Plateau or Valley?

Say “Kulaman Plateau” anywhere in Sultan Kudarat Province and you’ll be met with a slightly confused look. Virtually no one here calls Kulaman a plateau. For the people living in the plains, Kulaman is a mountain. For the residents of Kulaman’s neighboring villages, Kulaman is a valley.

I myself never thought of Kulaman as a plateau until I read the academic papers on the limestone burial jars. I come from a village that is outside of, and more elevated than, Barangay Kulaman, and I grew up hearing people refer to our poblacion as a valley. However, if one looks at the place from a farther point or with a broader perspective, such as the anthropologists from outside Mindanao did, it indeed makes more sense to describe Kulaman as a plateau than as a mountain or a valley.

So do use Kulaman Plateau when writing about the burial urns or the Manobo people, but if you are visiting Sultan Kudarat and asking for directions, use Kulaman only. Mention plateau and people won’t have a clue what you are talking about.

New Year, New Blog Features

Pardon me for not being able to update this blog for more than a month. I got sick, terribly sick, perhaps the worst I’d ever been. When Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out Manny Pacquiao and typhoon Pablo claimed a thousand lives in Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental, my own foe also knocked me down, confining me to bed for five days.

The good thing, though, is that I’m all right now, perfectly all right, and I’ll be facing the new year a wiser and more health-conscious person.

Speaking of the new year, I’ve decided it’s time to introduce new stuff in this blog. These features aren’t really new in the world of blogging, but in this particular site, they are. Top of the list is I’m now going to allow you visitors to comment on my posts. You may now give me your suggestions, corrections, and the like, in a more convenient way; no need to e-mail me.

I disabled comments before because, having been a copy editor and maybe just obsessive-compulsive, I was a stickler for proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. I still am. But I’ve sat down with myself and told him to go a little easy on you blog readers; you are not manuscript authors, after all.

Feel free to express yourselves. I will approve and even reply to your comments as long as you don’t commit these mortal sins: truncating words (give me a comment, not a txt msg); unjustified . . . and improper . . use of …. ellipsis points; giggling or laughing in a jejemonic way (e.g., jeje) or in more than three syllables (e.g., hahahaha); and shouting (LIKE THIS).

Another change is that I’m now going to use Senator Ninoy Aquino, the official name of my hometown, as sparingly as possible. When referring to the municipality, I’ll use, simply, Kulaman. For the central village and seat government, I’ll use Barangay Kulaman. For the elevated area composed of the town and adjacent villages, I’ll use Kulaman Plateau.

I’m dropping Senator Ninoy Aquino because nobody really uses it save for official documents and in official functions. For the locals and residents of neighboring towns, the place is, and probably will always be, Kulaman. I now believe that instead of forcing the people to use the official name, the official name should be changed to reflect the traditional and the present prevailing practice of the people. (I should research how a name of a certain place can be changed by law.)

The third new move is that I’m now going to welcome fellow bloggers who want to exchange links with me. However, I’m going to limit my links to blogs that deal with culture, art, travel, literature, and similar topics. No showbiz gossip, pop music, or fashion blogs for me, except maybe if we’ve been friends the old-school way, not just in Facebook or blogging. If I find your blog übercool, though, no rules apply. I’ll link you even if you don’t ask for it.

Whew. I think I sound so hard to please after laying out those dos and don’ts above. Oh well. I won’t persuade you to think otherwise. I am hard to please. And I don’t aim to please others. I didn’t create this blog to be popular. In fact, I don’t want this blog to be popular. I just want to help the very few people who need or want to learn more about Kulaman Plateau and its Manobo people. I’ll be pleased enough with a thank-you from even just one graduate student doing his thesis or a travel enthusiast wanting to rough it in Kulaman.

I think this post is already too long for a blog, so I have to say goodbye now. Till next post. May Kulaman be a better place to live in, and visit, this 2013!

Death of an Artist

With her death, I am tempted to believe that good people die young. She was a responsible high school teacher, a dedicated pastor of her church, and a self-taught muralist always willing to share her art. She was only in her early thirties when she joined her creator last month.

