The Philippines continued, Camarines Sur

When last I posted I had just returned from a visit to the northern Lamon Bay area of Quezon Province.  After a short stopover in Metro Manila, I hopped on a bus in the morning, and headed south to Camarines Sur, a province in the southern portion of Luzon Island, but the vertical center of the Philippines.  It is over 500 km from Manila to Naga City, and I had requested from the organizers of my schedule to either rent a car and drive, or to take a bus - I wanted to take this time to see much of the country.  A bus it was.  These fellowships are amazing opportunities  we are often flown from place to place, each day packed with meetings and events.  I think however that unless a Fellow makes a conscious efforts, it is too easy to just see the cities.  While I had taken one trip to rural Philippines already, I was looking forward to this trip to just settle back into a seat and stare out the window as half of Luzon Island, the largest in the Philippines passed by.

It was worthwhile.  We stopped a few times at local eateries along the way.  If anyone is every looking for inexpensive place to spend some time, the Philippines is for you.  Hotels are cheap, food is cheap, activities are cheap . . . in fact I have yet to find anything that is not cheap.  My lunch was a bowl of soup, anchored by 2 large (massive) shrimp.  Each was larger than my palm, and together they probably weighed well over a pound.  Along with a heaping bowl of rice, and a sprite, and a large tip, it was about $4.50 US.  It was an uneventful day, 8:30 am - 6:30 pm was spent on the bus.  But it served its purpose - I got to watch the countryside go by.  Most of the pictures have way to much reflection and glare from the window, so I'll skip them for now.





I was picked up by the folks from the Camsur Water Complex.  It was built by the provincial government as an economic development project, and is a water sports complex built for wake-boarding.  A large central lake has a cable system that wraps around its perimeter.  Towlines are suspended from this cable and tow wake-boarders around the lake past a series of ramps, jumps, and buoys.  It was a low key, and cheap place.  I think in total for meals over three days I spent, maybe $25.  The lodging, while sparse and simple was under $100 for three nights.

On the morning of Tuesday the 13th I was picked up by folks from PECUARIA.  Mr Molina, and Tony (chairman and vice chairman of the board of directors respectively) picked me up on the very rainy morning and we proceeded to their cooperative.  PECUARIA is a result of Agrarian Reform here in the Philippines.  I'm not sure how interesting this will be to everyone else, but I'm going to take a few minutes to digress here and talk a little about the history of agrarian reform.  Coming from a system where land ownership is held sacred, and in many cases taken for granted, this entire system is fascinating to me.

Like many other countries in the Pacific region, land ownership over many hundreds of years was consolidated into the hands of very few, very large landowners.  Actual farmers throughout the region where merely tenants, not owning their own land, and paying excessive rents each year for the land.  In the late 1940's immediately following WWII, many nations in the region, under the guidance of the US, including South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines embarked on a course of Agrarian Reform.  Through various methods, getting the ownership of farmland into the hands of the farmers themselves.  Japan and South Korea took just a few years for this process.  In the Philippines Agrarian Reform actually began just prior to WWII,  with much of the implementation being delayed by the war.

1963 brought a major turning point in the legislation (although legislation and implementation here in the Philippines often bear little proximity) with the Agricultural Land Reform Code.  The main thrust of this reform was that all landholdings above 75 hectares (roughly 180 acres) that were planted with either rice or corn would be siezed by the government and resold to the tenant farmers.  Landowners would be paid 10% of the value in cash, and 90% in the form of interest free bonds.  The tenants would purchase the land through amortized payments over 20 years.  But it only covered land planted to corn and rice, and many landowners avoided the program by shifting production to sugar, coconuts, fruits, or livestock.

The Department of Agrarian Reform was formed in 1971 under President Marcos as a result of extreme protests at the lack of progress with Agrarian Reform, and made some major changes to the code - making sharehold tenancy (rent paid in a portion of the crop) illegal, and converting all farms to leasehold tenancy and capping interest rates that could be charged to tenant farmers and reduced the landholding limits from 75 to 24 hectares (roughly 60 acres).  A year later, with the onset of declared Martial Law, President Marcos declared that all landholdings over 7 hectares (16.8 acres) in rice or corn were to be transferred to the tenant farmers at a value of 2.5 times the value of annual production, paid over 15 years at 6% interest.  Amazing the things you can order under martial law huh?  The decree only covered land in production as of 1972 (over the next 10 years roughly 3 million new acres of farmland would be cleared and farmed, almost exclusively by large landowners), and again it only covered the roughly 9.5 million acres of corn and rice land, not any of the 6 million acres under cultivation with other crops.  One huge flaw as well - it only covered farms operating on a tenancy method, leaving it possible for a landowner to avoid the process by simply evicting all the tenant farmers and operating the farm with hired laborers under a single corporate farm model.

