Filipino RM awardees 2010: Physicist couple showing the way

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Juan Escandor Jr.

MANILA, Philippines—Amid the grim education scenario in the Philippines, a bright light shines from the remote town of Jagna in Bohol province.

There, husband and wife Christopher Bernido and Ma. Victoria Carpio-Bernido, both physicists, introduced a way of teaching and learning that has produced amazing results.

More than a decade ago, they left their academic careers at the University of the Philippines (UP) and went back to a rural setting to run a struggling school and help students achieve their academic potentials.

Their efforts catapulted them to national and international attention and became a source of inspiration.

The Bernidos were among seven awardees honored Tuesday by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation in ceremonies at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The Bernidos were recognized for “their purposeful commitment to both science and nation, ensuring innovative, low-cost and effective basic education even under Philippine conditions of great scarcity and daunting poverty.”

The Bernidos are among 42 Filipinos whom the foundation has honored since the awards began in 1958.

Chris, 53, is from Bohol while Marivic, 48, is from Naga City in Camarines Sur province. They finished at UP and earned their doctorate degrees in physics from the State University of New York. They both taught at the UP National Institute of Physics, where they met and fell in love.

Now, Chris said in an interview, “we have 490 children”—a reference to the students in their care.

For the country

The Bernidos surprised their UP colleagues in 1999 when they packed their bags and moved to Jagna, where Chris’ mother was running a small school, Central Visayan Institute Foundation (CVIF).

Closing down CVIF would have been the easier option but Chris and Marivic accepted the challenge of running the school. Chris became its president and Marivic the principal.

“It was Marivic who was sugod (gung-ho),” Chris laughed.

“Then things became difficult,” Marivic recalled. “I lost a lot of weight.”

But giving up was not in the couple’s vocabulary. Marivic said: “For us, it has always been the bigger picture, the country. We both wanted to do something for the country.”

At CVIF, students are honed to excel in academics, in science especially, and to be well-rounded individuals with good values.

Revolutionary method

In 2002, the Bernidos designed and introduced a revolutionary way of teaching called the CVIF Dynamic Learning Program (DLP).

“It limits teacher participation by devoting 70 percent of class time to student-driven activities built around clear learning targets, aided by well-designed learning plans and performance tracking tools,” the Bernidos said in a lecture paper.

CVIF uses a “parallel classes” scheme that needs only one expert teacher aided by facilitators. The Bernidos wanted to show that poverty is not an excuse for poor teaching and for not excelling in academics.

No notebooks, no homework

Their students, many of them poor, performed well in national scholastic aptitude and college admission tests. Soon many educators wanted to see for themselves how CVIF did things. Two Nobel laureates came to visit.

Where in the world does one find a school where students are not required to have notebooks and do not have homework? Only this side of Bohol.

“The students use activity sheets, instead,” Marivic said. “They don’t need notebooks and they go home without the burden of homework.”

It was difficult to imagine how students learned through the use of activity sheets and with minimum teacher intervention until the Bernidos spoke about neurons in the brain, biophysics and neurodynamics that are involved in the learning process.

“We are not dealing with machines,” they said.

Poverty not a barrier

In 2006, the Bernidos launched the Learning Physics as One Nation (LPON) program to address the shortage of physics teachers.

The Bernidos present three main learning problems that could be addressed: teacher problem, textbook problem and science lab problem. They believe that “poverty and scarcity are not barriers to quality education.”

The couple ask: “Can high school students learn essential physics effectively even if their classroom teacher has little or no physics training?” Yes, the LPON pilot study results showed.

The programs include learning activities to be individually accomplished by the students plus weekly video lectures featuring expert teachers. “Teacher-expert” and “student-expert” interaction happens in real time through e-mail and text messaging.

Their solution to the textbook problem: “Pick a select team of experts that could conceptualize and design concise learning ... Only one copy per class is needed because the students will copy by hand the material from the board or screen.

And the science lab problem? “We believe that there is no need for expensive labs in high school. The simple pendulum could be used for scientific experimentation, analysis and inference-making. So select cheap and simple set-ups to demonstrate fundamental principles of science.”

Not science only

Science is not all the Bernidos want their students to excel in. Students are exposed to the arts such as music and theater.

“We stage plays, we make the students listen to Bach … We also want them to know about the lives of saints. Oh, they like Jean d’Arc very much,” Marivic said.

Unlike some scientists who are agnostics or atheists, she and her spouse find no conflict between science and their faith, Marivic said.

