A Guide to Kulaman Plateau and Its Manobo People, Lost Burial Jars, and Hundred Caves
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Good Men Die Young
Last Friday, a barangay tanod was killed in our village. There was a bayle in a sitio, and he tried to pacify a drunk. The drunk stabbed him four times. I know only the tanod by his nickname–Pandoy. He was an extremely shy man, I think partly because he only had a few years of school. I had not exchanged more than a few words with him. Whenever my family had to stay out of the village for a few days, my father would ask Pandoy to feed our dogs, and he would, for a little more than a thank-you. He was known in our village as reliable and hardworking. He was in fact also hired as the official “water tender” of the village’s water system. He fixed leaking pipes and similar stuff, and for his labor, he was given P50 or so per month. As a barangay tanod, he was paid P280 per month. For an amount that most of us would consider a pittance, Pandoy served his community and even gave his life. I find it hard to believe that there there’s still such a person living in this country. Most of us think often of what we can get, not what we can give. Many of us even get as much as we can get away with. I thought I’d learned everything about service from the great men in history I’d read about. I didn’t know I had one more great lesson to learn—from a “lowly” barangay tanod, by example.
Monday, July 20, 2015
A Bird’s Nest
I found a bird’s nest—with two eggs in it! Now this isn’t really news in a mountainous area that still has considerably lush vegetation. If you set out here to look for a bird’s nest, your quest will end in less than thirty minutes. What’s special about the nest I discovered is that it’s cuplike, which is getting rarer to find nowadays. The nests here are commonly that of a sparrow’s—ball-like and has a small circular opening at the side.
I found the nest in the school across our house. I was taking a late-afternoon walk, pretending I’m Charles Dickens exploring the streets of London, when I noticed a sparrow’s nest nestled in the newly trimmed hedges. I happened to have my camera with me that time, so I decided to take a photo of the nest. The mouth was clearly exposed to passers-by, but the whole nest was intact because whoever spruced up the plant either had a good heart or had the artistic sense to include the nest in the design. After I took just one shot, a tiny bird flew away in fright from inside the plant. I brushed aside the tiny leaves and branches, and found the beautiful cuplike nest. I peered closer into the nest, and to my delight, I found two unhatched eggs.
The eggs were maroon or purplish. I could not tell for sure because it was getting dark. I took a photo of them, and I hope my camera processed the color right. I also did not see the color of the bird that fled from the nest; it just appeared to my eyes as a brownish blur. As I know from experience, though, cuplike nests are built by yellow hummingbirds (yes, the kind of bird that can fly backward).
I checked the sparrow’s nest, and as I had assumed, it had already served its purpose. The eggs had hatched and only shells were left there. I got worried that, just like what happened to me, the sparrow’s nest would attract passers-by and inadvertently lead them to the other nest. So I took the used nest and threw it away. I wished that the eggs would hatch soon because June was coming and regular classes would start again. The eggs or the hatchlings would surely not survive in the hands of mischievous students.
I wondered if the person who trimmed the hedges had seen the second nest. Maybe he didn’t, for the nest was well-hidden inside the plant and he must have been working fast. Maybe he did and he was really good-hearted so he left it there untouched. In any case, I was glad that it was safe. Soon, two lives would be born in it, and then fly around and liven up the air with their music.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Book: Children of Tulus
In last week’s post, I made mention of Stuart Schlegel’s Children of Tulus, the book that inspired me to write a short story about the Tiruray people. It occurred to me that some readers of this blog might want to get a copy of the interesting and well-written book, so I’m posting here more details about it.
The book, subtitled Essays on the Tiruray People, was published by Giraffe Books in 1994, and I bought my copy in Cebu sometime in 2013, as indicated in the note that I wrote at the back page of the front cover. I’m sure that I bought my copy at Book Sale, but I can no longer remember if it was in the SM branch or in the Robinsons branch. I believe both outlets—indeed, all Book Sale outlets—have copies of the book until now. Here in Cotabato Region, there’s a Book Sale stall in KCC Mall in Koronadal City and one or two in the malls in General Santos City.
Though the book is twenty years old now, my copy was brand-new when I bought it. The cover and the inside pages didn't have any crease. That’s because Giraffe, apparently, has been keeping tons of its books in a warehouse. As far as I know, the publishing company has stopped operating for about a decade now, and it decided for some reason to clean its warehouse just a couple of years ago. Book Sale, which sells pre-perused books, has been there for a while, but Giraffe books appeared on the shelves of the store just recently. I wonder if Giraffe authors still get royalty from the sale of their books; though the books are sold for the first time, their prices are for second-hand items. I got my copy of Children of Tulus for just sixty pesos, if I remember it right. Some titles, especially by Filipino authors who are no longer active in the literary scene, sell for as low as twenty pesos.
Below are the contents of the book. I hope the table will guide you if you are you are doing a research or entice you if you are simply looking for a good read. Whatever your intention may be, you must get a copy of the book. It’s worth your time.