The Marcos Regime came to an end as a result of the People Power Revolution from 1983-1986.  If you haven't heard much about this revolution, check it out here.  Its an amazing tale of a virtually entirely peaceful revolution, complete with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people gathering to support the movement, nuns bearing rosaries kneeling before tanks sent to disperse the troops, and a fall of a 20 year regime in a matter of just a few days.   After the fall of Marcos and the reintroduction of Democracy however, graft and corruption were still rampant and power was still controlled by a wealthy ruling elite.  Marcos had written his own constitution under Martial Law and this was replaced in 1987 by a new constitution.  Now Agrarian Reform was actually included at the constitutional level, and this time covered all agricultural land, and farm workers as well as tenant farmers.  It left it up to the congress however to set the types of exemptions and the types of land to be covered.  I like to think we are "relatively" free of obvious graft, corruption, and a culture of the inclusion of specific personal gains in our laws in an area like the US.  But even we have our exceptions to that.  Just look at something like our wetland protection act, a document that governs ALL of the states wetland resources . . .  well, all except a few little pieces here and there, not large pieces, and some for arguably good reasons, but others . . .  well lets just say it makes you wonder what chairman's friend was saying, "come on senator, just this little bit of land, can't we carve just this little piece out . . ."  Imagine that same process in a country where corruption and personal interest is considered the norm?  The legislation that was passed to implement the constitutional mandates was rife with exemptions and "prioritized" the reforms to lands between 55 and 125 acres.  Landowners were also given special abilities to argue the process in the court system a certain way to delay any process.  The biggest teller of the whole process - Agrarian Reform was set to expire in (I think), 2014.  So just to recap - congress is made up of many large landowners and their friends, all lands are supposed to be included, and they give themselves a little over 25 years to do it.  Oh yeah, and you are allowed to argue the process in courts, and the "priority" is on those medium sized 55-125 acres farms.  This article does a good job of describing one of the issues in a microcosm (oh wait, you mean the president at the time the land reform bill was being written also happened to be a major owner of a 15,000 acre sugar cane farm with tenant farmers?)  As I said at the start South Korea and Japan completed their reforms in just a few years.  74 years since its start, 49 years since it was re begun, perhaps a better starting date, it is still far from done, a process market by bribery, corruption, stalling, and deadly conflicts.

The co-op headquarters.

So that sets the stage for PECUARIA.  Prior to the 1980's PECUARIA was a 800+ hectare (almost 2,000 acre) hacienda, a corporate style farm that produced primarily livestock.  Not a specific target of the government Agrarian Reform efforts, it was still a large farm in its area, and was a focus of attention by many farmers in the community who felt it should be.  Due to repeated and continuing violence and destruction happening on the farm due to this, the owners closed the farm and took part in a "Voluntarily" offer to sell process with the government.  As a part of the land redistribution process, "Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries" had to be identified - the people who would actually receive the land as a part of the process.  Thousands of people claimed to be the most rightful beneficiaries   Protests, violence, and bitter acrimony developed among various groups as they jockeyed for position.

Finally an outside organization was brought in to help find a solution and 427 beneficiaries were identified.  They were not simply given the land, it was given through a cooperative that was formed, with all 427 being owners of the coop, but also assigned a specific parcel of land that was theirs to till.  Instead of paying for the land, they had to buy stock in the coop.  I'm going to skip ahead a bit here - watch the video to the right, it does a good job of telling much of the story of the creation of PECUARIA and its just 7 minutes.  When they talk about the prices of things, remember is php at a 41:1 exchange rate (1 million php is $24,400 US)

One of the several farm roads.  The farm was, like most of the
Philippines, amazing to view.

The most common farm implement I have seen here.

Rice.  This is a major rice growing area, and the co-op
produces a lot!

While the coop "owns" the land, and the farmers own the coop, they are individual farmers farming their own plot of land.  They own the product that they produce and may choose to sell it to the coop or not.  Despite the video's lack of mentioning it, not all the farmers are organic, and some who are, don't always follow the rules.  The management is diligent and strict however and while all farmers benefit from the dividends paid by the coops profits, it only buys the rice of the certified organic farmers who follow the practices.  Others are free to sell their crop where ever they wish.  They have ambitious plans and have spent a long time building a solid base for their operation.  Currently they have two major challenges - capital investment (always a problem in a growing enterprise) and motivating members.  They are addressing the capital investment issue by simply regulating their growth, using current cash flow to finance future expansion.  The larger challenge however is member motivation.  Some of the farm plots sit empty, unfarmed.  Farmers can leave their ownership to their heirs, but they cannot sell it.  They also cannot abandon it.  The coop has started a process of declaring some of the lands abandoned (an internal process) and seizing them.  It will work to restore them, and it has a process for bringing new members into the coop - they have to make the same stock purchases that other members had to make, and pay dues for two years before they are eligible to be designated land.  They are offering training courses and reforming their board requirements in an effort to have better, active, participation.  What was striking to me is if you left out the issue of land ownership, it could have been a conversation directly out of a Farm Bureau, Rotary Club, or other civic group - how do we get our members motivated to be involved, how do we train the next generation . . .

Some of the farmers have small hand tractors.  Perfect size
for these farms, and maneuvering over the dikes.

The rice terraces are all hand built each planting season  

They have had a true struggle in forming the group.  But they had a clear vision, goals, and an implementation plan, and they stuck to it.  A sugar plant has been destroyed by a typhoon, they have struggled to learn organic farming, seeing it as one of the only methods to distinguish the product in the market price and make them price setters not price takers, their first manager and founding leader, Dante was murdered by a rival group of farmers trying to disrupt the legal transition of ownership under the Agrarian Reform System.  At one point the Philippine Army was deployed to help protect the farm and its farmers from an invading group of farmers set on wrestling physical control of the land from the co-operative.

While it was great to see the story, it was even better to spend two days with the two gentleman who were helping to make it all happen, while at the same time struggling to make a living off of their own 1.7 hectare (4 acre) plots.

Mr. Molina has three children, all spaced 4 or 5 years apart.  through careful planning He first built a very basic cement block home and invested in his home.  His farm now yields him roughly 40,000 pesos (just under $1,000) a year.  College tuition is 15,000 pesos a semester and as his son approached college age, all the family's resources were targeted towards one goal, getting his son through college.  His son has now graduated and is a policeman in a neighboring city.  Next year the family's wages, now including not just a farmer but a policeman will shift to the daughter.  Then the three will shift to the youngest daughter.  After that Mr. Molina thinks he will have just enough time to fix up his house and maybe get some sort of transportation before he has to stop farming due to age.  By that time he will have three children, all hopefully with good jobs and a college education who can support him.  Its the way it is here.  Its long term investment and careful planning and it is helping not only the co-op, but with some luck and hard work, will propel his children and grandchildren forward as well.  I noticed when I was there, and in video afterwards - the real crop of this co-op isn't organic rice or muscavado sugar.  It's educated children.