Just a few years ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes. She was teaching then in a private school in Isulan, the capital town of Sultan Kudarat. The doctor's prognosis was gloomy: her days were numbered. Because of that and some other reasons, she decided to go back to Kulaman. At home, she continued with passion what she had been doing—teaching, serving her church, painting. She would only take a pause whenever she had to go to the hospital because her gastritis had confined her to a crouching position or her legs had become too numb and swollen. She had developed complications due to diabetes, and the worst was kidney damage.

Last summer, she got married to a gentle man who wanted to spend a lifetime with her even if he knew a lifetime could mean a thousand days only. Last June, she was given a permanent position in a public high school. It meant a regular salary. It meant she would have money to pay for her medicine. The opportunity, however, came too late. Her doctor said only 30 percent of her kidneys were working, and she had to start undergoing dialysis.

She refused further treatment. She decided to embrace her fate. She said she didn't want her family to be buried in debt just so a few hundred days would be added to her life. She ate whatever she craved for and did everything she wanted to do—that still meant teaching her students Math, speaking about God's love every Sunday, and giving life to walls with enamel paint.

The swelling of her body worsened by the day, and she had to be rushed to the hospital in October this year. After a couple of days in the hospital, she was brought home. She could not get up from bed, and she had difficulty speaking. She said, however, that she didn't feel any pain. She felt nothing.

She lapsed into a coma soon after. She lay unconscious and snoring. More than twenty-four hours later, she woke up. In an audible, lucid voice, she called her mother and asked the old woman to pray. Her husband looked at the mother and daughter with pain; his wife did not ask for him. She just slipped into unconsciousness once more and never made a sound again.

Kulaman Jars in Cebu

I wasn’t able to update this blog for more than a week, again, because I’ve been to a writing workshop, again. This time, it was in Cebu. Yes, Cebu, where some of the Kulaman burial jars were taken.

Of course, I didn’t let the opportunity to see the jars pass. On November 5, Monday, I dropped by the University of San Carlos Museum, and for the first time, I was able to see the actual jars, not just their online photos. I even ran my fingers along their ridges. It was a surreal experience. I found myself on the verge of tears.

The jars were displayed atop a knee-high wooden platform about two meters wide and four meters long. The platform was placed right in the center of the museum, which was about the size of three classrooms joined at the sides. Thus I can say that the burial jars from Kulaman are the most prominently featured, and maybe the most valuable, artifacts in the museum.

After my extensive online research, I thought I had become a connoisseur of sorts of the jars. I was taken aback when I could not properly classify the artifacts in front of me. I tried my best, though, and I came up with an inventory of burial jars in USC’s possession.

I counted thirty-seven items in all, but only two of them were complete. One was medium-sized, circular, and nearly immaculate. Its body had bold diagonal ridges, and its cover was in the shape of a tent. Carved on the cover were two figures of lizardlike men. The figures were placed back-to-back, on the two wider sides of the cover.

Another complete item was a small quadrilateral jar that appeared grimy. It had dark yellow streaks around it. Its simple flat cover had a protruding knob. At first I thought the design was phallic, but on closer inspection, I found out that tiny holes had been bored on the knob to make it appear like a human face.

Including the two complete ones, there were eighteen jars altogether. The rest of the thirty-seven items were mostly anthropomorphic lids and some fragments I could not identify. Of the eighteen jars, only three were quadrilateral; the others were circular. Two were more than one meter high. Most had simple vertical or diagonal ridges around their bodies, but one of the tallest had a carved figure of a man.

The jars, or at least the ones that didn’t have covers, were empty, so there were no Late Neolithic human bones to see. The collection, though, also had some pieces that were discovered with the jars. They were tacked on a board near the wall, and they included stones, shells, and boars’ teeth.

Town with Highest Zip Code in the Philippines

Here's a trivia question for you: What province in the Philippines has the highest postal code? Check the map below and go back here. Now which town in the province has the zip code 9811, the highest in the country? Check this page from Philippine Postal Corporation.

Oookay. Probably, you already know the answer even without looking at the map or clicking the link. This blog obviously is about the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, so I don't have any good reason to ask a trivia about another town (or at least at this point, when I'm still on the preliminary stages of building this site).

