and weaning foods, to the packaging itself. My own son is on formula simply because I’m solo parenting (yes, I know there are claims that men can induce themselves to lactate but...). But even as I use formula, I do resent the way the manufacturers still attempt to drum up their ludicrous IQ messages in the packaging. I have a can of Gain in front of me and it has “IQ” written all over the can. Psychologists can tell you this is insidious, almost a way of saying: if you shift, you might be taking away all this IQ-enhancing milk from your child.

I’d trust industry more if it would stop playing with the facts. On television the other night, I heard claims that breastfeeding continues to be widespread anyway in the Philippines, so why regulate the formulas. I heard a figure as high as 85 percent cited, but that refers to mothers who initiate breastfeeding, and that could be even for one day alone.

What are the figures that matter? First, only 16 percent of mothers will use exclusive breastfeeding for six months, which is the recommendation of the World Health Organization -- a small minority. Second, the last National Demographic and Health Survey found that the median period of breastfeeding nationwide was only 0.8 months. Yes, the decimal point comes before the 8, meaning it’s less than a month.

Industry spokesmen have also challenged, sometimes with indignation, Unicef’s figures about milk formulas being related to some 16,000 infant deaths in the Philippines. They want proof, but again that’s all so formulaic, making them sound too much like the tobacco companies who continue to insist that there is no direct proof showing that smoking kills. It reflects a lack of understanding of scientific medical research, which can show only correlations rather than direct causation. With such poor scientific sense, industry’s claims to being able to provide sound medical information become highly suspect.

Wish list

If the formula manufacturers are serious about their claims to providing information, then let them expand on the initiative of Nestlé’s Wellness Campaign, which has included a categorical statement that there is no scientific evidence to support IQ improvement from one of the infant formulas. Nestlé was the main target of consumer groups many years ago because of its aggressive marketing of milk formula and it seems to be learning that public relations can pay off.

Just a wish list for the companies to prove that they’re interested in medical information for better maternal and child health:

How about launching, in their own offices and factories, facilities for mothers to breastfeed and to store breast milk? How about spearheading a campaign with other corporations on the value of breast milk? (Using the language of profits, we could argue that breastfed children are healthier, which means less absenteeism from mothers who would otherwise have to stay home to care for a sick child.) How about more programs on TV, with media-wise doctors and nutritionists, explaining good child nutrition in general, to include, I’m willing to concede, a role for milk formulas? (Sure, maybe even tackle the question about breastfeeding men.) Finally, how about sponsoring medical experts to talk about how long a child should be on milk formula? (Some of my pediatrician friends say I can shift to regular milk after the child turns 2. Others say 1. Still others, including the late Benjamin Spock, suggest a total shift away from cow’s milk and the use of soya instead.)

There are enough opportunities out there, to be funded from the industry’s P21-billion annual revenues, for the companies to prove they’re genuinely interested in promoting infant and child nutrition.

Fireflies

2007-08-05T11:29:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Fireflies
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 03:14am (Mla time) 06/22/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I was in Mindanao recently on a research assignment when, one night, a team member ran to us, inviting us to look at a tall pata tree (I haven’t been able to locate its botanical name) where we were treated to a natural ballet performance -- of fireflies.

The research team members, young and not-so-young, were all captivated. I realized, too, it had been a while since I had seen fireflies or, for that matter, dragonflies and other insects that used to be quite common -- all driven away by urban pollution and environmental degradation.

Why these lights? One explanation is that the lights are used to attract mates. Another theory is that they send out signals to potential predators, a way of saying, hey, we’ve got these lights, so keep away, we’re not that edible.

Beyond these cold biological explanations, fireflies have sparked the imagination of people everywhere. The English name “firefly” focuses on the insects’ rear light, but our Tagalog “alitaptap” seems to take a different focus. I wonder if the names in our region refer to the way the lights flicker: think “audibly” and you can imagine the fireflies: ali tap tap, ali tap tap. The Kapampangan name “alipatpat” has a similar quality. To the south, we get “aninipot” in Bikol languages and in Cebuano and Hiligaynon, but in Waray it is “bukatkat.”

The firefly has entered our folklore, with at least one folk tale circulating in the Internet. Supposedly the daughter of two gods, Alitaptap was born with a star on her forehead. When their kingdom was threatened with an invasion, Alitaptap’s father begged her to marry the son of their rival. Alitaptap refused and the enraged father struck her with a sword, sending the star on her forehead flying in the air and disintegrating into many small lights. The invasion apparently pushed through and Alitaptap’s homeland was ravaged. All that was left after the carnage were those flickering lights, the little alitaptap.

I haven’t been able to confirm if this rather gruesome story actually comes from one of our legends, but I did find several entries for fireflies in Damiana Eugenio’s “Philippine Folk Literature: The Riddles” (UP Press, 2005). Most of the riddles suggest a person carrying a light. For example, from Bulacan we have this riddle: “Eto na si Ingkong, may dalang dupong.” [Here’s Ingkong, carrying a light.”] When the riddle uses a woman, they become risqué. For example, this one from Bicol: “Naglayog si manay, nagsisiga an puday.” [“Sister flew, her vagina sparkling.”]

Other riddles describe persons or animals with gold in its anus. A quaint one: “Maliit pa si Tsikito, marunong nang manabako.” [Though still small, Tsikito knows how to smoke a cigar.”]

Firefly fireworks

The best riddles are the ones that truly baffle. This Waray riddle is succinctly complex: “Kanan kahuynon kalayo, diri nakakapaso.”] [“The fairy’s fire, it does not burn.”]

This Tagalog riddle challenges the mind: “Hindi ilaw, may liwanag; Hindi mata, kumikindat; Kung madilim, tumataas; kapag mapagod, lumalakad.” [“Not a lamp, it is bright. Not an eye, it winks. When it’s dark, it soars; when tired, it walks.”]

Now shouldn’t our quiz shows begin to feature such riddles and help reverse the dumbing down of the Filipino? But let’s not wait for the networks to do that; get a copy of Eugenio’s book and pick out a few riddles each week to tackle with the children. The anthology has more than a thousand pages, with enough riddles to last through the whole of childhood.

Another favorite of mine is in Ilocano: “Nagmulaak iti sili idiay sanga diay salamagi; nakaskasdaw, pari, ta nagbunga iti diya-mante” [“I planted chili pepper on the branch of the tamarind tree; it was surprising, friend, for it bore diamonds.”]

I’m baffled by the reference to chili pepper, but I like the way the riddle talks about how a tamarind tree yields diamonds. I got to wondering if perhaps fireflies are particularly attracted to tamarind trees. I suspect they probably do look for certain types of trees, preferably those that are quite tall, but perhaps also with other forms of attraction.

Trees along river banks seem to be particular favorites of fireflies, with several places in Southeast Asia drawing tourists because the fireflies actually synchronize their lighting, going on and off together. Now that’s another natural wonder to study, maybe, a form of male cooperation (it’s mainly the males who signal to the females).

When I directed an anthropological field school in Donsol, Sorsogon a few years back, residents told me the Donsol river often had spectacular firefly displays at night, but I was never able to get to see them. Donsol is where you have the “butanding” [whale shark], but it looks like they could develop night cruises down their river for the firefly “fireworks.”

‘Anting-anting’

Another reason why I like that Ilocano riddle is that it tells us something about popular culture. To have come up with that riddle, the Ilocanos -- and, I’m sure, many other cultures -- had to be quite observant of the fireflies and their habitats. Not only that, the riddle captures the way that natural phenomena thrilled onlookers.

A few weeks back, I was in Manila’s Quiapo district researching the assorted “anting-anting” [amulets] being sold near the church. There was a “lola” [grandmother] with whom I bonded almost immediately. I had picked up an item for her to identify and she had gone, in a deadpan voice, “Apdo ng sawa” [snake gall bladder], rattling off its many purported uses. Next was a bony item. Without batting an eyelash, she went, “Titi ng buwaya” [crocodile penis] and I think you can guess what uses that was for. We went on and on, and she was totally cooperative but in an almost mechanical way.

At one point I picked up a piece of wood with black striations. Lola’s face remained deadpan, but I could sense a slight difference in her facial demeanor. “A, suwerte ’yan” [“It brings luck”], she said, and then she explained what it was: “Kahoy ng dapdap, na dinapuan ng alitaptap.” I caught every word but almost wanted to beg her to repeat it, because it came through almost poetic. Note how an English translation “wood from the dapdap tree, touched by fireflies” sounds so terribly bland, but the visual imagery from the description still has its charm.

A tamarind tree yielding diamonds, or a dapdap tree with waltzing lights -- I can see why people are so touched, maybe wanting even to take a piece of the wood home as an amulet. I showed a piece of that wood to students in Ateneo de Manila University’s new medical school, my way of trying to trigger their imagination, open their minds to popular culture and what people do.

I’m asked all the time: do amulets work? And I say not in the sense that they have power on their own. The dapdap wood touched by fireflies has no efficacy of its own, but hearing the description sparks something in our minds, recreating a whole sensory experience that can be comforting.

If the fireflies, tiny fireflies, only knew how their mating rituals are given new meanings by human onlookers.

Two speeches

2007-08-05T11:27:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Two speeches
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:14am (Mla time) 06/20/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Two fine speeches by two young Filipinos have been going around the Internet and receiving praise everywhere they are posted, but I thought I’d still feature them for those who might have missed them and to do a bit of boasting about the University of the Philippines (UP), about “Tsinoys” [Chinese-Filipinos] and about our young people in general.

The two speeches are Mikaela Irene Fudolig’s valedictory delivered at commencement exercises at UP Diliman last April and Oscar Franklin Barcelona Tan’s speech at the Harvard Law School commencement exercises last June 7.

I see the speeches as useful reading materials for our schools at high school and college levels, for social studies or history, or even for writing classes. We have a tendency in the Philippines to equate good speeches (and good writing) with the pompous, the flowery, the obscure. Fudolig and Tan’s speeches are brief and to the point, yet rich in their insights.

Trailblazing

Let’s start with Fudolig’s speech, “Take not the road less traveled” (http://www.upd.edu.ph/%7Eupdinfo/Pagtatapos07/mikispch.htm). Fudolig herself is a wonder, graduating with a degree in BS Physics, summa cum laude, at the age of 16. Like a true scientist, she starts out with an observation about how UP Diliman students can’t seem to stay on the pavement when they walk: “From every street corner that bounds an unpaved piece of land, one will espy a narrow trail that cuts the corner, or leads from it. Every lawn around the buildings sports at least one of these paths.”

Fudolig presents several hypotheses: Are UP students trying to cut down on traveling to save on the cost of shoes or slippers? Are UP students so “enamored of mathematics and Phythagoras” and triangles? Are UP students just “naturally countercultural,” always ready to defy the order of things? Or are UP students just a model of Filipino youth today: “They want everything easier, faster, now”?

Fudolig proposes these mysterious trails reflect the UP students’ “pioneering, defiant and brave spirit.” After all, the trails weren’t always “walkable” so there was some risk, even snakes (smile), for those who dared venture into uncharted territory.

All of that was a clever metaphor of the choices for UP graduates. Sent out into the world, will the new graduates choose to migrate, or go for the “immediate monetary benefits in some low-end outsourcing jobs”? Such decisions, she says, are similar to the sidewalks and pavements, the paths that are “easiest to take.”

“Be brave,” she exhorts her fellow graduates. “Defy the pressure to lead a comfortable, but middling life ... Take not the road less traveled.” She admits that “talk is cheap” and offers to place herself in the service of the university, and asks graduates to join her to “trample a new path.”

I couldn’t help thinking about how Fudolig herself is a product too of UP’s trailblazing. I’m referring to the university’s still experimental early college placement program (ECPP) for gifted children. Fudolig began taking courses at the university in the summer of 2002, when she was only 11. She was still studying at the Quezon City Science High School but was allowed to take university-level courses in math, chemistry, English, history and biology, a kind of transition period. The following school year, she entered UP as a freshman. The experimental program provided that safety transitory period, as well as close guidance to gifted students, even while encouraging their independence. They are also sheltered from the media and any kind of publicity, and are treated like any other student.

World citizens

The other speech comes from Oscar Franklin Barcelona Tan, a Tsinoy who has a law degree from UP (Class of 2005) and was working for a master’s degree at Harvard Law School. There are actually two versions circulating in the Internet. One, posted on the Internet site of GMA Network, has the title “The Law of the Good Man as Our Generation’s Law” (http://www.gmanews.tv/story/45413/Young-Filipino-lawyer-addresses-Harvard-law-grads). A shorter one, which was e-mailed to me, is titled, “Like Wine in the River, Like Citizens of the World.”

There are a few differences between the two versions. The longer one has him acknowledging his father, lawyer Edmundo L. Tan, who struggled through a poor childhood in Negros Occidental making it into UP’s law school, and his second father, Raul Pangalangan, former dean of UP’s College of Law (and fellow columnist here in the Inquirer).

The speech begins with a generous dose of humor, of partying and drinking without the debauchery (sample: “Soon, we found that great substance that keeps any law school together: alcohol. On New Year’s Eve, a Belarusian handed me a glass of vodka, but scolded me when I began to sip it. . .”) He describes their quest for common ground, which was complaining about American chocolate, American cheese, American tea, American food.

The quest becomes serious, as he describes meeting people from countries struggling with human rights and democracy. And as he thanks Harvard for their brilliant professors and powerful ideas, he acknowledges that the passion he and his classmates have comes from realizing “that our peers in faraway lands face the same frustrations, the same nation building ordeals, the same sorrows, and ultimately, the same shared joys and triumphs.”

The longer version of the speech talks about how international law can bolster and expand concepts of rights. He asks: “How can rights to biodiversity be asserted given an intellectual property regime that allows Indian basmati rice to be patented in a key export market? How can rights to environment become reality given in developing countries with large populations and meager resources?” He wonders how nations can dialogue when the terms are not equal, citing as an example the case of the American soldier convicted for rape in the Philippines but detained at the US Embassy.

Wine returns, but this time with a vignette from China about the legendary Yue king, Gou Jian. Presented with fine wine, he ordered his troops to stand by a river into which he poured the liquor, his way of sharing the gift with the troops. Tan notes: “A bottle of wine cannot flavor a river, but the gesture so emboldened his army that they won a great victory. We of the Class of 2007 shall flavor this earth, whether we be vodka, wine, champagne ... Irish stout, Ugandan warabi or Philippine lambanog.”

Tan closes with a call on his American classmates “who will soon lead the world’s lone superpower” to “transcend our individual nationalities and affirm that we are citizens of the world.”

Fudolig’s quiet speech speaks of quietly engaging a world that is UP and, hopefully, the country, of educating the next generation. Tan takes on the world with boldness and fervor and talks of how his generation defines the law by the good (i.e. ethical) man (and woman). Both have their messages for young Filipinos who will increasingly find themselves citizens of a nation, and of the world.

Loving story

2007-08-05T11:26:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Loving story
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:19am (Mla time) 06/15/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- It couldn’t have been more appropriate, a love story involving a couple with the surname Loving. But more than a love story, the case was a landmark in civil rights, offering lessons not just for Americans but for the whole world.

On June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled in a “Lovings vs. Virginia” case that laws barring interracial marriages were unconstitutional. At that time, there were still 17 American states that had such “anti-miscegenation laws,” all of which were rendered null and void by the ruling.

I will explain, shortly, how Filipinos in the States were also affected by these laws, but let me get first to the Lovings’ story.

Lovings vs. Virginia

The 1967 Supreme Court decision came in response to a case filed by Richard and Mildred Loving against the state of Virginia. Richard was white and Mildred, black. (I’m going to use “black” here instead of the current politically correct term “African-American.”) Both were from the state of Virginia, had fallen in love and wanted to get married but couldn’t because Virginia had a Racial Integrity Act which prohibited interracial marriages.

In the American system, each state can formulate its own laws as long as these do not violate provisions of the Constitution. It was in 1958 when the Lovings wanted to marry and at that time, interracial couples couldn’t get married in Virginia but could in Washington, D.C., which was right at the doorstep of Virginia. So the Lovings crossed the border and got married.

One would have thought they could then live happily ever after, but when they returned to Virginia to live, their home was raided one night and they were arrested. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act didn’t just forbid interracial marriages within Virginia, but also didn’t recognize marriages outside of the state.

The Lovings were sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, but were given a choice: Their sentence would be suspended if they agreed to live outside of Virginia for 25 years. The Lovings did leave, settling down in Washington where Richard took up a job as a bricklayer. But the Lovings’ self-exile was not easy since they were away from family and friends. They wanted to return.

Eventually they wrote to Robert Kennedy, who at that time was the US attorney general, asking for legal assistance. Kennedy referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union, where two lawyers offered to take up the case. Virginia’s Supreme Court upheld the Interracial Act, with the judge, Leon Bazile, writing: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. ... The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

The case then moved on to the US Supreme Court, which ruled on June 12, 1967 that the anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.

Mongolian or Malay?

Looking back now, I’m amazed at how such laws could have existed in the United States so late into the 20th century. Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany had similar laws, but then it wasn’t surprising given how racism was so much part of state and religious ideology (the South African apartheid regime would cite the Bible as the basis for their racist policies). We tend to think of the United States as a bastion of freedom and human rights but forget racism was (and still is) a burning issue.

The term “miscegenation” (“mixing of genus”) dates back only to the 19th century, but anti-miscegenation laws go back to the 17th century, during the British colonial period. Virginia had one of those early interracial bans on marriage as well as sexual relations. Such laws clearly had white slave-owners and black slaves in mind. The ban on interracial sex was, of course, constantly violated but interracial marriages were effectively suppressed.

Even after slavery was abolished after the Civil War, anti-miscegenation laws continued and were even expanded in the 20th century, with the new waves of non-white immigrants. During the first part of the 20th century, many Filipino men, mainly Ilokano, migrated to the United States as workers. Many of the “manong” [Ilokano elder] who ended up in California remained bachelors because that state did not allow them to marry Caucasian women.

Who knows what love stories transpired in those years. Some brave couples went off to other states where they could marry. Others, mainly Filipinos who went to work in the states of Washington and Alaska, did marry Native Americans and “non-white” immigrants. Many others remained bachelors. In the 1970s and 1980s, many of the retired old-timers returned to the Philippines where they were able to find young Filipina brides.

Scientists generally recognize that race is an artificial category -- all humans have the same genes, with greater variations within “races” than between them. “Race” is based on our perceptions of physical appearance, which can be arbitrary as was shown in California’s anti-miscegenation law. Originally, California banned marriage between “Whites” and “Mongolians,” the latter category defined to include Filipinos. In 1933, a Filipino, Salvador Roldan, wanted to marry a white woman and challenged California’s anti-miscegenation law, arguing that Filipinos were “Malay” and not “Mongolian.” The California judge handling his case agreed with him, but two weeks after that court decision, California’s Senate amended their anti-miscegenation statute to include the “Malay” race. I couldn’t find information on what Roldan and his girlfriend did. California kept its anti-miscegenation law until 1948.

Even today, Americans grapple constantly with race. Their national censuses still insist on asking for racial classification, with all kinds of categories: American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. There is a “Some Other Race” category for “mulatto,” “Creole,” “mestizo” [of mixed blood].

The reality is that beyond skin color, we all look pretty much alike. Armed with a few local phrases, I have passed as Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Mexican, Brazilian (OK, Japanese-Brazilian), even Indian (where they thought I was from one of the northern states).

Back to our love story. The Lovings did get to live in Virginia, but life for interracial couples, and their children, remains difficult in many parts of the United States. The prejudice remains and I am sure many Filipinos remain affected, whether as children of interracial marriages or not. What’s so sad is that I’ve met so many Filipinos in the States who are themselves quite racist, with very condescending views of blacks and Hispanics, and also intolerant of other forms of diversity (for example, sexual orientation). In the Philippines, racism remains strong as well toward children of black GIs, and toward our Negrito groups or, generally, anyone with dark skin.

I’d like to see our schools dealing with the fallacy of race, and the dangers of racism. A good place to start might be this Loving story.

Baby signs

2007-08-05T11:25:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Baby signs
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:20am (Mla time) 06/13/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- What will I write about? I was thinking this morning -- until Noy (I’m giving my son a pseudonym since I write about him from time to time) came to me wringing his hands. “Change diaper?” I asked to confirm, and he nodded.

As I went to get a diaper, I remembered that some time back, I promised readers an article about the wonders of baby signing, so here it is.

Noy is not deaf, but he uses sign language because I taught him to. The baby signing movement began in the United States about 20 years ago, but is not widely well known yet. My sister, who lives in Canada and specializes in speech therapy, endorsed it quite enthusiastically when she visited a few weeks ago. She taught Noy two signs within a few days and I’ve taken over, now convinced they should give a Nobel Prize to the ones who invented this baby signing, considering how much peace it has brought to so many homes.

Noy is a year-and-a-half old, and like most babies his age, he can’t quite talk yet. He tries and occasionally succeeds, for example, saying “Tat,” originally to refer to cats, but now extended to include dogs. When he can’t get through, that’s when he whines, cries or shrieks. But that rarely happens ever since we’ve gone into signing.

One of the courses I teach at the university is linguistic anthropology, so I know that signing makes sense. It’s unrealistic to expect babies to speak as we do. Like our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, infants have a vocal apparatus that can’t quite form words as human adults do. Notice that infant babbling is mainly vowels, the consonants requiring a bit more development (for one thing, it’d help if they had more teeth!).

Human language eventually emerged, thanks not just to our vocal apparatus but also to the kind of brain we have, which allows abstractions and reflection. Filipinos tend to think babies are unthinking ("wala pang malay”), but in fact they do think quite early but can’t speak, so they use gestures. Notice how they vigorously point to show they want something (or want it taken away), and when they want to know what it is. Babies do think, and are trying to learn as much as they can.

Baby inquirers

You’re probably getting my drift now. Babies are avid inquirers and if they do this by pointing, why not teach them more ways of signing what they want? Spoken language is after all just another form of signification.

In the late 1970s, Joseph Garcia was working as an interpreter for the deaf in Alaska and noticed that the hearing babies of deaf parents were communicating much earlier than the children of hearing parents. Intrigued, he focused on baby signing as his doctoral research at Alaska Pacific University. Meanwhile, at the University of California at Davis, psychologists Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn were also doing something similar, spurred by Acredolo’s observations of her own daughter’s attempts at signing.

Garcia’s research found that children could produce simple signs at around eight months and that when, later, they could speak, they had a better grasp of language and grammar. Acredolo and Goodwyn did a bigger study, comparing children who learned signing and those who didn’t, and following the children for eight years. They found the signing children had a better grasp of grammar and (now, this is still controversial) higher IQs. Other studies have since found signing children to be better at reading and spelling.

Now, I don’t really care about IQ claims. I think what’s most important is reducing the frustration babies (and parents) have when the child can’t communicate, and allowing them to be as expressive as they can.