The rice mill.  It dehulls and cleans the rice.

Most drying in the Philippines, like in China is done with
"solar" driers.  Simply spread the rice out on a road, driveway
yard, etc, and let it dry in the sun.  PECAURIA recently
built a flatbed drier to help dry the rice in the wet times
as well.  Roughly 10 tons of rice per batch, 16 hours per
batch, and all heating is done by burning . . . rice hulls.
 

Tony is a young man who, while he had a plot of land in the co-op had lived outside the coop and worked as a salesman for a private company.  He neglected the farm doing very little with it, instead focusing on his primary job.  At some point along the line he realized that like many Filipinos his labor was making someone else money, and no matter how hard he worked, he just got a small paycheck that never seemed to raise him up.  He began to realize that he had something that, through hard work and investment he could improve and grow - and directly benefit from.  He now works virtually non stop, for an outside company, as vice chairman of the co-op, and on his own farm.  He is focusing on long term crops - mahogany trees, mango trees, Philippine redwoods, and more in an effort to create something for the future.  More long term investment in building something that directly translates his work, into his reward.

we stopped at the Cagsawa Ruins.
This church was built in 1724 to replace
one burnt in 1636 by Dutch Pirates.
During the eruption of the Mayon Valcano
hundreds of villagers sought refuge in the
church and were killed by pyroclastic flows.

These same two men were also the two that drove me to my next place to stay in Donsol.  On the roughly 3 hour drive we talked about many things, but one topic was particularly interesting.  We had talked a little bit about my travels through Mongolia, China and the Philippines.  I had tried to describe each the best I could and we discussed China a great length.  Just like its claims over disputed islands with Japan, it also claims ownership over many islands that the Philippines claims are its.  China is a growing player in the region and certainly of interest to many Filipinos.  I tried to tell them how I struggled with China and Communism.  I had a short visit to China in 1995.  At the time, surrounded by shanties, run down cities, and a general sense of poverty and inequity all around it was easy to look at communism and say "see, it doesn't work."  Now anyone travelling through China cannot say that so simply.  The growth of the cities, the services to the villages . . .  while they may still need a lot of improvement, something they are doing is working.  But at the same time the freedoms are so limited.  Internet freedom is nonexistent;  I wrote about the challenges facing a young person trying to decide about having children; there are in fact elections for who will lead the communist party, but in a country with 1.3 billion people, only 80+ million are a member of the communist party and therefore able to have any say in who those leaders are.  The standard of living in China now is so much higher than that of the Philippines.  The healthcare is better, the education is better, the roads, buildings. . .  so much is "better."  But all three of us would choose the Philippines and their system in a heartbeat.  While democracy has been a struggle here, and few would argue that it is "fair" with the prevalent corruption at least there are honest choices in live.  I spoke of the Huaxi Village (see my earlier post on that) where every villager had a luxury home, a car, free healthcare and education and much more but they had to work 7 days a week and nothing actually belonged to them, it was all owned by the village and thus lost if they left.  They just stared in disbelief and amazement that anyone would choose to live that way.  I have to say I agree.  I'd take true free will struggling on a farm in the rural Philippines any day.

My first excursion in the Philippines

The last weekend was a whirlwind.  I'm still not sure exactly what my "take away" thoughts and emotions are.  It is rare that I need so much time to process my feelings about an experience.  Contrasting emotions such as: enormously thankful; shocked; contented; a little skeeved out; exhausted yet fullfilled and energized at the same time; understanding so much more, and yet still mystified . . .  These all swirl in my head as I try and put this down on virtual paper.  I'm just going to start to tell what happened, and where I can insert the feelings I will.  Where I cannot, I can only hope that the pictures and the story help to convey at least a hint of what I experienced.

The morning of Friday the 9th found me headed to Infanta in the North Lamon Bay area.  The itinerary had some vague suggestions of what I would be doing, things like "participating in program activities of ISO", "staying in staff house", and "traveling by boat."  We drove for almost 4 hours over some incredible mountains to the east of Manila, and to the north of Laguna de Bay.    



View Larger Map

Draw a line from Rodrigues to Infanta (yeah, that part where there are no roads) that's the route we took.  It was some incredible scenery, interspersed with local communities early on, with those fading out to tiny settlements of 2 or 3 houses as we climbed into the mountains.

The first 1/4 of the trip was like this.  There is considerable
sprawl surrounding Manila.

It slowly gave way to houses like this spaced out
much further as we continued to climb

We began to climb, slowly at first and then steeper
and steeper.

we kept climbing until we were directly under the clouds 

Know what kind of farm this is?  No?  It's a rooster farm.  Not just any poultry,
Specifically cocks bred for fighting!

In the mountains there were small settlements such as this,
well above the lower clouds and in the sun.

 See those two little vehicles there?  They are everywhere here in the Philippines.  They are mostly four stroke Kawasaki 175's.  They have a rigid frame attached to them, providing not only a cover for the driver, but a small compartment on the side.  Later in the trip we would take one of these down the second worst road I have seen in the Philippines.  Thankfully we transferred to a Jeepny for the worst one.  Now, I showed a picture in China of cargo stowed on a bike. I complain to my parents when they want to put 6 of us in their minvan for a trip.  Just remember that.