So there. If you're not a spelunker or anthropologist but you're a sucker for trivia, the information I've just given you might be a come-on enough for you to visit my hometown.

Map by Howard the Duck, licensed under Creative Commons

Before I say adieu, though, let me add another trivia about the trivia: Though Senator Ninoy Aquino has a designated zip code, it hasn't have an official post office for several years now. People here has to go to Isulan, the capital town of Sultan Kudarat, to mail their letters and documents. Rumor has it that the last local postmaster or whatever he was called had stolen some checks sent in the mail, so the postal service here was discontinued. Now say with me: Tsk, tsk, tsk.

SNA State of Local Development

Here's more on the depressing economic condition of my hometown. I found a 2009 report on the state of local development in the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. The report was created by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) as part of its local government performance management system (LGPMS). I'll let some of the findings mortify you:

State of Health and Nutrition – Maternal mortality rate is unbearable.

State of Education – Elementary participation rate is intolerable. Elementary completion rate is extremely low. Simple literacy rate is low.

State of Employment – Unemployment rate is alarming. Underemployment rate is very high.

State of Income – Income per capita is extremely low. Poverty incidence is alarming. Magnitude of families living below poverty threshold is too high.

State of Forest Ecosystems – Forest cover in forest land is denuded. Incidence of large-scale illegal logging is high. Forest resources and wildlife habitat are severely at risk.

The report is in summary form and quite easy to read and understand. It has one conclusion, however, that I find difficult to believe. In its "State of Urban Ecosystems," it indicates that, in Senator Ninoy Aquino, "air quality is poor." I wonder what the basis for the statement is. Among the barangays of the town, only Kulaman is officially identified as urban, and as I have observed firsthand, the village barely has possible sources of air pollution, such as factories and motorized vehicles.

Another error I noticed in the document is the land area of Senator Ninoy Aquino. It should just be thirty-nine thousand hectares, not thirty-nine million.

Manobo Magic Demystified

Many Visayan settlers here in Mindanao whisper about the power of the Manobo people (and other indigenous tribes) to use some primitive dark magic. The suspicions are not exactly unfounded. Ross Errington, a linguistics scholar, set out to investigate the matter and reported his findings in the journal Studies in Philippine Linguistics, published by the international volunteer organization Summer Institute of Linguistics.

In the article, which appeared in 1988, Errington classifies the magic of the Dulangan Manobos into four, according to its use: (1) magic to ward off misfortunes, (2) magic to heal the sick, (3) magic to attain success, and (4) magic to inflict harm on others. Towards the end of the article, the writer discusses Manobo magic in relation to the conversion to Christianity of many tribe members.

Visayans who will read the article will be surprised to find out that Manobo magic isn't much different from the traditional supernatural practices of lowlanders. Like the Visayans, the Manobos of Cotabato wear amulets to attract positive energy and utter chants to drive away illness-causing spirits. The difference is in the details. Read Errington's article to learn the nitty-gritty of Manobo magic. To cite it as a source, see Bibliography.

Sultan Kudarat Youtube Profile

I checked Youtube for videos on Kulaman, and I didn't find anything worth your time. I chanced upon, however, a two-part profile video of Sultan Kudarat Province. It was created by the provincial government and uploaded three years ago.

The first video opens with the words "The land of one hundred caves, wonderful falls, and beaches. This is also the number one producer of quality coffee in the country . . ." The parts about caves and coffee are referring largely to Senator Ninoy Aquino, my hometown.



Senator Ninoy Aquino, however, is not expressly mentioned until 7:41. The narrator says the municipality has the smallest something. I can't figure out the word, for the life of me. While the narrator talks about our town, the screen shows the facade of our municipal hall (yes, the one that looks like a three-room elementary school). The camera then pans to the bronze bust of the good senator in front of the building.

Perhaps the most interesting information I learned from the video is the classification of the people of Sultan Kudarat by ethnicity and religion. According to the video, Hiligaynon speakers compose 41.06 percent of the population; Maguindanoans, 21.28 percent; and Ilocanos, 15.03 percent. Roman Catholics dominate the population, at 56 percent, followed by Muslims, at 23 percent.

