Malnutrition, poverty and looming landslide: Lunas, a cursed village?

It was an hour past midnight. It seemed there was nothing more Marife Maraon could do to pacify her one-year-old baby whose sharp howls severed the night’s tranquility, rousing neighbors from their slumber in this tiny and remote upland village of Canlugoc, Lunas, Maasin City in the province of Southern Leyte. Marife pulled her baby to her chest in a tight and warm embrace as she sang her some lullabies. The little one finally closed her eyes and went silent. But it wasn’t at all to Marife’s relief for the baby also stopped breathing. Malnourished from the start, the baby’s health deteriorated so quickly in a span of a few days after asthma hit her. Six months later, her death is something Marife still couldn’t accept. For her, it was the most forceful pronouncement of what she claimed a “curse" on her life and on their land. “Until today, I cry every night. I cannot accept her death. My two other kids are also malnourished. I’m afraid to lose them," says Maraon in her dialect. It wasn’t the first and only child death in Barangay Lunas, home of about 300 families who see children getting more malnourished each day as their lives are struck by severe poverty after a ‘bunchy top’ virus infested not only of the village but all of the city’s abaca plantations. The virus invaded sometime in 2003 and completed the task of demolishing more than 300 hectares of abaca plantations in about four years. There, the dollar-earning industry died and so did the farmers’ livelihood. Now, there is nothing to eat except root crops and camote tops. There is no job. The husbands have to find means of living outside their village. Unfortunately though, they have been shooed away by residents in neighboring villages who complained of robberies that are blamed on them. So when children are getting sick, parents could hardly even afford to pay transport service to bring them to a hospital, much more to medicines and food. And when the baby died, Marife just wrapped her in white linen and buried her. There was nothing to pay to embalm the son’s remains and to give her a decent wake. Ironically, “lunas" is a Filipino word that means cure or solution in English. Natives in the community also say their village was named after the kind of bamboo plant their ancestors called “lunas." These bamboos also known as the tree of life for its versatility were said to have sprouted in all of the township’s forests. It isn’t known why these bamboos disappeared. Residents are at a loss for answers. Sometimes, they question themselves – could there be something they have done so wrong to deserve such a fate? Many of the housewives have gone away to Metro Manila to earn a living as a domestic helper, leaving behind children in the care of their husbands who, what residents believe are by nature, cannot exactly match the kind of care a mother gives to her child. So, in many cases, the children are left alone in the house to care and feed themselves while their father looks for something to harvest in the farm. Day care teacher Celsa Mori says in her class of 17 kids aged 3 to 6, only about three or four are well-nourished. The rest comes to school weak and with empty stomachs. Hence, despite a meager allowance of 700 pesos a month she gets from teaching, she most often feels obligated to shelve out a penny to buy some snacks for the kids, just for them to go through the day. There was a feeding program sponsored by the government, but that happened during the nutrition month last year and had never been followed since, according to Mori. Absences are also quite high for these kids who often come to school barefoot and with no pencils and papers. “Kawawa mga bata rito. Sana may makatulong sa kanila (These children are really pitiful. I hope there will be someone who can help them)," says Mori. What keeps Mori going is that many of these kids are actually bright. They learn quickly despite their conditions. And in fact, for the last several years, children who graduated valedictorian in Lunas Elementary School come from Sitio Canlugoc. This year, they are also expecting another one from their community to top the graduating class in the same school where children from Sitio Canlugoc have to walk for an hour to reach it.