Chapter 1
Introduction: The Tiruray and I
Chapter 2
Tiruray-Maguindanaon Ethnic Relations: An Ethnohistorical Puzzle
Chapter 3
Tiruray Morality
Chapter 4
The Traditional Tiruray Zodiac: The Celestial Calendar of a Swidden and Foraging People
Chapter 5
Tiruray Gardens: From Use-Right to Private Ownership
Chapter 6
From Tribal to Peasant: Two Tiruray Communities
Chapter 7
Tiruray Traditional and Peasant Subsistence: A Comparison
Chapter 8
Diet and the Tiruray Shift from Swidden to Plow Farming
Chapter 9
Repercussions of Naive Scholarship: The Background of Local Furor
Chapter 10
The Many Social Worlds of Southeast Asia
Chapter 11
The Anthropologist as Outsider
Chapter 12
The Customs of the Tiruray People
Written by Jose Tenorio (Sigayan) in 1863 and translated and annotated by Schlegel in 1969
I. Concerning Tiruray Houses and Food
II. Concerning Their Beliefs, Their Religions, and Beliyan
III. Concerning Their Divinities and Supernatural Beings
IV. Concerning a Variety of Superstitions and Charms
V. Concerning Their Clothes, Weapons, and Adornment
VI. Concerning Killings and the Causes That Motivate Them
VII. Concerning Their Marriages
VIII. Concerning Anniversaries of Weddings and Births
IX. Concerning Other Ways of Seeking a Spouse
X. Continuing about Marriages
XI. Concerning Births
XII. Concerning What They Do with the Sick and the Dead
XIII. Concerning the Clearing of Land and Cultivations
XIV. Concerning Songs and Dreams
XV. Concerning Their Leaders and Their Mode of Government
The book, subtitled Essays on the Tiruray People, was published by Giraffe Books in 1994, and I bought my copy in Cebu sometime in 2013, as indicated in the note that I wrote at the back page of the front cover. I’m sure that I bought my copy at Book Sale, but I can no longer remember if it was in the SM branch or in the Robinsons branch. I believe both outlets—indeed, all Book Sale outlets—have copies of the book until now. Here in Cotabato Region, there’s a Book Sale stall in KCC Mall in Koronadal City and one or two in the malls in General Santos City.
Though the book is twenty years old now, my copy was brand-new when I bought it. The cover and the inside pages didn't have any crease. That’s because Giraffe, apparently, has been keeping tons of its books in a warehouse. As far as I know, the publishing company has stopped operating for about a decade now, and it decided for some reason to clean its warehouse just a couple of years ago. Book Sale, which sells pre-perused books, has been there for a while, but Giraffe books appeared on the shelves of the store just recently. I wonder if Giraffe authors still get royalty from the sale of their books; though the books are sold for the first time, their prices are for second-hand items. I got my copy of Children of Tulus for just sixty pesos, if I remember it right. Some titles, especially by Filipino authors who are no longer active in the literary scene, sell for as low as twenty pesos.
Below are the contents of the book. I hope the table will guide you if you are you are doing a research or entice you if you are simply looking for a good read. Whatever your intention may be, you must get a copy of the book. It’s worth your time.
Chapter 1
Introduction: The Tiruray and I
Chapter 2
Tiruray-Maguindanaon Ethnic Relations: An Ethnohistorical Puzzle
Chapter 3
Tiruray Morality
Chapter 4
The Traditional Tiruray Zodiac: The Celestial Calendar of a Swidden and Foraging People
Chapter 5
Tiruray Gardens: From Use-Right to Private Ownership
Chapter 6
From Tribal to Peasant: Two Tiruray Communities
Chapter 7
Tiruray Traditional and Peasant Subsistence: A Comparison
Chapter 8
Diet and the Tiruray Shift from Swidden to Plow Farming
Chapter 9
Repercussions of Naive Scholarship: The Background of Local Furor
Chapter 10
The Many Social Worlds of Southeast Asia
Chapter 11
The Anthropologist as Outsider
Chapter 12
The Customs of the Tiruray People
Written by Jose Tenorio (Sigayan) in 1863 and translated and annotated by Schlegel in 1969
I. Concerning Tiruray Houses and Food
II. Concerning Their Beliefs, Their Religions, and Beliyan
III. Concerning Their Divinities and Supernatural Beings
IV. Concerning a Variety of Superstitions and Charms
V. Concerning Their Clothes, Weapons, and Adornment
VI. Concerning Killings and the Causes That Motivate Them
VII. Concerning Their Marriages
VIII. Concerning Anniversaries of Weddings and Births
IX. Concerning Other Ways of Seeking a Spouse
X. Continuing about Marriages
XI. Concerning Births
XII. Concerning What They Do with the Sick and the Dead
XIII. Concerning the Clearing of Land and Cultivations
XIV. Concerning Songs and Dreams
XV. Concerning Their Leaders and Their Mode of Government
Author’s photo and profile on the back cover of
the book. I owe a lot to the efforts of people like Stuart Schlegel. I hope my
writings will be the same to future writers and researchers.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Friends of this Blog
My brother saved or downloaded two dictionaries in my tablet, and the applications have been making my writing and editing life more convenient, so it occurred to me to give a shout-out to the hardware and software without which this blog wouldn’t exist or would be arduous to maintain. I’m not nerdy enough to give nicknames to inanimate objects and virtual items, so here they are in the names their inventors gave them:
1. Toshiba Satellite C660-1GQ
There isn’t much to brag about my loyal companion. What I love most about it is its 14.6-inch screen. When I’m writing in Microsoft Word, the screen has enough space for the document at the center, the Search panel on the left-hand side, and the thesaurus on the right-hand side. When I’m copyediting and the Track Changes feature is on, the screen has enough space to display on the right side the corrections I’ve made, even when I zoom the document to 150 percent. However, because the laptop has been with me for quite a few years, its battery operating time has reduced from four hours to a little more than an hour, its webcam has gone pfft, and it hangs whenever connected to a wi-fi.
