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Exploring Talim Island, the 'mole' in the waters of Laguna de Bay


Something about the flooded island in the middle of Laguna de Bay brings a creeping sense of déjà vu. A village marooned on the lake, ravaged in the name of progress then cast aside because it is a mere dot in the water...it is the story of Nunal sa Tubig (A Speck in the Water) coming true.

Beleaguered Talim Island in the middle of Laguna de Bay is like a malignant mole (nunal) exposing the sickness of the lake. Laguna de Bay is the largest lake in the Philippines, and the second largest in Southeast Asia. The lake is 42% bigger than the entire Metro Manila.
Ishmael Bernal’s dystopian vision of Laguna de Bay, which few understood back in 1976, has been brought to life by the twin tempests Ondoy (international name Ketsana) and Pepeng (international name Parma), whose waters refuse to recede from Talim Island one month after the great deluge. As end-of-the-world signs go, this is not on the scale of famine, pestilence, or rivers turning into blood, but still, today’s taga-isla (islanders) can’t help but wonder whose sins it is they are being punished for. A village with no landlines, cable TV, cars or factories spewing fumes into the air is drowning in the fallout of economic growth it never knew. Venice in Binangonan The disaster tourist’s journey to Talim begins in Binangonan, Rizal, about an hour’s drive from Metro Manila. From there, it takes thirty minutes to two-and-a-half hours on a motorized banca to reach the seventeen barangays on the island that fall under the jurisdiction of Binangonan (the other nine are under Cardona, Cavite).
This area near the port of Binangonan is still recognizable from the 1976 film Nunal sa Tubig (A Speck in the Water), except there was no tubig (water). The lake is now part of the street, with water lilies to match.
The small but busy road leading to Binangonan’s pritil (port) is still recognizable from Bernal’s film. Tricycles weave in and out of the crowds, while the bell tower of St. Ursula’s Church looms in the background. Since the swelling of Laguna de Bay turned part of the road into the Grand Canal last month, however, a new form of transport has sailed into town. Locals simply call it the lampitaw, a leaky tub made of plastic, wood, or metal scrap propelled by men tethered to the hull by a rope. They ferry passengers from one side of the road to the other, charging P5.00 to P10.00 per person. Same price for squealing hogs and sacks of rice. Venice in Binangonan does not stop with this improved gondola. For sun protection, lampitaw gondolieri wear pointy-nosed cloth masks that would fit right in with the birdmen at Carnevale.
The cloth masks worn by Binangonan’s “gondoliers" would fit right in with the birdmen at the Venice Carnevale.
Attack of the water lilies “Do Not Enter," a leftover road sign barks at the top of the street where the waterline now starts. Smug water lilies floating in from the lake gleefully ignore it. In retaliation, a boy spears them with a rake as they glide in. Revenge is sweet. As the lake becomes more polluted, the blooms grow more stubborn and profuse. They destroy fish traps and form thick groves that force bancas to consume more fuel as they cut through. This is one battle man can still win over nature—for now. The narrow footbridge lining the watery trail to the port materialized about two weeks after Ondoy and Pepeng struck. Lampitaw operators complain that they lose passengers as the gangplank grows longer and longer. Still, cargo business remains good. No one wants to jostle through the shaky bridge with squealing hogs and sacks of rice. From the footbridge, the sunken remains of a gas station and an ice plant’s delivery truck (“Perishable Goods, Do Not Delay") balefully remind townsfolk that life is not back to normal, despite sari-sari stores swiftly recovering from shock and setting up hot dog displays within arm’s reach from the bridge. (see next page) True-to-life movie At last, the embarkation area. The long jetty that used to jut out into the lake has vanished underwater. Bancas are parked on water lily beds so thick they look beached on dry land. As each boat is loaded to capacity, it mows down the creepers before sputtering away.
Drowned basketball courts and waiting sheds have become part of the furniture of Laguna de Bay.