The first part of the second video is rather boring, for it deals mostly with economic figures. The narrator specifies how many hectares of fishing grounds the province has, how many metric tons of rice and corn it produces, and the like. My interest was roused again when tourist destinations were discussed. I was fascinated, and excited, at the mention of "one hundred caves that contains [sic] burial urns in Senator Ninoy Aquino."



I had assumed that the caves of Kulaman had been swept clean of its Manobo limestone jars. I am now wondering if some caves have not been looted and the local government is implementing some program to preserve them. The video ends with some shots of lovely waterfalls. I don't know where they are, however, and I've never been to them.

Poverty in Kulaman

More than week ago, I created a post stating that Senator Ninoy Aquino is the poorest town in Region 12. The data were taken twelve years ago by the National Statistical Coordination Board. I rummaged through the agency's website again to look for more recent poverty statistics, and good news, my poor little town is no longer as poor.

Since 2000, NSCB conducted several more poverty estimates for the country. I can't find the results by municipality for 2006, so I will cite only the findings for 2000, 2003, and 2009. (NSCB's website could surely benefit from a little 5S.)

As I've posted, in 2000, Senator Ninoy Aquino received the dubious distinction of being the most impoverished municipality in Region 12, with 74.90 percent of its populace living below the poverty line. T'boli in South Cotabato ranked next at 73.67 percent, and three other towns in Sultan Kudarat Province registered poverty incidence above 70 percent—Colombio, Lutayan, and Bagumbayan.

In 2003, poverty in Senator Ninoy Aquino had been alleviated, for only 63.63 percent of its populace could not afford basic necessities. The municipality ranked fourth among the poorest in the region. The top two belonged to South Cotabato Province—T'boli (66.50 percent) and Lake Sebu (65.31 percent)—and on the third spot was Malapatan (66.37 percent), of Sarangani Province.

In 2009, the ranking of Senator Ninoy Aquino improved further. The municipality now placed twelfth, with only 47.60 percent of the population experiencing poverty. The sad thing is that its neighbor, Palimbang, took over the top spot, with 63.70 percent of its residents unable to make ends meet. The town was eighth in 2000 and sixth in 2003.

The most alarming about the findings is that the municipalities that registered the highest incidence of poverty are where indigenous tribes live. Hopefully, the statistics will goad (or shame) the local government units concerned into improving the plight of their peoples.

Want to Learn Manobo?

I missed posting here! I wasn't able to update this blog for more than a week because I've been a fellow at a regional writing workshop. The schedule was crazy; there were so many literary works to read and plenty of kindred spirits to banter with. Now I'm back to the rut that is my real life, so I'm going to have enough time again for this blog.

To get the ball rolling again, I present you readers several gems that I've unearthed from the website of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The site has downloadable publications that are just perfect for those who want to learn the language of the Dulangan Manobos. Here are the basic references:

• Ini sa Medoo Kagi Diya sa Epat Balangan Kagi: This is Words in Four Languages (1979) PDF 4MB
• Sa Libelu Kesetawit Diya sa Telu Balangan Kagi: A Phrase Book in Three Languages (1995) PDF 1.8MB
• Cotabato Manobo Grammar (1988) PDF 4.4MB

The first book above contains an exhaustive list of Manobo words and their respective equivalents in English, Tagalog, and Cebuano, so using the book, most Filipinos can learn Manobo. For more advance learners, listed below are some supplementary documents. I don't have any formal training on linguistics, so I can barely understand their contents:

• A Transition Network Grammar of Cotabato Manobo (1979) PDF 3.1MB
• Discourse Types and Tense Patterns in Cotabato Manobo (1979) PDF 0.5MB
• Hortatory Mitigation: The Case of the Camouflaged Backbone (1984) PDF 0.9MB

The website also offers downloadable documents that are about the Dulangan Monobos but not directly related to their language:

• Cotabato Manobo Ethnography (1988) PDF 1.7MB
• The Magic of the Cotabato Manobos (1988) PDF 0.7MB

That's all for today. Mesehaa ki pa kani. Dutu a de! (To know what I mean, see page 4 of A Phrase Book.)