Any disadvantages? There was some concern that signing children might stagnate and not move on to speaking, but the fear has been dispelled by studies.

Teaching the signs

It’s actually quite simple to teach babies to sign. The books that are available are American so naturally they suggest using American Sign Language, but you can certainly use Filipino Sign Language, or even come up with your own system. The reason we use one of the established sign language systems is that the child learns an extra language that’s already being used—in this case, by the deaf.

The signing books usually start with the signing for “eat.” The best time to teach this is right before a meal. You take the child’s hand, and bring it to her mouth (in Filipino, “pagsubo”) and ask, “Eat?” or “Kain?” (be consistent though with the word you use). You can also demonstrate the sign yourself. Follow the signing with food. Repeat this several times. Because eating is so essential to the baby, he’s bound to pick up very quickly. Soon, if the child seems irritable, you can ask, “Eat?” and he’ll respond with the sign to confirm. Or, come to you and sign when he is hungry.

A second sign you can tackle is “more” -- again best taught while eating. You pause while feeding and then ask, “More?” followed by the sign, which is bringing the fingertips of your two hands together several times. You should see Noy now when he’s hungry: he’ll sign both “eat” and “more” -- and more, and more. And the rare times he’s full, he just shakes his head when you ask, “More?”

A very useful sign is “hurt,” where you get the tips of your index fingers to touch, over the painful area. This is a bit tricky. You may have to pretend here by hitting your head on the wall and grimacing and then signing for hurt, which is touching the tips of your index fingers over the painful part. Babies are born sadists and they’ll laugh their heads off with your antics, but eventually they realize it is an important sign. And because you respond by consoling them whenever they hurt (I do by kissing the afflicted part), just watch them sign for “hurt” even when they’re not.

Most of the time, they do mean hurt when they sign, and that saves so much trouble when you’re trying to figure out why they’re throwing a tantrum. It’s the same thing with “sleep” and “drink” or even “take a bath.” (Noy has more initiative, going to the closet and bringing out a towel.) There are signs for everything (Noy just learned “rain” last night), including emotions although this will have to come when they’re a bit older. Even when they can speak, babies often can’t quite identify the emotions they have and you’ll have to process this with them. (Mind you, some adults never quite learn either to identify, much less deal with their emotions.)

Local bookstores now carry quite a few books on baby signing. I’m using Diane Ryan’s “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Baby Sign Language,” but there are also books from the innovators: “Baby Signs” by Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn and Joseph Garcia’s “Sign with Your Babies.”

Your child is discovering the world, and you’re discovering his world. It’s an exciting time that won’t ever be repeated, so take advantage of it with both sign and spoken language.

Cultural ecology

2007-08-05T11:24:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Cultural ecology
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 01:57am (Mla time) 06/08/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The rains are here so, ever so conscious of the dangers of mosquitoes, we go out to our gardens to check for possible breeding grounds. We look for empty flowerpots, buckets, cans, even old tires that might have accumulated water which is now teeming with squirming mosquito larvae, draining them and feeling our families are safe.

Think again. Have you checked inside the house? Do you have flowers that have been in their vases for several days now, with unchanged water? What about those bromeliads, with leaves designed by nature to keep water? Do you have an aquarium, a fishpond, now without fish but still with water? Do you have toilets that are rarely used but because you left the seat cover up, its water has now become a sports club for mosquitoes?

I was shocked the other day when my father told me he’d found mosquito larvae in his toilet, not in the latrine but, of all places, in his water pick setup. These gadgets have a little receptacle where you pour in water, which flows into a pick to clean the teeth. If you forget to throw out the water after use, it attracts mosquitoes.

Not only that, my father found mosquitoes breeding as well in his bedroom, in the drainage slot or filter below the taps of the water dispenser! These filters take up the water that misses your cup when you’re filling it. The water can accumulate, and is stagnant, providing a virtual resort pool for the mosquitoes.

Scary, huh? You’re surrounded by mosquitoes waiting with dengue, malaria. Even the dogs are at risk, from heartworm.

Tapping nature

We tend to blame nature for many of our health problems, from winds (“ay, nahanginan”) and the heat to mosquitoes and birds (for avian flu) but forget it’s what we do to nature that either creates health or illness.

There’s a whole area of study, sometimes called cultural ecology, sometimes ecological anthropology, that looks into human interactions with our natural environment. The term “cultural ecology” is especially useful, highlighting how our interactions with the environment create “culture.” Early humans looked for ways to protect themselves from the elements, and came up with clothes and shelter, both of which are components of culture. (And because humans were imaginative, we went beyond function to create aesthetics, which is why we have fashions and architecture, and that’s still cultural.)

Nature poses challenges to us, but is also often a source of resources and solutions. All over the world, people learned to tap all kinds of materials for clothing, from plants as well as animals (until furs became politically incorrect). In Mindanao, many of our indigenous groups still know how to process tree barks into cloth (as in the T’boli tnalak). Today, we still rely pretty much on nature for clothing materials, cotton and silk, for example.

We transform nature each time we tap it, and often enough, there will be consequences. Depleted resources would be one of the more dramatic effects, but there are many smaller chains of events that we overlook, as I have just described with the mosquitoes.

We just need to be more aware of how our interactions with nature bring both benefits and risks. Pets are a prime example. We domesticated dogs (and they, us) for mutual benefit, but for most of human history, dogs stayed outside the home in most cultures. In the last 50 years or so, for many different reasons -- companionship, therapy, even as work animals such as seeing-eye dogs -- more people began to bring dogs into the home. That has meant adjusting to new problems like fleas and allergies. For the most part, we’ve managed quite well. I sometimes wonder if it’s the dogs that face greater risks, confronted with new problems in a home environment.

Let’s not forget, too, the technologies we developed to tap into nature more effectively. My father’s water pick and water dispenser are examples of ways by which we’ve tried to bring water into our household for specific purposes. In modern times, the technologies have allowed more intensive ways of exploiting nature, which can mean greater risks and problems.

CSI

In many ways, cultural ecology is a bit like doing forensic investigation except that it looks at culture and society for “evidence” and answers. Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and writer, is an example of someone who understands cultural ecology. One of his best-known investigations was into a neurological disease in a South Pacific island. Like a detective, he looked into every cultural nook and cranny and eventually found that the disease was caused by a kind of wild root crop they were eating.

As a medical anthropologist, I look into how cultures deal with health and illness. Inevitably, cultural ecology comes into the picture. I include a bit of cultural ecology whenever I can in lectures to health professionals, and I am developing a module on the topic for the medical schools at University of the Philippines and Ateneo (OK, OK, I’ll share it, too, with West Visayas State University and....). We need to train our health professionals to go beyond germs as they try to control diseases. I’m going to give one more example for mosquito-borne diseases. I remember one public health expert telling me years ago that he suspected cement hollow blocks to be another breeding area for mosquitoes. He’s probably right, given how porous the blocks are. That’s cultural ecology, too.

The world is finally coming to its cultural ecological senses. Awareness of human-instigated climate change is the best example. Our activities have set off global warming in an unprecedented way, and fears of new health problems, including “tropical” diseases emerging in temperate areas.

In a way, diseases and their vectors (like mosquitoes) are “smart” because they embed themselves in our culture, in our lifeways, which we take for granted. Really now, who but the most obsessive-compulsive would have looked at the water dispenser filter for mosquito larvae?

You, too, can be a cultural ecologist. Think now of all the other interactions we have with nature -- in nutrition, shelter, clothing, in all kinds of daily activities -- and identify the benefits they bring as well as the problems. Recruit your kids for your own Disease-busting Crime Scene Investigation at home and don’t arm them with insecticide to kill the mosquitoes. Explain that all you need to do is empty all those buckets and cans, clean out the water dispenser, re-stock ponds and aquaria with fish. Work with, rather than against, nature.

‘Graciosa’

2007-08-05T11:23:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Graciosa’
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 00:10am (Mla time) 06/06/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- “Can we look at these two units?” I asked the cell phone vendor. I was in Greenhills with a friend and each of us had spotted a unit that looked interesting.

The clerk frowned and said, “Isa-isa lang.” [“Let’s do it one at a time.”] Fair enough, I thought, maybe she’d had people running off with the phones, but I felt her voice could have been more congenial.

So, she pulled out one unit to show my friend, and after he was through, took out the other one for me to look at. I wasn’t really that interested, partly thrown off by her demeanor, so I quickly returned the unit to her with a “Salamat.”

She scowled and muttered, “Sayang lang oras ko.” [“My time was just wasted.”]

My friend watched me nervously, knowing how I feel about impertinence, but I figured, it’s the end of a long day and I’ll just let it go at that.

Bad business

“Graciosa,” I fumed on the way home and my friend, who’s younger, asked what it meant. “Graciousness,” I translated, only to get another blank look. And I realized, that’s it, we’re raising a new generation of ungracious Filipinos.

You see it all around you: in the way people push you aside as they try to get through a crowd, clerks who toss your change back at you, people who answer the phone with “Ano ’yan!” [“What’s that!”], bureaucrats who won’t look at you as you transact business. All this is going to be disastrous, considering how our economy depends so much on graciousness. We have millions of Filipinos working overseas, many in countries where graciousness is essential. And locally, we want to promote tourism, call centers, retirement villages, yet most of the younger Filipinos (and I bet quite a few older ones as well) have no sense of graciousness.

I’m talking about more than the good manners and right conduct norms we picked up in school. It’s also more than the artificial “Good morning, sir/ma’am” that everyone seems to be doing now in malls and stores, done so mechanically they might as well be greeting a school of hermaphrodite milkfish.

Graciousness means the little extras that go a long way, the “thank you” and the smile, even for the most routine work done; the “please,” the “po,” the “palihug” (in the Visayas) that go with every request -- again, no matter how small. It’s making an effort to move closer to a customer to hand over an object, rather than hurling it. It’s hospitality -- plus, a way of saying “You’re special,” serving fresh fruit juice instead of some soft drink or powdered drink. It’s also the “pinipig” you add to the chocolate -- thank you, Aunt Gilda, who whips up the richest “tskolate eh.”

Class

We tend to think that graciousness comes with being upper class. Not quite. Graciousness is very much alive in the most remote of our villages, with the poorest of the poor in the boondocks (“bundok”), where people welcome you into their homes, give you their best room (or, for very poor families, their best “banig,” or sleeping mat), slaughter their only chicken or pig and when you try to stop them explaining you’re vegetarian and can’t bear to see animals slaughtered, they take out their one and only can of “carne norte” (corned beef). Graciousness means going out of your way to help, and that’s literal in many parts of the country. Ask for instructions to someone’s home and you automatically have a guide accompanying you to that place, even if it’s five or six mountains away. And no, they’re not going to ask you for a tip.

So, why are we losing this graciousness? Partly it’s urban life eating away into our soul. To survive in cities, we think we need to be tough and brusque.

But I’m realizing, too, the rot goes back to when Filipinos began to internalize the values of our feudal lords. Among their peers, landlords observed proper etiquette and had some degree of graciousness, but toward lesser mortals, who were 95 percent of the Philippine population, it was pure and unadulterated arrogance.

I had friends who worked as flight attendants in Philippine Airlines and who told me how, on flights to and from Bacolod and Iloilo, they had to deal with wannabe “hacenderos” [plantation owners] who would lug in heavy bags that they would drop on the floor. Never a “please,” never a “palihug” from the haughty passengers, the attendants were expected to know that they should lift the bags and put them into the overhead bin -- and say thank you for the privilege.

You see it, too, with domestic helpers, who have mastered, through imitation, the imperial tones and habits of their employers. I worry in particular about the “yaya” (nannies), who pass on this class snobbery to the young children they’re caring for. When their wards grow up to be insolent brats, the parents wonder why they became that way.

Eventually, that lack of graciousness, combined with class snobbery, spread like a virus, transforming us into paragons of rudeness. And the poorer one is, the more one gets the brunt of this ungraciousness. You see it in the malls: the lower the income group they cater to, the more ungracious the sales clerks, bored, overworked and suspicious of their customers because they’re not rich and might steal the goods.

Like the wind

I try to understand when someone is ungracious because of a long day’s work, but, whenever possible, I also take it up with them -- graciously, sometimes with a bit of teasing -- because I know that if I don’t call their attention to their lapses, they would eventually offend someone less tolerant, and that would cost them their job.

I’ve found that graciousness can be useful even with the mean and the vicious because it rattles them, gets them even more nervous as they wonder if you’re preparing to take action against them—very graciously, of course. And sometimes they’re right.

“Xing ru feng,” my Chinese meditation teacher recently exhorted our class. Move like the wind. To demonstrate, she took a few steps to emphasize the importance of being light-footed, then opened and shut a door ever so carefully. “It’s more than politeness,” she explained, “it’s respecting others, being conscious that you don’t end up disturbing others.” Graciousness includes the gentle handling of any object, an expression of our respect for its value.

Society ritualizes graciousness so it can be taught, eventually becoming embodied, meaning it becomes part of our body, reflected in our speech, our gait, our facial expressions, our hand movements. It’s the way, too, all our movements come together to give us what we call in Filipino “dating,” the impact we have on people. It’s never stiff, as when we “behave” only because we have to. Neither is it contrived, as when politicians perform. Never directed, never scripted, graciousness touches people because it emanates from a kind of choreography of the heart.

Suicide ‘barangay’

2007-08-05T11:22:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Suicide ‘barangay’
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:24am (Mla time) 06/01/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Imagine a community where people constantly talk about suicide, the way to go about it and the victims they had known.

One such community exists -- a “barangay” [village] in Palawan province -- catching the attention of French anthropologist Charles MacDonald, who eventually discovered that there had indeed been many suicides in the community. He went on to investigate and wrote a book, “Uncultural Behavior,” just published by the University of Hawaii Press and available, I am told, at Solidaridad Bookshop on Padre Faura Street in Manila.

The title is appropriate, given that the Philippines has one of the world’s lowest suicide rates. The 2000 Philippine Health Statistics from the Department of Health reports only a few thousand deaths that year from “intentional self-harm.” In medical statistical terms, that is something like 1.8 per 100,000 people. Compare that to the highest rates in the world, which are found in Russia and the Eastern European countries, with figures ranging from 30 to 42 per 100,000.

Certainly, the actual rate in the Philippines is probably higher, with many doctors agreeing not to report deaths as suicides because of the stigma. But even if we could get the true figure, it would probably still be relatively low.

Some countries have a more liberal view of suicide, seeing this mainly as an individual decision that has to be respected. There are even organizations now that talk of the “right to die,” especially when facing a terminal illness.

In other cultures (Japan being the most well-known example), suicide is seen as an acceptable way of making amends for having brought shame to the family, the community or even the nation. Just this week, the agriculture minister hanged himself following allegations that he had improperly accepted “gifts.” Another official followed suit shortly after.

Contrast that behavior with our officials who, even with glaring evidence of major wrongdoing, will insist on their “right” to remain in office.

Suicide profiles

MacDonald uses the term “Kulbi people” to refer to his study community, which is a subgroup of the indigenous Palawano. From the Kulbi’s recollections, MacDonald found 56 cases of suicide from 1979 to 2000. The figure may seem small but remember this barangay’s population is only 1,500.

Using a more careful study of cohorts, MacDonald calculates the suicide rate for the Kulbi to be 136 per 100,000 between 1990 and 2000, and 173 between 1990 and 2001 -- staggering figures when you look at the highest country suicide rates. MacDonald gives a table of rates reported for small tribal groups, and the Kulbi are second only to the Aguaruna of Peru, where a rate of 180 per 100,000 was reported.

Macdonald also collected information on the reported causes of 87 suicides and grouped them into “melancholy suicides” (common among older people), “gender relations suicides,” “passionate and angry suicides,” “multiple suicides out of grief” (a chain of suicides, or cluster suicides) and “impulsive suicides of teenagers.”

MacDonald tests different explanations for suicide by probing deeply into Kulbi society and culture. He leaves no stone unturned, looking into everything, from the natural environment to kinship and politics, from concepts of “personhood, emotions and moral values” to religion.

Each chapter in MacDonald’s book suggests “answers” to the suicide riddle, until you get to the next one and realize that the answers seem to create even more riddles. For example, as MacDonald describes the Kulbi’s great sense of autonomy, and the lack of hierarchical structures, one is tempted to think that maybe they’re similar to many Western societies where individuals are left on their own to decide. Yet, MacDonald links this autonomy to the Kulbi’s overwhelming fear of society, an unwillingness to confront critics or judges. A 13-year-old boy, for example, had caught his grandmother’s chicken in a snare. His siblings told him his grandmother would hang him for the misdeed. The boy hanged himself.

At the end of his suicide “profiles,” MacDonald notes that a common denominator to the suicides is pain or stress, whether, physical, mental or emotional. “The suicide,” MacDonald proposes, “wants to stop hurting.”

Thankfully, MacDonald doesn’t end with that explanation. He rejects biological or genetic explanations, as well as the idea that there may be a whole melancholic cultural personality at work. He looks to other studies conducted among small groups, looking for possible correlations with the predisposition to suicide, from the presence of organized violence to a belief in vengeful souls.

Even without the focus on suicide, MacDonald’s description of the community is exhaustive and makes the book a good buy.

In the end, after excluding different theories, he suggests a wave theory, meaning that at some point in the past, some catastrophic event such as an epidemic may have spurred a surge of suicides and that with time, suicide became somewhat acceptable.

It’s difficult to prove that wave theory, but it does give food for thought, maybe even a warning. In more urbanized and industrial areas throughout the world, including Metro Manila, we occasionally find cluster suicides -- one suicide setting off another. Japan has been facing the problem of group suicides involving younger people who meet and eventually forge a suicide “pact” through the Internet.

Public health

MacDonald’s work is an example of how the social sciences can contribute to public health -- in this case, to suicide prevention. So many characteristics of Kulbi society -- individualism amid continuing fear of authority -- are in fact found throughout the Philippines and may help to explain suicide even among urbanized Filipinos.

MacDonald’s study raises questions about the vulnerability of small communities like the Kulbi. Is it possible that they might reach a critical “tipping point” more easily? Or could a small community act faster to prevent suicides from becoming an acceptable norm? Given, too, that we now live in a world where isolation is almost impossible, does the outside world (in the Kulbi case, the Philippine mainstream) have any impact on the Kulbi, reversing or reinforcing the current suicide trend?

Beyond suicide, however, MacDonald’s study challenges our ideas about culture. We tend to presume culture is shared and that people happily observe the norms. His study shows that culture is much more complex, that even with a kind of national norm like what we have for suicide, there can be significant exceptions. In the Kulbi case, what passes as deviance from a national norm is in fact the small-group norm.

As MacDonald’s book shows, understanding the “uncultural” provides the key to unlocking the many mysteries of “culture.”

A, B, C, D or A Ba Ka Da?

2007-08-05T11:21:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

A, B, C, D or A Ba Ka Da?
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:03am (Mla time) 05/30/2007

With the new school year upon us, I’m wondering what our schools are going to do, given the President’s Executive Order 210, which for the nth time revises our medium of instruction in schools.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed the EO in May 2004. There was a delay with the Department of Education’s implementing rules and guidelines, which were released only in July 2006. In a nutshell, the EO and the implementing rules provide for the following:

English will be taught as a second language starting with Grade 1. Starting with Grade 3, English will be used as a medium of instruction for English, Mathematics and Science. (This is actually an old requirement dating back to 2002.) Finally, the President and the Department of Education require that English be the “primary medium of instruction” in all public and private high schools, “primary” defined as English being used in “not less than 70 percent of the total time allotment for all learning areas.”

A group of educators has gone to the Supreme Court to challenge the executive and department orders on grounds that they are unconstitutional. The group includes National Artists Bienvenido Lumbera and Virgilio Almario, University of the Philippines professor (and Inquirer columnist) Randolf David; Isagani Cruz, president of Wika ng Kultura at Agham [Language of Culture and Science], and Efren Abueg, writer-in-residence at De La Salle University.

The educators argue that the 1987 Constitution declares Filipino as the national language and mandates the government to “initiate and sustain [its] use ... as a medium of official communication and as language of instruction in the educational system.”

The rationale for EO 210 is explained as “a need to develop the aptitude, competence and proficiency of our students in the English language to maintain and improve their competitive edge in emerging and fast-growing local and international industries, particularly in the area of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).”

It’s an appealing argument, given all the publicity around call center jobs and how so many applicants are turned down because of lack of English proficiency. But the educators point out that call centers don’t generate that many jobs in the first place so trying to get all schoolchildren to speak English does not make sense. On the other hand, if it’s the broader ICT industry that’s being targeted, then English becomes even more unrealistic, given that tasks such as software development are not tied to English proficiency.

Back to basics

Just for the sake of argument, let’s say there is indeed a bonanza out there -- in terms of outsourced and overseas jobs -- waiting to be reaped if we could produce better English speakers.

The President and her advisers presume that this is best done by making English the primary medium of instruction. But this runs counter to all the scientific evidence. The research into language and education shows clearly that learning is best done through a local language.

The mother tongue (which can be Ilokano or Kapampangan or Tausug, whatever is spoken locally) should be used in the first year of school to build a bridge for learning other languages. That would be Filipino in non-Tagalog areas, and could, later, include English, Spanish, Chinese or other global languages.

One study by the Summer Institute of Linguistics’ Diane Dekker and Catherine Young, “Bridging the Gap: The Development of Appropriate Educational Strategies for Minority Language Communities in the Philippines,” describes an innovative program in Kalinga where the community worked with educators to develop a curriculum and teaching materials for primary school in Lilibuagan, the local language. The article is so fascinating I’m going to save a more detailed description for another column, but the authors show that this approach can produce good literacy and numeracy levels.

The conclusions of local and international studies are simple: pupils learn faster when taught in their mother tongue. By imposing English as the medium of instruction as early as Grade 1, we actually further slow down the learning processes in our schools, including those for English.

In fact, I’d argue that the continuing predominance of English for teaching has produced a labor force that is barely literate in English or Filipino, and that this translates into mediocrity in the work place. It’s not surprising that overseas investors set up production facilities in other countries that may have poorer English proficiency than we do, but far surpass us with technological development and labor productivity.

Catching up

From China down to Indonesia, English language schools are cropping up like sari-sari stores. Some Filipinos point to these schools as “proof” that we were correct in pursuing English proficiency and that our neighbors are now seeing the error of their “nationalism” in language policies.

Let’s be careful with our conclusions. These are countries that certainly saw the importance of having a national language, propagated through the schools. In the post-colonial era, this was especially important in building a sense of national identity.