Upon arrival in Infanta we had a short lunch, and then proceeded to the Staff House for ISO, my hosts for this trip.  ISO, or the Institute for Social Order  is a NGO founded in 1947 by Fr. Walter Hogan a Jesuit Priest.  Their work, while having spiritual undertones is focused almost exclusively on improving the lives of the less fortunate through: The education and training of local communities in the fields of social change, human development and management development;  The organization of communities for livelihood and income generating projects as well as productive employment;  The provision of assistance to local communities in the areas of social research, organization and technology development.  The Staff House was a combination field office, bunk room for staff and volunteers (without the bunks), and meeting room for the Integrated Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council (IFARMC) of Northern Lamon Bay.  We arrived during a meeting of this group, as they are supported almost entirely by ISO.  IFARMC is a community based natural resource management group.  In the Philippines, each municipality has oversight on its "municipal waters" - those waters extending from its high tide line to 15 kilometers.  "Commercial fishing" in this zone is illegal (commercial fishing does not included small scale local fishers, in covers the larger boats using purse nets, trolling nets, long lines, etc . . .)  In an effort to coordinate their management of the area, 9 municipalities have joined forces to have one integrated council.  Additionally the council is integrated with the fishers themselves, the local municipality, the Philippine Navy, the Philippine National Police (PNP), and several NGO's.  The meeting was really for my benefit and they took some time to explain what they did.  To give you an idea of the situation here for the fisher folk or fishers as they are known, they are the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.  They usually fish for 8-10 hours each day, 7 days a week using hook and line, gill nets, or spear fishing (all legal methods) and in some cases dynamite and cyanide (illegal methods.)  During the 3 month peak season an average catch for those using legal means is 15-25 kgs of fish per day.  During the leaner times (the other 9 months) the norm is closer to 5-10 kg.  The fish, depending of the remoteness of the landing site is anywhere form 40-80 pesos per g (current exchange rate is 41 pesos to the dollar.)  During the lean month the fisherfolk are making $5-$20 USD per day, working 8-10 hours each day.  The boats are open, roughly 15 feet, have dual outriggers and are normally paddled by hand with the fishers going out anywhere form 2-12 km offshore each day.

A long standing problem has been the use, by some fishers, of cyanide and dynamite to catch their fish.  Using dynamite will likely yield a fisher almost 500-750 kg in a single day.  The site they fish on however will be decimated and unable to support fish for another 10 years.  That afternoon, around the time most of the boats started to unload their cargo and sell it to buyers, The IFARMC set up a mobile checkpoint on the sole road from the primary site for offloading fish (the municipality of Real) to Manila.  They had originality planned to take me on a sea patrol, but with several recent "interactions" between the patrol and armed fishers, they elected to instead do the checkpoint on the road.  It was sited at a "normal" checkpoint manned by two members of the Philippine National Police (think a cross between our FBI and Army) equipped with automatic rifles and sidearms.  These checkpoints are on almost every major road in the area, normally every 50-100 km or so.  They are used to try and control illegal logging, fishing, and to apprehend members of any of the half dozen active Muslim terrorist groups operating in the country.  While incidents in this region were rare, we were only to take the road we did over the mountains during the day, I was told that it was unsafe due to possible ambushes when traveling at night when I asked about the safety at night (my question was more geared towards a few massive landslides we saw, a few where large portions of the roadway itself were gone.)

The IFARMC, made up primarily of local municipal officials and volunteer fisherfolk have the power to inspect the fish, and to sieze illegally caught fish, and even to press cases in court, do not have the "might" it takes to get the job done in this country on their own.  Hence the partnership with the Philippine Navy, and PNP when operating on land.  As vehicles approached, usually trikes or small open bed trucks approached, members of the IFARMC would indicate to the PNP officers which vehicles they wanted to inspect (easily identified by the styrofoam coolers full of plastic bags and ice).  Sometimes the PNP officers would flag other vehicles over as well, usually any vans with all tinted windows, trucks that looked like they might have logs under their tarps (all commercial logging is now illegal in the Philippines), or vehicles with more than 3 or 4 18 - 45 year old men.

Most of the fish were reef fish, fairly small in size
that we inspected.  The IFARMC only has
jurisdiction over the municipal waters and fish
caught inside them.  Most of these are smaller reef
fish.

We opened each box of fish and looked first for fish that
appeared to look mangled in some way -
bruising, discoloration, etc . . .

Those fish were then handed down
to the actual inspector who would
cut them open and inspect the
interior organs.  While we found
none that day, I was shown pictures
of the internal organs of fish found
the previous day at a market
inspection, mangled and destroyed
beyond recognition from the blast.

Around 10:00 we returned to the Staff House, a two room condo with the first room being roughly 12 feet deep and 10 feet wide.  That room functioned as the kitchen, office, dining room, and milling around room for the 15 (yes 15) of us.  There were four chairs and the rest just lounged on the floor.  In the back of the room was a door into the "bunk room", a 10 x 10 room with two single mattresses leaning against the walls.  After dinner all but 9 of the folks went to their own homes, the remaining ones being too far from their homes to return that night (in some cases they came from island communities in the bay.)

These guys were some of the warmest, friendliest men I have ever met, all very eager to share whatever they had and struggle through a sometimes less than conversational ability in English to communicate with me. They raged in age from Justin (65+) to Melvin who was in his early 20's.  5 of us bunked in this room, two sleeping on a rollout mattress no wider than two feet, two sleeping on an actual mattress on the floor, and myself on my own matress.  I offered to take the smaller rollout one, seeing as how they were letting me have my own to no avail.  before bed each was texting a girlfriend or wife. Few use the phones for calling, its too expensive (not "expensive" by most Philippinos' standards, but these guys are far poorer than most Philippinos.)

By midnight we went to sleep, alarms set for 4:00 am to get up and get on the ferry to Polillo Island.  At 4:00 we were up, and on the ferry by 5:00 am. It doesn't get light here till around 5:45, so please forgive the grainy picture.  It was a 4 hour ferry ride to the island.

All the boats here have outriggers.  Its just the way they build
them.  Large or small, they all got 'em.  This was our ferry.

The city as we were pulling away.
The sun had finally come up.

Over the weekend it rained 5 or 6 times each day.  When it did it RAINED.
It would usually last for 5 or 10 minutes though.