2. Microsoft Office Word 2013
It’s the latest and most advanced word processor in the market. Its Search feature, editing options, and thesaurus are superb, at least compared to similar programs. I, a broke guy, was only able to download a copy of this because I used to have a Microsoft 360 account that my former company was paying for. The account was closed when I left the company, so the interface of my Word now includes a distracting notification that my subscription has expired, written in a pink line half an inch wide across the screen and below the toolbar. Also, I no longer have an access to a huge online storage space. But other than those chinks, the software is working perfectly.
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Edition CD-ROM
My copy is the 2004 edition. Though the content is still useful, the interface is outdated. Every time I open the program, the screen of my computer blinks and I get a notification that the “color scheme has been changed to Windows 7 basic” because “a running program isn’t compatible with some visual elements of Windows.” This program also has a good dictionary and thesaurus.
4. Blogger
This should be at the number one spot, but it is an obvious placing, and obvious is uninteresting. I started blogging in Blogger, and I never changed platform since then. I don’t feel like trying other websites just for the sake of trying. I’ve been happy here for the past seven or eight years. Blogger’s service keeps on getting better, especially when Google took it under its wings. What I love most in Blogger is the prescheduling option; I get to create my posts in bulk and set them to come out one at a time weekly.
5. Canon PowerShot A2500
Aside from books, this digital camera is perhaps the only sensible thing that I bought from my salary when I was still in the city working as an editor of technical documents. I lived by the paycheck; I splurged on Friday-night beer and on meals in the fancier fast-food outlets. I bought the camera primarily for this blog. I wanted my posts to have accompanying photos. However, my text-over-visuals philosophy has remained. I consider myself a writer before anything else. Photos and videos will enhance but will never replace my words.
6. PhotoScape
This freeware has been quite helpful in my photo-editing needs. As much as possible, though, I refrain from manipulating my digital images for this blog. I use this software mostly to mark my photos with the name of this blog. I used to go to Pixlr.com for this, but because I’m offline now most of the time, PhotoScape became a reliable replacement.
7. Youtube
I don’t think I need to explain the use of this website. This site is cool because my videos can be easily embedded to my blog (and other websites, for that matter). And because Youtube, like Blogger, is also now connected to Google, I can use the same account and doesn’t have to perform the pesky task of logging in multiple times. I have two things to gripe about, though. First, the quality of my video lowers when uploaded on Youtube. The original, when played in my camera or laptop, are clear enough despite the moderate resolution. On Youtube, they look like they’re taken by a 2-megapixel camera phone. My second complain is that my videos, each of which runs for just a minute or less, take a long time to upload. Each one takes thirty minutes to an hour. (But this may be due to the speed of my Internet connection.)
8. Windows Movie Maker
This software comes handy whenever I need to edit videos. Its features are limited, but it’s got all I need. Usually, all I want to do is cut the video so that it would not be longer than sixty minutes.
9. Samsung T210
This device is useful to me because of the two dictionaries installed in it recently, as mentioned above. I no longer have to endure the glitchy Encyclopaedia Britannica on my computer. For several months, I had no good use of the tablet because I had bought it for its capability to be connected to a wi-fi, something that you can’t expect to find in a remote plateau. (As you can see, I’m pretty much a one-gadget-one-use person.)
10. SmartBro
This device is here only because I’ve run out of better things to enumerate. SmartBro has been such a disappointment since November last year. When Smart started to offer “free” Internet access to mobile phone users, my broadband stick became practically useless. I have tactfully reported the problem to the company’s Facebook page and to their call center, but I got either no or useless reply. One customer service representative even hung up in the middle of the call.