But having a national language did not mean excluding access to the world. Many of our neighbors translate books, not just from English but from French, Spanish, Japanese, German. Students learn English quite late, and only optionally. In the 1960s and 1970s, Thai graduate students came to the Philippines to take up agriculture, dentistry, public health, engineering. Filipinos poked fun at their fractured English. The Thais worked hard, went home to apply what they had learned -- yes, with the “poor” English -- and today, we import food and household wares from them. Today, Filipinos join the millions of tourists visiting Thailand, and then wonder how they get to bring in so many visitors, despite the still poor English proficiency.

I know, some of you are thinking, “Look who’s talking. Mike Tan has benefited from being able to write in English.” Yes, I am a product of an era when we were punished for speaking in Filipino. But I can tell you, too, that I know I could have been a better teacher, a better writer, if I had been encouraged to use Filipino in school.

I see this with my colleagues in other countries, who are not quite as good with English but are able to convey so much of their national experiences. It’s not surprising the world is waking up now to the literature, arts, cinema of our neighbors, all done in their local languages.

We need to be able to look forward to a time that Filipinos, speaking or writing in English or Spanish or Chinese, will dazzle their audiences who know that their eloquence and wisdom spring, not from the mastery of a foreign language, but from hearts that think and feel in Filipino.

Young scientists

2007-08-05T11:19:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Young scientists
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:46am (Mla time) 05/25/२००७

MANILA, Philippines -- Rightly so, six young Filipinos made it to the Inquirer’s front page yesterday with good, very good, news that provide welcome relief from the depressing news about electoral fraud.

The six won awards at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) held in the States last week. The ISEF is billed the largest pre-college science fair in the world, this year’s event bringing in 1,500 young students (the winners’ age range was from 15 to 18) from 40 countries to compete for several awards and prizes provided by private corporations as well as the US government and the European Union.

I’ll shortly get to the names of the awardees and the titles of their research presentations, but I wanted first to tackle the significance of these science fairs and Filipinos making it to the finals.

First, the winners were all from public schools, which tells us the government educational system can still be centers of excellence. The winners came from the Philippine Science High School system as well as from two national high schools, both in the Visayas. The inclusion of national high schools is especially encouraging, but not surprising. Teaching at the University of the Philippines, I can vouch that some of our best students, and faculty members, are products of these national high schools.

Second, this ISEF reminds us of the importance of science fairs. I know that we have local fairs as well but rarely get to read about them, and the presentations. I can imagine the excitement of our scholars when they make it to the fairs. These fairs are the equivalent of international science conferences, but I suspect they’re more exciting because the adult scientists often end up reading the most boring papers while the science fairs reflect the innovation and imagination that young student scientists have. I visited the ISEF website and was fascinated by the titles of the papers presented, from a Thai student’s investigation of the mechanism of the Mimosa leaf’s closure (that’s the makahiya plant) to a Saudi Arabian student’s “Smart Shoe for Blind People” and a Mexican’s presentation with this kilometric title: “Psycho-social effects caused by parental absence on children 7 to 11 years old with solution by means of exercises that stimulate dialogue.” The Filipinos’ presentations were just as intriguing, as I will explain in a while.

Intel, idol

Third point, the science fairs are an excellent opportunity for corporations to channel some of their philanthropy to young people. I know that Intel has been a major sponsor for some years now, both for our local scholars as well as for the international event and I appreciate how they’ve been doing this low-profile, but I hope too they can challenge other corporations to follow suit. The US corporations know very well that the science fairs allow them to identify budding scientists, people who might even become part of their staff later on.

The sponsors of ISEF were quite diverse, with various US government agencies getting into the act. Even the Department of Homeland Security offered awards for research that would “prevent and deter terrorist attacks.” The European Union offered travel grants to another science fair in Spain. The most innovative prizes were from the Lincoln laboratory of MIT: naming minor planets after the grand prize winners! Maybe the Philippine government can offer to name islands after our young winners.

Which takes me to my fourth point, more than having islands named after them, our scholars deserve more coverage by our mass media. We need more of these role models for young people, a counterpoint to the silly American Idol-genre of “heroes.” I’ve nothing, certainly, against singing and dancing; in fact, I’ve proudly written about how UP and Xavier (my high school alma mater) won in national streetdance competitions. But we do need to be much more appreciative of our young scientists. It’s important for young Filipinos to see them, and to hear them talk not just about their science achievements but also about their families, their day-to-day interests. I saw a photograph of this year’s Filipino winners in another daily newspaper and I can say they look like your teenager next door.

Filipino winners

I’m going to get to the Filipino winners but before that, congratulations are also in order for the other Filipino students who did qualify to go to ISEF, but didn’t win awards. The fact that they made it to the fair is itself an honor.

Now to the winners. Note that I’m going to be paraphrasing some of the very long titles. I have not seen their presentations so I’m basing my comments on the titles of the papers alone, which intrigued me because they reflect the interests of our young scientists, and what we might see in the future if we don’t lose them to brain drain.

Most striking was how three of the presentations focused on disease control or management, one for plants and two for humans. Luiji Suarez won an award from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance-Lemelson Foundation for his research on the potential of marine bioluminescent bacteria to fight two major rice diseases. Suarez is from the Doña Hortencia Salas Benedicto National High School in La Carlota City, Negros Occidental.

A team from the Philippine Science High School in Quezon City -- Ivy Ventura, Janine Santiago and Mara Villaverde -- won a team project award for their research into fluorescent proteins from sea slugs. These proteins have potential for the detection of tumors.

Melvyn Barroa of the Capiz National High School won in the microbiology division, looking into how fish mucus, which protects the fish, might be used for human health as well, both as an antimicrobial and for immune mechanisms. Barroa was said to have turned down an offer from a German institute that wanted to buy his research. He didn’t want to sell the research since he wasn’t sure if the Philippines would benefit. This young nationalist scientist will be taking up political science at the Ateneo de Manila University.

Finally, we get to Hester Mana Umayam from the Philippine Science High School-Cagayan Valley, who won an award in the Behavioral and Social Sciences division for looking into “ethnomathematics in the geometric patterns” of Kalinga weaving. Being an anthropologist, I was most thrilled by this paper’s title. Ethnomathematics, put simply, looks at indigenous math systems. Weaving provides one such example -- a good weaver has to be able to figure out weaving designs in her head and knowing which types and colors of fibers to use next. That requires algebra and geometry of a different sort. Umayam apparently also looked at how the weaving reflected class and Kalinga culture.

From luminescent tumor markers to the geometry of weaving, our young Filipino scientists did us proud. Here’s to hoping that in the years ahead, we do see and hear more of their achievements, as well as those of other young scientists who still have the curiosity and the drive to explore the world around us.

‘Touchpoints’

2007-08-05T11:17:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Touchpoints’
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:19am (Mla time) 05/23/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Have you ever wondered why your baby seems to be making great strides with physical or mental development, and then suddenly seems to backslide or regress? A usually pleasant child, for example, suddenly seems prone to tantrums and crying fits.

Dr. T. Berry Brazleton, a prominent American pediatrician, assures parents and caregivers that we shouldn’t worry too much about that; in fact, normal child development involves what he calls “touchpoints,” phases in childhood development marked by “predictable spurts that are often preceded by distressing regressions.”

Back in the 1980s, I had the privilege of attending a Unicef-sponsored seminar where Brazleton was the main speaker. He was most engaging, coming through not so much as an academician (with appointments in Harvard and Brown University), or even as a pediatrician, but as a warm grandparent. He easily captivated the Filipino audience, even if his insights were based mainly on cases in the United States.

Eventually, Brazleton authored a book called “Touchpoints,” published in 1992, which became a bestseller, but I never got around to getting the book. Recently, on National Public Radio, I caught an interview with him and was thrilled to learn a second edition of “Touchpoints” had come out, this time in collaboration with Dr. Joshua Sparrow, a child psychiatrist. This time, my interest was as a parent and I made it a point to look for the book, eventually finding a copy at Fully Booked.

It’s the kind of book where you almost feel the author is holding your hand, going through the various “touchpoints,” from pregnancy, to birth, to various age intervals where you might expect the touchpoints: 2-3 weeks, 6-8 weeks, 4 months, 6-7 months, 9 months, 1 year, 15 months, 18 months, 2 years. The third year is optimistically subtitled: “Looking Ahead.”

Besides the discussions about touchpoints, there’s a whole section on “challenges to development,” dealing with everything from allergies and asthma to divorce and developmental disabilities, to television and toilet training.

Tantrums

New parents will often be told about important milestones to anticipate: when to expect the child to stand, to walk, to talk. But we’re not warned about times when the child seems to stagnate, or even regress. Brazleton has a powerful term to describe the really serious regressions: a meltdown.

Brazleton assures us that the regressions are normal, even predictable. I’m going to cite Brazleton’s discussion of one such touchpoint that could occur around the age of 15 months.

This was actually the first chapter I read, because my son is about that age, and has been, well, quite temperamental at times. Brazleton writes that this age is in fact marked by tantrums, that even the most pleasant babies may suddenly become a pain. But this “regression,” Brazleton explains, is to be expected because this is the age where the child is going through an inner turmoil: he wants to be independent but faces many obstacles. He ends up frustrated, but might not understand the emotions around the frustration, so he lashes out at siblings, at parents.

Brazleton suggests that we leave it to the child to sort it out. You put him in a safe place where he can’t hurt himself, and then walk away, almost as if to say “I’m sorry I can’t help you more ... but this tantrum is your job.” It makes sense: the child’s tantrum comes precisely because he’s figuring out what it means to be independent. If we indulge his tantrum, we actually keep him dependent and “regressed.” Brazleton’s advice works quite well: I’ve “spied” on my son with his “quiet time” and am amazed at how quickly he calms down, eventually finding something to do.

The problem is that culturally, we think the proper response is to carry the child to comfort him. That only reinforces the idea that a tantrum is a way of asking for help, or even for getting something done. It’s not surprising that we have to deal with so many adults—from politicians to professors—who still try to get their way through tantrums, and succeed because there are enough fools willing to play their game.

‘Urong-sulong’

Going through Brazleton’s book, I began to feel that “regression” might be too strong a term. The so-called regressions are probably part of our evolution. In a sense, the “regressions” are needed to warn the parents about a vulnerable period, often a phase where one aspect of growth is about to occur rapidly, and so will require more attention for the child. That can be teething (but don’t we all know that?), a growth surge, any dramatic development in the child’s cognitive abilities.

In the introduction to the new edition of his book, Brazleton mentions the work of the Dutch ethologist (animal behaviorist) Frans Plooij, who has found that among chimpanzees, there are also these spurts and regressions and how mother chimpanzees seemed to “know” about these touchpoints, isolating their babies from the pack during critical periods, lest they annoy the male chimps too much with intensified crying and clinging.

By “warning” about regressions, we go into “red alert,” preparing ourselves, the family, maybe even the community, to deal with a crucial period in the child’s development. This does not mean pampering or indulging the child; instead, it’s giving more space for everyone to deal with the difficult period.

My choice of a Filipino term for touchpoints would be “urong-sulong.” Younger readers recognize that as the title of a song rendered by Regine Velasquez about the vagaries of love -- “urong” being not so much a regression as a period of uncertainty, and “sulong” referring to the more positive, movement forward. The hope, of course, is that cumulatively, we make progress.

The last part of Brazleton’s book deals with “allies in development,” showing how parents, grandparents, friends, “childcarers” and pediatricians can forge alliances to be more effective in dealing with the touchpoints. For Filipinos, that chapter is particularly important given how parenting in the Philippines is still built on a wide network of relatives, friends and neighbors. With millions of Filipino parents working outside of the home, or even overseas, it becomes all the more important that we maximize our social networks.

Brazleton’s introduction recommends “reaffirming traditional forms of family intimacy”: returning to breastfeeding, co-sleeping (children sleeping next to the parents, rather than being isolated in a crib), more lax toilet training and something as simple as having meals together with the child. All these traditional forms allow parents and caregivers (and that can include “kuya,” or elder brother, and “ate,” or elder sister) to become more sensitive to the changes in the child. Throw in education about the touchpoints and we should be well on our way to less painful, more productive child-rearing.

Zen

2007-08-05T11:16:00.002+08:00

PINOY KASI

Zen
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 02:30am (Mla time) 05/18/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Among Asian countries, the Philippines has been the least influenced by Buddhism. Even neighboring Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, has several grand ancient Buddhist temples, notably Borobodur. In the Philippines, some of our archaeological sites have yielded Buddha images, but Buddhism itself never did gain too many adherents. Today, it is mainly associated with older Chinese-Filipinos, who worship at a few dozen temples scattered throughout the archipelago.

At one time it seemed Buddhism would eventually fade away in the Philippines given that most younger Chinese-Filipinos were being raised Catholic or Protestant but in recent years, Buddhism has gone through a revival, generating interest among younger Chinese-Filipinos as well as non-ethnic Chinese. Following a worldwide trend, varied Buddhist groups have established themselves in the Philippines, ranging from the Japanese Soka Gakai to Tibetan Vajrayana.

The fastest-growing groups are however still linked to Chinese Buddhism, notably two groups that are described as “humanistic Buddhism.” These are Tzu Chi and Fo Guang Shan, both Taiwan-based sects and emphasizing charitable work, including education, health and disaster relief.

Meditation

I’ve written in the past about Fo Guang Shan and will try to do another column in the future about both these groups. Today I wanted to feature a less visible aspect of Buddhism in the Philippines: the Zen movement.

To understand Zen, we have to go back to the roots of Buddhism in India, where meditation played a central role. One type of meditation was called “dhyana” in Sanskrit and “jhana” in Pali. When Buddhism reached China, one sect that emerged called itself “zenna” to highlight the practice of meditation. Exported to Japan, “zenna” eventually became abbreviated to Zen, and in China the pronunciation of “zen” changed eventually to Chan. Zen is also known as Seon in Korean and Thien in Vietnam.

Japanese Zen and Chinese Chan Buddhism have diversified into different schools but all still emphasize meditation together with a simple, but not necessarily ascetic, lifestyle. Training is handled by “dharma masters” who themselves go through years of rigorous study and, like the Catholic system of bishops, are able to trace their “lineages” back to original Zen and Chan founders.

In 1976, one branch of Japanese Zen, Sanbo Kyodan, made it to the Philippines through a Catholic nun who conducted meditation classes in St. Bridget’s School in Quezon City. Sister Elaine trained many people, some of whom became dharma masters themselves. Their network, called the Zen Center for Oriental Spirituality of the Philippines has groups in the cities of Davao, Iloilo, Baguio and Tagaytay, with a “motherhouse” (pardon my Catholic nun terminology) in Marikina City.

To join this group, you have to attend eight orientation seminars on successive Sundays, where you are taught to meditate. Their meditation revolves around “koan,” or Zen stories, a famous example being the question, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Koan are not riddles; they are meant to focus one’s attention.

This group might be described as being more of “Christian Zen,” given their close ties with the Catholic religious. One of them, former Jesuit Ruben Habito, now based in the States, has even written a book “Living Zen, Loving God.” But the Zen Center emphasizes they are not a religion, and they do not require that people “convert” to Catholicism or Buddhism.

They are a mixed group, with many professionals. I have several friends who are part of this group, including Zos Lee, dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at University of the Philippines, Diliman; architect Ning Encarnacion-Tan; psychiatrist Henny Espanola in Iloilo. Their ranks include quite a number of psychiatrists in the Philippine group, and this is because one of the early members of the group was the late Dr. Antonio Perlas, who was responsible for bringing Zen to different parts of the country.

Chan

Although I have so many friends in the Zen Center, I haven’t been able to even start with their orientation seminars because Marikina is out of the way. I’ve been meditating on my own for many years but I agree with Zen adherents that the “sitting” is better done as part of a community.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to find a more accessible base and this is the Ocean Sky Chan Monastery in San Juan town, in Metro Manila. Holding my breath, I signed up this year for their introductory course, conducted in Chinese and spread out over 12 Friday evenings. Don’t ask me how I managed to complete the course with two kids, university teaching, writing Inquirer columns and handling a few dozen other odds and ends, but I’m convinced Zen does help you sort out the chaos of modern life, each meditation session a chance to empty the clutter in our minds so we can think more clearly.

The monastery was established only a few years ago and is managed by Abbess Jian Yong and two Buddhist nuns. They conduct meditation classes in Chinese (Mandarin or Putonghua) during weekdays and English on weekends. Each class meets once a week for two hours, with about 45 minutes of sitting and walking meditation, followed by about an hour of a lecture on Chan Buddhism.

There are three levels for the meditation classes, as well as special classes on Buddhist sutras or scriptures, which can be quite heavy. One sutra class I attended involved more than an hour’s discussion of just one phrase.

Ocean Sky also holds prayer services on special Buddhist holidays. This Sunday there will be one to celebrate Vesak or Buddha Day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., including a vegetarian lunch. The Vesak celebrations are open to the public, Buddhist or non-Buddhist.

The meditation classes are for adults but they also have summer camps that do introduce meditation to children. The minimum age here is 6.

Commitment

Zen or Chan Buddhism does not have a monopoly on meditation training. There are several places now that offer meditation classes, often to promote better health.

But there’s more to Zen and Chan than the health aspect. Zen is a way of life, too, that requires commitment and discipline. Both the Zen Center and Ocean Sky are quite strict with attendance, for example.

One time, while meditating at home I found myself distracted by a squadron of mosquitoes. The temptation was to exterminate them with an insecticide but I remembered how our dharma teacher had used mosquitoes to explain non-violence as an important aspect of Buddhism: “Rather than killing the mosquitoes, find ways to avoid them, or to have them avoid you.”

That wasn’t intended as a mosquito koan. If you’re wondering, I turned on an electric fan.

Ocean Sky will be starting a new round of classes next week while the Zen Center will hold orientation workshops in June so I’m giving you their contact information:

• Ocean Sky, 716 Jose Abad Santos, San Juan, Metro Manila. +632 7260600 and +632 7236132.

• Zen Center, 85 St. Catherine/St. Claire, Provident Village, Marikina City. +632 9978867.

Elections as culture

2007-08-05T11:16:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Elections as culture
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 01:26am (Mla time) 05/16/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Philippine elections have been compared -- and rightly so -- to our fiestas, with their rough and tumble revelry. Or to a carnival, with side shows and cheap thrills and being taken for a ride.

I think the elections are more than festive events. They are now an integral part of Filipino culture. Let me do a bit of personal ethnography here to explain what I mean.

I arrived at the polling place around 7:30 in the morning and was pleasantly surprised to find large crowds. Who says Filipinos are always late? We do have an early-bird syndrome that comes out when we face situations of scarcity, especially when we’re talking about desirable goods. We see this early-bird syndrome at, for example, job fairs where there is only a handful of job openings, or at parties where food is served buffet-style, with the guests rushing up as soon as food is available and piling their plates sky-high with food, fearful that there wouldn’t be any left if they wanted seconds.

Elections trigger the early-bird syndrome in a different way. People anticipate problems of missing names, missing lists or even missing precincts. It’s the same way we handle any government-related activity, for example, getting a birth certificate at the National Statistics Office. We go early to beat the crowds, and if something goes wrong, there’s more time to unravel the problem and, hopefully, take care of everything in one day.

Gender, rituals

The early-bird syndrome probably also reflects how seriously we take elections. There’s excitement about this political exercise which generates the fiesta-cum-carnival atmosphere. You can see that excitement in the composition of the voters: women and men of all ages, and quite a few elderly with their walking canes -- even an occasional caregiver to help them along.

The ones managing the precincts were predominantly women. That probably reflects the gender distribution of our public school teachers, but I couldn’t help but wonder, too, about gender roles, the women handling the most crucial tasks such as giving out and receiving the ballots. The men were assigned to -- you guessed it -- fingerprinting the voters and applying the indelible ink after someone had voted. Messy work, but simple enough for the male brain. Now, tell me if that isn’t the way we often assign tasks in daily life.

The precincts reminded me of another aspect of local culture: our tendency to have too many people handling a fairly simple task. There were just too many people, including watchers. At the same time, I could understand that our elections have become a matter of watching the watchers. I didn’t feel any tension in the place I voted, but I can imagine that in other parts of the country, the watchers had reason to be vigilant, given the potentials of fraud and violence.

The problem here is that the bulk of the work is still handled by one or two people, so everything moves at a snail’s pace, sometimes made slower because there are too many people milling around and getting in each other’s way. The lone male in my precinct looked bored, but had the initiative to go through our queue to check if the voters knew their identification numbers.

Many didn’t have voter ID cards, which takes me to the haphazard way we do things. Although voters’ registration took place a long time ago, the printing of the ID cards seemed almost arbitrary. My parents got their cards, but I didn’t, although we registered together. I dropped by the local office of the Commission on Elections a few days before the election and a member of the staff found my record on the computer monitor. You’re there, he assured me, but they couldn’t print out the ID cards because they didn’t have the budget. I was told any ID card would do.

In the end, no one ever asked me for an ID card because they were too busy with all kinds of little rituals. We’re very good at making simple things complicated. Each ballot, for example, had a number, which had to be copied on their form, which has always made me wonder about confidentiality. Sign here. Fingerprint here. Fingerprinting, incidentally, is a procedure that was originally intended for illiterates. It serves no purpose today except to make us feel we’re doing something official.

After voting, the ballot stub has to be removed. Because some printing contractor made money again on bad perforations, the precinct people had to use scissors to cut the stubs. Time wasted again.

The ballot box had two compartments, one for the stub, one for the ballot itself. I saw one voter putting the stub in the wrong compartment. One of the schoolteachers shrugged and moved quickly, whipping out a key to unlock the compartment, pull out the stray ballot and then lock the box again. Rules, rules, rules -- all made to be broken.

Filipino-style, we complain all the time about elections but deep down, we’re really quite proud of our democratic system, the elections included. We’re becoming more critical with our voting, more vigilant with safeguarding the vote. We’re moving forward, despite the warlord-politicians in many parts of the country and in spite of the current Commission on Elections.

Elections are the one time we go beyond rhetoric and demonstrate our appreciation of democracy. I’m always touched by the TV coverage of ballots being brought in from remote areas. Someone should do a documentary on how ballots are transported from the island municipalities of Sulu and Tawi-tawi, or the mountain communities of the Cordillera. We would also like to hear more about what the schoolteachers go through, including the story of Filomena Tatlonghari, the schoolteacher in Mabini, Batangas, who was shot to death after she refused to surrender the ballot box to armed men during the elections in 1995.

Elections speak of Philippine culture, and of the Filipino.

Agham

I’m still on elections but moving away from my ethnography. One of my anthropology graduate students, Erika Rey, wrote about the confusion around Agham. In a column last Friday, I had mentioned Agham as a party-list organization of people from the science and technology sector and gave www.agham.org as the organization’s website.

It turns out that website belongs to another Agham, to which Erika belongs. The organization was established in 1997, with a long full name: Samahan ng Nagtataguyod ng Agham at Teknolohiya para sa Sambayanan. Its chair is Dr. Giovanni Tapang, a physicist teaching at the University of the Philippines.

