Reflectors
Dec. 12- 17, 2016 Vanguard OPINION 7
Vintage View
By Prof. Rolly Borrinaga
Waraywaray and Binisaya
I believe it is now high time for us to correct two of our bothersome cultural labels and repossess the original ones.
First, the label on our people: we had called ourselves WARAYWARAY( no accent in any syllable, and no hyphen). The nearest phenomenological equivalent of this word in English is BRINKMANSHIP –“ n., the policy of pursuing a hazardous course of action to the brink of catastrophe”( New World Dictionary). This facet of the Waraywaray character, our tendency to be“ brinkmen”, which had been there when the Spaniards came to our shores centuries ago, seems to be at the root of our notoriety as a people as perceived by other ethnic groups. There is nothing wrong with this label, when put to good and proper use. So let us take it up again.
Imperial Manila spoofed our people’ s cultural label through the 1954 movie and song,“ Waray-Waray,” a word
Reflectors
By Reynaldo B. Almenario
which the Tagalogs hyphenated and pronounced with accents on the two“-ray” syllables. It is time for us to dismiss or simply ignore the intentional decades-old spoof once and for all.
We should also resist and dismiss the abbreviated label, WARAY( accented on the second syllable), with which we are now bombarded with increasing frequency over the radio. This word always meant“ nothing” or“ none” in our language, and we should leave it at that. We should no longer allow this word to be appropriated as label of our people.
Next is the label of our language. It was never WA- RAY, or even WARAYWA- RAY. It was always called BINISAYA( accented on the last syllable) in published tracks – in the Makabenta dictionary, first published in 1979, and in the 1890s novena translations of Fr. Antonio Sanchez de la Rosa, OFM, who published the most extensive grammar( in
1887) and dictionaries( in 1886, 1895, and 1914) of our language more than a century ago. In 1909, the cream of the local intellectuals based in Tacloban and Palo, led by Norberto Romualdez, organized the SANGHIRAN SAN BINISAYA( Academy of Binisaya Language), aimed at refining our local language. Some of its members had in fact published a Binisaya orthography and guidelines on writing using Roman letters. But the group’ s adoption of a“ purist” attitude towards the development of the language seemed to have contributed to its doom. Its surviving members could only offer meek protest when new the labels for our language and our people started replacing the original ones.
We must realize that the BINISAYA label for our language is now open for us to repossess. And then we can adopt a more pragmatic approach in its strengthening and promotion. The Central
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Eradicating Extreme Poverty by 2030
( Last part)
In our last column, we said that the country’ s coconut industry is where over 20 million Filipinos depend for a living, yet where the poorest of the poor reside. We said there are three major factors are at the root of this situation: prevalent share tenancy; a prevailing sharing system so lopsided in favour of landowners who take 50 percent to 70 percent of the net income; and a monopsonistic to oligopsonistic market structure lorded over by traders who dictate buying prices.
In December 2013, a hectare of coconut farm in Bondoc Peninsula( Quezon Province) generated only Php56,776.00 in annual net income, or Php4,731.13 per month at the buying price of Php24.00 per kilo of copra. This income figure assumes that the farm family owns the land; even so, this is an
income level already way below the 2012 official poverty threshold of Php7,980.00 per month.
Truly, land tenure improvement( land to the tiller, and enforcement of the lawful leasehold arrangement which requires the leasehold holder to pay the land-owner / lessor only 25.0 percent of the net income) will do a lot raise the net revenue of the small coconut farmer. But that is not enough. The coconut industry need be re-engineered such that:
Coconut trading is henceforth shifted from copra into whole nuts, thereby enabling the farmers to save on costs associated with dehusking, splitting of the nuts, cooking and drying of the meat. Moreover, with this shift, we do away with aflatoxin that ordinarily characterizes our copra, generally dried as it on open spaces that expose
the raw material to various types of dirt from animals. Indeed, the argument of the American Soybean Association, which lobbied in the US Congress many years ago to ban our coconut oil from entry into the US market, relied heavily on this finding. But with a shift to whole nut trade and a wet process to produce oil, aflatoxin becomes a thing of the past.
Social enterprises, socalled social because farmers co-own and eventually operate these ventures through their organizations, are set up to process whole nuts into products in which the country has almost absolute advantages: the meat into medicinal virgin coconut oil, premium cooking oil, coconut flour, skimmed milk and paring cake; the water into coco energy drink; the husk into twines, geo-textile and
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Voices
ByJun Portillo
Politics, Economics, AIDS
I was a victim of revenge sex. I was then working abroad while my wife and children were here back home. One day, I went to a bar. An attractive woman offered to buy me a drink …” Dan * begun his testimony with a shocking revelation: he’ s infected with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV which causes the deadly and acute medical condition called AIDS, acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
We were gathered that week in a resort in Luzon for PHANSuP’ s annual planning workshop. PHANSuP or Philippine NGO Support Program is the country’ s“ linking organization” of the International HIV / AIDS Alliance based in Britain. The event was attended by PHANSuP workers and supporters all over the country. I joined PHANSuP in 2011 as Communications Officer of their program on maternal and family health.
Dan is ranking official of PHANSuP. Until that point, I didn’ t know he’ s a PLHIV or Person Living with HIV. PLHIV are people who are infected with the virus and are taking maintenance medication called anti-retroviral as management intervention. We came to know that there were other PLHIV working in PHANSuP at that time. Without the free anti-retroviral from donations, they are at risk of death.
Dan Continues,“ I was flattered. We hit it off right away. We had a great conversation while drinking. I got really drunk. It was then that the woman offered to go home with me. Things went fast. We were in my bed. But I woke up alone in the morning and remembered about the woman in the bar. There was surging panic as I checked on my things. Nothing was missing. My wallet was untouched. The gadgets and all things of value were there, also untouched …”
I remembered Dan’ s testimony last week on December 1, World AIDS Day. Dan held the audience like Coleridge’ s Ancient Mariner and proceeded to tell the story with“ glittering eyes.”
“ I could not believe it at first. I had a one-night stand for the first time and with a young, beautiful and passionate woman. That night I went back to the bar and looked for her. She wasn’ t there. I was puzzled. It was months after I went home and had my medical check-up that I realized what happened. The lab results showed I was HIV positive.”
Dan would, in the next months and years, wage a great struggle for his life. The struggle simultaneously happening included avoiding stigma and abuse, asking for forgiveness from his family and securing anti-retroviral for himself. According to Dan, the greatest struggle of all was securing that the medicine remains always available. It’ s a struggle that he’ d fight to the hilt even after all other battles were won.
Holly Burkhalter, in an article for a magazine published by the US Council on Foreign Relations, wrote,“ The AIDS pandemic continues to grow exponentially, outstripping prevention efforts and treatment programs; every day it kills 8,000 people and infects 13,700 more.” In our country, there are 24,936 people who are living with HIV / AIDS as of April 2015, count is from the AIDS Registry of the Department of Health. It does not include the estimated thousands of unreported cases.
AIDS epidemic has impact on economics and politics, and vice verza. At household level, income and expenditure is affected. Researcher Patrick Lundberg and colleagues found out that infection of HIV by a family member results in as much as 40-50 percent decline in household income. Macroeconomic growth declines as mortality hits the most economically productive demographic age group like young college graduates working in call centers.
Limited resources, on the other hand, channels national budgets to more pressing issues like disaster rehabilitation. Politicians choose to spend on infrastructure and other popular projects instead of AIDS which has less percent of voting population affected, unwittingly and silently bringing the epidemic to a future uncontrollable levels.
The disturbing reality of revenge sex together with socio-economic, cultural, and political dimensions all contribute to the complex
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