1. Toshiba Satellite C660-1GQ
There isn’t much to brag about my loyal companion. What I love most about it is its 14.6-inch screen. When I’m writing in Microsoft Word, the screen has enough space for the document at the center, the Search panel on the left-hand side, and the thesaurus on the right-hand side. When I’m copyediting and the Track Changes feature is on, the screen has enough space to display on the right side the corrections I’ve made, even when I zoom the document to 150 percent. However, because the laptop has been with me for quite a few years, its battery operating time has reduced from four hours to a little more than an hour, its webcam has gone pfft, and it hangs whenever connected to a wi-fi.
2. Microsoft Office Word 2013
It’s the latest and most advanced word processor in the market. Its Search feature, editing options, and thesaurus are superb, at least compared to similar programs. I, a broke guy, was only able to download a copy of this because I used to have a Microsoft 360 account that my former company was paying for. The account was closed when I left the company, so the interface of my Word now includes a distracting notification that my subscription has expired, written in a pink line half an inch wide across the screen and below the toolbar. Also, I no longer have an access to a huge online storage space. But other than those chinks, the software is working perfectly.
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Edition CD-ROM
My copy is the 2004 edition. Though the content is still useful, the interface is outdated. Every time I open the program, the screen of my computer blinks and I get a notification that the “color scheme has been changed to Windows 7 basic” because “a running program isn’t compatible with some visual elements of Windows.” This program also has a good dictionary and thesaurus.
4. Blogger
This should be at the number one spot, but it is an obvious placing, and obvious is uninteresting. I started blogging in Blogger, and I never changed platform since then. I don’t feel like trying other websites just for the sake of trying. I’ve been happy here for the past seven or eight years. Blogger’s service keeps on getting better, especially when Google took it under its wings. What I love most in Blogger is the prescheduling option; I get to create my posts in bulk and set them to come out one at a time weekly.
Aside from books, this digital camera is perhaps the only sensible thing that I bought from my salary when I was still in the city working as an editor of technical documents. I lived by the paycheck; I splurged on Friday-night beer and on meals in the fancier fast-food outlets. I bought the camera primarily for this blog. I wanted my posts to have accompanying photos. However, my text-over-visuals philosophy has remained. I consider myself a writer before anything else. Photos and videos will enhance but will never replace my words.
6. PhotoScape
This freeware has been quite helpful in my photo-editing needs. As much as possible, though, I refrain from manipulating my digital images for this blog. I use this software mostly to mark my photos with the name of this blog. I used to go to Pixlr.com for this, but because I’m offline now most of the time, PhotoScape became a reliable replacement.
7. Youtube
I don’t think I need to explain the use of this website. This site is cool because my videos can be easily embedded to my blog (and other websites, for that matter). And because Youtube, like Blogger, is also now connected to Google, I can use the same account and doesn’t have to perform the pesky task of logging in multiple times. I have two things to gripe about, though. First, the quality of my video lowers when uploaded on Youtube. The original, when played in my camera or laptop, are clear enough despite the moderate resolution. On Youtube, they look like they’re taken by a 2-megapixel camera phone. My second complain is that my videos, each of which runs for just a minute or less, take a long time to upload. Each one takes thirty minutes to an hour. (But this may be due to the speed of my Internet connection.)
8. Windows Movie Maker
This software comes handy whenever I need to edit videos. Its features are limited, but it’s got all I need. Usually, all I want to do is cut the video so that it would not be longer than sixty minutes.
9. Samsung T210
This device is useful to me because of the two dictionaries installed in it recently, as mentioned above. I no longer have to endure the glitchy Encyclopaedia Britannica on my computer. For several months, I had no good use of the tablet because I had bought it for its capability to be connected to a wi-fi, something that you can’t expect to find in a remote plateau. (As you can see, I’m pretty much a one-gadget-one-use person.)
10. SmartBro
This device is here only because I’ve run out of better things to enumerate. SmartBro has been such a disappointment since November last year. When Smart started to offer “free” Internet access to mobile phone users, my broadband stick became practically useless. I have tactfully reported the problem to the company’s Facebook page and to their call center, but I got either no or useless reply. One customer service representative even hung up in the middle of the call.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Burial Jars on Facebook
I’m glad that I don’t seem to be the only one interested in Kulaman Plateau limestone burial jars and in spreading the word about them. Before I was able to, someone else had created a Facebook page about the archaeological artifacts. I can no longer remember if I searched for the page on Facebook or its creator gave me the link. What I’m sure of is that the man had left a comment in one of my posts here, and then one thing led to another.
See the page for yourself; search for “Cotabato Limestone Burial Jars” on Facebook. The page has photos of burial jars that are in the possession of a family in the United States. The jars were originally bought in the seventies by an American woman named Sally, when she was staying here in the Philippines, and her son created the Facebook page in July last year. Through email, I learned a few personal things about the family and how they acquired the jars, but I am not in a position to reveal them, so you may peruse instead the information that Sally’s son opted to share on Facebook.