Erika sent a press statement dated May 10 describing their group as a “national organization of scientists, engineers and advocates dedicated to make science and technology serve the people through direct community service and advocacy.” The organization has taken an advocacy role around issues like power rate increases, oil price hikes, the Philippine-US military exercises Balikatan, the proposed tax on text messaging. They have also participated in congressional hearings on issues like mining, genetic engineering and the budget for science. This Agham emphasizes they are not running as a party-list organization and instead endorses Bayan Muna.

To vote or not to vote

2007-08-05T11:15:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

To vote or not to vote
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 01:24am (Mla time) 05/11/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I have friends who are seriously thinking about not voting, because they are so overwhelmed by the feeling that the administration will cheat massively, so why bother.

A sizeable proportion of the population -- the youth -- have already disengaged themselves by not even bothering to register. Yes, government was so anemic with voter registration, but I suspect that even if Commission on Elections had been more aggressive, many young people would still have kept away. Young people, even at the University of the Philippines with its militant reputation, have become so disillusioned with politics. Their concern now is to get a diploma so they can leave to work overseas.

I share a lot of the pessimism, and seriously considered not voting. At one point, I even accepted an invitation to deliver a keynote address at an overseas conference right on Election Day but eventually begged off because I thought, now more than ever, voting does matter.

Local battles

Our pessimism comes about mainly with our focus on national politics. For this election, the public opinion polls clearly show the opposition will retain its hold on the Senate, so there are fears that the administration will cheat to alter the results there, and that after the elections, all would be lost.

It’s time we shifted attention and looked instead at the arenas where the more important battles have to be fought. I’m referring to local governments, the races on the provincial and municipal or city levels. Local governments have tremendous powers because of decentralization and can make a huge difference.

The now-defunct Newsbreak magazine had a special issue last year highlighting best practices of local governments, showing how we were moving forward, albeit slowly. I was impressed, for example, with an article about Quezon City’s management of its finances, a gargantuan task considering its income has reached the billion-peso mark.

Family planning is another example. The national government does not want to touch this, fearing the ire of the President and conservative Catholic bishops, but many local governments are quietly implementing their programs, purchasing the needed contraceptives and intensifying family planning education. In Iloilo province, several mayors banded together to implement programs that go a step further, integrating environmental conservation with family planning.

Much can be done at the local government level and successful initiatives can create a bandwagon effect, with officials imitating and eventually trying to outdo each other with good governance. I’ve been part of the Ateneo de Manila University’s Leaders for Health Program, which started out with a few municipal health officers, all physicians, being trained to form teams with local government officials to bring health reforms. After the first batch, some mayors and governors and provincial health officers were asking if they could join in.

I am sure there are many other local leaders out there, working their own miracles in the field of education, agricultural production, microfinance, even heritage conservation.

Mavericks

Do competent leaders stand a chance in our elections? I’m cautious here. I get depressed hearing from friends outside of Manila, telling me of administration-backed mayors, even governors, running unopposed. There are also depressing stories about the congressional races, a crucial area where national and local politics interface. The administration knows it is crucial they get the numbers here, to stop any new impeachment procedures.

Yes, the machinery of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration is awesome, but I can’t help but sense desperation in the way it has been throwing out money. I hear of so many provinces and towns where all the candidates get “donations” from the administration, a way of betting on all the horses.

Grim as the battles are, I also hear of a new generation of politicians somehow making progress even with minimal resources. The best example is the maverick Danton Remoto, who is running for the House in the third district of Quezon City. After he was rebuffed trying to get Ang Ladlad groyp registered as a gay and lesbian party-list organization, he tried to run for the Senate, and was again spurned by the Commission on Elections. Now running for the House, he actually stands a good chance of becoming the first openly gay member of Congress.

Maybe it was just as well that Ang Ladlad wasn’t accredited because Remoto has expanded his platform to include many other political issues, from impeaching Arroyo to environmental conservation. And he seems to be making headway because the third district has a good mix of constituents, from the chattering classes who live around Loyola Heights and Katipunan Road to the hard-nosed blue- and white-collar workers of Project 4. Remoto defies political stereotypes, being a writer and a poet, and a professor at the Ateneo. He says he has the support of Catholic groups, emphasizing this includes both “the single and the coupled.”

The ultimate stake

Get real, my friends tell me, a few local governments can’t make a difference. I’d argue they can, not just for the local community but for the country. It’s not just a matter of creating a bandwagon effect but also of countering the epidemic of pessimism and cynicism that has engulfed us. After I read the Newsbreak issue last year, I sent it to an American foundation that I work with. They were impressed, and have committed funds to two of our universities to propagate some of the examples of good governance in the area of health care.

Many Filipinos are unaware of another unseen crisis that has accompanied our political crisis: International donor agencies have been pulling out or reducing their funds in the country. This parallels the weak inflow of money from international investors.

The government likes to boast of international money coming in, but these are mostly portfolio investments, foreigners playing with our stock market and bonds, rather than investments in job-creating businesses. The reason for the donors’ and the business investors’ caution is simple: They do not see democratic processes evolving. There’s too much uncertainty, too much arbitrariness in the national government. But wiser donors and business people see a way out, identifying local governments with competent leaders, and putting their money in these towns and provinces.

The nation is in crisis, but it’s not the usual acute kind, with massive street rallies and protest actions. It’s more of a continuation of a chronic crisis that’s simmered through the years, often going into a boil as more people become disenchanted with our Enchanted Kingdom. The danger is that instead of boiling over, our democratic system might just dry up, like a water kettle that’s been kept on low boil and forgotten.

Our votes are our investments, our way of showing that despite the national government, despite the President, we still have enough faith in the system to vote for leaders who can hold the fort, keep democracy going until 2010, and beyond.

Party-list maze

2007-08-05T11:13:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Party-list maze
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 01:29am (Mla time) 05/09/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- With the party-list organizations madly scrambling for publicity, one of them just had to do it. Alyansa ng Sambayanan para sa Pagbabago (ASAP, People’s Alliance for Change) activists romped through a shopping mall, dressed in plastic raincoats with nothing underneath except their briefs (and I don’t mean written ones). Their point? Good governance needs (gulp) transparency.

Innovative as ASAP was, their publicity stunt only showed how the party-list groups have limited access to the public to explain their platforms. Which is a shame because the system, created by RA 7941, was intended to allow disadvantaged groups representation in Congress. Under that law, a party-list organization gets one seat in Congress for every 2 percent they can garner of the total votes. For example, a group that gets 6 percent of total votes cast would have three seats. The law provides that up to 20 percent of the total number of seats in Congress can go to party-list organizations.

The party-list system has allowed a number of legislators to get into Congress without having to use guns, goons, gold or glitter. In previous Congresses, we’ve had a few party-list representatives making it, mainly from politically progressive organizations. Bayan Muna and Akbayan, for example, had three seats each in the present Congress.

Once in Congress, these party-list representatives can make or break initiatives, so I can believe Akbayan’s Etta Rosales when she says that there are party-list organizations acting as fronts for Malacañang, apparently hoping to win seats and block anti-Arroyo moves in the new Congress.

Voting for a party-list group isn’t easy, given the lack of information about the groups, including something as basic as the organization representatives. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) refused to release the list of the party-list nominees until Akbayan filed a case with the Supreme Court. Akbayan won the case and the Comelec has since released the list, which was published in the Inquirer last Saturday.

The list was helpful for exposing some of these party-list organizations’ hidden agendas. One of the more glaring examples is Bantay, which has Jovito Palparan Jr., who has been accused of numerous human rights violations, as its lead nominee. There is also Banat, whose No. 2 nominee is Raul Lambino, one of the main pushers of Charter change.

Knowing who the candidates is helpful, but I still remain in the dark about most of the groups’ platforms. One of my research colleagues, lawyer Mai Taqueban, helped me with an Internet search for websites and platforms. Both of us noted how difficult it was to find websites and for the groups that did have one, their sites weren’t exactly exciting. The party-list groups clearly need to recruit spin doctors and public relations people.

I can’t endorse any one party-list organization, but I thought I’d share some of the possibilities with readers to help them through the maze, or should I say alphabet soup (with a lot of A’s). Because of space limitations, I can list only three nominees for each group. On your ballot, don’t forget that you can vote for only one group. You will be voting for the organization, not for a particular nominee. I’m listing the nominees only to give you an idea of what the organizations stand for.

Progressive groups

The government propaganda machine and the military have tried to discredit many of the party-list organizations as “leftist” -- even “communist.” I’ll say this: we need more leftist parties and I wish we’d reach the political maturity where we can have communist and socialist parties running openly. Throughout the world, including most of Asia, communist parties are legal and engaged in parliamentary struggles. Even the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal, which was engaged in a bloody insurgency for years, just gave up armed struggle to run for parliament.

Our leftist party-list organizations span the ideological spectrum. Akbayan and Bayan Muna have very different ideological positions and are sometimes (often?) at odds with each other. Generally though, the leftist party-list organizations that have won seats in the past have a fairly good record of fiscalizing the traditional politicians and have united on many bills oriented toward social reform.

It’s not surprising that the Arroyo administration has been trying to discredit these groups. The party-list organizations have strong mass membership at the grass-roots level, and garner votes because of their long track record of serving people at the grass-roots level. Here are the progressive organizations in alphabetical order (I have friends in all these groups so I don’t want to be accused of playing favorites):

Akbayan (www.akbayan.org) -- Ana Theresa Hontiveros-Baraquel; Walden Bello; Enrico Dayanghirang.

Anak Pawis (www.anakpawis.org) -- Crispin Beltran, Rafael Mariano, Joel Maglunsod.

Bayan Muna (www.bayanmuna.net) -- Saturnino Ocampo, Teodoro Casino, Neri Colmenares.

Sanlakas (geocities.com/sanlakasonline/?20077) -- Jose Virgilio Bautista, Nilda Lagman-Sevilla and Wilson Fortaleza.

You might also want to consider CIBAC (Citizens’ Battle Against Corruption, www.cibac.org), which doesn’t belong to the Left. Their nominees are Joel Villanueva, Luis Lokan Jr. and Cinchona Gonzales. Villanueva made it to the present Congress and has supported many forward-looking initiatives.

Sectors

The party-list system would have been ideal for boosting sector representation, especially from such groups as senior citizens, or small businesses. Some of the party-list names hint at such representation, but Mai and I could not find websites to describe their work or their platform. The best we can do is list organizations for three important sectors: women, overseas workers and, would you believe, scientists?

There are two women’s party-list organizations worth checking out, both with progressive political lines and with a proven pro-women track record in the previous Congress. There’s Abanse Pinay (www.AbansePinay.com), whose nominees are Teresa Fernandez, Kalayaan Constantino and Yasmin Busran Lao; and Gabriela, with Liza Maza, Luzviminda Ilagan and Flora Belinan. We could not find a website for Gabriela. I will admit personal ties with Abanse Pinay, knowing Kala and Yasmin, the latter being a Muslim development worker and a religious scholar.

Ahon (www.ahonpinoy.org) has more traditional personalities as their nominees (Dante Ang II, Bernardo Ople and Ernesto Herrera), but they have a well-defined agenda about what could be done for overseas workers.

Finally, I’d consider Agham (www.agham.org), a party-list organization for the science and technology sector. There’s irony in having scientists as a disadvantaged group, but that’s exactly who we are in the Philippines, where movie celebrities have a greater say in public affairs than scientists. Agham’s nominees are Emil Javier, Saeed Daof and Angel Alcala. With Alcala as one of their leaders, it’s not surprising Agham also has a strong pro-environment position.

‘Que sera, sera’

2007-05-07T11:47:00.002+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Que sera, sera’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:49am (Mla time) 05/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I’m sure many of you know the song. Hear the music now? Let’s begin: “When I was just a little girl (OK, so if you’re a guy then change the lyrics)/ I asked my mother / What will I be?/ Will I be pretty?/ Will I be rich?/ Here’s what she said to me.”

Do I hear you humming now? “Que sera, sera./ Whatever will be, will be./ The future’s not ours to see./ Que sera, sera./ What will be, will be.”

Legend has it that when Doris Day first heard the song, her reaction was that it was a “forgettable children’s song.” Eventually, she recorded the song for Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” The song won an Oscar for best original song.

My parents tell me I loved the song when I was a child, oblivious, of course, of the lyrics and content to repeat “que sera, sera.” Children love the song because it is catchy, while adults, well, it is a sticky tune -- you hear the first two lines and you hum along, and again, and again, but it isn’t irritating like many other glue-y songs.

Hebrew, English and Tagalog

The other day “Que sera, sera” returned to haunt me when I got a DVD film, which opened and ended with the song. It was a film entitled “Paper Dolls” and the cover showed what looked like a showgirl, all decked out in costume ready to dance. No, it wasn’t some adaptation of “Dream Girls”; rather unexpectedly, it was a documentary about Filipinos in Tel Aviv, made by an Israeli, Tomer Heymann. The back cover said the film ran 80 minutes, in color, widescreen, in Hebrew, English and Tagalog with English subtitles.

I don’t remember reading about the film here in the Philippines, but I may have just missed it. On the other hand, I would have thought that if the film had made it here, it would have attracted more attention in the media, including rave reviews.

The film is about a group of Filipino “bakla” [gay men], living and working in Tel Aviv as caregivers. Yes, it is a true story, with Heymann following them around as they care for their wards, all elderly men, and making the oddest of couples (imagine them walking around in semi-drag, dressed like women as the bakla are over here, while wheeling around their elderly wards in the B’nei Brak district of Tel Aviv, an Orthodox Jewish section with very conservative residents).

We learn that these Filipinos were undocumented, meaning illegal, workers, but then after the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising), the Israeli government found themselves lacking laborers, and relaxed their immigration rules. The Filipino “bakla” were able to get jobs as caregivers, and by Israeli laws, could stay for as long as their employers would vouch for them.

The main characters in this real-world drama are Cheska (originally Francisco), Sally (Salvador), Jan (Troan Jacob), Giorgi (Eduardo) and Chiqui. All are in their 30s. All have lived in the Middle East for several years.

As their stories unfold, we are reminded that there are Filipinos who go overseas not just for economic reasons but also because they’re sexual refugees, people unable to find acceptance from their own families back home. They venture overseas, hoping to find a new life, sometimes even risking it by going to places that may seem even more inhospitable.

In Israel, this motley band of adventurers end up as caregivers by day, but occasionally launch night performances as female impersonators or drag queens. The caregivers are, to put it politely, on the matronly side, so their shows border on parody. Heymann introduces them to a nightclub owner, and for their audition number, they perform the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila,” yes, another sticky song that means “Let us rejoice.” But the nightclub owner wants them to pretend to be Japanese geisha. They quit.

The drag shows become almost incidental. What we see are the bonds the caregivers build with their elderly patients. We are reminded of the difficulties of caregiving, with one of the Paper Dolls describing how her ward, who has Alzheimer’s, was constantly wandering off. What makes their work even more valiant is the way they adjust to cultures so different from our own, sometimes almost outrageously. There is one scene that left me partly in shock: an orthodox Jewish old man devoutly praying, apparently oblivious to the Filipino caregiver at his side, headphones on, singing away a bit too loudly -- inside a synagogue.

Throughout the film, we hear the “bading” [gay men] speaking in Hebrew. I have no way of telling how good they are at it, but they seem to be comfortable and articulate.

Sally is something else. She is the most endearing among the Paper Dolls. Caring for Haim, an elderly man with throat cancer who has lost his voice, Sally has learned to read Hebrew so she can figure out Haim’s written instructions. Not only that, because Haim wanted her to learn more Hebrew, he had her reading aloud the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, which she does quite well.

The documentary reveals the difficult life of the Paper Dolls: cramped living quarters, fears of police raids, fears of terrorist bombs. There is one scene showing the chaotic aftermath of a bombing: The authorities call on everyone to seek medical help and not to worry about being arrested. The authorities know the area is full of illegal migrants, including the Filipinos.

One of the Paper Dolls talks, too, about missing her mother, bringing home the message that we export Filipinos to care for other nations’ elderly, at the cost of being separated from their own elderly.

And yes, there is discrimination, even in cosmopolitan Tel-Aviv. We hear an Israeli taxi driver calling them perverse, even as he describes his own trip to the Philippines where he could pick up sex workers for a few dollars.

Half-Jewish, half-Filipino

The warm moments come, unexpectedly, from the elderly patients. Early on, Haim’s kindness and good heart show. He says that he hired Sally as a man, but it’s become inconsequential that she didn’t quite prove to be as manly as he had expected.

I want you to watch the film to appreciate how Sally and the other Paper Doll, find their place. I don’t want to give you the ending except to say that eventually, they go on to Britain, still caring for the elderly.

In a talk show interview, Heymann recalls, with amusement, how Chiqui was beginning to feel she had found her place, describing herself as “half-Jewish, half-Filipino,” again oblivious to the realities of politics and citizenship in Israel, or of Jewishness.

And yet when you think about it, the Paper Dolls’ situation is probably only more dramatic than that of most other Filipinos. Given our age of diaspora, what is the Philippines for us? What does being a Filipino mean?

The Paper Dolls become Filipino icons in the way we all are liminal -- never home, never away from home. Maybe, too, “Que sera sera” is appropriate, almost an anthem for us. There’s irony in the way we actually face so many choices now of where we can live, where we can work, and yet we make our choices, sighing, “Que sera sera.”

'Ganda'

2007-05-07T11:47:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Ganda’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:57am (Mla time) 05/02/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- The other week, I agreed to an electronic interview (i.e., by e-mail) with Ruel de Vera about Filipino concepts of beauty, parts of which he used for an article, titled “Beauty Slip,” in last week’s Sunday Inquirer Magazine. Reading through the article got me thinking more about “ganda” as a Filipino keyword, a keyword being a term that’s used often in conversations and which carries many meanings that apply to different aspects of our lives.

At first blush, ganda deals with aesthetics, with what’s beautiful. Like the English “beautiful,” ganda is used to describe nature (including flora and fauna), cultural objects such as paintings and sculpture, jewelry, clothing and of course human beings.

As with “beautiful,” the aesthetic meaning of “ganda” tends to be associated with the female. We do not describe a handsome man as “maganda,” although, curiously, Sofronio Calderon’s Diccionario Ingles-Español-Tagalog, published in 1915, translates “handsome” as “maganda, mainam, marikit,” exactly the same terms for “beautiful.” Today, we reserve “maganda” for a woman, but vestiges of the past are still with us in the way we describe both women and men as having “magandang mukha,” which I’ll tentatively translate as a “nice face.”

Good face, good day

There are important differences in the ways “ganda” and “magandang mukha” are used. The exclamation “Ganda!” tends to be a spur-of-the-moment evaluation of women, often drawing from clear social norms such as the color and smoothness of the skin, a certain height, body conformation, even the way the person carries herself. To say someone has a “magandang mukha,” on the other hand, evaluates the way different characteristics in the person converge to leave an impact on the person. There can still be an aesthetic component, but the emphasis is not so much on outstanding characteristics than in the way the features blend together harmoniously, interacting with the person’s demeanor and personality.

Ultimately, the face is evaluated as being good. Something’s lost in the translation “good face,” but really that’s what “magandang mukha” is. We apply the adjective to a face that makes us feel, well, good because we feel the person, too, radiates niceness and goodness. It’s the adjective a parent will apply, approvingly, to someone courting his or her child.

Last week I wrote, too, about how the most homely “askal” (street dog) can be “ganda,” too. “Ganda” here is not the opposite of “pangit” (ugly) but of “masama” (bad) -- “masamang mukha” being a face that causes disease, warning you of malice and ill will.

I’ve sometimes been asked why we greet people with “magandang araw,” because it seems to translate, awkwardly, into “beautiful day.” But “maganda” actually conveys wishes for a good day, as the Cebuanos do with “maayo” (or, sometimes simply “ayo”). “Maganda” then isn’t beautiful in a literal meteorological way; a rainy day can still be a very good day, depending on the company we have, on how the day’s events unfold. Our day is made good by the laughter of children in the morning, by that phone call, or e-mail, from overseas. Eventually, when a good day does seem certain, we begin to radiate it in our faces: yes, “maganda ang mukha.”

“Ganda,” limited to facial aesthetics, is superficial and fleeting, as we all too often find in our celebrities, including our politicians. The cosmetics, the cosmetic surgery, succeed in projecting some semblance of “ganda,” but only for the moment. The veneer wears off easily when the person doesn’t have the inner spirit that projects “maganda.” It’s not surprising that “maganda,” used to describe “loob” (our inner self), takes on many different meanings. Returning to Calderon’s 1915 dictionary, we find “magandang-loob” appearing all throughout the dictionary, to mean everything from amiable to charitable to good-natured. All said, it again boils down to goodness, but one that can be seen, felt and, most importantly, shared.

Singing out ‘ganda’

Perhaps because it is so richly emotive, “ganda” takes on musical qualities, a word that is literally sung out. It can be a quick “ganda” that we mutter to ourselves after a job well done: a meal, a painting, even a column (followed by shame when I realize my immodesty). Other times, our voices are pitched as we sing out a delighted “ganda,” often replicated “ganda-ganda” when we get an unexpected treat, an object, an act, or, we turn a bend on a road, a hidden landscape. The “ganda” here often leads to a kiss, an embrace, sometimes even tears, when we are moved by the person giving the treat, as we are moved by the giver’s “magandang loob.”

There’s “ganda,” too, the “da” stretched out with awe and respect for enduring beauty, as in Ricky Reyes’ billboards featuring Gloria Romero: “Ang Ganda ni Lola.” We do that all the time for our own “lola” [grandmothers] and “nanay” [mothers] and daughters and nieces and friends.

Beware, though: A stretched “ganda” can drip as well with sarcasm. The “da” is stretched, but we sing it out in a deadpan tone to convey the feeling that the person only thinks she’s “ganda,” but has no right to feel that way. The judgment is passed not so much on aesthetic grounds because the person may be physically attractive but is perceived to be undeserving of “ganda” because of reckless audacity, because of trying too hard with the cosmetics, with the clothing and jewelry, with the Botox. (For those who are not quite updated, Botox is a medical treatment that uses small amounts of bacterial toxins to paralyze the muscles. The effect? No wrinkles, and a peculiar frozen smile that elicits the Botox “ganda.”)

That Botox “ganda” indicts insincerity, but at times it can also be a reprimand, for a botched or mediocre job, often with an order to have it repeated. The Botox “ganda” is gendered, not quite in the domain of macho men, who express their displeasure by a volley of curses and expletives. The “ganda”-as-rebuke is an art mastered by the more flamboyant of gay males, and of middle-aged women (a.k.a. “matronas”), a concession to the norm of diplomacy without compromising on repugnance. I will never forget the way a gay “matronic” friend once got a restaurant bill that was completely in error. He looked at the bill, slowly lifted his eyes toward the waiter, crumpled the bill with one hand and went: “Ganda. Ulitin mo.” [“Beautiful. Do it again.”] The correct bill was delivered within minutes.

