BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi
Earthballing / Death of miners and a boy

In my years growing up in their midst, I never saw my old man and his fellow gardeners attempt to earth-ball and transplant pine trees beyond the size of a sapling or a pole. These manual laborers didn’t believe a tree much older and bigger than a Christmas tree would survive if disturbed, its roots jutting out of its ball cut, lifted out of its original moorings and then transplanted.

If the 497 trees standing on the way of a plan to expand the Loakan economic and industrial zone into Camp John Hay would be balled, it would be an experience these gardeners of yesteryears wouldn’t have the chance to witness. Most of them are now up there, coaxing petunias to bloom and seeds to sprout in the great garden and forest in the sky.

There’s reason to assume some of the trees planned to be lifted are mature, natural, first growth. If so, they’re old enough to be mute witnesses and survivors of events, like the bombing of the camp in 1941, and the changes in John Hay’s landscape after the former U.S. military recreation center was turned over to the Philippine government. They must be, for the area developer originally asked for a permit to cut, not to ball and transfer them.

John Hay is a monoculture forest dominated by pine. It’s valid, therefore, to presume that majority of those planned to be balled and transferred are of that pine specie, the scent of which we –residents and visitors alike – now and then miss and pine for.

Our once dominant Benguet pine (is it pinus kesiya or pinus insulares) is quite a sensitive breed. Some seedlings wither and die from the shock of being transported for planting. Even mature ones slowly choke to death when covered with one or two feet of soil from the base or root collar.

This had been the case in some insensitive bulldozing work, some intended, I suppose, to eventually give reason for the dead trees to be cut as they posed danger to life, limb and property. A successful balling project is that patch beside the Baguio Convention Center, done many years ago to provide a patch of peaceful green as added ambience to the Karpov-Korhnoi world chess championship battleground. The trees were poles and saplings when they were balled. Yet their growth is stunted as a result of the disturbance.
***
The tragic death of several pocket miners inside a doghole flooded during a cloudburst in Itogon, Benguet is reason enough for the province to consider a proposal for the establishment of a provincial mining engineer’s office. The proposal was made years ago by Edmund Bugnosen, a mining engineer who grew up in the mining camps of Itogon. It’s a practical suggestion, as mining, aside from vegetable farming, is Benguet’s economic backbone. Like other provinces, it has a provincial agriculture office to support its farmers. Unlike others, it still has pockets of gold thousands of its residents continue to depend on, even if the main lodes had been mined out by giant firms. A government policy, however, might block the creation of such office if additional budget for an office and staff would overshoot the allowed ceiling for administrative expenses.
***
The news is often found on the obituary or card-of-thanks pages – as those of our venerable Baguio Midland Courier. Here are two of them I got through my cell phone screen last week:
Myron Gawigawen, a Baguio boy from Besao, Mt. Province, ended five years of dialysis sessions the other Friday morning. Taking off from his student activism days at the University of Baguio, Myron went on to social and community development work under Horacio “Boy” Morales. I heard he also took on the cause for cooperatives for some time as executive of the Cooperative Development Authority. He raged on till the end against the dying the light, his wife Ellen told those who came to pay their respects at the Resurreccion Church. Myron, a friend and brother, was laid to rest Wednesday in Sagada.

Yip Kook Chong, the amiable, soft-spoken secretary-general of the Asia-Pacific Alliance of YMCAs based in Hongkong, will compare notes with Myron up there on how to bring this world of mortals closer to what it should be. Mr. Yip bent backwards, quite literally to endure pain and appear as normal as the rest when he came to give direction to the APAY forum this year in Manila.

Having met him only thrice and in fleeting moments, I hardly knew Mr. Yip. I learned more about him through his APAY secretary-general’s report last year. A sentence that somehow summed up his report may as well be the epitaph for one who lived a full life for others:
“In the thrust for transformation of society and building community, we continued to pursue the agenda for development with a human face.” (e-mail: rdacawi@yahool.com for comments).