The photos on the page are quite valuable. Aside from black-and-white photos of burial jars, it has colored photos of Dulangan Manobos. You can see them in their traditional garbs, some of them showing off some interesting objects: an old man in a loincloth strumming a guitar-like musical instrument, ladies with brass loops dangling from their ears and stacked around their ankles, a chieftain-looking man sporting a conical hat and wielding a wooden staff adorned with strips of metal and intricate carvings, a huge family or a small band of neighbors lining up behind a wooden coffin. Nowadays, you can rarely see Dulangan Manobos in such garments and jewelry.
There’s already a Facebook page for limestone burial jars. I wish there would be someone out there who would create Wikipedia entries for the jars, the Dulangan Manobos, and the caves of Kulaman Plateau. Additional Youtube channels and Blogger blogs could also be thrown in.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
The Kulaman Plateau Mystery II
(Continued from yesterday’s post, this is the last of two parts.)
The person who spoke for CAAP on television said, “We completely deny [that a plane crashed in the area.]” He added that a “registered” plane has a “flight plan” and the radars of the agency would have detected it if a crash really happened. I don’t know if the rest of the statement was edited out, but what came out on television was rather curt. It irked me. There are simply a lot of loopholes in the statement. But before I go to those loopholes, let me state that I agree that the object could not have been a passenger plane. Had it been an aircraft of Cebu Pacific, Philippine Air Lines, or a similar company, the news would have spread like wildfire. Apparently, only CNN Philippines and none of the major television networks got wind of the news.
The plane, if the object was really a plane, could very well be a private one, despite CAAP’s denial of the same. It’s possible that the owner or pilot of the plane did not have the flight registered with CAAP. We’re in the Philippines, and if there’s an individual or company that doesn’t comply with government requirements, it shouldn’t be shocking. Also, regardless of whether the flight was registered with CAAP or not, I highly doubt that the agency could properly monitor all the activities in our aerial territory. I’ve seen quite a few reports on television about outdated or completely inoperative essential equipment at the country’s main airport. It won’t be surprising if CAAP’s radars are less than serviceable. And of course, there’s plain old indolence and incompetence of government employees. You see that everywhere—in your municipal or city hall, the Department of Health, the Department of Education, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, even in the “elite” Special Action Forces of the Philippine National Police. It won’t be shocking to find out that workers in CAAP, the Department of Transportation and Communication, and related agencies have been sleeping on their desks.
I heard from some people that eyewitnesses claim they saw a plane. Could they be mistaken? While we live in the boondocks, I believe that the people of Kulaman Plateau are civilized enough to be able to identify a plane from a kite, a weather balloon, a flying garbage truck, a manananggal, or a saucer-shaped spaceship. Airplanes to and from General Santos City can be seen in the sky regularly, and scenes with airplanes are fairly common in movies, so they know what a plane looks like near or far even if they have not been on one. If they say it was a plane or something that looked like a plane, then it could only be a plane or something that looked like a plane.
I wonder if the object was a drone. A drone is unmanned, and it could be the reason why no one seems to have publicly sought help from the authorities to rescue any victim or recover any debris. I doubt, though, if a drone would produce the kind of sound that I heard. For the nth time, it was very loud. It was heard all over the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino and beyond. That’s an area of at least 40,000 hectares. If it’s true that the sound was heard in as far as the municipalities of Lebak and Esperanza, then the area can be as wide as 150,000 hectares. It must be a huge drone and quite low-tech, considering the kuliglig-like sound it made, and that doesn’t make sense. A conspicuous and cranky drone doesn’t make sense. I must admit, though, that the only drone I’m familiar with was the one that Jeremy Renner shot down in The Bourne Legacy. So it might really be a drone. But the question is, What would a drone be doing in Kulaman Plateau? My best conjecture is that it was a U.S. drone looking for the other two terrorists that the PNP-SAF failed to neutralize in Mamasapano. Usman and Amin Baco might have sought shelter in the camp of Moro rebels in the municipality of Palimbang, southwest of Senator Ninoy Aquino. I’m not saying of course that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is coddling the terrorists. I’m just saying that, just like what happened in Mamasapano, the terrorists might be hiding in an MILF territory without the knowledge or consent of the MILF leadership. Again, let me emphasize that this is merely a conjecture. I think it’s the fictionist in me who wrote the preceding couple of sentences. I’m merely exploring—and hopefully eliminating—the rumored but unlikely explanations for the bizarre incident. I still have more reasons to believe that the object was a private plane.
So if it was a private plane, why has there been no explanation or public call for help from the family or associates of the possible victim or victims? One possible reason is that the plane was doing or carrying something not legal, and the people who arranged the flight didn’t want the authorities to get wind of their activities. (Many people in the plateau have the suspicion that the plane was carrying Yamashita gold bars, and they’re wishing to stumble on the wreckage.) Another possible reason—and the religious may pray that this is really it—is that the plane was able to land safely despite the engine trouble. This isn’t impossible. As I’ve narrated earlier, the last sound coming from the sky was almost similar to that of a normal airplane. The rumbling became faint, but it didn’t end with an explosion, at least as what my ears caught. So if it was a private plane, what could it be doing in Kulaman Plateau? Maybe it was just supposed to pass and it had another destination. Maybe it was carrying an official or owner of the powerful logging company that operates in the area; the plane might have just been hired or might be owned by the company or the owner of the company. Investigators should ask a statement from the company. (And while they’re at it, they may ask the company why it doesn’t seem to have had any corporate social responsibility projects in the decades that it has been operating, stripping Kulaman Plateau of its virgin forests.)