It’s curious that Imelda Marcos constantly speaks of “the true, the good and the beautiful,” but rarely uses the Tagalog “ganda.” It is a more powerful word in its connotations of the true and the good, and more.

Exercise your judgment of “ganda” this election time. Look closely at the candidates and ask yourselves if they have “magandang mukha.” The best spin doctors and speech writers can’t quite deliver a “magandang mukha” overnight. “Magandang mukha” comes from the inner spirit -- “magandang loob” -- one that is cultivated through the years, through a good (in the sense of ethical) life. It is also through living that good life that one learns to detect “maganda,” not just in people’s faces but in all who surround us, in all of nature.

'Askal'

2007-05-07T11:46:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Askal’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 02:09am (Mla time) 04/27/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Funny how Filipinos idolize human “mestizos” [of mixed blood] but have the opposite attitude when it comes to dogs, taking a condescending view of the “native” dog, the mixed breed, the mongrel. “Native” determines the fate of these dogs, which are considered good only when they’re barking and guarding the house, but are otherwise kept out of sight, out of mind, forbidden from entering the house, unwashed except when it rains and fed, if lucky, with scraps.

Purebreds get names like Princess, while the native dogs go nameless, or by monikers like Whitie, Blackie, Brownie, with the owners oblivious to the racist connotations. In other instances, the dogs’ names became political barometers. For example, as Ferdinand Marcos’ popularity sank, the number of native dogs called Makoy increased.

I grew up with several generations of dachshunds and knew little about native dogs until vet school, where we would get quite a few of them at the University of the Philippines’ animal clinic. We were required to identify the patient’s breed on their records and we’d scribble “mixed.”

We’d encounter them, too, in droves, when we conducted rabies vaccination campaigns. Owners, if you could call them that, would watch in amusement in an instance of reverse class snobbery: I’m sure they derived immense pleasure seeing middle-class kids running around in the heat trying to wrestle down the “native” dogs and quickly jabbing them with the vaccine before we’d get bitten. “Hey,” women would sometimes challenge us in Filipino, “Can you vaccinate my husband as well so he won’t go ‘ulol’ [mad]?” referring not to the usual madness of a rabid dog but of a philanderer.

Friends

I could understand why the street dogs were so difficult. As puppies, they would reciprocate the attention and affection humans -- usually children -- gave them. But as they grew older, they’d be exiled outdoors, chained, cursed, kicked, beaten. To survive, they learned to keep a safe distance from humans.

But at the university clinic, I saw another aspect of the “askal” [a contraction of “asong kalye,” or street dog]. The ones we saw had owners from poor communities, who clearly loved and cared for the dogs and were willing to use part of their meager budgets for an ailing dog. The dogs would come in, often without a leash, limping behind their owners. They were easy to deal with; it was almost as if they understood we were trying to do something for them.

Later, working in rural areas and spending several weeks at a time in communities, I found it actually easy to strike up friendships with the native dogs. For all the human cruelty they experienced, Bantay seemed to be able to sense quickly when there was a gentler, kinder human. Rural people were always surprised when they’d see native dogs sitting next to me and allowing me to stroke them. “Amoy aso kasi” [“I smell like a dog],” I’d say in jest.

Sometimes I’d worry for the dogs, wishing I could teach them to be even more distrustful of the kindness that humans occasional exhibit. One time in Kalinga, many years back, I saw a man calling out to one of his dogs, which responded immediately, running to its owner, tail furiously wagging away. I did not eat lunch that day, sad and angered at the brazen betrayal of friendship.

Sinag and Britney

The native dog is changing. Drive through the streets and you see more of them carrying evidence of “aristocratic” parents: dachshunds and boxers and pugs and Rottweilers and pit bulls. Purebreds have found their way into poorer communities, occasional strays from subdivisions, but in many cases, actually being raised there in the slums. Pit bulls are popular, since they are used for dog fights. Other poor families raise purebreds, in the most cramped quarters, to sell. “Better than a piggery,” one dog breeder in a slum area told me.

The term “askal” reflects a more benign view of the dogs. “Askal” could almost pass as a breed in itself, the way it sounds like Alsatian (better known as the German Shepherd).

My parents still have two venerably ancient dachshunds, but my own dogs are askal, something that happened accidentally. I was having an old house renovated and the construction workers took in two of the most malnourished, mangy puppies, pot-bellied from worms. I’ve learned this happens quite often in construction sites, the dogs meant to help guard the premises, sometimes raised with cats that come in to go after mice and rats. I de-wormed and bathed the pups, and I would play and go “kutchi-kutchi” whenever I’d visit. When the renovation was done, they left the pups, now spry adolescents, and before I could get them ligated, they produced more askal, of all sizes, shapes and colors.

I’ve come to confirm what I learned in genetics lectures: Askal are brighter and stronger than pedigreed dogs. “Purebred” simply means dogs were inbred to obtain a particular characteristic, for example, the long bodies of dachshunds, which made them ideal to hunt underground creatures. But all that inbreeding has produced many problems for the dogs: dachshunds, for example, are prone to back injuries and paralysis. The mixed breeds, our askal, are sturdier, quite resistant to diseases. I’ve lost count of the number of slum dogs I see with a distinctive twitching that tells me they’re survivors of distemper, a disease that almost always kills a purebred pup.

Askal are probably even better adapted to human populations, having learned to decipher the entire range of human neighbors, noble and ignoble. Because they’re so independent, askal will resist training; but with the right methods (chokers and force never work), they’ll learn quickly.

I still have Sinag and Tala, the original construction dogs, and Munggil and Britney and Tisay. Munggil got her name because she was the runt in the litter, her name meaning “tiny” in Bahasa Indonesia. But after I named her, she began to grow, and grow, almost with a vengeance, and is now the tallest, most elegant dog you can imagine. Britney, well, she was always being teased as plain and ugly, but I always argued that like humans, she has her own kind of “ganda” [beauty].

The five askal have free rein of the gardens and the house, occasionally becoming too comfortable, inviting themselves to sofas and beds. They’re alert watchdogs, but will quickly move into “welcome” mode when they know the visitors are all right.

Best of all, they’re incredibly good with children. It helps that they’re of a size that allows them to literally see eye to eye with toddlers, which undoubtedly helps with the bonding.

I worry that my two toddlers, growing up with these friendly askal, might end up thinking all dogs are as tame. When they’re older, I’ll explain why I pull them away when they approach dogs in the street. With time, they’ll be able to tell, as I have, if a dog is friendly.

Meanwhile, our askal are becoming so much a part of their childhood, and will someday help me to explain goodness and kindness, and the joys of being free-spirited and “ganda,” unencumbered by pedigrees and external appearances.

Why?

2007-05-07T11:45:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Why?
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:36am (Mla time) 04/25/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Even as a child, Remberto de la Paz (“Bobby” to friends) was said to have been the ever inquisitive one, always asking why and figuring out how to repair things. He would have wanted to become an engineer, but math was his Achilles’ heel so, coming from a family of physicians, he ended up in the University of the Philippines College of Medicine.

The why’s didn’t stop there but came to deal more with the state of the Philippines. It was the 1970s, the era of Ferdinand Marcos and martial law, and the health sector -- professionals and students -- were not spared by the social ferment. Which shouldn’t be surprising given the way social inequities are always amplified in the health sector, the poor dying of diseases that are both preventable and curable.

The rural areas were in particularly dire straits, with hundreds of municipalities having no physician. In the 1960s, there had been a massive brain drain of Filipino doctors and nurses, mostly going to the United States. Those who stayed on would practice in the cities.

Marcos’ health technocrats came up with a six-month rural service requirement for all medical graduates, hoping to provide far-flung areas with medical services, however temporary. There were also hopes that young idealistic physicians would end up staying on after their rural service.

But the program didn’t work out. If you had the connections, you could get assigned to a fairly urbanized “barrio” in the cities, sometimes even in Metro Manila. As for those who went out, there was a total mismatch between their medical training and the rural service. The medical curriculum was oriented to high-tech hospitals, but they were working in rural health units with few supplies beyond small kits of medicines marked “Medical Assistance for Rural Communities and Other Sectors” (MARCOS).

For most of the medical graduates, rural service was a nuisance, a requirement that they needed to get over with as soon as possible so they could leave for the States.

There were exceptions. The medical schools had their share of student activists who went out, even as students, to serve in urban slums and looked forward to rural service. And after doing their rural service, some were crazy enough to want to stay on.

In the 1970s, health activists had formed a national network of community-based health programs (CBHPs) mainly to serve rural areas. Bobby and his wife, Sylvia, also a doctor, eventually ended up working in one of these CBHPs, with an organization called AKAP, founded by TB specialist Dr. Mita Pardo de Tavera. I was also working with AKAP, and that was how I came to know Bobby and Sylvia.

The CBHPs believed that the solutions to health would come not from individual behavior change alone, but through community organizing so people could come up with collective solutions to their health problems. Dr. Tavera’s vision for TB control involved training of local health workers, some with hardly any formal education, to conduct health education classes, mobilize communities for BCG vaccinations, collect and examine sputum samples from people to check if they were infected with TB, and supervise patients with their anti-TB medication.

Bobby’s and Sylvia’s lives revolved around TB, but they knew, too, how the obstacles to TB control were often rooted in economics and politics. Patients couldn’t afford the TB medicines, so AKAP provided them for free, but we found out that some of the patients were selling the medicines so they could feed their families. We ended up having to check their urine for an orange tinge, proof that they were taking their rifampicin, the most expensive medicine in their treatment.

There were other people asking why as well: Why were these UP medical graduates working in godforsaken, “NPA-infested” Samar province, rather than in the States? The heat was on, and eventually the couple had to move from Gandara, one of the poorest towns in Samar, to the capital Catbalogan, but continued to care for patients from several towns.

On April 23, 1982, late in the afternoon, a man walked into the De la Paz’s clinic, and fired away. A total of 11 bullets entered and exited Bobby’s body. The gunman was said to have threatened people who were watching: “Who else will help the people from the mountains?” He was referring to the NPA.

Word spread quickly, with at least 200 people rushing over to offer help. Twenty-nine people donated blood. Bobby lived long enough to see his mother, who flew in from Manila. He would have turned 30 on Sept. 11 that year.

Twenty-five years on, I still hear of health workers active in Samar and other places where the likes of Bobby had served. The other CBHP doctors are still around, scattered all over but most are still serving in their own ways, teaching in medical schools, doing private practice, even working through government. Our paths cross from time to time: Sylvia went on to train in obstetrics and was the one who attended my daughter Yna’s birth.

Changes have come all too slowly in the health system. The government now has a TB program very similar to what AKAP was doing in the 1980s, but many Filipinos still die of the disease. The rural service requirement for medical graduates has been abolished and the Department of Health came up with a voluntary Doctor to the Barrios program, but there are few takers.

A new wave of brain drain now plagues us, mainly of nurses, including doctors-turned-nurses. It’s mostly for economic reasons, but I hear more people talking of hopelessness and despair with the political situation here.

Bobby’s case has never been solved. Ironically, even without Marcos and martial law, we face a new round of assassinations of suspected leftists, and on a scale more vicious and bloody than we ever saw under Marcos. Medical Action Group (MAG), a human rights medical group formed after Bobby’s death, is holding a training workshop in forensics this week together with the Commission on Human Rights, specifically in response to this wave of killings.

Last year, Dr. Chandu Claver and his wife Alice, both active with the group Bayan and with community health programs, were shot in Tabuk, Kalinga. Alice died from her bullet wounds. The Clavers’ assailants remain at large.

What would Bobby have done if he had lived? I suspect he would have gone for postgraduate training in medical bioengineering and continued finding ways to serve the poor. But wherever he might have ended up, I have a strong feeling he would have continued to ask why, perhaps with greater urgency than he had back in medical school and in Samar.

* * *

Health Action for Human Rights will sponsor a forum on April 26, Thursday, at 4 p.m., at the Philippine General Hospital Emergency Room complex, with lectures on “The Current Human Rights Situation” and “The Alston Report.”

If you want more information on the life of Bobby de la Paz, look up an excellent biography written by Dulce Festin Baybay in the anthology “Six Young Filipino Heroes,” edited by Asuncion David Maramba.

UP’s sunflowers

2007-05-07T11:44:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

UP’s sunflowers
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 02:40am (Mla time) 04/20/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- There’s an event-filled weekend coming up, with Earth Day on the 22nd and several schools, notably the University of the Philippines (UP), holding their graduation exercises.

The graduating students at UP in Diliman, Quezon City, and their families are in for a treat, with sunflowers blooming all along University Avenue, the main road that brings you into the campus from Commonwealth Avenue and Quezon Memorial Circle.

The sunflowers are planted only in the summer, timed to bloom around the third weekend of April, when the different colleges hold their recognition ceremonies on a Saturday, culminating in one grand university commencement exercise the following day.

I have to hand it to UP’s seasoned gardeners, who have perfected their schedules for the sunflowers, planting them in a way that they bloom right in time for the graduation ceremonies. That’s why it’s important for you to catch the sunflowers, which will stay on one or two weeks after the commencement exercises. As the flowers droop and wilt, the gardeners will step in to uproot the plants and harvest the sunflower heads for the seeds.

Teaching plants

These plants are more than beautiful ornamentals. They’re in a way teacher plants, offering many lessons about nature, so appropriate for Earth Day.

We could start with its botanical aspects. The sunflower is intriguing in that its attractive yellow flowers aren’t quite flowers. The plant belongs to the family Compositae, so called because its members have composite flowers. What you see are golden heads with more than a thousand small, individual florets.

Let me confuse you some more: When the mature florets mature, they take on a different appearance and people tend to call them sunflower seeds. Not quite correct again. The mature florets are actually fruits (achenes), and the seeds are actually inside, covered by an inedible husk.

The scientific name for sunflowers is Helianthus, from “Helios,” the Greek god of the sun, and “anthos” for flower. The plants are heliotropic, meaning they track the sun’s movements. When you visit the sunflowers, look for the buds or immature heads, which start the day facing east, where the sun rises, and then follows the sun’s rays through the day moving to the west. After the sun sets though, the buds turn eastward again, waiting for the sun to rise the next day.

The heliotropism itself is an adaptation for survival, the plant maximizing sunlight. Not only that, their flower heads become five-star resorts that attract insects, who fly in and land to sunbathe and play (smile), all to the advantage again of the plant since the insects help pollinate.

The sunflowers’ heliotropism provides a case study for those interested in fluid mechanics. There’s a small plant “muscle” involved and a fine regulation of potassium exchange that allows this heliotropism. Once the flower head blooms, it can no longer move with the sun’s rays—“paralyzed” in an eastward direction.

The sunflower has been studied by chemists and agronomists and a host of other researchers because it has so many uses. The sunflower seeds are used as a snack food, while the plant itself yields sunflower oil, animal feed, various industrial chemicals and, lately, it’s even been formulated into a biofuel, a substitute for gasoline.

If your interest is mathematics, the sunflowers provide an example of Fibonacci numbers. I won’t go into details about these numbers except to say that they follow a certain formula. The sunflower’s florets are arranged in a spiral, usually 34 in one direction and 55 in the other. Other Fibonacci numerical patterns are found throughout nature, from the branching of some trees to the curves of waves.

The sunflowers are for our artists as well. Vincent Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings were intended to decorate a room for his friend and fellow impressionist Paul Gauguin. I don’t know if they ever really ended up decorating Gauguin’s room, considering that the two’s short stay together was, to say the least, turbulent.

Historians should look, too, into the sunflowers. They were originally cultivated in the Americas, but were eventually introduced to the rest of the world by explorers and colonizers. I suspect they came to the Philippines through the galleon trade.

Watching the sunflowers thrive so well in UP and knowing of their many uses make me wonder why they aren’t cultivated more widely. Even without economic considerations, they are dramatic ornamentals: a few stalks are enough to provide a heartwarming accent for a city backyard garden.

And here’s an idea for UP with its centennial coming up next year. Maybe we can have special sunflower fields in all campuses, spinning off all kinds of other products from colorful postcards to packets of seeds, certified to be authentic UP.

Earth Day, Book Day

Those who won’t be at UP for its Earth Day graduation have a choice of other activities. Over at the Sidcor Sunday Flea Market at the Lung Center, there will be a special Earth Day affair called “Baga’t Hangin Musikahan 2007,” to include a concert from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. with performing groups like Orange & Lemons, Pinikpikan, Brownman Revival, Akafellas, Paolo Santos, Aiza Seguerra, Lou Bonnevie and her band, and hey, the Singing Doctors of the Lung Center. Besides singing, the Lung Center will also offer free pulmonary work-ups, and lectures on alternative fuels. The concert is free, sponsored by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. There’s also an on-the-spot poster contest on the theme “Give your lungs a chance” at 7:30. So, go, go enjoy the flea market ... and all the bonus events.

At the other end of Metro Manila, at the Cultural Center, the environmental group Haribon is organizing Sibol 2007 with several activities, mainly art and multi-media exhibits and a showing of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s documentary about global warming. The activities go through the entire day but the film showing is from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Dream Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The weekend has still another unexpected treat. Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish cultural center, will celebrate International Book Day on Saturday, with an entire day of activities from 10 a.m. 11 p.m., including, hold your breath, concerts, film showings, wine and cheese tasting, Latin dancing, photo and declamation contests, a book market, even free Spanish lessons! Instituto Cervantes is on 855 T.M. Kalaw St. in Ermita, Manila. Visit the website (www.manila.cervantes.es) for more information or call +632 5261482 to 85.

The International Day of the Book is actually April 23, but Instituto Cervantes wisely thought of celebrating it this Saturday. The Spaniards started it all, marking Miguel Cervantes’ death anniversary. In Catalonia, people would give each other a rose in exchange for a book. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, the government celebrates by giving schoolchildren a token that can be used toward buying a book.

Don’t forget your hats, sunglasses and sun block this weekend. And here’s hoping that in a few years, Earth Day and the International Day of the Book will be in the consciousness of every Filipino.

Boxing’s other faces

2007-05-07T11:43:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Boxing’s other faces
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:05am (Mla time) 04/18/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Manny Pacquiao’s victory last Sunday came only two weeks after another Filipino boxer, Angelito Sisnorio, was killed by a brain hemorrhage sustained during a boxing match in Thailand, where he was pitted against flyweight champion Chatchai Sasakul.

Pacquiao’s victory might make us forget, too quickly, Sisnorio’s death. Yes, the Games and Amusements Board has since banned Filipino boxers from going to Thailand and there was some outrage expressed, with Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad writing an article with the title, “Did they have to deal with savage Thailand?” Trinidad exposed a racket in Thailand: “Saturday night fights featuring hapless Filipino pugs against rising or established Thai boxers have been regular dinner fare in Bangkok.” Not only that, Trinidad said, some fights are rigged, with Filipino boxers “advised” to intentionally lose a match.

I can believe Trinidad’s claims, and will give my reasons shortly. But I did want to write, too, about the need to ask ourselves some tough questions about the many faces of boxing, other than that of the victorious Pacquiao.

Paid gore

Last year, during a visit to Thailand, I picked up a magazine in a rural market newsstand. The magazine happened to be displayed with its back cover facing me, and it caught my eye because it showed a Thai boxer with a bloodied face, his eyes wide open with pain and with fear. There were blood stains as well in different parts of his body and the Thai captions were printed in a way that made it look like it was dripping blood, much like you see in the titles of horror movies. Inside the magazine, there were more photographs of this type, including the boxer on the back page shown during the match taking blows from his opponent.

I bought the magazine and showed it later to O’ong Maryono, an Indonesian martial arts expert who currently lives in Thailand. O’ong shook his head sadly and explained that this happens very often in Thai boxing, with people paid to both inflict and receive such injuries.

I was shocked, having thought of muay Thai or Thai boxing as a sport that had become refined through the years. Two years ago, Discovery Channel featured a documentary on muay Thai showing how it had become almost an art. I had also read books with detailed descriptions of the rituals and rules that accompany muay Thai, with boxers actually praying before each match.

The magazine I got showed another side to Thai boxing, one of bloodthirsty spectacle with ties to syndicates and paid gore.

I was disturbed mainly because all that lust for blood seemed to go against the perception of Thailand as a gentle Buddhist country that eschews violence of any kind. But then as a social scientist, I should know better. In many parts of Asia, you will find the gentlest people, overly concerned about maintaining smooth interpersonal relations. Yet, beneath the surface, there may be simmering tensions and conflicts in values.

Many Thais themselves object to the transformation of Thai boxing into a gladiator sport, but acknowledge that it reflects a disturbing side of the Thai psyche, one that occasionally erupts in the political arena. Thai history has its share of extreme violence even up to fairly recent history. There was for example the “Thammasat Massacre” of 1976, when Right-wing paramilitary forces fired at a pro-democracy rally near Thammasat University. Officially, 46 people were killed, but the death toll may have been higher. The brutality went beyond the killings, with bodies mutilated.

And us?

I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the way we lash out at other cultures and fail to see how we, too, may have a similar “underside” to our culture. If Thai brutality seems to contradict Buddhism, we shouldn’t forget that we, too, have cultural behaviors that run against Christian compassion.

I’d start with our brutality to animals, from dog-eating to cockfighting to the “killing me softly” way of slaughtering chickens and ducks in parts of the Cordillera region, the hapless birds slowly beaten to death.

I was once traveling with a foreigner out of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and she had to be the one to point out to me, in disgust, a poster showing horsefights in Bukidnon province. The posters were from the Department of Tourism, and apparently we don’t think twice about how such photographs drive away, rather than attract, tourists and project us as a sadistic people.

And you know what? It seems the Thais are kindred spirits for some of this sadism with animals. When police raided a dogfight recently in Antipolo City, they found Thai visitors who had flown in just for those fights.

All that I’ve just described gives the context to our love of boxing. We forget that this sport leaves many casualties. We forget that Sisnorio had once been a youth boxing champion, and world-class, too. When he died in Thailand, he was only 24. Boxing careers are short, moments of glory too brief. Last year, the University of the Philippines anthropology department hosted a Japanese sociology student who had first acquired an interest in Filipino boxers because there were a few older ones who were in Japan. He followed their trail back here, to find more of these older boxers, some living in past glory, but none in wealth.

We forget, too, the power relations behind international boxing. It’s not a coincidence that the bouts involve Third World boxers, fighting in a ring in the United States. Soon, we hear, they will bring these fights to China, with their new rich eager to pay to watch. We forget that Filipino boxers end up in Thailand, paid to lose, because Thailand is richer than we are.

Call me a wimp, but I’m unable to feel jubilation watching two people pummel each other. I cringe when thinking of a Filipino being battered, and I grieved after seeing the photograph of Sisnorio’s home in Koronadal. The caption described it accurately as a “shack,” reminding us that so many boxers come from impoverished backgrounds, with few options in life for upward social mobility.