Reference: Law Creating Ninoy Aquino Town

I found a copy of Republic Act No. 6712, the law creating the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. Thanks to websites that serve as a database of Philippine laws. Our statutes can now be read, copied, and shared by almost anyone, not just yellowing and gathering dust on some hands-off shelf.

According to R.A. 6712, Senator Ninoy Aquino shall comprise eight barangays, seven of which belonged to the Municipality of Kalamansig, namely, Buenaflores, Bugso, Kadi, Kiadsam, Kulaman, Malegdeg and Sewod. The eighth village is Langgal, which belonged to the Municipality of Bagumbayan. Barangay Langgal is where I grew up.

From the original eight barangays, twelve more were later added, bringing the present number to twenty. The newer barangays are Banali, Basag, Buklod, Gapok, Kapatagan, Kuden, Lagubang, Limuhay, Midtungok, Nati, Tacupis, and Tinalon. Most of these twelve villages were formed out of the territory of Langgal. So far, however, I have not been able to find the law or laws that created these barangays, so I will not comment further on their scopes or history.

Back to the republic act, I find the last sentence rather strange: "Enacted without executive approval, February 17, 1989." I feel like Corazon Aquino, the Philippine president that time, didn't want to give her husband's name to the place. I know that statutes need not be signed by the president to be valid and executory, so long as they meet some equivalent requirements, but I wish the use of the late hero's name had the express blessing of his wife.

Read the full text of R.A. 6712 at PhilippineLaw.info.

Fiction: The Bad Spirit

I aim to update this blog at least twice a week. I have gathered quite a few materials, in both hard and soft copies. I find their volume, however, a bit overwhelming for now. I still don’t know how exactly to extract the parts and put them in this blog. “Should this topic be in a page or in a post?” “Should I feature this source in a single post or just quote a line from it?” Stuff like that.

Therefore, while I’m sorting things out, let me have another shameless self-promotion. Here’s my second Manobo-inspired story. My medium-term goal is to write at least seven stories about the indigenous people of Kulaman. So far, two have been published and one has been stuck in the rewriting process. Oh no. I should be working harder.

In the hinterlands of Cotabato region, among the Manobo people, roams a spirit called fegelilong. It is one of the most feared and despised spirits, for it makes fun of the human heart and kills mostly young men.

The fegelilong preys on lovers. Whenever it hears them set a tryst, it will come to the agreed place and lurk around. If the woman fails to show up on time, the fegelilong will assume her likeness and appear before the man, who will be struck dead the moment he sees the doppelgänger. Young people who have found love for the first time, because of their propensity to meet in secret and ignore the counsel of older folk, are the most vulnerable to the viciousness of the fegelilong.

Or so according to the beliefs of the tribal people. Unbeknown to them, the fegelilong does not kill on purpose. Its concept of death is different from that of humans. In fact, all the spirit desires is to help its supposed victim. It wishes to soothe a man’s aching heart. It wants to atone for something it did a long, long time ago, when human beings had not yet arrived in Mindanao and spirits had dominion of the large island.

The fegelilong then was an enchanting spirit called Sinta. Her beauty was known even in the lands far beyond the seas, and many male spirits journeyed to the mountains of Cotabato to court her.

Read the rest of the story in New Asian Writing, a Bangkok-based independent press.

Senator Ninoy Aquino Is Poorest Town in Region 12

For aesthetic reasons, I don’t want two or more posts to appear on the same day. That’s why even if I have finished writing more than one article, I publish only the first one and then schedule each of the rest to appear on another day. But it looks like I’m going to break the self-imposed practice this soon. I just have to insert this piece of news right now.

I admit I wasn’t able to hold back my tears when I came across the news a few minutes ago. The bare facts do not need to be stated in a dramatic language to tug at someone’s heart: The Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino is the most impoverished in the region. Three out of four people here live below the poverty line. This means they do not eat three full meals every day, they cannot pay for a doctor whenever they are sick, and they cannot send their children to college.