It would pour for a few minutes, then be gone . . .

The ride was uneventful but it was a long one, having had only a few hours sleep and I frankly I was still getting used to my dramatic shift.  Just 48 hours before I had been in one of the most advanced, developed cities on earth, staying in a true 5 star hotel, with a chauffeur and a personal guide/translator.  I was now tagging along with about 10 local fishers and an ISO staff person busily doing her work, sleeping as I had mentioned, and feeling awkward enough to leave my raincoat in the bag, being the only passenger out of roughly 100, on the boat with one, and frankly it being one that costed more than any of them made in two months during the difficult seasons.

On the out islands, petrol is sold, by the litre,
in one litre glass pepsi or coke bottles.
That sure wouldn't fly back home.

Upon arrival in the town of Polillo we had lunch (around $15 US for the group of us) at a local restaurant and after saying good-bye to a few of them who were going their own way, the 10 of us remaining climbed onto two of those trikes I mentioned.  That's right, 10 passengers and two drivers on two small motorcycles with sidecars.  three sat in each sidecar (to say it would have comfortably fit one would have been a loose use of the words comfort or even fit for that matter. two sat side saddle behind the driver on the motor bike itself.  Our bags sat on our laps.  We then proceeded to drive for about an hour over the bumpiest roads I had ever been on in my life.  We pulled into a small village and I said my prayers, thankful for our safe arrival.  Until they told me, oh no, this is just where we get on the jeepny, the roads past here are too rough for the trike.

thankfully we had switched form the trike
to the Jeepny by this point!

For those of you who don't know (I sure didn't) a jeepny can best be envisioned if you think of an old WWII Jeep.  Cut it in half just behind the driver's seat, extend it about 10 feet and put a bench down each side of the back.  Then put 14-16 people in the back, (in that 10 feet of space, with their bags since the roof is full of cargo) and proceed another hour and a half.  Now as the crow flies its only about 60 miles from Manila to San Rafael (a small village in the municipality of Bordeos) our final destination on Pilillo Island.  It had so far taken around 4 hours by van, 4 hours by boat, an hour by trike, and another hour and a half by jeepny.  And we had to walk the final 20 minutes since the bridge into the village was too decayed to hold the jeepny with us on it safely.

As we walked over the bridge into the village of San Rafael I
got this picture of kids swimming and bathing as one of the
women watched and washed clothes in the river.

A typical  higher end home in the
village, this one had concrete blocks
for the walls on the entire ends,
and halfway up the sides of the house.

Once we arrived, the ISO staff and volunteers got to work.  We were visiting the village to validate the results of the data estimations, from information supplied by the villagers for a resource assessment report for the village.  It is part of an anti-poverty planning and development project.  Local input is crucial in the planning process here.  It was intriguing and informative, but I want to save the topic for after a few more meetings I have in the next few days.  The meeting was held in the multi function hall (the one room structure to the left).  It serves as the office of the economic development council, health clinic, community hall, birthday party center, and much more.  The two sides facing the prevailing winds are concrete with wood slatted windows, the other two sides are just wooden slats.  Roughly 25 people were there from this 1,700 person village to comment on the data, and change what they felt needed correcting.

While they worked many of the youths either played basketball, or watched the others play on the court outside the hall.  That is the village drama stage you can just barely see on the right of the last slat.  It is open on three sides, with a lean-to roof and solid back.  Rice fields were behind the houses to the east of the main road, woods behind the houses to the west.  There is one road in town, with 343 households  stretching along 1 km on both sides of the road. virtually every resident is a farmer or fisher, or a combination of the two.

The process went long into the night and while they were finishing up, Justin took me to visit some of the local households including the village captain, the youngest on Polillo Island (municipalities elect mayors, burungays, or villages, elect captains.)  Justin said that all was fine for us to walk around the village itself this late at night (around 10:00 pm) but we shouldn't go outside of it.  A few months ago there was a crime that was committed at night and the PNP refused to come until morning.  In this area, one considered very safe, three PNP officers were ambushed an killed in just such an incident less than a year ago.  People have an odd sense of "safe" here.  The road we went on to Infanta was safe - as long as we didn't go at night for fear of ambush.  This village was safe, but military personnel, in a heavy jeep wouldn't venture the 2 km from their outpost to the village at night for fear of ambush . . .

We finally got to sleep around midnight.  In most of the houses people slept on the concrete floor, I first slept on a bench in a living room, and then in a hammock in a kitchen.  The constant crowing of the roosters, barking and fighting of the ever present dogs over scraps of food, and the loudest frogs I've ever heard, followed by the 1:00 am wake up time to repeat the process back to Polillo town to catch the 5:00 am ferry made for maybe 15 minutes of total sleep.

After setting out on foot from the village at 1:00 am and running the whole process backwards, I arrived at my hotel in Manila around 1:00 in the afternoon.  We had taken a different route back, from Real, this time passing many lowlands.

I'm now a world away, but at the same time just 60 miles from where I was.  Manila is a massive city, surrounded by mountains and a Manila Bay.  Its a far cry from where I was this morning.

The people from San Rafael had so little.  The poor housing, the complete lack of opportunities, virtually non existent sanitation, poor nutrition, the depleting fishing stocks, and the incredible ordeal of such a short journey have left me drained and morose in many ways.

At the same time they have so much.  Optimism, love for one another, culture, and smiles all around.  The warmth and friendship shown to me by a small group of fishers, joined together by a common cause to protect not only their livelihood but the natural resources around them for the next generations was so invigorating and uplifting.   It was an experience I'll never forget  I feel drained and probably a bit depressed, while at the same time grateful, uplifted, and happy.

Last few days in China

I'm sorry it has been a few days since I posted last.  It seems that China's Congress which started today meant that in the days leading up to it they blocked contact with virtually every overseas social media site.  I was never able to see my own blog in China, but I could still log onto blogger, write new ones, and upload them.  In the last few days they wouldn't even allow that.