I’d ask, too, if I’m being unpatriotic in being unable to feel national pride watching a Filipino emerge victorious from having beaten up a Mexican. Sure, the bouts are monitored carefully, boxers matched kilo for kilo, given regulation gloves and play by all kinds of rules -- a far cry from the debacles in Thailand’s rigged fights. But just how civilized can boxing ever become?

All said, I worry about how the glorification of boxing seeps into our national psyche, to the point where urban poor communities have street boxing matches involving children, with crowds cheering them on and placing bets. How honest are we in explaining to children what a boxer’s road to success and glory might entail, and the chances they’ll ever make it?

Phantom voters, phantom genders

2007-05-07T11:42:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Phantom voters, phantom genders
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:17am (Mla time) 04/13/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Danton Remoto and thousands of other Filipinos are fuming mad at Ben Abalos and the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Beyond the computer snafus and printing fiascoes, beyond the questions about whether they can count or not, Comelec officials are coming under fire now about the way they accredit party lists. While approving the applications of groups with the most obscure of constituencies (some nothing more than relatives of big shots), the Comelec has turned down the application of Ang Ladlad, which Remoto founded and which wants to give a voice to Filipino LGBTs (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered).

The Comelec claims Ang Ladlad is a party of “phantom voters.” Hmmm, phantom voters? I thought of the comic books of my youth and that hunk running around in skin-tight leotards and an eye mask, but the Comelec means something else: it claims that Ang Ladlad’s constituencies are unreal, are phantasms.

This reminds us that beyond the issue of party-list representation, Philippine society still has serious hang-ups about genders, an issue I’ve brought up in several columns.

Pink vote

The Comelec represents the gender ostriches, the ones who would like to think the world only has two genders and any claims to the contrary can’t be true. The LGBTs are mere phantoms lurking in the night.

Yet, we know there are many Filipinos who do recognize the other genders and are terrified, thinking we face an epidemic of “sexual perverts.” I am not exaggerating the fears here. I have been getting reports about a former Department of Health employee who goes around lecturing in different cities claiming that there is a global conspiracy, headed by the United States, to control population. According to this imaginative woman, this involves imposing family planning—and promoting homosexuality!

We’ll never really have reliable figures about the size of the LGBT constituency. We hear 10 percent cited quite often, based on the Kinsey survey in the United States back in the 1950s but that survey was problematic and only asked about male homosexual experience. Other more recent surveys in different countries give figures hovering between 4 percent and 6 percent. In the last Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study of the University of the Philippines, 15.1 percent of males and 3.6 percent of females said they had same-sex sex (sorry for the awkward terminology).

But surveys are always difficult to conduct when it comes to asking people for personal disclosure on sensitive issues, which means the tendency is for the statistics to under-represent reality.

Ang Ladlad has sent out a text message calling for a show of force: “On Friday the 13th (I think that’s supposed to sound ominous), 10 a.m., gays and lesbians will rally in front of the Comelec to show we are not the phantom, but the opera. Pls wear pink, white or come in costume. And join us in a show of the Pink Vote.”

Hidden genders

I’m sure the event will be well attended, but there might be almost as many media people (some themselves LGBT) as “phantom” voters. The problem again is that the rally is public and many LGBTs are not about to come out yet.

We need to go back in history to understand how we’ve progressed -- or regressed with gender rights. In the past, we had “lalaki” [male] and “babae” [female] and an occasional “bakla” [gay] who would get beaten up. But even amid that repression, there were already quite a few courageous “bakla” who were quite open about it. Philippine society responded by allowing certain occupational niches for the “bakla,” particularly hairdressing, dress designing, doing the laundry (yes, “bakla” used to be “lavanderas” [laundrywomen]!). Besides “bakla,” there were other words used, notably “binabae,” “biniboy’’ and “syoki.” All these terms reflected not so much sexual orientation than a concept of an effeminate male, “binabae” meaning “like a woman,” “biniboy” being a contraction of “binibini” [miss] and “boy” while “syoki” came from the Hokkien Chinese word that means weak-spirited.

With time, those terms have become almost extinct, perhaps emblematic of the way the “weak-spirited” stereotype has been challenged. It’s inevitable, as a global movement grows around the rights of sexual minorities. In the 1950s, “gay” was a term used to refer to the underground male homosexual culture; by the 1970s, thousands of women and men were marching in the streets proclaiming Gay Pride and protesting social discrimination. Filipinos were swept up by this growing awareness of the need to fight social prejudice and bigotry.

Pepper Boys

Many gains have been made to advance gender rights, of women, and of the LGBT. By and large though, gender discrimination remains prevalent, forcing many LGBTs to remain in the shadows. There’s a class factor to all this. In the past, the ones who dared to come out -- as captured in the term “ladlad” (to shed one’s cape) -- were mainly from the low-income groups. Now, more upper-class Filipinos are coming out, but still with trepidation because of the fear of being disowned, of bringing “shame” to the family name, of losing one’s job.

The shifts in gender labels actually reflect this paranoia. I hear people differentiating themselves as “discreet gays” from “parloristas” [beauty parlor attendants], a reference made with the kind of derision that accompanies “palengkera,” referring to a loud, lower-class woman market vendor.

The need to be discreet has given rise to the gender category “paminta,” which gives a new meaning to Spice Boys. “Paminta” means pepper, but the word is derived from “pa-mhin.” Further translation: “mhin” means “men” and “pa-mhin” means trying to be masculine, as society requires men to be. To be “paminta” is an attempt to escape society’s homophobic radar screens or sometimes even “gay-dar” (the radar screens of other gay men).

There’s more. Some of the Pepper Boys do a good job of it, and are called “pamintang buo” (whole pepper); others fail miserably and are mocked as “pamintang durog” (ground pepper).

“Discreetness” has become an obsession, sometimes a desperate attempt at camouflage. It’s not surprising then that even the English word “bisexual” has mutated in the Philippines to mean a “discreet gay” who insists on clinging to the last vestiges of acceptable sexuality, meaning having some kind of attraction for women. I once interviewed a Pepper Boy who said he was bisexual, but it turned out that in his 30-plus years of existence he only had one tryst with a woman, way back in his youth, when his macho “barkada” [gang of buddies] forced him to have sex in a brothel.

Filipino hidden gender categories go beyond sexual orientation; they speak of a liminal and, yes, phantom-ic, existence that is always in danger of becoming even more oppressive as religious conservatives go on the offensive like what they are doing now.

Phantom genders, phantom voters: there’s a sizeable constituency out there. And the Comelec, by denying representation to LGBTs, makes a travesty of the party-list system.

'Matona'

2007-05-07T11:41:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Matona’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 11:35pm (Mla time) 04/10/2007

A friend of mine sent a text message last week, complaining that it was already April and she still didn’t know what a “matona” was.

“Matona”? I thought it was some abbreviated text-message word, and then I remembered that I had mentioned it in one of my columns, about emerging genders in the Philippines, together with a promise to describe those categories. I wrote, then, that genders are social constructs that expand the biological “male” and “female.” They are created and defined differently, from one society to another.

I also did that column, concerned that people were equating gender with sexual orientation, which should not be the case. To give an example, I described the “manang” as a gender construct. The term used to refer, with respect, to older women, but has since evolved to refer now to older women (and lately, to men as well) who tend to be dour and humorless, constantly poking into other people’s affairs (sexual and non-sexual) and passing judgment with all the self-righteousness they can muster. We can see here that “manang” has nothing to do with sexual orientation, but it does pick out some attributes around “maleness” and “femaleness” to label people.

Changing times

Once we’re assigned to one gender category, most of us conform to society’s expectations about what we can -- and can’t -- be, what we can -- and can’t -- do. When someone proclaims, “Lalaki ako” [literally, “I am a man”] he is saying many other things, for example, “I can swear any time I want to, and go out and stay out late.” “Lalaki ako” also negates many other behaviors, for example, “I will not cry in public.” These are all very culture-specific; in many societies, the equivalent of “lalaki” [man] does not forbid the person from showing his emotions in public, for example.

We learn our gender roles from a very early age. I was watching a grandfather chiding his wife the other day for allowing their infant grandson to play with a hair brush. That, he felt, was “pambabae” -- behavior of a girl! Gender is taught and incorporated into our very core of being, into our bodies, all the way up to the way we hold the newspaper, and cross our legs, as we read my column.

Yet, powerful as gender may be, societies are constantly revising these categories and definitions. All this does not happen whimsically. The gender categories are responses to the times, to changes in economic structures, political systems. Often enough, the new categories are in a way “secessions” of people who feel “trapped” by the norms and who dare to defy the norms.

This takes me to the focus of today’s column: the “matona.” Last semester I asked my students in a course on gender and sexuality to pick out and define new gender categories in the Philippines. One student wrote about the “matona.” a term I hadn’t been aware of until I read it in the student’s paper.

When I asked other students in the University of the Philippines about the “matona,” most were unaware of the term, but when I checked with an urban poor community in Quezon City, it sparked off a long discussion. Almost as if it had been scripted, just as we were discussing the “matona,” a motorcycle came into the street where we were. As the driver got off, taking off her helmet, my friends pointed to her and said, “Ayan, ayan [There, there]. Matona.”

People in the community explained that “matona” is a feminine derivation of “maton,” or hoodlum. But we have to be careful about the word “hoodlum” here, which tends to have connotations of delinquency, even criminality. People use the term “matona” with different tones. It can be tongue-in-cheek, it can be part mockery, but the tone is never totally negative. In fact, the term is sometimes used almost affectionately.

It’s also interesting that people distinguish between two types of “matona.” There’s the “matonang tibo,” which refers to a tough lesbian, what they would call in the West a “butch lesbian.” This seems to be used almost interchangeably with an older word, “tomboy.”

More intriguing is that there’s the almost redundant term “matonang babae,” who is not necessarily lesbian. “Lumalaban siya,” my urban poor friends told me, meaning she fights back, or she fights for her rights. Often, they explained, these are women who have been abused, even raped, and who are now fighting back.

‘Matona,’ Madonna

I suspect the “matona” ties into changing women’s roles, in the urban poor context. The life of a woman in an urban poor community is tough. Besides dealing with poverty, many women in the slums have been abused, battered and abandoned by their fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers. In response, many have learned to be quite independent and now show this independence with a “masculinization” of their body movements, their clothing, their speech, even their occupations.

There is a sharp class angle to this use of “matona.” Among the upper classes in the Philippines, an assertive woman is, well, an assertive woman. It’s becoming almost a norm, with women occupying many senior positions in universities and corporations.

Among our lower classes, assertiveness may not be as acceptable. No doubt, our lower-class women have always been strong, taking on many responsibilities that men have abdicated, but they had to do this with meekness and patience as is expected of being “babae.” Today’s urban poor women are changing, thanks in part to the influence of community organizing and women’s groups. Urban poor women are asking questions, speaking out and, yes, fighting back.

In rural areas, assertive women would be called, contemptuously, “agresibo,” or even risk being labeled as “aswang” (loosely translated, a witch) and getting marginalized. Today, urban poor communities are more philosophical about it. “Matona” reflects some ambivalence, a feeling that the assertive woman is “different,” and yet accepting that, yes, maybe it’s a good thing for women to move on from the old Madonna stereotypes (a la docile Virgin Mary) to, yes, Madonna the singer, the borderline dominatrix.

It will be interesting to see what happens to this word, but what’s more important is to see how the word evolves in relation to the changing status of women not just in urban poor communities but in the Philippines in general. Those developments will give the context to the way “matona” is used -- whether tongue-in-cheek as it is being used today, falling into disuse maybe because it becomes irrelevant, or, who knows, turning into a badge or honor, maybe even turned into a song like that one about the Waray-Waray woman. That last term, too, is a gender category, something I can discuss in future columns as I deal with the other fascinating genders we have in the Philippines.

Fasting and abstinence

2007-05-07T11:40:00.002+08:00

PINOY KASI

Fasting and abstinence
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:12am (Mla time) 04/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Older Filipinos will remember when Catholics had to abstain from meat all throughout Lent. But if that seemed excessively strict, we shouldn’t forget that early Christians not only abstained but fasted, throughout most of Lent.

Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has modified the rules around fasting and abstinence. In 1966, Pope Paul VI issued “Paenitimini” or the Apostolic Constitution on Penance which reorganized these rules, while explaining the reasons for the revisions.

I’ve been using the word “rules” but that probably is too strong a term. “Paenitimini” left it to local bishops’ conferences to thresh out more specific guidelines on fasting and abstinence, depending on local situations. And while the Catholic Church today still considers the “substantial observance” of fasting and abstinence as an obligation, there is more emphasis today on the rationale and spirit behind these penitential practices.

I thought it’d be useful then to look first at what’s “required” and then go back to the meaning of Lenten penance itself, especially in our Filipino context.

Whale and turtle?

What are the “rules” today? All healthy Catholics aged 18 to 59 are obligated to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. All kinds of exemptions are possible, for example for people who are traveling, or students. (I was thinking in particular of Filipino students, whose final examinations are appropriately timed during Lent.)

Catholic fasting pales in comparison with the Muslims’ Ramadan, where the faithful fast for an entire month, meaning no food or water from sunrise to sunset. The Catholic fast simply states that there should be “no full meal” during the day. Snacks, or if we prefer the more solemn sounding “collations,” are allowed.

Besides fasting, Catholics aged 14 and above have to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent. It’s interesting though that the rules issued by the Catholic Church also point out that all Fridays of the year, except for those on which a solemnity (holy day) falls, are days of penance and so voluntary abstinence is suggested.

Vegetarians would cringe on how “meat” is defined. Fish is allowed. So are eggs and dairy products. And lard and margarine. And “meat juices,” for example, chicken broth and consommé.

The circuitous rules here have led to all kinds of questions: Would whale meat be “meat”? (Whales are mammals, not fish, so...) What about turtles and frogs and insects? One article in the American Catholic website suggests that the best guide is to follow custom, whatever the local tradition is. I’m not sure how helpful that rule is, considering how, in so many Asian countries, we eat anything that moves.

Public penance

I was just so amazed at the kinds of discussions around fasting and abstinence in different publications and on the Internet, especially when it comes to interpreting the rules, such as when a “collation” or snack would be most appropriate.

Lost in the quibbling is a reflection on what penance means. This, of course, varies from one culture to another. Filipinos use the Spanish-derived word “penitensiya,” with rather severe connotations. Even today, there are areas in the Philippines where older Filipinos will try to get people not just to fast and abstain from meat but also to refrain from talking, laughing, even bathing (on Good Friday). Then, too, there are the extreme penitential modes like flagellation and crucifixions.

Rightly so, Lent and Holy Week should be a time for penance but serious questions have been raised about severe self-mortification. We forget that fasting is not meant to punish the body; instead, it is meant as an aid to prayer and spirituality. Emptying the body makes room for the less mundane. The hunger that comes with fasting is also a powerful metaphor for our hunger for spirituality. With that in mind, it’s easier to understand why we have Eucharistic fasting, the requirement that one should refrain from taking food and water an hour before communion.

There’s more to penance. Pope Paul VI’s “Paenitimini” reminds us that there is a “continuous need of conversion and renewal, a renewal which must be implemented not only interiorly and individually but also externally and socially.”

In that context, fasting and abstinence from meat are therefore not simply pathways to personal sanctity but also a way of expressing our solidarity with the poor, sharing their hunger and their usually meatless meals. One theologian notes, wryly: “Avoiding meat while eating lobster misses the point.” Isaiah (58:3-8) is more indignant, attacking the hypocrisy that may accompany religious fasting. To give just one excerpt: “Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

The whole idea then of social penance is to make up for our collective failings. Besides fasting and abstinence, there are other ways of doing penance, including prayers and charity work. We might do well to popularize a practice called “Scrutinies,” where entire communities or parishes come together for a kind of collective examination of conscience, not to ferret out sinners in our midst but to think of the times we shirked away from social responsibilities, and what we might want to do about it.

Changing times

When the Catholic Church “relaxed” its rules on abstinence, no longer requiring meatless Fridays throughout the year, New Yorker magazine came out with a cartoon showing Satan pointing to multitudes of people burning in hell and saying: “Now what do we do with them?” Presumably, the burning souls were Catholics who had eaten meat on a Friday when it was still considered a mortal sin.

Times do change and everywhere religions are moving toward an emphasis on substance rather than form, conscience rather than rules. Holy Week in the past was severely ascetic, but I wonder how much it contributed to our “holiness” as individuals or as a nation.

Today, we may be swinging to the other extreme, with Holy Week simply seen as time for a vacation, for Boracay and Baguio and Hong Kong or for staying home to watch a stack of DVDs, including some X-rated ones.

There is value in going back and rediscovering the value of self-denial. I’m amused to find these days people paying exorbitant fees to stay in expensive spas where they are forced to fast and abstain from all kinds of meat (including whales and turtles and...) so they can become healthier. Wise women and men of different faiths figured long ago that penance, without whips and chains, made us healthier both in body and in spirit. That’s something to reflect on this Holy Week as we do penance, individually or collectively, through fasting and abstinence or through good work.

(The full text of “Paenitimini” can be found on www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_19660217_paenitemini_en.html.)

Much, little

2007-05-07T11:40:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Much, little
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:47am (Mla time) 03/30/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- An American friend of mine, railing about our poor sense of time, finally exclaimed: “Even your roosters can’t get their crowing right.”

I was tempted to agree, having tossed and turned through the night because of neighbors who keep battalions of fighting cocks that ti-ti-la-ok at 2 or 3 in the morning, rather than around sunrise. But you know, I suspect their crowing time is actually an adaptation to us humans. The birds stir when there’s movement in households, and that can start very early in the morning.

It’s not just farmers and rural people who start their day early. Our urban areas buzz with activity long before the sun rises. How early? Go to any of our wet markets and you’ll find vendors coming in with their fish, meat, vegetables and fruits at 3 or 4 a.m. And if you think that’s early, many of them have already gone to their suppliers, who start even earlier.

Dawn to dusk

The middle class thinks the poor are indolent, but try visiting the slums and you’ll be amazed at the work that goes on, way before dawn and long after dusk. I’ll describe the working activities in a typical day, pieced together from my field notes:

At 6 a.m., the "sari-sari stores" [neighborhood variety stores] are already open. Sometimes even earlier than that, you’ll find parents bringing their children to school. They do this because it takes so long to commute to the schools, and also because they will have to rush off to work right after.

A few sari-sari stores have tables in front to serve breakfast. I’m always amazed at how many people buy their breakfast, mostly younger ones, migrants from outside Manila who rent bed space inside the slums, and therefore cannot cook. There are also a few women, and men, who look like they are just about ready to turn in. “We’re classmates,” one woman once told me, laughing, and I knew she wasn’t referring to night school.

One time, at around 6:30 in the morning, I saw an ambulant vendor coming around with caged birds. I asked who would buy birds this early. It turned out he was there to collect from one of the slum dwellers, who had bought some birds on credit a few days earlier. “If you don’t come this early, they go off to work and you can’t collect,” he said.

Other ambulant vendors come later in the day, selling an incredible variety of goods, from fruits to plastic pots and pans, from ice cream to guitars, from plants to kapok pillows.

The day wears on with the sari-sari stores and the ambulant vendors. Admittedly, it isn’t hard manual labor, but it is time intensive. Toward the afternoon, the streets become even more congested as people come out to put up stalls selling “dirty food” like fish balls, barbecue, fruit juices. Their buyers are students coming out of school, and the occasional office worker on the way home.

After dusk, some of these sidewalk vendors, who live in the slums anyway, just stay on, hoping to catch the last few office workers on their way home—or one of the “classmates” going off to work.

Oh, and who can forget? Between 9 and 10 at night, the lonely cry of one last ambulant vendor: “Balut ... balut.” The sari-sari stores stay open, too, offering tonic drinks to go with the balut.

At least

So much time goes into all these activities, but the earnings are meager. One vendor once complained to me that although she only charges P5 for a cup of rice, there had been people asking if they could buy just half a cup. But, she sighed, at least she earned some money each day. “At least” is a translation here, expressed in different ways in Filipino, mainly “buti na lang” [thank goodness], “sa awa ng Diyos” [in God’s mercy].

One reader, Enteng Vicente, alerted me a few weeks back to an article by Ninotchka Rosca in the Inquirer, in which she refers to our frequent use of the term “at least” and how she sees this as a “cop-out” mentality. She talks about Filipino-Americans working 18/7 (18 hours a day, 7 days a week) for a pittance, but who will be contented: At least we have a job. Here at home, Filipinos have to put in so much more, for much less.

Let me add my thoughts here. The “at least” syndrome goes with “bahala na,” often erroneously translated as fatalism. "Bahala na" is not at all passive; it’s an expression we use after we’ve done all we can, and that can be a lot. After all’s said and done, we then wait for the results, and when they come, we say “at least...” sometimes barely able to conceal our disappointment.

The roots of our “at least/buti na lang” syndrome go back to a feudal era, when we were taught to be content with whatever crumbs the "datu" [tribal chief], the "hacendero" [landlord], and later, the politician, throw to us. We accept the leftovers with gratitude, even seeing it as heaven-sent.

Paradox

Coping is fine, but I worry about how our national life has become one coping after another even as new, more serious problems arise, and in paradoxical ways.

“At least” distorts our sense of proportion. We have Filipinos giving up jobs here to earn $200 to $400 a month in war-torn countries, hardly much more than what they’d get here, but “at least” it’s abroad and “at least it’s dollars.”

Sometimes we get weary from having to do so much to get so little, which is why we become vulnerable to get-rich-quick scams: the latest search for Yamashita’s lost gold, the pyramiding scams, the politicians’ grand poverty eradication schemes.

And when good fortune comes around, we quickly squander the bounties: “At least we lived the good life, as one-day millionaires.”

“At least” can be dangerous in the way we suppress our frustration, too often, too long, until we run amok, berserk. The hostage-taking incident last Wednesday, and the frequent reports in the papers about people running amok, are classic sequelae to this “at least” mentality. Call him crazy, call him a publicity-seeker, Jun Ducat was really a more dramatic version of Juan de la Cruz, quietly bearing the pain until something snaps. In this day and age of extreme this and extreme that, hostage-taking is a grand performance, grand "diskarte," to make a point.

All for what? Ducat will fade from public memory by the weekend, another guy who did too much to get too little. The politicians win again, with their promises to do something. “At least” lulls us to accepting the system.

The corrupt, the venal, the greedy -- they know the Filipino. The drug industry knows it can get away with charging us some of the highest prices in the world. There are others -- the tobacco industry, the junk food manufacturers, the firms that pollute our rivers and our air—who know they can get away as well because even if we do occasionally complain and cry “Foul!” and pass new laws, we’ll eventually quiet down and simmer with our "at least."