Some people thought that the sound was caused by a bomb or bombs. It wasn’t. It didn’t sound like any of the bombs or missiles that I’ve seen explode in movies and documentaries. It didn’t sound like the improvised explosive device that went off some seventy meters away from our house in Isulan, several years ago. I don’t want to go into so much details about this. It wasn’t a bomb or any form of ordnance. Some people suggested that it might be the debris of the satellite that was expected to fall, but the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration has denied this. The agency said that the satellite was still in orbit when the strange sound was heard. I don’t see any reason why NASA would lie, and as far as I know, a metallic object or a meteor falling from the sky—in the remote chance that it’s not yet burned up—wouldn’t sound like a truck engine.
To sum up, here are the things that I’m sure of about the source of the sound: (1) It was traveling in the sky. (2) It had an engine. (3) Its engine malfunctioned. Here are the things that I heard from other people and that might be true: (1) It looked like a plane. (2) A part of it was burning. I’m also sure that: (1) It was not a passenger plane. (2) It was not a bomb.
And the million-dollar question: Was it a spaceship? Many of the people in the plateau are thinking so, and that’s primarily because the authorities cannot give any reasonable explanation, and if the authorities don’t do anything further, the spaceship theory will surely become the best explanation for it. The Kulaman Plateau Mystery will tickle for sure the balls of UFOlogists, conspiracy theorists, and similar weirdoes. Imagine having at least 50,000 people as witnesses. All of them heard the sound, and dozens of them saw the object, and their descriptions are the same! This must be the biggest verifiable UFO sighting in the history of the world. I don’t mind if the rumor about aliens will spread. It might be the best way for people outside Kulaman Plateau to be interested in the matter. It might be the only way to persuade authorities or concerned organizations to conduct a thorough investigation. Let’s spread the lies and ignorant opinions so that we can solve the real mystery and find the truth.
The person who spoke for CAAP on television said, “We completely deny [that a plane crashed in the area.]” He added that a “registered” plane has a “flight plan” and the radars of the agency would have detected it if a crash really happened. I don’t know if the rest of the statement was edited out, but what came out on television was rather curt. It irked me. There are simply a lot of loopholes in the statement. But before I go to those loopholes, let me state that I agree that the object could not have been a passenger plane. Had it been an aircraft of Cebu Pacific, Philippine Air Lines, or a similar company, the news would have spread like wildfire. Apparently, only CNN Philippines and none of the major television networks got wind of the news.
The plane, if the object was really a plane, could very well be a private one, despite CAAP’s denial of the same. It’s possible that the owner or pilot of the plane did not have the flight registered with CAAP. We’re in the Philippines, and if there’s an individual or company that doesn’t comply with government requirements, it shouldn’t be shocking. Also, regardless of whether the flight was registered with CAAP or not, I highly doubt that the agency could properly monitor all the activities in our aerial territory. I’ve seen quite a few reports on television about outdated or completely inoperative essential equipment at the country’s main airport. It won’t be surprising if CAAP’s radars are less than serviceable. And of course, there’s plain old indolence and incompetence of government employees. You see that everywhere—in your municipal or city hall, the Department of Health, the Department of Education, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, even in the “elite” Special Action Forces of the Philippine National Police. It won’t be shocking to find out that workers in CAAP, the Department of Transportation and Communication, and related agencies have been sleeping on their desks.
I heard from some people that eyewitnesses claim they saw a plane. Could they be mistaken? While we live in the boondocks, I believe that the people of Kulaman Plateau are civilized enough to be able to identify a plane from a kite, a weather balloon, a flying garbage truck, a manananggal, or a saucer-shaped spaceship. Airplanes to and from General Santos City can be seen in the sky regularly, and scenes with airplanes are fairly common in movies, so they know what a plane looks like near or far even if they have not been on one. If they say it was a plane or something that looked like a plane, then it could only be a plane or something that looked like a plane.
