Mt Province town praying for dry season not rain

By DexterA. See 

NATONIN, Mountain Province – While other people in other parts of the country are praying for more rains to pour upon them to enhance their agriculture production, and provide them with abundant supply of water, local residents in this remote eastern town a45re longing for the prevalence of El Niño or drought to allow the uninterrupted implementation of key infrastructure projects and enhance their sources of livelihood.

Mayor Matteo Chiyawan said the people living in the town never experienced summer season over the past 24 years as it always rains in their place daily.

It rains in our place for a duration of at least fifteen days before the occurrence of intermittent rains which will be again followed by prolonged period of rains that now affect our local agriculture sector and the sources of livelihood of our constituents,” Chiyawan stressed.

He revealed the last time that the municipality experienced prolonged summer season was right after the July 16, 1990 killer earthquake where the drought lasted for over five months.

Chiyawan said because of too much water on the soil, some portions of mountain slopes and most portions of roadlines have softened surfaces opening the possibility of soil erosion aggravated by the delayed implementation of public works projects considering the existence of too much moisture on the land that makes it difficult to compact.

Chiyawan cited the drying of palay by farmers are also significantly affected by the absence of sunlight in most days of the month exposing the harvested agricultural crops to possible rotting causing heavy losses among the agriculture stakeholders.

Natonin is a fourth class municipality in the province of Mountain Province, Philippines. The municipality is very mountainous, with very little level ground lending itself to agriculture. The barangays are geographically isolated by high 700 meters above sea level mountains covered in jungle.

The town is composed from people of different ethnic groups, foremost of these tribes are the Balangaos and the Majukayongs. Most of the population are of Igorot stock.

The Madukayong tribe identifies itself as Igorot, in that they are geographically in Igorot territory, yet many of their traditions and dialects are more closely related to Kalingan. It could be argued that the Madukayong are the southernmost Kalingan tribe. Headhunting was practiced in Maducayan as late as the mid-1930s, and was set aside in favor of Christianity and education after World War II.

Chiyawan said the town’s rainforest cover is greatly contributing to the abundance of rainfall that makes its river systems suitable for the operation of minihydro power plants as part of their economic activities in order to increase the opportunities of increased employment for the people and increased income for the local government to augment its main economy that is focused on agriculture.

While there are rituals that could be performed to help in stopping the prevalence of continuous rains in the different parts of the town, Chiyawan said tribal elders who have memorized the sequence of prayers and the animals to be butchered for the so-called “patik,” an indigeno7us native ritual to stop the rains, were not able to pass on the knowledge and skills in doing so to the younger generation which now makes it difficult for them to perform the ritual and realize its goals and objectives of stopping the rains.

“Our people are already restless on what to do because their agriculture produce are already being damaged by the rains. I pity our constituents for being exposed to too much rains,” Chiyawan said.

He added the concreting of the Bontoc-Tallubin, Barlig-Natonin-Paracelis road is being delayed in the portions that are located withyin the jurisdiction of the municipality because of the continuous rains.

Natonin is 74 km away from Bontoc and 25 km away from nearby Paracelis town.

Chiyawan appealed to the Mountain Province Engineering District of the Department of Public Works and Highways to fastrack the concreting of the 17 kilometers unpaved portion of the Natonin to Paracelis road so that it will connect their municipality to Santiago City, Isabela which is around three to four hours travel from their place in order to enhance the desired bus