The powerful know that for them, it takes so little to get away with so much in this country.

Summers of our lives

2007-05-07T11:39:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Summers of our lives
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:47am (Mla time) 03/28/2007

“Strawberry ... it all started out that summer in Cebu when Mr. Cuna (a family friend) realized I had never taken a soda, so he ordered a strawberry soda for me. It tasted like heaven and that was it, strawberry has always been special for me,” my sister said.

She and I were having dessert and I was getting my high on vanilla ice cream, which I, too, traced back to one summer, when I had to have my tonsils removed. Before the operation, I was forbidden from taking any ice cream, on the notion (unscientific it turns out) that it would aggravate my frequent bouts with tonsillitis. So, after the tonsillectomy, I got as a kind of ultimate reward the forbidden food of the gods: ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and really, I believe somewhere in our brains there’s a place for imprinting food memories -- vanilla for me, strawberry for my sister.

Blooms

Maybe in our brains, Filipino brains, we have a special storage area for summer memories. Think back now and I’m sure you can come up with a long list of events, places, faces, scents and tastes that you associate with some summer.

In temperate countries, the four seasons become evocative metaphors for life: spring with the wonders of new life, summer with the zest of youth, autumn with mellowing midlife and winter with the solitude and peace of old age.

What happens then in the Philippines, where we are told we only have the wet and dry seasons or, as Westerners mutter, tongue-in-cheek, no, the two seasons are hot and very hot?

Actually, we have more than two seasons. With age, you learn to tell the seasons, as you feel subtle but discernable changes in the colors of leaves, in the way they fall (yes, like autumn!), in the way the breeze stands still, or wafts in, or turns into "habagat," the monsoon. Even the rains vary in intensity, even in their smell, with the different seasons.

But yes, there is this distinct hot season we label tag-init. It’s not just a time of heat but of flowers and fiestas and, every few years, elections. Lush bougainvillea colors ambush us now at every corner, providing relief from our cities’ bleak and gray landscape. Over at University of the Philippines, Diliman, the gardeners have planted sunflowers and we expect them right in time for graduation in April. In the meantime, there’s enough of a spectacle with many of the trees on campus coming into bloom. The best, of course, is yet to come, perhaps in May, when the campus turns crimson with the fire trees.

Check your gardens and you’ll find wild lilies that have been lying dormant much of the year to store energy in underground bulbs until the summer heat convinces them to shoot out and unfurl their flowers.

And let’s not forget the orchids. My favorite is the "sanggumay," with the way its vines just hang there through most of the year – "simple lang" [it's simple], as we say in Filipino -- patiently waiting till summer comes along and then suddenly it’s like someone painted your garden while you were asleep.

Firsts

But the flowers of May (and April and March) only provide a backdrop to a highlight of summer: graduation exercises or, for preschool, moving up ceremonies. The preferred term is, of course, commencement exercises, with every other graduation speaker reminding the students this is not a time when we end school but commence, begin, life.

And our summers? Perhaps they don’t really end or begin anything. Summers connect, provide continuity for life. It’s a break before new graduates go to work. It’s a break, too, for those in schools, with summer workshops and camps offering an amazing variety of activities: dancing, painting, writing, swimming, drama -- why, one Buddhist temple in San Juan even offers meditation for children.

Summer’s an opportunity for travel, one of the most educational experiences one can have, whether learning about nature ... or strawberry sodas.

Summer’s a time for firsts. Maybe because more people are around at home, we think we’ve caught the baby’s first words, first steps.

Summer’s a time of adventure, of new experiences, of daring. Summer’s when boys become men, and I mean circumcision although in times past, there may have been other more risqué rites of passage.

Summer’s a time for first love (OK, and second and third) or of reviving first love. Oh, but don’t we ever learn? For some, summer, too, can be a time for heartbreak, an end to innocence, but never mind, all that, too, is part of life.

Intersecting

In midlife, summers become all the more important for reunions, for lives to intersect. My sister was here visiting from Canada. It was a time for her to look up relatives and friends and classmates, although I did notice that she didn’t have that many people her own age to meet up with because so many people of our generation have joined the Filipino diaspora.

“This is my sister,” I told other parents at my daughter Yna’s moving-up ceremony, “and she just flew in from Canada,” making it sound like she did just for Yna. But she was here for more. Although my sister’s younger, she’s now coping with an empty nest, her two children now living away from home because of school. So here she was to look into my own rather late parenting. We’d talk while I changed diapers, prepared milk, put away the toys, and she’d intervene from time to time, remembering how she handled her own children, including quick lessons on using sign language with children (the people who developed this program really should get a Nobel Peace Prize, considering how it has bridged the communication gap we have with babies).

This morning she came into my room to say goodbye. The baby was feeding but raised one hand to sign “bye-bye.” When she came in to kiss him, he feigned resistance, clearly wanting to use it as an excuse to cuddle up more closely to me.

Our family is not good with goodbyes, so we don’t usually tag along to the airport. I waved back at her, pretending to sign like the baby: “Go, go ... see you next summer.”

After she left, I suddenly remembered a poem she wrote years ago, about her son who never seemed content with all the hugging and snuggling from his mother. I, too, have to plead at times with my son when he wants to be carried: “You’re a big boy now.” But I anticipate, as my sister described in her poem, that someday, I’ll want to hug him and he’ll pull away, maybe even mildly protesting, “I’m a big boy now.”

I’d like to think that when the time comes, I’ll find comfort remembering our summers together, of his furious signing for more ice cream, of lullabies and lizards on the ceiling, of dogs romping in the garden, of the cat coming in at midnight. Actually, we don’t really remember things that happen when we’re very young, but we like to think we do because the best summer stories are those from our parents about what we did as babies and toddlers.

That’s how we all piece together our childhood -- and more. In the end, it isn’t so much whose summer it was, or the accuracy of the details, than the way we recall those many summers together, the summers of our lives.

'Albularyo'

2007-05-07T11:38:00.002+08:00

PINOY KASI

‘Albularyo’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:31am (Mla time) 03/23/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Last Sunday the Inquirer had a full-page spread featuring 10 medicinal plants endorsed by the Department of Health. The eye-catching feature, with colored photographs, brought back memories of my own forays into the world of the "albularyo."

When I was still in college, back in the 1970s, I volunteered with the Rural Missionaries, a group of Catholic sisters that organized community-based health programs. As my graduation approached, I asked the sisters if I could continue to work with them after college. I had a feeling they didn’t quite know what to do with a veterinarian and since I couldn’t become a nun either, one of them came up with a brilliant idea: why not get me to research on medicinal plants?

I jumped on the chance, but without any illusions. I was a city creature, through and through, who knew next to nothing about plants. The first time I volunteered for work in a rural area, I gasped at the sight of a tree with wonderful flowers and asked the mayor’s wife what the tree was.

It was her turn to gasp. Really now, how was I to know that mango trees produced flowers?

I had taken botany in college but could barely remember what pistils and stamens were. So to prepare myself for medicinal plants research, I signed up for a course in economic botany. That was a fascinating course, and I’m convinced, to this day, that if we could teach botany by pointing out the uses of different plants, students would probably remember much more of that subject.

‘Plawel’

So, off I went to Mindanao, then to the Visayas, then to Luzon, to interview a few village "albularyo." That term is misleading though; it’s a Spanish-Filipino word that means “herbalist.” It came about because in western countries, most medicinal plants are small herbs. I learned quickly that in a tropical country like the Philippines, our immense biodiversity offers us so many more diverse medicinal plants, from tiny herbs to towering forest trees.

Early on in the research, I realized too it wasn’t just the "albularyo" who had information on medicinal plants. Every household had its own stocks of traditional medicine in their backyard, and generally, the older women knew how to pick out and prepare the plants.

They were also always ready to share what they knew. Within a few weeks, I had two field notebooks bulging with information.

Even back then, I could tell that folk knowledge about many medicinal plants was beginning to disappear. In one Ifugao village, a young student was assigned to accompany me out in the field to identify plants. After a few minutes, I realized she was identifying every other plant as “plawel,” which I dutifully jotted down in my notebook -- until I realized “plawel” was “flower.” I was tempted to point at a mango tree with full blooms to ask her what it was.

After a few months of this kind of work, I realized, sorting through all the different plant names -- whether Cebuano, Tagalog or Ilokano -- there was really a small core of about 20 medicinal plants that were used throughout the country. I went back to Manila and read voraciously to get more information on these plants -- from the classic “Medicinal Plants of the Philippines” (by Eduardo Quisumbing, published in the early 1950s) to Chinese pharmacology books.

I put the information together into a booklet with a rather fancy title: Philippine Medicinal Plants in Common Use: Their Phytochemistry and Pharmacology. It was a rather technical book, but I’d like to think it helped to stimulate more interest in medicinal plants in our health programs. In the 1980s, an American non-profit group, World Neighbors, got me to produce less technical materials, consisting of posters and a slide presentation explaining the uses of medicinal plants.

Demystifying plants

The posters and slides were attempts to demystify the use of medicinal plants. The years of research on medicinal plants had made me realize there was so much of magic involved in using the plants. Take "pito-pito" as an example: That was 7 leaves of 7 plants put together for a general tonic. I’d imagine that if some Chinese-Filipino had developed that decoction, it would have been "walo-walo," given the Chinese love of the number 8.

In recent years, commercial interests have contributed to further mystifying the plants with references to “phytochemicals,” as if these were new discoveries. All that the word means is “plant chemicals,” which scientists have been looking at for decades now.

An example of phytochemicals would be essential oils. A plant with a strong smell will have several of these oils, which can help to clear a congested nose, bring up the phlegm from the lungs, or, externally, help to relieve itchiness or heat. Sounds familiar? Yes, Vicks Vaporub is a mixture of those oils. Yerba Buena (“the good herb”), one of the 10 medicinal plants endorsed by the Department of Health, is an example of a plant rich in essential oils.

The community-based health programs helped people to rediscover the plants, minus the magic. Communities came up with their own products like SLK Cough Syrup, made from "sampalok" [tamarind] leaves, "luya" ]ginger] and "kalamansi" [native citrus]. ABC (avocado, "bayabas" or guava, and "kaimito" or star apple) leaves were used for diarrhea. There was even oil mixed with ginger and "sili" [pepper] leaves and used as a balm for muscle pains, which, I’d advise people tongue-in-cheek, could also be used to season their food.

Nationalism, science

Looking back at those experiences, I do feel we need to go beyond SLK and ABC. I still keep hearing of research that ask the "albularyo" about the plants they’re using, and I think that’s such a waste of time. We know what they’re using; the question is, what are we going to do with all that knowledge.

I squirm whenever I hear officials talking about medicinal plants as “cheap alternatives for the poor.” There’s more to the plants, and neighboring countries, knowing this, encourage local companies to develop medicinal plants. China has the most developed systems for medicinal plants and rich Chinese-Filipinos are known to fly to China, paying thousands of dollars for some of the traditional preparations.

I’m amazed to see Filipinos shelling out a thousand pesos for a bottle of imported mangosteen extract, for example. Or ordering banaba products from the United States for diabetes. Banaba is a tree with purple flowers that you find all over the country. Back in the 1950s, there were already local scientific articles about banaba’s medicinal uses but no one seemed interested in taking them beyond research. Today, banaba isn’t even in the government’s list of endorsed plants.

If we were more nationalistic and more scientific about our medicinal plants, we’d probably have more than those 10 plants to offer. And if we don’t get our act together, foreign companies are going to patent medicines from the plants and sell them back to us in fancy packages, at astronomical prices.

Caring more

2007-05-07T11:38:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Caring more
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:27am (Mla time) 03/21/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- It’s been four years since the United States sent troops into Iraq, but it could well have been 400 years ago -- as far as Filipinos are concerned.

Intervention or invasion. That event now seems so distant; yet, back in 2003 we too were caught in the frenzy around Iraq. I still remember the angry letters I got four years ago, mostly from Filipino-Americans, because of the columns I wrote opposing the invasion of Iraq. At that time, so many people believed George W. Bush and his claims that Saddam Hussein was part of al-Qaeda. Saddam was the devil incarnate, supposedly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that he was ready to unleash on the world.

Courtesy of international cable TV channels, we saw, live, the “shock and awe” invasion and the collapse of Saddam. Who could forget the footage, replayed many times, showing a statue of Saddam being toppled in Firdos Square in Baghdad, to show how the Iraqis so welcomed American intervention? A year later, The Los Angeles Times wrote about how US Marines had instigated the toppling, even providing an American flag to wrap Saddam’s face, until they realized the Iraqis weren’t exactly impressed by that move. An Iraqi flag was brought in, and Iraqi children and youth were encouraged to cheer as the statue was finally brought down.

The Philippines jumped on the bandwagon, joining the United States in a Coalition of the Willing. Early on, the government organized a humanitarian and peacekeeping team, called the “Task Force on Philippine Participation in Post-War Rebuilding of Iraq,” with 175 members and a budget of P141 million.

But there was more to this than humanitarianism. Government officials talked shamelessly, about how we could profit from Iraq, by sending overseas workers. A task force called “Philippine Public-Private Sector Partnership for Reconstruction and Development of Iraq” was formed to assist local companies to try to corner contracts from the US government for Iraq’s “reconstruction.” But the lucrative contracts didn’t quite materialize. Filipinos were blacklisted after a group of workers, assigned to build the US prison for suspected terrorists in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, tried to organize a union.

But never mind. When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited the United States in May 2003, she pledged loyalty to the US cause and came back boasting of more rewards, oops, more development assistance. Meanwhile, Filipinos were finding their way, on their own, into Iraq. In 2004, Islamist militants kidnapped one Filipino truck driver and threatened to execute him if we didn’t withdraw from Iraq. We blinked, and American friends tell me that the US government has never forgiven us for that.

Comma in history

We need to be more conscious about the historical parallels between Iraq and the Philippines. We forget that we, too, were invaded in 1898, supposedly, to be taught democracy. We forget we were collateral damage in the Spanish-American War, just as the Iraqis got Bush’s vented rage after 9/11 and al-Qaida.

Saddam was captured in December 2003, hastily tried and sent to the gallows on Dec. 30, 2006. No WMDs were found and even Bush has stopped referring to it. Instead, the new propaganda is that the US occupation is there to bring democracy to Iraq. In September last year, President Bush told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is—my point is, there is a strong will for democracy.”

Yet Iraqi resentment against the Americans has increased. The latest BBC/ABC public opinion poll conducted between Feb. 25 and March 5 showed that 50 percent of Iraqis find the country’s situation “somewhat worse” or “much worse.” Asked how the presence of US forces affected security, 69 percent answered “worse.”

Iraq has plunged into a bloody civil war since the invasion. One estimate from the Johns Hopkins University is that some 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the invasion. The death toll for American soldiers has climbed too: 500 in January 2004, 1,000 by September that same year. The new year saw the American death toll passing the 3,000 mark, more than the number killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York.

The financial costs have been escalating as well. During US congressional hearings last January, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said that the cost of the “war on terror” (mainly Afghanistan and Iraq) was about $4.4 billion a month in 2003, but that this has climbed to $8.4 billion this year.

And is the world safer? Certainly not. Islamist fanaticism has been further fueled by the American occupation of Iraq, and the reports of American soldiers’ violations of human rights, from the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison to murder and rape cases.

Soldier named Caleb

Four years ago, I wrote, with some disgust, about how CNN and other cable channels were glamorizing war, with rosy reports of one US victory after another coming from journalists “embedded” with the invading forces.

These days the coverage has become gorier. One CNN special, “Combat Hospital,” followed the maimed bodies of soldiers and civilians brought into American military hospitals. I tend to turn away, and turn to National Public Radio on the Internet radio, but there too, it’s hard not to pause and listen to reports about America’s war dead.

I can understand there’s patriotism and idealism among these young soldiers, but the US mass media acknowledge how the casualties also tend to come from small, poor American towns, with military service providing some economic relief. One soldier had saved enough money for college and for a family, but he was killed before he could come home to his fiancée and two kids, including a baby son he had never met.

On New Year’s Day, CNN featured the story off Pvt. First Class Caleb Lufkin, who was killed in May 2006 at the age of 24. I found his obituary on the Internet, where he was described as an “avid banjo player and enjoyed fishing, hunting and motorcycles.” He had only finished high school, and gotten a volunteer firefighting certificate from the community college.

CNN featured a letter Lufkin’s mother had written to say goodbye to her son:

“You were still smiling on your first day of kindergarten when I found it so hard to let go of your hand. I’ll be okay, mom, you said over your shoulder at me as you trotted alone into the school with your new school backpack. It was almost more than I could bear let going of that little hand and releasing you into the world. And you said the same thing again when you went to Iraq. I’ll be okay, mom, with your army pack on your back.”

She ended the letter simply with “You are forever in my heart.”

A few days after CNN featured the Lufkin story, Bush announced his intention for a new troop surge—more soldiers will be sent to Iraq.

We need to care more about Iraq -- and America.

Drug safety

2007-05-07T11:37:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Drug safety
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:33am (Mla time) 03/16/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- A man wakes up in the middle of the night with diarrhea, gropes around and takes what he thinks are anti-diarrheal tablets. Next thing you know, he’s trying to kill his wife.

Over in Cavite province, men have started making decoctions out of a popular ornamental called coral plant, supposedly to enhance their virility. Yet, as early as 1921, Leon Maria Guerrero, an authority on Philippine medicinal plants, already wrote about the plant being a dangerous cathartic, meaning it causes severe diarrhea. In another botany book, “Burkill’s Dictionary of Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula,” I found out that the plant was used for “criminal poisoning” in Latin America.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) estimates that there are some 2 million serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) each year in the United States, leading to about 100,000 fatalities and making ADRs the fourth leading cause of death in the country.

We don’t have estimates on such cases and fatalities in the Philippines, but I am certain they are quite high. There are probably cases where people die of the medicines they were taking, without the family ever realizing it. Many medicinal plants, for example, have low levels of the dangerous substances, but these can accumulate; so even the persons taking the decoctions may not know they are being slowly poisoned.

The causes of ADRs in the country include carelessness among health professionals, a lack of health literacy among Filipinos, inadequate instructions on drug products, and unclear advice from health providers. I’d say, even the barrage of drug advertising, by proclaiming particular medicines as safe—when in fact, no drug, not even your “ordinary” pain-killers, not even your medicinal plants, is truly safe—contributes to ADRs.

The two cases I cited at the beginning of this article were brought up by speakers at the recent convention of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists. Dr. Kenneth Hartigan-Go, who is a physician specializing in pharmacology, gave the story about the anti-diarrheals, which I’ll explain in greater detail in a while. Another speaker, Dr. Annabelle Reyes Borromeo, is a nurse and management expert who shared experiences from her work in American hospitals, including how Filipina nurses get into serious trouble because of a lack of consciousness about drug safety. I was the third speaker and I concentrated on cultural aspects that affect drug safety, including a discussion on some of the problems that come with traditional medicines.

The hospital pharmacists are your unsung heroines (and a few heroes . . . it’s a very female profession). You rarely see them but they work quietly in the hospital pharmacies, checking and double-checking medicines that have been prescribed and preparing them in the right doses so they can be dispensed safely.

Outside the hospital though, we don’t have these pharmacists checking on what we take, so I thought I’d take off from the horror stories shared at the convention and go straight to a very basic drug safety measure: Know what your medicine is.

Names, names

How do you get to know about the medicines you’re taking? The key is the generic name, which in the Philippines is printed in a box above the brand name. Unfortunately, medicines in other countries often have the generic names in very small print. Sometimes, the generic names aren’t just printed.

The case Dr. Hartigan-Go gave as an example involved a man who had worked overseas and had brought home one of the medicines he had been prescribed while abroad. The name was Dia-tabs, which, as we know is an anti-diarrheal in the Philippines. But in the country the man was working, it was the brand name for a diabetes drug.

When diarrhea struck this overseas worker in the middle of the night, he forgot that his Dia-tabs was an anti-diabetic, not an anti-diarrheal. He took several tablets, basically overdosing himself with an anti-diabetic, and this caused chaos in his blood sugar, which then drove him into the psychosis that made him want to kill his wife. When you think more about it, those few tablets could have caused two deaths.

So, learn to recognize your medicines by their generic names, and what they do. This is especially important in our age of the Filipino diaspora. So many Filipinos come home from overseas, bringing with them medicines with missing labels, or with brand names that can be confusing.

But the brand name problem applies even to local drugs. Medicol, a common drug, used to be paracetamol. And then the manufacturers decided to change it to ibuprofen, which is also a pain killer but which requires different precautions. Paracetamol’s side effects, caused by high and frequent doses, are mainly on the liver. Ibuprofen, on the other hand, even with the right dose, can cause severe allergy reactions, because people are sensitive to that drug and its relatives like aspirin.

Another reason why you need to know your medicine’s generic name is to be sure that you don’t “duplicate” it. If you consult two different doctors, as many Filipinos do, they may prescribe the same drug but with a different brand name. That could cause an overdose.

“Generic literacy” applies even to traditional medicine. The coral plant’s scientific name is Jatropha multifida. One look at the plant and I could tell it was a relative of Jatropha curcas, or "tubang-bakod," which also has cathartic effects and which is being studied as a source of biofuels.

Remember, too, that drugs can interact with each other, so you have to be prepared by knowing what drugs you’re taking.

For example, if your dentist wants to inject the local anesthetic lidocaine, you should inform her about the drugs that you’re currently taking. Lidocaine can amplify the effects of such medicines as hypotensives (lowering blood pressure) and tranquillizers.

There is no such thing as a totally safe drug. Antihistamines or anti-allergy drugs, for example, often cause drowsiness. So if you need to drive, or handle machinery that requires alertness, you have to be extra careful about those medicines. Be aware, too, that these anti-allergy medicines are also often found in cold remedies.

How can you keep track of the generic names? For now, you might want to buy a copy of MIMS, available in most bookstores, but be aware that this is produced by the drug industry and contain very minimal information. It’s very weak on safety issues, and does not include products that use medicinal plants. (This is understandable since such products are approved as food supplements rather than as drugs.)

I use MIMS mainly to double-check on the generic names of drugs, and then use that generic name to get more reliable information from medical textbooks and from the Internet. But be careful too when using the Internet. Not all the information there is reliable.

Almanacs

2007-05-07T11:36:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

Almanacs
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 00:53am (Mla time) 03/14/2007

Ever heard of Don Honorio Lopez’s “Kalendariong Tagalog”? It’s an almanac that comes out annually, the 2007 edition being its 109th. A slim newsprint pamphlet of about 40 pages, it’s a treasure trove of assorted information and, for social scientists, a way of looking into local culture.

Before doing the cultural analysis, let me walk you through the almanac’s contents. The almanac’s main section is the calendar. Looking at March 14 for example, we find out it’s the feast day of Saints Leuvino, Florentina and Matilde.