I wonder if the object was a drone. A drone is unmanned, and it could be the reason why no one seems to have publicly sought help from the authorities to rescue any victim or recover any debris. I doubt, though, if a drone would produce the kind of sound that I heard. For the nth time, it was very loud. It was heard all over the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino and beyond. That’s an area of at least 40,000 hectares. If it’s true that the sound was heard in as far as the municipalities of Lebak and Esperanza, then the area can be as wide as 150,000 hectares. It must be a huge drone and quite low-tech, considering the kuliglig-like sound it made, and that doesn’t make sense. A conspicuous and cranky drone doesn’t make sense. I must admit, though, that the only drone I’m familiar with was the one that Jeremy Renner shot down in The Bourne Legacy. So it might really be a drone. But the question is, What would a drone be doing in Kulaman Plateau? My best conjecture is that it was a U.S. drone looking for the other two terrorists that the PNP-SAF failed to neutralize in Mamasapano. Usman and Amin Baco might have sought shelter in the camp of Moro rebels in the municipality of Palimbang, southwest of Senator Ninoy Aquino. I’m not saying of course that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is coddling the terrorists. I’m just saying that, just like what happened in Mamasapano, the terrorists might be hiding in an MILF territory without the knowledge or consent of the MILF leadership. Again, let me emphasize that this is merely a conjecture. I think it’s the fictionist in me who wrote the preceding couple of sentences. I’m merely exploring—and hopefully eliminating—the rumored but unlikely explanations for the bizarre incident. I still have more reasons to believe that the object was a private plane.
So if it was a private plane, why has there been no explanation or public call for help from the family or associates of the possible victim or victims? One possible reason is that the plane was doing or carrying something not legal, and the people who arranged the flight didn’t want the authorities to get wind of their activities. (Many people in the plateau have the suspicion that the plane was carrying Yamashita gold bars, and they’re wishing to stumble on the wreckage.) Another possible reason—and the religious may pray that this is really it—is that the plane was able to land safely despite the engine trouble. This isn’t impossible. As I’ve narrated earlier, the last sound coming from the sky was almost similar to that of a normal airplane. The rumbling became faint, but it didn’t end with an explosion, at least as what my ears caught. So if it was a private plane, what could it be doing in Kulaman Plateau? Maybe it was just supposed to pass and it had another destination. Maybe it was carrying an official or owner of the powerful logging company that operates in the area; the plane might have just been hired or might be owned by the company or the owner of the company. Investigators should ask a statement from the company. (And while they’re at it, they may ask the company why it doesn’t seem to have had any corporate social responsibility projects in the decades that it has been operating, stripping Kulaman Plateau of its virgin forests.)
Some people thought that the sound was caused by a bomb or bombs. It wasn’t. It didn’t sound like any of the bombs or missiles that I’ve seen explode in movies and documentaries. It didn’t sound like the improvised explosive device that went off some seventy meters away from our house in Isulan, several years ago. I don’t want to go into so much details about this. It wasn’t a bomb or any form of ordnance. Some people suggested that it might be the debris of the satellite that was expected to fall, but the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration has denied this. The agency said that the satellite was still in orbit when the strange sound was heard. I don’t see any reason why NASA would lie, and as far as I know, a metallic object or a meteor falling from the sky—in the remote chance that it’s not yet burned up—wouldn’t sound like a truck engine.
To sum up, here are the things that I’m sure of about the source of the sound: (1) It was traveling in the sky. (2) It had an engine. (3) Its engine malfunctioned. Here are the things that I heard from other people and that might be true: (1) It looked like a plane. (2) A part of it was burning. I’m also sure that: (1) It was not a passenger plane. (2) It was not a bomb.
And the million-dollar question: Was it a spaceship? Many of the people in the plateau are thinking so, and that’s primarily because the authorities cannot give any reasonable explanation, and if the authorities don’t do anything further, the spaceship theory will surely become the best explanation for it. The Kulaman Plateau Mystery will tickle for sure the balls of UFOlogists, conspiracy theorists, and similar weirdoes. Imagine having at least 50,000 people as witnesses. All of them heard the sound, and dozens of them saw the object, and their descriptions are the same! This must be the biggest verifiable UFO sighting in the history of the world. I don’t mind if the rumor about aliens will spread. It might be the best way for people outside Kulaman Plateau to be interested in the matter. It might be the only way to persuade authorities or concerned organizations to conduct a thorough investigation. Let’s spread the lies and ignorant opinions so that we can solve the real mystery and find the truth.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
The Kulaman Plateau Mystery I
(This is the first of two parts.)
While I was inside the house the previous Sunday, June 14, I heard an extremely loud rumbling from the sky. The sound made me so scared that I decided to go out of the house and glance around, expecting something enormous, metallic, and on fire to appear out of the clouds and come crashing down on me. The strange sound went on for about thirty seconds to a minute, and then the air became silent again, as it usually is in most part of Kulaman Plateau. It took me I guess a minute more to calm myself. When I went back inside the house, I forgot rather promptly what had happened. It didn’t occur to me again until lunchtime the next day, when CNN Philippines reported about unconfirmed “reports” about a “plane crash” here in Sultan Kudarat Province.
That could have been the end of it for me. News about plane crashes generally don’t pique my interest. I can’t give a definite reason for it; perhaps it’s because plane crashes get almost everyone excited, and the popularity turns me off, as what I normally feel about things popular. Even if the crash happened in Kulaman Plateau, I wouldn’t give it much attention, much less write about it. I decided to create this post, however, when I found out that the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines denied the occurrence of such an incident, or accident, as though hundreds of people in the plateau merely smoked hemp together and hallucinated the same thing.