Aboard the banca en route to Talim, one can live out Nunal sa Tubig’s opening scene where a rich mestizo businessman is surveying the maze of fish pens on the lake from a speedboat. The drone of a banca’s motor is heard throughout the film like a ticking bomb, auguring the destruction of the lake by gas-guzzling engines and the tyranny of industrialization signified by a Napocor power plant visible from the lake. Life, as we know, has imitated art. Post Ondoy, many of Laguna de Bay’s fish pens have been swallowed by rising lake waters (mixed with Caliraya dam waters unleashed by Napocor, locals suspect). On Talim Island, the gray lakeshore that used to measure some 20-50 meters wide is gone. In its place are the submerged waiting sheds and covered courts of each flooded barangay, which now look like indoor pools for dolphin shows.
Panicked villagers ran up and down “main street" of Barangay Ginoong Sanay shouting “Timog na! (South)!" when Typhoon Ondoy whipped thru the island and cut off the outside world.
“Stick tsaka panty" One of the barangays on Talim Island is Ginoong Sanay, so named because its men strive to be maginoo (chivalrous) and sanay sa trabaho (hardworking). And what is it exactly that they do? “Stick tsaka panty," replies eighteen-year-old May, niece of the barangay captain and our unofficial guide. Stick, we deduce, means barbecue stick. It’s hard not to trip over the little javelins in the village. Talim’s craggy terrain may be hostile to other crops, but bamboo grows abundantly on its slopes. In Ginoong Sanay, the reed is hacked almost non-stop into barbecue sticks that are sold in Laguna and Rizal, while neighboring barangays make baskets and furniture. Panty, we tactfully ignore. Sodom and Gomorrah In a village of 1,643 people living in one compact row, news travels at warp speed when aliens arrive from the city. At the sari-sari store of May’s mother Editha, a small horde has assembled to eavesdrop as she recounts last month’s horrors to her daughter’s visitors. The night before the storm, says Editha, the waves on the lake were so large and loud, no one could fall asleep. Electricity had gone out the afternoon before, and boat service to and from the mainland had stopped. Cut off from the outside world, no one had a clue why the waters were rising on the lake. The burning sulfur of Sodom and Gomorrah could have fallen from the sky for all they knew. An angry, burbling rivulet was also gushing down the mountainside. Fearing they would drown from above and below, the panicked villagers began running up and down the barangay’s little street. But where could they go? On an island, there is no escape unless you have wings.
The pier of Barangay Ginoong Sanay is submerged somewhere around this spot, where passengers now have to leap off a precipice to get on bancas.
(Growing wings seems to be a particular fascination of the islanders. Even the banca of George Estregan’s character in Nunal sa Tubig was called Kapitan Bagwis. His dream was to leave the island and join the navy.) Boat service stopped for nearly a week. Power was not restored for two weeks. Food stocks dwindled because no one could go to the mainland for supplies. Even water became dangerous to drink because toilets of wrecked houses had burst into the lake, along with the barangay garbage dump.
The swelling of Laguna de Bay has erased the fairly wide shore of Talim Island. Waves and fallen anahaw palms crashed through this concrete house that used to be a substantial distance from the water.
Panty by panty “Pati panty walang natira (Nothing is left, not even panty)," says Editha of a neighbor’s house that was washed away. How can they begin rebuilding their lives? “Paunti-unti na panty (Panty by panty)," she replies. Panty. What is this panty everyone keeps talking about? A titter ripples through the crowd. Editha’s husband Zalde holds up the fishing net he is mending. “Panti-tilapia."
Fish are getting scarce on the lake, so fisherman Zalde moonlights as a construction worker on the mainland whenever he can.