What’s sadder is that the National Statistical Coordination Board gathered the data way back in 2000. Twelve years from then, the situation seems to be the same, and it won’t likely change in the near future. Those who have filed their candidacy for the coming elections are your traditional politicians.

Addendum: I do not yet know how to use this pre-scheduling option, or I've been time disoriented. This post appears alone on this date.

Kulaman in Relation to Philippine Political Divisions

Kulaman is the central barangay of the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, Province of Sultan Kudarat. For the sake of those who are not so familiar with Philippine political divisions, I will discuss them in this post and give some examples from around these parts of Mindanao. My sources for this article are the 1991 Local Government Code of the Philippines and the official website of the National Statistical Coordination Board, among others.

The Philippines is currently divided into seventeen regions. Government agencies (e.g., Department of Education, Philippine National Police) in each area are headed by regional directors. The regions, however, are not political units, since there are no regional governments (except for the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, which is ruled by an elected governor).

The regions are further divided into provinces, each ruled by an elected governor. In American setting, regions are loosely similar to states and provinces are similar to counties. Sultan Kudarat Province is part of Region 12, or SOCCSKSARGEN, which also includes South Cotabato Province, Cotabato City, Cotabato Province, Sarangani Province, and General Santos City.  As of June 30, 2012, the Philippines has eighty provinces.

The provinces are divided into municipalities, each headed by a mayor, and the municipalities are divided into barangays, each headed by a chairman. The country has 1,494 municipalities and 42,027 barangays. The Province of Sultan Kudarat has eleven municipalities and one city (Tacurong), while the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino has twenty barangays.

Municipalities are also called towns. Major newspapers in the country use town instead of municipality (e.g., “Senator Ninoy Aquino town,” not “Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino). In this blog, I interchangeably use municipality and town, and barangay and village.

The barangay is considered the basic unit of government in the Philippines. The village chairman and councilors are the lowest-ranking public officials that are chosen through periodic and organized elections. The barangay, however, is further divided into puroks, or zones. Many barangays also have special zones called sitios. A sitio is usually a cluster of houses that is far from the center of the village and often bigger than a purok. In English, I think sitio may be translated as hamlet.

Cities do not fit perfectly in the normal political divisions of the Philippines, and their classifications may be confusing to an ordinary person. Most, if not all, Philippine cities have been created from existing municipalities. In contrast, provinces, municipalities, and barangays are sometimes created out of areas that were not previously grouped together. For example, the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino was formed from several barangays of Kalamansig town and Barangay Langgal of Bagumbayan town.

The Philippines has 140 cities, and they are classified as highly urbanized, independent component, or component. Highly urbanized cities are those that have an annual income of at least fifty million pesos. They usually have the same level of importance as provinces; the mayor of a highly urbanized city is independent of the governor of the province where the city belonged when it was still a municipality. General Santos City is classified as such.

An independent component city is similar in political status to a highly urbanized city. Only, the independent component city does not meet the annual income requirement. Cotabato City is one such city.

A component city is not much different from a municipality; the mayor is still under the power of the governor, and the registered voters in the city vote for the provincial elective officials. Tacurong, Koronadal, and Kidapawan are component cities of Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato, and Kidapawan, respectively. Some government agencies, however, have a separate division in each city, regardless of its size, so component cities enjoy some independence from the provinces they belong.

Another complex political division in the Philippines is the legislative district. Each district is entitled to elect what is commonly called a congressman (more accurately, a member of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, the Philippine lawmaking body). Each province, or city with at least 250,000 inhabitants, is entitled to have at least one representative in the Congress.

Though General Santos City and Cotabato City meet the requirements, neither of them doesn’t have its own representative yet. Instead, General Santos City is combined with three municipalities to form the second legislative district of South Cotabato, and Cotabato City, along with eleven municipalities, belongs to the first district of Maguindanao Province. Sultan Kudarat Province has two districts, and Kulaman is included in the second.

One textbook erroneously describes the Kulaman plateau as part of Bukidnon Province, while a few academic papers fail to mention that Kulaman is, at the present, part of the Municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. I hope this post will help set the records straight.