IP barefoot doctors

Ethnic and modern blended as indigenous healers in their tribal finery descended via the steep escalator of the posh SMX Convention Center at the SM Mall of Asia complex in Pasay City. I ran and descended ahead of them and waited with my camera to capture the colorful sight. Some of them were profusely ornamented, a few were almost bare with only their G-strings on. It was ethnic chic set against the modern. But this was not a fashion show. More than 100 experienced healers from different indigenous communities all over the country attended...

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Free book on sustainable rice agriculture

Whenever sustainable agriculture and organic farming are taken up in this space, quite a number of readers send in feedback and queries, or even offer information about what they are doing in their own farms and backyards. Which means that sustainable agriculture, natural farming, organic farming, or in the new Filipino jargon of enlightened farmers, “likas-kaya at organikong pagsasaka” (LKP) is gaining adherents and advocates. (I do backyard organic gardening and have lately been eating so much patola—the short, gourd-like type which looks like...

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Maribojoc

It is not very often that one gets out of the city to find and experience the pristine and the primeval. Last week, I was in Maribojoc in the island province of Bohol to enjoy not just the fiesta and behold its ancient landmarks but to also experience its “secret places,” the blue and green quiet spaces that glide in and out of one’s dreams. While Bohol now figures big on the tourism map because of the beaches of Panglao, the Chocolate Hills and the cultural sites, it has other little-known spots that could draw a different breed of visitors,...

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Highwaymen

According to Wikipedia, the word highwayman came to be in the 1600s. The term is mainly applied to robbers who travelled on horses, as opposed to those who robbed on foot. Mounted robbers were widely considered to be socially superior to those who walked. Slang names for them included “knights of the road” and “gentlemen of the road”. Such robbers operated in Great Britain and Ireland from the Elizabethan period until the early 19th century. In the mid- to late 19th-century American West, highwaymen were known as road agents. In the same time...

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