Mori says parents inspire their children to study hard for it can be the only way out from poverty. In their small and remote village, children have no computers or televisions to distract them, so they can concentrate on their studies. Livelihood programs Maasin City Mayor Maloney Samaco acknowledges the hard life residents face in Sitio Canlugoc and in the whole of Barangay Lunas. It’s true, he says, that these are happening, and that the local government has done measures to alleviate their situation. He says he has tapped various non-government organizations to help him deliver the services in the area. There are limited resources on hand and it is wiser to do it this way, he adds. For one, with the support of a non-government organization German Technical Cooperation, the residents have formed an association among themselves to establish a community-based forest management program. Called Young Innovators for Social, Environmental Development Assoc., Inc. (YISEDAI), the residents do reforestation, develop tree plantations, and conduct nursery operation with seedlings of indigenous species like narra and bagalunga. The group also received livestock like goats and chicken, vegetable and forage seeds, values formation, and training programs so they can start a livelihood program. One problem YISEDAI faces is that due to hunger and scarcity, there are occasions when residents are forced to butcher their goats and chicken even before they are reproduced. City social welfare officer, Fe Sta. Cruz, says women were grouped and provided with 5,000 pesos as seed fund for the self-employment assistance program. The group was asked to rollback the same amount in two years. From this fund, Sta. Cruz, says, the group was able to put up a sari-sari (mini grocery) store and had started a food production program. There is also a financial assistance package that the residents can tap when they are sick. Philippine Health Insurance identification cards were distributed to poor families in the village a few weeks earlier. She adds that the children, especially the little ones, have also been continuously provided with a feeding program, something that parents in Sitio Canlugoc deny having reached their children. “It is a depressed village, so it is always a recipient of our social programs," says Sta. Cruz, adding that she understands when people here remain restless. The efforts made by the local government, she says, cannot make wonders overnight and will have to take sometime for residents to begin reaping the rewards. “Our programs only started last year. These may be small, but these can surely help them," Sta. Cruz says. Huge cracks It seems to Lunas residents that their miseries compound one after the other. On top of malnutrition and poverty, the residents are also faced by an imminent threat of being covered alive by a landslide. In the last four years, cracks found on several of their roads, house floorings and walls have become bigger and bigger. Residents have seen their walls torn apart due to these cracks. They do not exactly know the reasons for the cracks. They suspect that tree-cutting activities and heavy rains made the soil feeble, triggering ground movement. And so when it rains hard, they feel strained not allow their children to go to school, fearing that something, like a landslide, may happen along their way. The thing, however, is Maasin City has no dry season. Rainy season can be felt during the months of June to October, and can extend up to February. From March to May when the rest of the country experiences summer, it is observed to be cool with random rains in Maasin. The Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has identified a total of 1,017 barangays or villages in Eastern Visayas as susceptible to landslides. Thirty-four of these are in Maasin. When the author called the MGB regional office in Tacloban City to inquire on the cracks, its director Loreto Alburo immediately deployed supervising geologist Cesar Balce who had to travel 12 hours from Catarman, Northern Samar to Maasin to inspect the area. Balce says MGB identified many of the cracks found at the foot of a slope four years ago, but there are several new ones now. The soil there has been extremely saturated by water that comes from the upland rice paddies that appear like mini rice terraces. The cracks have indeed progressed that in fact, houses in the area have tilted. Balce also advised teachers in an elementary school nearby to dismiss classes when rains continue for three hours. “The number 1 danger there is initially landslide and eventually mudflow," says Balce. “So when people notice presence of muddy water, they have to evacuate right away and wait for nothing." He has recommended for a detailed geo-hazard study to see whether there’s a need to relocate residents or engineering measures like building strong concrete drainage systems from the rice paddies down to the foot of the hills will do. Maasin City Vice Mayor Effie Abiera-Sabandal also assures that city engineers conduct regular ocular inspections in the area. And when heavy rains pour, the mayor immediately activates the City Disaster Council to be on full alert for any eventuality. “We don’t want another Guinsaugon. That’s why we keep ourselves prepared at all times," says Abiera-Sabandal. In February 2006, a massive landslide buried the entire village of Guinsaugon, St. Bernard in the same province of Southern Leyte, killing more than 1000 people. The Guinsaugon landslide was the largest of several similar incidents that struck the province. There were landslides in the towns of Punta, San Francisco, Pinut-an, San Ricardo, Liloan and Sogod, which caused enormous damage to lives and properties. It must be recalled that prior to the Guinsaugon tragedy, residents had already reported seeing cracks on their roads and floorings, just like what are found now in Barangay Lunas. Hence, Lunas residents cannot help but feel anxious. They hope for a faster, bolder, and more reliable action from the government because for them, the cracks are signs of a ticking bomb that’s waiting to explode. And for each rain that drops on their roofs, they fall to their knees and clasp their hands to pray it isn’t yet the end of their days. - GMANews.TV (The author is a television news reporter of GMA Network, Inc. and is a regular contributor of special reports on women, children, education, health, human rights, and the environment to the network’s news Web site GMANews.TV.)