The almanac also tells us that the previous day was the waning quarter moon (pagliit sa alakdan) and that by March 19, you’ll have a new moon. March 19, as many of you already know, is the feast of San Jose (the Virgin Mary’s Saint Joseph). The almanac also tells us that the day is the fiesta for San Jose del Monte, Bulakan; Baras, Rizal; Polilyo, Tayabas; Balanga and Kabkabin in Bataan.

Agrarian origins

If I may return to March 13, high tide today will be at 4:04 p.m. Are you thinking of agricultural activities? You may have to wait. March 11 would have been a good day for planting, while March 18 is your next good day for plowing the fields. (I take it “pag-araro” [plowing] is meant strictly in its agricultural sense, although it can also have other, less land-based meanings.)

The list of auspicious days for planting and plowing are said to apply as well to fishing, meaning if you want to seed your fishponds, you look for the good days for planting.

This almanac, like so many of its counterparts in other countries, clearly has its roots in agriculture. Other countries’ almanacs are much more elaborate, predicting the weather, suggesting what crops to plant and how they should be planted.

The Chinese probably have the most elaborate almanacs, which they call “Tong Shu” (the “everything book”). The books follow both the sun and the moon and the way they usher in different parts of the seasons (for example, beginning of the spring, beginning of the small frost, beginning of the great frost). These descriptions help to guide farmers with their planting activities.

The Chinese almanacs also have extensive advice on what you can or can’t do on a certain day, from opening a new business, to getting a haircut, to cleaning the grave sites of relatives. It also tells you if the day will be good, or bad, for certain people, depending on their year of birth (e.g., the year of the dog).

As if all that were not enough, “Tong Shu” has amulets printed inside, which you can use to deflect bad feng shui, or attract good luck.

The Chinese almanacs are taken fairly seriously, with thousands upon thousands of copies, produced by different people, being sold each year. Even the television channels in Hong Kong and Taiwan will feature Tong Shu advice for the day and, in a modern twist, that will include whether it’s a good day to buy stocks or not.

Heroes, jerks

Almanacs clearly work on the psyche. On one hand, it helps to give some certainty to an uncertain world. Some people just need to be able to feel they’re setting out in the right direction for the day. One can understand why this was so important for farmers, given nature’s vagaries. Simply knowing the movements from one season’s phase to another probably gives order and meaning to farmers’ lives.

One would have expected that with all the advances of technology today, almanacs would have gone out of fashion, but for the Chinese at least, even the most modernized, the almanacs are still important. I suspect the most avid followers are business people, given the high risks that they take. And I worry, at times, about how people develop a dependency on the almanacs, to the point of paranoia about possible misfortune.

“Kalendariong Tagalog” [Tagalog Calendar] is more restrained, but it still reflects our need for some degree of control over nature, over our lives. The lunar cycles and the high tides are clearly for agriculture and fisheries. But in addition, there’s a strong dose of Western astrology in here. Thus, before the entry for Feb. 21, “Kalendariong Tagalog” tells us we are entering Pisces. Males born on this date, the almanac predicts, will be happy and hard-working, and will get rich in their old age. In their being daring and in their loquaciousness, they will have more than their share of ill feelings (presumably generated in others). After that long discussion of the Pisces male, we find that a Pisces female should just harbor pleasant (“magandang”) feelings and thoughts toward her spouse.

There’s more. The almanac has a whole section preparing women for their husbands, depending on what their astrological sign is. I learned, I hope not belatedly, that male Geminis need to feel free and unshackled. And advice for women who marry such creatures? Just consider them friends, take good care of them and remain faithful.

Gender-sensitive the almanac is not. There is no section describing women by their astrological signs, and what their husbands need to do to keep their marriage happy. Presumably, women have to adjust to the jerks they married.

But I have to say the almanac sort of redeems itself by being nationalistic. Besides listing saints and fiestas, they have some historical information as well. The cover of the almanac, in fact, has a kind of secular pantheon of Filipino heroes: I was able to identify Rizal at the center, surrounded by Burgos (the priest), Del Pilar, Bonifacio, Mabini and Lopez-Jaena.

Yes, all male. But hey, you can’t be perfect here. I did appreciate Don Honorio’s nationalism. For March 19, we find this citation: “When Magallanes arrived in the Archipelago we had our own government, faith, laws, etc. 1521.” Not bad, huh? (A recent lecture from historian Zeus Salazar was a bit blunter: What did Magellan do in 1521 except to get himself killed by Lapu-lapu?)

For those who are interested, you’ll find birthdays of national heroes and of presidents. Note how I separated the two categories.

It would be wonderful if we could see expanded almanacs. Maybe when I retire, I’ll work on one. It will have lists upon lists, of Filipino inventions and discoveries, of the arcane and the strange (like that bridge in Bohol province that they kept building until they realized it was going to run into a church), and of course it will have all kinds of practical information, including recipes upon recipes for medicinal plants.

Where to get the almanac? You can buy them direct from the publishers at 152 Scout Gandia Street in Kamuning, Quezon City, or pick up one in Quiapo from the amulet vendors. While you’re in Quiapo, you might as well ask the vendors for their amazing spells and charms for dealing with feckless good-for-nothing husbands or partners. Enough with suffering women having to be the ones to look up the time when high tide comes in.

Gender gender

2007-05-07T11:35:00.003+08:00

PINOY KASI

Gender gender
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:25am (Mla time) 03/09/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- March is marked by a flurry of activities around women’s issues, a takeoff from International Women’s Day on the 7th. Over the last few years, people have extended the month’s focus to “gender awareness” (sometimes said half in jest, “Oh, gender- gender na naman") to mean a focus on women’s issues and concerns.

All that is fine, but teaching in many local and international gender courses, I’ve realized that this focus on gender-as-women can also be a disadvantage, even adversely affecting the effectiveness of programs that seek to address women’s issues. Gender awareness must deal with all forms of inequities, regardless of gender.

So, for today’s column, I thought we should revisit the term, and identify some of the genders in the Philippines. (Do you want to give a preliminary guess right now? Two? Three? Four? Do I hear five?) Over the next month, I’ll do a few more columns, going into more details and why it’s so important to set the genders straight (pardon the pun).

From Sex to gender

Let’s get back to the basic terms. When you fill out an application form and see “Sex,” you’re tempted to answer something like “rarely” or “often” but dutifully fill in “M” or “F” for the two sexes to which about 98 or 99 percent of the population belongs, by virtue of chromosomes and anatomy. (The remainder, and the numbers are quite large in absolute terms, belongs to intersex categories, something I explained in an earlier column.)

Gender is different, with quite complex origins. Derived from the Latin “genus,” it meant “kind” or “type” (as in type of object). Filipinos use the term “kasarian,” which comes close to this meaning, a category that distinguishes one thing from another; thus “sari-sari” means various, but “ka-sari-an” means “of one kind.”

The term’s oldest use, attributed to the Greek philosopher Protagoras, was grammatical. In English, objects are referred to with a neutral “a” or “the” but in many other languages, it’s a bit more complicated. Spanish, for example, uses the feminine article “la” and the masculine article “el”, so while the body is male ("el cuerpo"), its different parts may be male (like the eye, "el ojo") or female (such as the head, "la cabeza").

Gender can also mean “to produce,” which goes back to the Greek “gen” (to produce). This idea of production, even of origins, is reflected in words like “gene,” “genesis” and “engender.” One translation of Leviticus 19:19 reads: “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind,” meaning in this case “to breed.”

In the 1950s, the term mutated once more to mean socially constructed or socially defined categories, roles, statuses and identities. Gender goes beyond the biological to refer to the way societies classify people, with all kinds of expectations from the way we walk, talk and dress, to the careers or occupations we can pursue. We grow up with those expectations and adopt gender identities, conforming with, or rebelling against, society’s expectations.

Let’s use “lalaki” as an example. As a biological category, it’s fairly straightforward, with a certain physical conformation, and appendages (in Filipino, “kung may lawit”). But "lalaki" as a gender category is much more elaborate: you’re supposed to speak like Noli de Castro, walk like Joseph Estrada, and if in medical school, become a surgeon. Dare to deviate, a slight flick of the wrist without the wristband, a voice that’s slightly too high-pitched, or becoming, heavens (oops, even words like “heavens”), a dermatologist, and eyebrows are raised, questioning your “pagkalalaki.”

How many?

That’s gender. I’m exaggerating the stereotypes, but the expectations can be quite severe and strict, pounded into our heads from the day we are born up to the day we are buried.

Over the years, many of us who handled gender seminars and courses would explain that in the Philippines, we have more than two genders, and rattle them off: lalaki, babae, bakla, tibo, silahis. The problem with this list is that people then begin to think that gender refers to sexual orientation, thinking of “bakla” as “male homosexual,” “tibo” as “lesbian” and “silahis” as “bisexual,” while “lalaki” and “babae” are “heterosexual.”

All that wasn’t quite correct. Gender goes beyond both biological sex and sexual orientation. In fact, as more social scientists from non-Western societies began to do sexuality research, myself included, we pointed out the inadequacies of many terms coming from the United States and Europe.

“Bakla” isn’t a matter of sexual orientation alone. It’s used more often to refer to a man who is effeminate. So what happens to a man who walks like Noli de Castro and speaks like Joseph Estrada but “likes” other men? Now that really confuses Filipinos: Is he "lalaki"? Is he "bakla"? Maybe, many will conclude, he is "silahis."

Then you have men who are really effeminate but don’t have the slightest attraction to other men. Are they "lalaki"? Or "bakla"?

I won’t give you the answers yet. I just wanted to give examples to show how convoluted genders are, and there are many.

“Madre” is an occupational category, but sometimes, women will joke, “Madre ako ngayon,” which means she has moved into a gender category, albeit temporarily, with “madre” meaning a non-sexual person, at least activity-wise.

Then there’s “manang.” Originally meant as a term of respect, it now refers to older women who tend to be self-righteous and prudish, a takeoff from the middle-aged women who cluster around parish priests, helping to take care of the church but also ending up as a kind of council of elders keeping the priest updated on the town’s sinners.

Today, a “manang” can be a younger or older person, single or married, male or female, the gender connotations now extended to include other forms of behavior. If we could confer MS degrees ("Master’s in Sulsulan" -- loosely translated, the vicious and persistent whispering that destroys people’s reputations), the "manang" would be masters of the masters.

Hey, my feminist friends are probably muttering now, when do we get to the inequity part and gender oppression and persecution? Patience, my friends, patience. We have the whole month to do that. What I hope I cleared today is that gender is more than sexual orientation. Just looking at the “manang,” you can see “manang-hood” is an extension of the more negative aspects of local femininity, of putting up a façade of chasteness and of becoming self-appointed guardians of morality. The “manang” is often a woman, but she can be more oppressive to other women than the men are.

In future columns, we’ll look at other examples of genders: the metrosexual, the "baklita," the "matandang binata," maybe a bit more on the "manang." Learn to differentiate the "matona" from the "matrona." Learn why being a Spice Boy, as in being "Paminta," isn’t necessarily a good thing. And with elections coming around, learn to sniff out the candidates’ gender, and how that might affect governance.

Gender gender

2007-05-07T11:35:00.002+08:00

PINOY KASI

Gender gender
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:25am (Mla time) 03/09/2007

From Sex to gender

How many?

That’s gender. I’m exaggerating the stereotypes, but the expectations can be quite severe and strict, pounded into our heads from the day we are born up to the day we are buried.

Then you have men who are really effeminate but don’t have the slightest attraction to other men. Are they "lalaki"? Or "bakla"?

I won’t give you the answers yet. I just wanted to give examples to show how convoluted genders are, and there are many.

Women's paradise?

2007-05-07T11:35:00.001+08:00

PINOY KASI

Women’s paradise?
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:13am (Mla time) 03/07/2007

Last year, newspapers all over the world noted that among the top 10 countries with the smallest “gender gap,” the only developing country was the Philippines, which came in sixth.

In case you missed the news items last year, the top 10, out of a total of 115 countries, were: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Germany, the Philippines, New Zealand, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Gender Gap Index, compiled by the World Economic Forum, was mainly based on a review of female-to-male ratios in four areas: (a) economic participation and opportunity, (b) educational attainment, (c) health and survival and (d) political empowerment. Besides these four areas, the index considered data on maternity and childbearing, education and training, employment and earnings, and basic rights and social institutions.

Given our high ranking, are we now to believe the Philippines is a paradise for women? I visited the World Economic Forum site and downloaded several of the country reports, but never got around to writing about it. Today being International Women’s Day, I thought it’d be a good time to revisit this index.

No. 1

The Gender Gap Index is useful because it allows a more concrete and comprehensive view of gender equity.

One glance at the data sheet for the Philippines and I could see why we did so well in the overall global rankings. We ranked 1st worldwide for female-to-male ratios in 7 out of 14 main indicators: (a) legislators, senior officials and managers; (b) professional and technical workers; (c) literacy rate; (d) enrollment in primary education; (d) enrollment in secondary education; (e) enrollment in tertiary education; (f) sex ratio at birth; (g) life expectancy.

I would agree with those rankings. Women are very visible in both the domestic and international labor force and women do make it to fairly high positions here. In the area of education, our women are more literate and, yes, the boys tend to drop out from school in large numbers, at all levels.

The sex ratio at birth indicator may have intrigued some of you, so let me explain what that involves. Our female to male ratio at birth is 0.95, which means 95 females are born for every 100 males. This is the expected “natural” figure, and eventually evens out because the death rates for males tend to be higher than females. (Yes, we are the weaker sex, biologically speaking.) In cultures with very strong biases against females, female fetuses may be aborted at high rates, thus skewing the sex ratio to produce many more males than females. China’s female-to-male ratio at birth, for example, is only 0.89.

“Healthy life expectancy” is another good indicator because it incorporates the quality of life aspect. For the Philippines, females can expect, on average, 61.5 years of healthy life while males come in only with 57.1. (Do I hear male readers gasping in despair?)

Contexts

We can be proud of how we’ve fared with the indicators I just described. But many of those statistics have to be looked at in context, and in relation to each other.

We may do well with female participation in the labor force, but in terms of wage equality, the World Economic Forum’s survey found women only got 73 percent of what men did for similar work. Even more glaring is income, which includes non-wage sources, for example, small businesses. For the Philippines, women’s income was only 59 percent of what men were getting. We see that all around us: our women have to work so hard doing laundry, small-scale buying and selling, and yet they earn so very little.

We know, too, how our women are often doubly oppressed, having to work outside the home while bearing the bulk of domestic responsibilities. That isn’t measured in any of the Gender Gap Index indicators except for two, which both belong to “additional data” rather than the main indices. The two indicators are length of paid maternity leave, which is 60 days in the Philippines, and the leave benefits, which is 100 percent of wages in the Philippines. Compare that with Sweden, which pays 80 percent of wages for 390 days and another 90 days of a flat rate.

I am not advocating such generous maternity benefits for the Philippines; that would bankrupt all our business firms. The Swedish government has a hard time encouraging their citizens to have more babies while here, we’re dealing with a completely different kind of problem, one which relates to the gender gap. The Gender Gap Index only looks at the current contraceptive prevalence rate (percent of married women on family planning). It would have been useful if they incorporated unmet need, which would be the percent of women who want family planning, but can’t, whether because of opposition from their spouse, or because mayors like Manila’s Lito Atienza ban contraceptives from government health facilities.

There are some intriguing indicators in the Gender Gap Index’s “additional data” which deserve more attention. For “polygamy,” our rating is 0, which means it is supposed to be absent, a plus point for gender equality. But tell that to the many Filipinas who suffer because their husbands believe polygamy is a right.

Another indicator used by the World Economic Forum is that of paternal versus maternal authority, with the Philippines scoring 0.10, 1 being the worst possible score and 0 being the best. What does “maternal authority” mean, and does that necessarily translate to enhanced women’s welfare? For example, I’ve wondered at times if maternal authority is used only to further reinforce patriarchal rules.

It’s the same question I have about another area where we supposedly did quite well for gender equity. Globally, we ranked seventh with the indicator “years with female head of state (last 50)” but I have to ask, just how pro-women were our two women presidents? We’ve been moving backwards in terms of women’s health during the Arroyo presidency because of her stubborn opposition to family planning.

I will reiterate that the Gender Gap Index is an excellent resource, but we should go beyond rankings and look at the finer details of the report, looking at what each indicator means. For example, do we educate our daughters only so we can export them, in larger numbers now than men, as overseas workers? Is that something we should be proud of, or should we see this as another way of exploiting our women?

With elections coming around, the Gender Gap Index reminds us of the importance of political representation. The World Economic Forum reported that women make up 20 percent of the outgoing Congress, and a third of the Cabinet. Both opposition and administration senatorial slates are glaring in their weak women’s representation, but let’s try to make up for that by going after all candidates, women or men, and at all levels, to ask them about their positions on women’s issues.

When cultures meet

2007-05-07T11:34:00.000+08:00

PINOY KASI

When cultures meet
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:47am (Mla time) 03/02/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- An ivory Virgin Mary and a sleeping Santo Niño with Chinese eyes. A blue and white jar, dating back to the Qing dynasty, where you could lock up chocolate. A gold “ibu dan anak” (mother-and-child) ornament to hold together a batik blouse.

These are among the objects on display at the Ayala Museum until May 27, as part of a 6-in-1 exhibit called “Chinese Diaspora: Art Streams from the Mainland.” The six exhibits include The Robert Villanueva Collection of Chinese Trade Wares; The Peranakan Legacy; Tsinoy: Mestizo Art in Colonial Times; Damian Domingo: The First Great Filipino Painter; Evidence Bags: Claudine Sia; and China Gaze: Valeria Cavestany.

The first four are historical exhibits, while the last two are modern art. But all six come together to show what happens when cultures meet, and interact.

Talking wares

My favorite exhibit is that of trade wares. Most are from China, although there are also pieces from Vietnam and Thailand. Curated by Rita Tan, one of the foremost authorities on Chinese ceramics, the exhibit brings together all kinds of Chinese ceramics that were transported on extensive trade routes that ran throughout the entire Southeast Asian region. These were originally in the collection of H. Otley Beyer, the American anthropologist and archaeologist, but were later bought up by Roberto and Corazon Grau Villanueva.

This exhibit reminds us that the "168" mall and the Divisoria flea market area are only the latest developments of a centuries-old trading relationship. More than a thousand years ago, the Chinese realized the trading potential in Southeast Asia. The Chinese knew that in exchange for their ceramics, as well as other products such as silk, they could obtain valuable forest and mineral products from their neighbors. If the ceramics could talk, we’d have wondrous tales of that trading relationship.

The Ayala exhibits offer glimpses into the dimensions of this trade. The wares come from several dynasties, the oldest piece being Yue ware dating back to the 10th century. They come from different parts of China, including Zhejiang, Henan, Jiangxi, Guangdong and Fujian. The wares from that last province interested me the most, and it was thrilling to learn that Nan-an, from where my paternal grandfather came from, was a major producer of these ceramics.

Most of the trade wares had very practical uses, from plates and beakers and bowls for dining to the huge jars for storing and fermenting (imagine pre-colonial "patis" or "bagoong"!) foods, and, let’s not forget, drinks, as in intoxicating beverages.

Many of the objects combine the utilitarian and the decorative. A figurine showing a boy on a water buffalo, for example, turns out to be a water dropper. Next to one of these wares is something that looks quite naughty: a couple in a rather amorous position. I couldn’t tell if it is meant to be a water dropper as well, but try to imagine our ancestors displaying such figurines in their homes.

Many of the trade wares are exhibited in the homes of the rich and famous as prestige goods, a way of displaying one’s wealth. But I suspect even our ancestors already saw these wares as a way of showing off. Many of the ceramics were excavated from burial sites, again a way of indicating one’s status, as well as an expression of beliefs in an after-life where the valuable ceramics could still be used. Who says you can’t take it all with you?

Mestizo art

The Chinese who migrated out to Southeast Asian countries included artisans who had the traditional ceramics designs not only in their heads but also the skills to replicate the technology. Thus, in parts of modern Thailand and Malaysia, you have jars produced in kilns that were established way back in time by Chinese migrants. This is why you have to be very careful when you buy “antique” ceramics: more likely than not, that jar may be 21st-century made-in-Thailand rather than some 12th-century Chinese ceramic.

In other cases, Chinese migrants modified their artistic skills, incorporating local motifs, designs and processes to produce “mestizo art.” Three of the Ayala Museum exhibits give fine examples of these hybrids. “The Peranakan Legacy” is an exhibit on loan from the Asian Civilizations Museum, showing everything from embroidery and beadwork to intricate jewelry and ornaments, to massive sculpted furniture, all produced by the Peranakan or "mestizo" [mixed-blood] Chinese-Malay.

A Qing blue and white jar with a lock, intended to store (hoard?) chocolate, reminds us of the prosperity of these mestizo classes, which is reflected in the extravagance of their artwork. Some of these families even had their own jewelers-in-residence, something rich Filipino (including Chinese mestizo) families did too in the 19th century, to make sure the craftsmen did not substitute or filch valuable raw materials.

Ambeth Ocampo has described in his column the exhibit, “Tsinoy: Mestizo Art in Colonial Times,” which he curated. While the Peranakan exhibit was breath-taking, I still found charm in the “Tsinoy” exhibit, a small selection of hardwood "santos" and jewelry that show Chinese influences -- the "singkit" [chinky] eyes on some of the images, including a Virgin Mary and a sleeping Santo Niño. One statue of the Virgin Mary, from its facial features as well as its dress, could have passed for the Buddhist Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy).

Another exhibit shows the work of another Chinese mestizo, Damian Domingo who established the first art school in the country. It’s intriguing though how one self-portrait shows him looking very Caucasian, without the slightest hint of his Chinese ancestry.

Unleashed

The two more modern art exhibits show how the fascination with things Chinese remains with us today, incorporated into the “evidence bags” (actually glassine envelopes with photographs and postcards) of Claudine Sia and the media light boxes of Valeria Cavestany, using light boxes with acrylic renditions of China and the Chinese.

There’s contrast and continuity in these exhibits. The old Chinese wares are exquisite, but there’s contrast between their staid colors -- blue and white, celadon, brown -- and those of “mestizo art,” where there is an explosion of colors and a move away from traditional designs. It almost seems as if the Chinese artisans and artists, unleashed in new hothouse environments of Southeast Asia, gave free rein to their imagination, whether in the Peranakan clothing, or the contemporary work of Sia.

Yet even when mestizo art turns whimsical, kitschy or opulent, you find continuity, a connection to mainland Chinese culture, in the designs, in the workmanship. Understanding the Chinese influence in Filipino culture becomes all the more important in our age of globalization and now, the Filipino diaspora. Will we, too, leave our mark elsewhere, even as we bring home the sights and sounds of our overseas sojourns to blend into our already eclectic cultural potpourri?