Monday the 5th featured a visit north in Beijing County to a large greenhouse area.  Now the Chinese have embraced capitalism in an interesting way.  I posted a little while ago about the richest village in China, and its business activities.  When the whole idea of capitalism was "allowed", some of the first entities to go out and form for profit companies were the military, and the various governments - central, provincial and villages.  The village we were visiting decided a few years ago it wanted to attract greenhouses and be a leader in flower production.  

Two layers of heat curtain in the house, one layer
on the outside.  As advanced as any you'll see in the US.

They did what any good Chinese village would do, they used their money and borrowing power to go out and build a few greenhouses and start a greenhouse operation specializing in potted flowering plants.  But they didn't stop there.  In the US, labor and heating are the two big costs for a greenhouse operation right?  Well labor is cheap here, really cheap.  How do we reduce the heating costs - the village went and built a massive, very clean, very efficient central heating plant utilizing deep wells, with a combination of heat pumps and heat sinks, supplemented by natural gas.  Their greenhouse was only about 3 acres, not nearly big enough to justify such an investment but they built 20 more such greenhouses and leased them to other enterprises, several which they themselves own.  Additionally they built a 50 acre park beside the facilities and each year they hold a huge tulip festival in the spring, and a chrysanthemum festival in the fall.  The village maintains about 40 of the acres and the different operations each have a display, depending on the festival, to exhibit their new varieties.  Pretty neat place.

The hog manure, once run through an anaerobic fermentor and
the solids are separated is composted in one of many
buildings like this one.  Pretty efficient operation too.

We then went to another village that had switched over from the individual farm model (3000 farmers all with their own 1/6 of an acre) to one large 500 acre farm that raised pigs and grew nursery stock and manufactured organic fertilizer from the manure.  The amazing thing - the farm, one of the largest hog operations in Beijing with 60,000 hogs smelt no more than many farms with 10 or 20 cows I have been on.  There is a continuous aerobic fermentor that processes all the manure on a continuous basis (each barn has a slatted floor with the manure being moved directly into a channel system and into the fermentor).  We couldn't go in close to the barns for bio security reasons, but we could see from a distance.  They were building new houses for the villagers (farmers.)  In almost any small town in the US they would be considered very high end condos - its virtually impossible, even in the countryside, to build single family housing units anymore, its illegal (uses too much land.)

Tuesday and Wednesday were free days.  Sort of.  I had a lunch with Dr. Shao the Secretary General of CEAIE and had a good opportunity to relay my experiences and speak about foreign exchanges in general; and Peggy kept me busy with site seeing.

Tuesday we did some things in Beijing since I needed to be in town for lunch.  We visited the Olympic City which is located in the center of the city.  It is massive and spreads like central park in New York City, through the heart of downtown Beijing.  It also sits virtually unused.  The "birds nest" holds concerts and while it brings in some money, it cost $441 million to build and barely breaks even.  The water cube looses over a million dollars each year.  The park itself is falling apart and has had little maintenance since the games.  It was a surprising contrast to the rest of the city.  You could tell it was a marvel in its day, but just 4 years later it sits virtually empty . . .

In the evening we visited some of the older parts of Beijing, the Hutong districts.  It was dark so not many pictures came out, but here is a picture of the style of house taken at an earlier part in the trip.  To think that this is what much of beijing used to look like just 10 or 15 years ago is amazing.  Development has its advantages, but it sure leads to the loss of a much different time.  Some of the house complexes we saw (still lived in today by the lower middle class people) were the same as they have been (with updated utilities) for the last 700 years.

Yesterday (Wednesday) saw a trip to the great wall.  I think the most impressive thing I have ever seen was the Grand Canyon.  The Great Wall is the next.  We got to visit a portion that while restored, looks out onto a much older section of the wall.  There isn't much to say - we've all heard of it.  Its a massive wall (which despite the common belief, cannot be seen from space), that didn't work (the Mongols just went around), but is still one of the most amazing feats of human achievement ever.  We visited the  Mutianyu portion, but the entire wall, and its branches measure 13,000 miles.  That's more than the distance from New York to LA - 5 times!  

Today (well very, very early this morning, as in 1:00 am) I checked into my hotel in Manila.  I had some great meetings with Eisenhower Fellow Dan Songco and PHILDRRA staff Mags as well as a brief orientation on some of the agrarian reform and fisheries issues facing the Philippines.  

Tomorrow morning I am off to see of the fisheries work in action and will likely be without wifi for blogging, but may have some facebook.  we'll see.

12 more days to go!

A sad day

I met many great people this past spring at the Eisenhower Fellowship Foundation's Opening Seminar, people who I know will be world leaders in the future.  Every one of them was friendly, engaging and brilliant in their own way.  Greg King however, along with his wife Catherine, was an exceptional individual and he stood out in my mind, even among such an esteemed group.  Maybe it was the reminiscing about New Zealand, a country that I had the honor of calling home for almost a year, living only about 20 minutes from where he and his family lived.  Maybe it was the brilliant legal mind, coupled with a true compassion for all people, even those who seem least deserving - he was best known as a criminal defense lawyer for those on trial for murder.  Likely it had something to do with the very late night of karaoke, in Philadelphia where he belted out many a tune with his new found friends, a small but eclectic collection of Eisenhower Fellows.  I spent a total of roughly 8 days with the man, part of a group of almost 30 other people, but he left an indelible mark on me.  It was a pleasure to have known him, even if for a very short period of time.

This morning in a complete fluke (a false hit from a google news search I was doing on something completely different) I learned that he was found dead today.  I cannot imagine the grief his family must be facing, he was only 42 and left behind a wife and two young children.