The thing did happen, whatever it was. I heard the sound myself, and reportedly there were some people who saw something, specifically an object in the sky that exploded or was on fire. The claims are true, and the appropriate government agencies should investigate them. It is frustrating to think that this incident will likely remain a mystery forever, as what happened to the unsolved medical enigma that struck Sitio Parreño, Barangay Tinalon, last year. The residents of the hamlet butchered and ate a couple of horses that had fallen ill or died within hours of one another, and the meat made the people sick. More than a hundred suffered from headache, diarrhea, and vomiting, and seven people died. I heard that the Department of Health conducted an investigation. The doctors suspected that the affliction was caused by a virus, and this is both interesting and worrisome because horse-to-human viral transmission is very rare. (And I would like to call it SNAV or Senator Ninoy Aquino virus, after the name of our municipality). The results of the tests, however, were inconclusive, probably due to the difficulty of going to the remote area and sheer lack of willpower and incompetence on the part of responsible government workers.
Some people in my village estimate the sound to have lasted five minutes. Some say ten minutes. My own estimate, as mentioned earlier, is merely thirty seconds to a minute. I’m fairly sure of my calculation, even if I didn’t look at any watch or clock during or after the incident. Time seems to stretch ten-fold whenever all you are doing is observe something. This is what I often feel every time I cook instant mami or instant pancit canton and closely observe the boiling time. I don’t like the noodles to be soggy, and there are still remnants in me of my old obsessive-compulsive self, so I always make sure that the time that elapses from putting the noodles into the boiling water to removing the pot from the fire is no more than three minutes, as suggested in most packaging. During such waiting time, I often feel that a minute is as long as five minutes. Furthermore, when the 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit Bohol and Cebu about two years ago, I was in Cebu then on the fifth floor of an eight-story building, crouched between the upper and lower bunks of a double-deck bed, waiting for the whole world to collapse on me. The shaking and rumbling of my dormitory seemed to me to go on forever, but I learned later from the news that the temblor lasted for about forty seconds only. I knew since then that time could indeed be relative or our sense of time may not be synchronized with a mechanical device.
Stories about what people here heard or witnessed that moment will surely be less accurate by the day. I assume I don’t have to explain how our own memory can deceive us. So I’m setting out here today my own account, and I’ll try to be as accurate as I can be.
When I heard the strange sound, I was seated in the couch in our living room, reading Pete Dexter’s Paris Trout. I don’t know what time it was exactly. It must be between 8 a.m. and 12 noon. I’m sure that it was morning because electricity in our town runs for twelve hours only, from noon to midnight, and the lights were not yet on that time. The sound was like a thunder. Let me describe the volume. Imagine yourself inside your house while it is raining, and then you see a flash of lightning outside. I’m sure you’ve experienced that. When a lightning is that near, the thunder that accompanies it is usually so loud that it makes your chest vibrate. The strange sound was as loud as that. So I thought it was just a thunder. I expected it to die out within a few seconds. It went on, however, for a little too long for a thunder. After seven or eight seconds, I decided to check it out. I went out of the house through the backdoor.
The sound was obviously coming from the sky in the west, but I couldn’t see anything. The sky was almost filled with thick white clouds. I don’t believe in aliens, or in humanoid aliens that drive a saucer-like spaceship, but I thought that time that the sound was perfect for such a spaceship. It only seemed fitting for a spaceship to emerge out of the clouds and fly toward our house like a giant Frisbee. I guess I thought of a spaceship because the previous night, I caught on HBO some scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though the scenes I saw didn’t have a spaceship in them. I walked the length of our house toward the front yard. Because the noise was obviously not a thunder and sounded like a cranky engine of a large truck, I told myself that it must just be one of the very few six-wheeler trucks that ply our village. But there was no truck in sight; our house is far from the road. And a truck could only sound that loud if I was very near it, or my ears were pressed against its engine. It then occurred to me that the sound might be coming from a thresher; a harvest had been going on for a few days at the farm lot about fifty meters from our home lot. I looked at the farm and didn’t see any person or mobile machine. I also realized that threshers are for rice, and the crop in the farm is corn.
Twenty or thirty seconds since the sound erupted, it became fainter. It’s a plane, I thought. It’s just a plane, but it still sounds odd. I looked at the sky in the east, where I usually see passing planes to and from General Santos City, but clouds still kept me from seeing anything. After a few seconds more, the noise died down, and I became aware of another noise—a truck running in the road about a hundred meters downhill. I was sure it was a truck because it blew its horn. I was sure that that the earlier sound wasn’t a truck, but because the last thing I heard was something familiar and harmless, I didn’t dwell on the matter. I didn’t want my imagination to get away with me, because that happened a few months ago and I seriously hurt myself physically. (But this is another story.) I went back inside the house and continued reading my book.
(The second part will be posted tomorrow.)
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