A few days before the semana santa (Holy Week) of 1996, I was in Atop-atop, a small fishing community in Bantayan Island, to document a community-based water project (for RAFI). The first time I set foot on this place eight years ago, it was some kind of love at first sight. Atop-atop was a sleepy village whose residents were kind enough to provide the comforts we often miss during out of town trips - a warm comfortable bed and a steaming tinola soup. But it was perhaps my tenth trip to Atop-atop within a six-year span two years ago, that I found out to be the most significant and fulfilling.
I hold fond memories of Atop-atop. A flask of rum shared with fishers over tales from the high seas. A basketful of shells for dinner, gathered while the orb sinks in the horizon. The gentle flutter of manila paper during community planning sessions at the seaside village chapel. Those early morning "walks" to the outhouse.
Very recently, I was sifting photos accumulated from years of community work, gathering memories of local color like a child rummaging toys from a nook. One particular photo stood out. My mind raced back, on that day in April two years ago. I recollected it all together, allowing myself and my thoughts to sink in further.
Theirs was a group of women headed by Mora, a spunky woman, a mother figure who was a pioneering hand in the community's affairs. That day she was totally absorbed in her work, assisting engineers from the city install a submersible pump. Under a huge breadfruit tree, she narrated how organizational hardships nearly drove them to break up, foregoing an opportunity of a lifetime. In the searing heat of the April sun, she envisioned how the village women planned to put up vegetable gardens once water gushes from the wells. I was awed.
The sight of women in single file, lugging pipes to the reservoir site about a kilometer away from the main village road was totally inspiring to say the least.
Six years and generations before, Nang Mora and her group shared the same story with the rest of the women particularly in rural areas worldwide. While their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are out in the field or the sea, they are left with child-rearing and other domestic work, including procurement of water which they haul daily, over valleys and gorges, several kilometers from their huts. A ritual of no choice. An extra burden where livelihood, domestic agriculture and sanitation depend. For centuries, they have silently nurtured families, and consequently, communities, yet their efforts have been unpaid and unaccounted for in the national accounting system specifically in the computation of the gross national product.
At the turnover rites three months after that visit, I silently watched her and her retinue, lugging, this time, basketloads of crabs for the salo-salo. Despite the festive occasion, they were silent, probably overwhelmed by their achievement.These women must have worn their hearts in their throats that day.
Looking back, I was inspired to see a glimmer of hope in a sector once perceived to be feeble and weak, and relegated to domestic affairs. The women, after all, have enough energy to draw water for an entire village. A victory and a celebration.
If Atop-atop had no electricity then, the women's energy would have lighted up the whole village!
Published in Jan. 4, 1998