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/high-profile-lawyer-greg-king-very-nice-guy-5193697

http://www.efworld.org/download/summaries/12/Greg%20King_Program%20Summary.pdf

Having Children in China

I'm on a roll so I want to make one more post here today.  Many of you have probably heard of China's one child rule.  As I have toured the country this, and its effects have been of interest to me.  The Chinese government claims that it has avoided the birth of 650 million Chinese since 1978.  For a country of 1.3 billion people, that is a massive reduction.  Despite great controversy within and without China, a recent survey by the Pew Foundation reports that over 2/3 of the Chinese people support the policy.  Every Chinese person I have talked to on any topic relating to the size of China says that it has too many people.  Not just a lot, but too many.

But this policy isn't as simple as many in the US believe   First of all the policy only applies to urban couples.  Rural families may have multiple children until they have one son, and many have more if that son suffers from mental retardation, a physical handicap, or a mental illness.  Able bodied sons are seen as necessary for continuing to farm in the rural areas, and as I have said many times, farming is one of the nations largest priorities.  There are exemptions for twins, many ethnic minorities (mostly Tibetans), and for couples where both people are only children.  Further, couples can choose to pay a fine (actually, each person in the couple must pay a fine) that, depending on the income levels of the couple, could be 30,000-60,000 US$ to have a second child.  It will however get you thrown out of the Communist Party if you are a member and have second child.  For any of these situations, you must apply to  have the second child, and child spacing is mandated, requiring at least 3-4 years between the children.

While it has greatly reduced the population growth of China, even with this policy, every five weeks, China's population grows by 1 million people.   The system however has led to what is called the 4-2-1 problem.  Two couples marry and have one child each, and those children marry and have one child.  On a generational scale, this impact is incredible.  A couple is left to take care of 4 aging parents and then one child is left to take care of two aging parents, and possible grandparents.  Because of the one child policy, the likelihood of that one child actually staying nearby, and living with the previous generation is less than the likelihood of one child of several doing the same.  While we in the West may see China as the ultimate in multigenerational households, more than half of all households in China now are "empty nest" households with the child having moved away.  With the policy being relatively new in generational terms (the first to be born under it are now 34 years old) it is unknown how many of those only children will move home, or move mom and dad to the city to be with them if they need it.

It has been interesting to travel with a young women in her 20's and discuss some of these issues.  She is single, and because she prefers more mature men, many of the men she would choose to date were born on the 70's.  She herself is a single child, born in the 80's under the policy.  She would like to have 2 children however (remember if her spouse is an only child, they can have two children), and only children born in the 80's are a very uncommon thing.  She could choose to pay the fine, which she would be very willing to do (even at the price of $30K-$60K) but would be thrown out of the Communist Party if she were a member.  You cannot simply join and then leave then rejoin the party.  You must apply to be a member, they can reject you for being unfit, and if you ever leave, or are removed, you cannot rejoin.  She believes though that if you have two children according to the rules, you can still join.  She explained that while you get most any entry level job if you were not a member of the party, if you wanted to advance, you needed to be a member of the party.  When she finally finds Mr. Right (lets guess at 2 years) marries him (give it another year) has one child (another year) waits the requisite time for a second (4 more years) applies to get permission to have another (another year) we are talking 9 years before she would be able to join the party and stay a member (having gotten the second child thing out of the way).  In the meantime there would be little chance of advancing at a job.  And if you are at an entry level job for 7 or 9 years, it can make advancing difficult.  She's thinking of going back to school (she already has a masters) just to buy some more time in the whole process.

Such are the struggles for a single 20 something in China, male or female wanting to have a family.

Taiyuan, Shanxi Province

Well, its my third blog post of the morning and if I can get it finished, I'll be caught up.  We left Chengdu Thursday evening bound for Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province.  We landed at around 8:30 pm and it was 9:30 or so before I made it to my hotel room.  The city looked less developed than many I have seen along the way.  Not a bad city by any means, the buildings just looked a little older and everything wasn't as modern.  What struck me though was the pollution here.  Now many people had warned me about Beijing.  Maybe its the time of year, but I didn't have much of an issue with the air in Beijing.  Here, with the windows open, it hurts the eyes.  It makes them slowly water just a little and has a mild sting.  Like you are chopping up one small onion.  Shanxi is situated close to the center of China, and it is said, that if you want to understand the 5,000 history of China, you should start here.  Much of what I have seen though are "normal" Chinese villages and cities with little time to explore here.  It was heavily involved in the Second Sino-Japanese War with much of it being occupied by Japan after the battle of Taiyuan in 1937.  Following that war it was a major center for the People's Liberation Army during the Chinese Civil War which had begun again in earnest after the end of World War II.

The corn harvest out drying on the front porch.
No grain dryers here, you just spread it out on the ground.

 Friday morning began with a pickup at the hotel around 7:30 and a 3 hour drive south to Changzhi. Changzhi Province is corn country here.  75% of the farmland here is corn - it gets cold in the winter (-5 degrees fahrenheit is normal) and they get just 20 inches of rain a year, virtually none of it in the summer.  The farms are still small, just one mu.  Now I've gotten some varying information as to how big a mu is, so I decided to finally go and look it up myself.  Not many places have this information, and its pretty tough to find.  But what I have been able to find is that it is just a little over 7,000 sq. feet. or just over 6 mu per acre.  So the farms are even smaller than I thought.  Most farms here are 1-2 mu, with the vast majority being just 1 mu.  The drive south was impressive.  Here a few photos taken on the way.  I apologize for the blurriness, but that is what happens when you are going 120 kph down the highway trying to take pictures with an iphone.

