Early this year, a boyhood buddy of mine visited our hometown of La Castellana, which is a municipality in Negros Occidental province, in the Philippines. My friend had been away for almost three decades in the United States. After calls on family and friends, he asked me to go with him on a “sentimental excursion” around town. One stop was the river junction where we used to swim and play when we were kids.
My friend saw what I see almost daily – murky waters, scattered wastes, a cluster of houses where trees once stood. “This is not the same river that I knew,” he said with sadness. He started looking for things that were not there anymore – the big mango tree with branches that drooped over the river; the sandbank at the river bend which served as our main playground; the forest trees and bamboos that lined the river banks; the fish and other freshwater life; the edible water plants; the birds; and a lot of other things.
That night we had a get-together with friends. We recalled the fun and the good life of our childhood, and the talk kept coming back to the river. It was the setting of our growing-up and it bestowed on us many gifts:
Physical Activity: We acquired much athleticism – dive, swim, climb, and wrestle – and physical health in the part of the river where the old mango tree once stood.
Nature Education: The river ecosystem taught us about nature. We could distinguish different kinds of birds by name, song, track, flight, and even the size and color of the eggs. The same is true for fish and other aquatic animals.
We came to understand the cycle of life and the food web by observing how frogs, spiders and butterflies live and reproduce. We knew countless plants, even the lowly weeds, by name, smell and usefulness. We knew from our elders that the forest upstream in the volcano supplies the river with clean, cool water the year round. We were aware of ecology before we came across the subject matter in school.
Skills: We developed a lot of skills such as building miniature dams and water wheels, boats and rafts, fish traps sand castles, among other things. We also learned how to cook fish and river plants with no utensils besides bamboo stems.
Bonding: The river also was a place of bonding. The young people of the poblacion (town center) used to congregate at the junction on Saturdays. We raced rafts, had swim relays, and played war games we picked up from the movies. In those days we knew everyone in town by name and face. The Saturdays by the river were one reason why.
Most of this is gone. The young people today do not go to the river anymore. My own children regard it as a dirty, foul place, and that causes me great pain. They do not even know what they are missing. My generation pities the present one for that.
All of us that night were bothered by questions that we should have asked ourselves long ago. Will we just let damage continue? Will we make no effort to stop it, and to pass along to our grandkids the benefits we enjoyed? Would it be possible to restore the river to its original state?
My friend wanted to know how the river of our memories had turned into the mess it is today. Some of the reasons were connected to global politics. Others were of our own making. To name a few:
Massive conversion of orchards and rice fields (which are soil- and water-conserving systems) into sugarcane plantations in the ’60s. Monoculture sugar production degraded the water-holding capacity of the watersheds, while the eroded soils from the plantations contributed to silting of the riverbed. The “Sugar Boom” was triggered by the Cuban Missle Crisis of the early ’60s. The US imposed economic sanctions on Cuba, including a sugar embargo. Then it expanded the import quota for Philippine sugar in the US. Our river was one casualty.
The shift from diesel to wood fuel by sugar mills in the ’70s. The price of bunker fuel skyrocketed during these years, and so the sugar mills turned to fuelwood to preheat their boilers. Rampant illegal logging in the watershed began a cycle of alternating floods and droughts. The riverbanks and easements, being open-access areas, were not spared of tree poaching. The increase in fuel prices may have begun with the Middle East wars and oil embargoes.
The influx of settlers in easement areas in the 1980s. During the peak of rebel activity in our region in the 80’s, people from the countryside moved closer to town to avoid the armed conflict. They finished off the regenerating trees and saplings left by poachers and brought with them a way of life that took a heavy toll on the river.
The construction of an overflow bridge 200 meters downstream of the junction. This project was ill-planned. A heavy deposit of boulders, sand and silt in the river made it shallow and wiped out the swimming place that we had known.
All of these causes are severe. But we think that they can be reversed. We also think it is up to us, who were born half a century ago, to start this movement. The memory of the river lives in us, so we are the ones to bring it back. We should have started long ago. But many of us were too busy with our own business and raising our families. Some live in far-away places, or sadly, just don’t care.
But enough of us do. We will begin on the river junction, and proceed from there both up- and downstream. We can start with small things such as river clean-up, tree planting and a campaign to inform the public about the importance of the river.
At the same time we will create a river restoration council to work with the local and national governments on such things as riverbed and embankment rehabilitation, recreation and livelihood projects, and resettlement of families occupying the river easements, especially in flood zones.
Restoring the river is a way to repay a debt of gratitude, and to enable future generations to thrive under the nurturing hand of nature the way our own did. In this one small place, we are determined to bring back the river of our youth.