By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Last issue I wrote about my talk during the town fiesta of my hometown, Besao, Mountain Province and my main point was due to the difficult environment there including the terrain and the lack of economic opportunities, we were born to adversity. We were tempered by hardships resulting in a steely determination that could see us through anywhere we were thrown by fate.
Now I realized that it might have been true to my generation. We walked about two kilometers to reach the high school there, now kids rode tricycles.
The town was just a one-vehicle place with the Willys Jeep of the Rural Health Unit clinic which was the only sign of modernity. You could hear it rattling (with under parts obviously worn out) its way through the rough road when the only doctor (who traced his roots to Pangasinan) of the clinic had to leave the poblacion to call on a patient. Now the roads are paved nicely and parking spaces can be a problem as there are vehicles everywhere. And the town has so many homegrown doctors and there is also now a hospital.
Every extended family has a member or a number of them had gone abroad. Many of them opted to settle in the US or Canada or in Europe. In much the same way that every family has a lawyer-member, an engineer, or a nurse, or a teacher, etc. Most of the rest have somehow finished college and are working elsewhere. Others have businesses in Baguio City or in other places. Who can forget the Besao and Sagada families with wagwag stores everywhere in this country?
So much so that in some barangays, elementary schools are now contemplating having several grades in one classroom with only one teacher. I guess there is not much choice if there are only 5 kids in grade one, 4 in grade two and 6 in in grade three. Sure, you can lump them all in one classroom with only one teacher and they could still be taught competently. It was the same in schools in the prairie during the early years of the USA.
With the better economic conditions of people in the town, much of the beautiful rice terraces have become grasslands. And Western Union has now an agent there.
So I was wrong as I earlier said. The younger generation there might have to find other ways to propel them to success. Whatever it would be, they would not be able to say that it was because their constitution or brains were tempered by hardship the way we knew it.
But I think I was right when I said that the younger generation should not dream only of having a college degree. That would not be enough in this highly competitive world. They should be thinking of obtaining a PhD, or courses that entail about eight years of study such as a bachelor of laws or becoming medical doctors. That is, if they want to go somewhere.
For my having talked a lot of gibberish, the town gave me a token consisting of several items which are products of the locality. There was a bottle of bugnay wine, a lemon wine, wild honey, black rice, some commercially packaged snacks that looked like crackers, and some woven items. If these could be produced at a commercial scale then the town would be “industrialized” in a way, on a micro scale.
People of nearby Sagada had been making a killing from woven souvenir items. It is high time other nearby towns gave them a run for their money. As to the honey there is a hungry market out there for pure wild honey. You can place my yearly order for 60 4×4 bottles.
As to the wines, they will need a lot of technical assistance. As I have said many time before about bugnay wine produced in the Cordillera, the problem is always the consistency. When one buys a carton of wine, one bottle should taste the same as the next one. But in a low tech production facility that would be a very tall order.
Same thing with the other food items. Somehow the quality should be upgraded without putting bad stuff there such as MSG which is what makers of chicheria do.
For the initial market of the products, the first customers can be the multitude of iBesaos who migrated to other places. They can be traced and am sure they will be supportive. As the quality of the products improve including the production capacity of those in the venture, then they could think of attempting of conquering the supermarts but that would entail some capital which is of course par for the course.
Com’ on, members of the younger generation, show us that you can do better even if you were not tempered by a painfully difficult life. In the process you will meet other kinds of difficulties that should also churn you into better persons. No guts, no glory.**