The term, he explains, refers to the net used to catch fish on the lake. The fish can be of different breeds like bangus, ayungin, biya, or kanduli, not just tilapia, but the catch-all term is panti. “Nang ako’y mangisda ako’y tila katorse pa lamang (When I started fishing, I was only fourteen)," he declares proudly in the elegant Tagalog of the older villagers that seems abnormally posh in their meager surroundings. (see last page) In the pecking order of the lake, a manti (mantitilapia, conjugation of panti) is subordinate to mga namumuhunan sa dagat, or those who invest in the sea. Fish pond investors have access to capital and can afford to build large pens and fill them with several hundred thousand fingerlings. They can wait seven months or even longer for the fish to grow. The manti who have no capital live off the fish that escape from the investor’s pond, and what other creatures they can scavenge from the lake. Fish out of water Both manti and investor are at the mercy of the lake to make the fish grow. When the lake waters are clear, the fish grow faster. Salt water coming in from Manila Bay through the Napindan Channel helps keep the lake clear. This is why the fishermen tried to stop the government’s plan to use Laguna de Bay as a source of drinking water for Metro Manila. That would mean closing the Napindan gate and losing the salt water. But the fishermen know more than anyone that big fish always win over little fish. With panti prospects dimming, Zalde has been moonlighting as a construction worker in the mainland.
Catching fish that escape from fish pens is part of day-to-day survival on Talim Island.
“Kahit ang sabi niya’y hindi siya mabubuhay sa kati, dahil ang galaw niya’y talagang sa dagat, nagtitiis siya (Even though he says he cannot survive on land, because he is really a man of the sea, he endures it)," says Editha. There is no choice. There are five children to support, the youngest barely a year old. Sari-sari stress Editha and her sari-sari store have their own set of troubles. Transportation costs have more than doubled since the swelling of the lake, because of the complicated chain of maneuvers from banca, lampitaw, footbridge, and tricycle that need to be essayed to move goods from mainland to island. Every sack of rice, case of beer, block of ice, and container of gasoline is charged at every leg of the journey, and it doesn’t help that she now has to travel to a much farther gas station to buy fuel because the one near the pritil in Binangonan is sunk. The higher transportation costs have wiped out any profit she used to earn from her sari- sari store. But she keeps the store going anyway, because the lake will be back to normal by December. Won’t it? Love it, leave it Despite their woes, Editha and Zalde have whipped up a special lunch for the nosy guests. Freshly cooked rice, fish just off the grill, scrambled eggs, a pitcher of iced tea cooled by a precious slab of ice, and prized bottles of Cobra Energy Drink, the fishermen’s favorite tipple because it helps them hang on to their pantis when fishing late at night with no sleep.
Editha and Zalde of Barangay Ginoong Sanay strike a pose in front of their sari-sari store with daughter May and their other children.
Throughout lunch, Editha and May fantasize about leaving the island someday, because life is simply too hard. If you have an emergency, you die because there is no hospital. Everything has to be brought in from the mainland because there is no market. On the island, you have to pump every drop of water you need out of a communal poso, while water from the lake in front of you is daintily purified and piped into the houses of Metro Manila. Laguna de Bay may be surrounded by warehouses, factories, and other shrines to the development of the Greater Metro Manila area, but on the island, there are no jobs, no businesses, no universities, no landlines, no cable TV, no cars. Many barangays like Ginoong Sanay are so stagnant they don’t even have tricycles. The barangay captain Rufino, however, still prefers living on the island. “Sa bayan, puro bili. Dito, kapag wala kang ulam, puwede kang manghiram sa kapit-bahay mo. Pumunta ka sa lawa, makakahingi ka ng isda. Dahil magkakakilala lahat ng tao (In the city, everything is for sale. Here, if you have no food, you can borrow from your neighbor. You can go to the lake and ask for fish. Because everyone here knows each other)." Lampitaw 2.0 Can we see the other barangays? Can we see the basket and furniture makers? May brokers a banca rental to take us around the island. As it enters Barangay Sapang, one of the worst-hit by the flood, shouts break out: “Ulo! Ulo! (Your head! Your head!)" The banca had gone through a submerged waiting shed like a gondola sailing under a bridge, without our noticing. The water was so high, our heads almost hit the roof of the shed. The shore is no more, so once again, it was lampitaw to dry land—that is, lampitaw 2.0. The gondoliers here do not steer their tubs from a rope attached to the prow. Instead, they draw power from an overhead cable like the MRT (no current buzzing, of course, that would be suicide in water). By pulling on the cable, the momentum of their bodies drives the lampitaw forward. An ingenious system for transporting large pieces of cargo like the bamboo furniture produced in the barangay. How much would a furniture maker earn from a three-seater sofa he makes by hand, out of bamboo he waited more than a year to harvest, if the sofa must go through such a complex journey to reach a buyer in, say, Divisoria? “P300." Less operating costs. The basket maker
Talim Island’s craggy terrain can be inhospitable, but it yields a lot of bamboo, which is made into large baskets (kaing) in Barangay Buhangin. One basket takes 2 hours to make by hand, from bamboo that takes 1-3 years to grow. A basket is sold for only P20 to wholesale buyers in Divisoria.
