Of kiwet and the burrowing of culture

CULTURAL NOTES

Richard Kinnud

In a recent visit to my birthplace in Ifugao, I had the chance of sitting with some folks who were talking about a barangay ordinance regulating fishing from the rice paddies.  One of them said this should be lauded as, first, it protects paddies from physical and biological destruction.  Fishers, even if unintentionally, can ruin the dikes or introduce unwanted elements into the ponds.  And second, this favors paddy owners who are purposefully growing fishes at their farms.  Ifugao rice paddies are naturally rice-fish agricultural systems, and some smallholders enhance them by making what is called a luhu’ or luhuk, a small portion deliberately dug deeper for fishes to be sheltered.
    But another argues that the ordinance should be amended as, at the present state, it somehow complicates the eradication of kiwet.  I first heard of kiwet, a swamp eel, as food but here I am being directly made aware that it is a farm enemy.  Its most destructive way is burrowing into the dikes causing the paddy to easily dry up.  The Ifugao native rice, often generally referred to as tinawon, which is still the one cultivated here requires that the paddy always holds water for it to grow and fruit well.
    In my childhood days at the barrio more than thirty years ago, I have not heard of kiwet.  I have seen though the changing of the ecology of the rice paddies.  There was the introduction of giant fresh water clams and giant tilapia.  This was deliberate as a government agency was even involved in the dispersal. 
    There was also the introduction of the golden kuhol which has become to this day a perennial problem of the barrio folks.  No one knows exactly how it happened but some say that it came with the introduction of itik, a non-endemic duck.  No itik project has prospered big time in the place though, but the golden kuhol thrived. 
    Years later, some endemic snails, fishes and insects were either hard to find or has vanished at the paddies.  This includes the small tikkam (clams), the ginga (small snails with fragile shells), the battikul (native kuhol), dolog (native mudfish), the native tilapia, and kullangga (an edible insect).    It is believed that the introduced species were the cause of the phenomenon as they may have been predators or were eaters of the eggs of the waning and the perished creatures.
    I now wonder how a barangay ordinance could eradicate the perceived menace.  Maybe it could slow down the damage but perhaps like the previously introduced species would cause long-term change.  It may not just be the farm ecosystem but farming itself.  Who knows when the smallholders would get tired of planting the tinawon and shift to other crops that are not water intensive.
    I asked how the kiwet was introduced here.  Some would say they just woke some three years ago and saw that kiwet has multiplied in the farms.  Another suspected that it could have been a purposeful sabotage done by a barrio mate or maybe something intended for food but turned out to be destructive.  Still another say it could have been accidental with the movement of soil and river sand from outside the barrio to be used in road projects and other infrastructure projects here.
    This made me think of cultural changes in general.  Sometimes people just do not know and they are already in an environment with a different cultural orientation.  Or maybe they can pinpoint to a particular person or institution to be the agent of the change.  Or perhaps look at growth or development as the cause.
    It has always been said that change is inevitable.  But for sure, we don’t like change to be destroy us.  We may have been blindsided at times or may have been unaware of change.  But have we been always vigilant of change that extinguishes part of a good culture?
    Our first weapon is awareness of the presence of kiwets burrowing into our fields culture.  Then the second step is a decision to minimize if eradication is not possible.  It would require some grand help from institutions that we interact with such as family, workplaces, churches, government, schools, and many others.  They could be minting places of ordinances that we need.    But then, could they be also breeding places or promoters of kiwets?  Aside from awareness, one has to examine and act accordingly.