See what appears to be short sections of stone walls on the hill in the foreground?  Those are just that.  Small curved stone walls making half circles about 3-4 feet in diameter.  In each one is a single tree.  There isn't enough soil to just plant the tree on the hillside, so they have build tens of thousands of these tiny curved stone walls on the hills and planted trees in them.  But there were also an incredible number of trees planted.  As I've said, China is paying far more attention to the environment than we hear about.  2000 years ago the effects of deforestation were already affecting China, and from 1950's through the 1980's it was devastating.  Much of this area had no older trees to speak of.  It looks as if just 10 years ago there would not have been a tree in sight.  Now many of the hillsides that were terraced for farming, are now planted with trees.    While there is much debate about the success of the program based on planting mono cultures of trees, and non native species, one things is clear from driving around china - you see the results of their reforestation efforts.  For the first decade of this millennium, China has forested eleven and a half thousand square miles of trees - every year.  That is more than the state of Massachusetts every single year!!!  When the government wants something done here they do it.  In 1978 the communist party passed a resolution declaring that it was the duty of every Chinese person over the age of 11 to plant at least 3 Poplar, Eucalyptus, Larch or other saplings every year.  Ordinary citizens have planted some 56 billion trees across China in the last decade, according to government statistics. In 2009 alone, China planted 14 million acres of forest - that's the size of West Virginia.  China plants two and a half times as many trees every year than the rest of the world combined.

This is a very mountainous area.  The interesting thing is that every hill, every mountain has been terraced.  We've all heard of the rice terraces, they are pretty and green and picturesque so they get photographed a lot, and thus we know of them. But every hill is terraced for whatever crops can be grown.  Here it is corn.  20 plants seemed to be the minimum.  If you could fit 20 corn stalks, it was planted.  Many of the small plateaus are only reachable on foot.  I asked how many of the farms had their own, or shared equipment, something that is growing in popularity across China.  I was told only about half, the rest simply cannot reach their fields with anything beyond a hoe or a 50 lb bag of fertilizer, or seed.  getting the crop out is the same - put the bag on your shoulders and hike down the hillside.

One of the the reasons for coming to this area was to see two technologies they are utilizing.   One is in the fields for corn production.  If they leave the corn stubble in place, it will blow away during the winter.  They do not have the machinery to harrow it in.  Instead they have taken to chopping the stalk in 6-12 inch sections, folding over the bottom half of the plant, and putting a little dirt from between the rows on top.  In this way the dirt holds down the stalks, helps break them down, and the stubble cover greatly reduces the evaporation in those bands.  The spacing is about 2 feet of stubble, 2 feet of bare ground.  Next spring the corn will be planted on each side of the stubble in the bare dirt.  The plant will pull the moisture from under the stubble, and also allow the rows to be staggered each year.  The row of heavy stubble also means the farmer only has to hoe in between every other row, the stubble keeps the weeds down in the rest.  And yes, this is all done with a hoe and shovel.

The other technology was a very interesting type of greenhouse utilizing combined fertilizer and irrigation techniques.  Each Greenhouse is roughly 9,700 square feet and costs just $3,200 US to build.  It has a natural dirt floor and is oriented east to west with the brick wall on the right being the north. The brick wall is a full three feet thick.  It is faced with a single layer of brick, and behind that is an earthen berm.  This serves two purposes, one very little sunlight enters through that side, and it is far more durable than the plastic.  More importantly though, it is a massive heat sink.  There is no heating in these structures, and the plastic sheeting on the south face is just one layer or perhaps 3 or 4 mm clear plastic.  All day during the winter the low sun shines on the wall and heats the brick, and the dirt behind it.  As the temperature drops at night, the heat migrates out of the wall, heating the greenhouse.

The trusses are a small gauge channel
stock secured with bolts.

The end walls are brick as well, with a small end house on one side.  They feature a single layer of brick on the outside, a layer of 4" Styrofoam insulation faced with a layer of skimcoat cement with fiberglass pieces in to to help hold it together.  The bottom and top 2 feet of plastic along the south face wrap around a rod to provide passive ventilation when it is warm enough.  These areas however are covered with an incredibly fine screen to keeps pests out.  This one didn't have it, but the others had large yellow sticky traps suspended form the ceiling to catch any insects that did get it.

Every four houses has a pump in a small manhole outside where they all meet.  In each house there is a 30 or so gallon barrel filled with liquid fertilizer, a hose that goes down into that barrel, and a simple venturi system is set up to suck fertilizer out of the barrel when the irrigation is happening.  Each set of two rows of plants has a VERY thin layer of plastic over it with small holes torn in it for the plant, and between the pair of rows and the next is a shallow (4") ditch.  Drip irrigation is used under the plastic that covers each pair of rows of plants, keeping the moisture in the ground and not in the air.

Notice the stairs on the side, and the short ventilation section rolled around
the pipe.

It gets cold here, and these greenhouses are built for year round operation.  With just a single layer of plastic there is virtually no insulation from that.  On the outside there are a series of overlapping 8 foot wide blankets that are rolled on a pipe.  In the center of the pipe is a motor fixed to a pole with a hinge in the middle.  Turn a switch and the blankets all roll down.  Turn it the other way, and they all roll up.  Notice the one in the back with the blankets all the way down.  At first glance this system seemed very rudimentary   After really spending time with it however it seemed ingenious.  Simple, cheap, reduces water (the limiting factor here for growing) by 2/3, reduces insect, fungus and bacteria pressure and extends a growing season from around 180 days to 365 without the need for heating.  This was a demonstration facility (although they had 120 of these greenhouses and where building 200 more) so they were all built with good materials.  The farmers in the area build them smaller (each of these were 30% larger than their farms) and many used 100% dirt (no brick) in the north, east and west walls; used blankets made from woven corn and rice stalks; and used cheaper plastic on the south wall (1.5-2 mm).  Most farmers build them for around 8,000 RMB or 1,280 US$ (half what the demonstration center builds them for).

It was a long day (6 hours of driving, 3 hours of meals (you read my last post on meals here right?), and about 2.5 hours of learning of the technologies, but it was well worth it.