The banca cruises next to Barangay Buhangin, where a kaing (large basket) maker named Leonides is sitting serenely on a porch beside his baskets. It takes him two hours to make one kaing, which will then be put on a lampitaw, transferred to a banca, popped into a tricycle, stuffed into a jeepney, then sold wholesale in Divisoria—for the staggering sum of P20. There, it will be varnished and retailed at P40 to P60. Leonides says he is just an evacuee in this house, because he is waiting for the thigh-high water in his own house to go away. Where does he think the water came from? “Lumalaki ang lawa (The lake is growing)," he says matter-of-factly, like this is perfectly normal. It will go back to its original size by summer, he adds. In the meantime, his worldly possessions are piled up on tables and cabinets in his flooded house so they will not get wet. He didn’t bother locking up. “Walang masyadong magnanakaw dito sa amin, kahit iwanan mo (There aren’t really any thieves here, even if you leave your things)." Buhangin has only 2,039 inhabitants. It would be hard for a thief to stay out of sight. Unless he grows wings. A mole in the sole It was almost sunset and time to go home. We say goodbye to May, who, in two days, will be enrolled at a university on the mainland, taking up B.S. Psychology. One step closer to her dream of leaving the island for good. “Palibhasa’y malaki ang nunal sa talampakan, kaya hindi mapakali sa isang lugar (He had a big mole on the heel of his foot, that’s why he could not be content in one place)," George Estregan’s character had said in Nunal sa Tubig about his late father who had the same dream. To which the wise old man of the village replied, “Ang ating pulo ay nunal sa tubig, na talampakan ng isang mahiwagang nilalang (Our island is a mole in the water, that is the heel of a supernatural being)." Bernal meets Rizal Ishmael Bernal’s movie foresaw a bleak future that has unfortunately come true. A century before it, however, someone had seen a very different picture. “The steamer was just entering the lake and the view was really magnificent," Jose Rizal wrote in the opening chapters of El Filibusterismo. “The beautiful lake stretched out before them like an immense mirror where Heaven might look at itself. To the right, a series of bays made graceful curves in the low shore; to the left, the island of Talim and the Susong Dalaga, the ‘Maiden’s Breasts’, with the soft undulations which have given it its name." The Susong Dalaga, also known as Mount Tagapo, is Talim Island’s highest point. From there, the skyscrapers of Makati and Ortigas are visible like a mirage, a hallucination of the progress and prosperity that the island can see but never touch, because it is drowning in the filth of the industries that created that specter of national advancement. This is the myth of development Nunal sa Tubig cryptically warned about. A sacrifice needs to be made: If you curtail industry, you hurt the economy. But if you don’t, you will destroy life itself.
Beneath these waters lies the sunken port of Barangay Ginoong Sanay. All that’s left of it are the smashed toilets on the right.
There are no neat answers. All the people on both sides of the lake can do is hope that a miracle of brilliant administration will allow them to wake up one day and see Jose Rizal’s Laguna de Bay magically restored. Then it will be déjà vu all over again, this time, a happy one. - GMANews.TV
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