She and Chris draw inspiration from the lives of the saints.

“St. Therese of the Child Jesus teaches us that little things done with great love have great merits. There are many opportunities to practice this while working in a small, poor school in a remote place,” she said.

From the Rule of St. Benedict, Marivic has drawn insights on leadership and management, while the works of St. Bonaventure has helped her relate being a physicist to theological thoughts.

“We are able to find contact points between what we witness in our scientific work and what we believe in as Catholics—a living personal and infinitely creative God,” she said.

Marivic wears the distinctive Lourdes habit—a white dress with a blue sash—every time she goes to Church on Sunday. She has been doing it for 37 years.

Japanese RM awardee dreams of peace fest in Hiroshima

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—Why not a global festival of peace in a Japanese city demolished by the atomic bomb?

This is one of the dreams of Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, one of the seven 2010 Ramon Magsaysay awardees to be honored Tuesday, the birth anniversary of the late Philippine president after whom the award is named.

Akiba, 67, was two years old when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The bombs instantly killed between 150,000 and 200,000 people in the two cities, according to a US-funded study. Many who survived still suffer from ailments caused by the A-bomb.

Akiba’s family did not suffer a direct hit but some things have remained in his memory.

“One of my earliest memories was the firebombing of my hometown Chiba City near Tokyo. I was only two and a half years old but I remember scenes,” Akiba said.

The war and its aftermath haunted the precocious boy. Now he is campaigning for a world free of nuclear weapons.

That world is possible, Akiba said.

“I am so confident that we are now studying in Hiroshima the feasibility of entering a bid for the 2020 Olympics. What could be better than to celebrate our entry into (a) new nuclear weapons-free world with a global festival of peace in Hiroshima?”

Award ceremonies Tuesday

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation cited Akiba for “his principled and determined leadership in a sustained global campaign to mobilize citizens, pressure governments, and build the political will to create a world free from the perils of nuclear war.”

He is the 24th Japanese and one of the 267 individual Ramon Magsaysay awardees since 1958.

Five of this year’s seven awardees—a Filipino couple, a Bangladeshi, a Chinese and a Japanese—will personally receive their awards in ceremonies Tuesday at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Two other Chinese awardees are not coming, one for being ill and the other for unclear reasons.

“When I was a child, I watched a movie that showed children who suffered from the A-bomb. Scenes in the movie merged with my childhood experiences,” Akiba told the Inquirer.

Akiba spent his high school years in the United States as a scholar. After finishing his BS and MS in Math at Tokyo University, he went back to the United States to pursue his doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Meeting the ‘hibakusha’

His US stay brought disturbing thoughts.

For example, Akiba said, many in the United States thought that Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 was the absolute evil and that the American decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan in 1945 was right.

Akiba taught in US universities for several years but returned to Japan in 1987 and became a professor at Hiroshima Shudo University. He became acquainted with the hibakusha (survivors of the A-bomb), one of whom, Akira Ishida, became his mentor in the advocacy against nuclear weapons.

“The hibakusha are not in Japan only,” Akiba said. “There are hibakusha now living abroad.”

‘No more Hiroshima’

With prodding from the hibakusha, Akiba joined politics and became a member of the Diet (Japan’s parliament) from 1990 to 1999. Then he became Hiroshima mayor, a post he still holds.

Now on his third term, he continues to take up the cause of the hibakusha.

The horror that visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not entirely lost on world leaders. In 1970 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force.

But despite cries of “No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki,” the NPT was ignored by nuclear-armed states and those that have since acquired nuclear-weapons capability.

By 1980, there were close to 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world with destructive power equal to a million Hiroshima-type A-bombs, according to one report.

Tales of horror

Before he entered politics, Akiba was already involved in the nuclear disarmament campaign. In 1979, he launched the Hibakusha Travel Grants Program that invited Americans and journalists to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to listen to the hibakusha’s tales of horror.

The aim was to draw attention to the horrors of war and world annihilation.

Akiba felt that Hiroshima, being history’s first A-bomb victim, had the moral obligation to warn the world of the dangers from such weapons. He put his city at the forefront of an international campaign against nuclear weapons, continuing his predecessors’ efforts.

In 1982, Akiba spearheaded the Mayors for Peace movement. Mayors, he thought, were best positioned to mobilize citizens to be advocates for peace.

Mayors for Peace now has 4,069 member-cities from 144 countries and regions worldwide. In the Philippines, 16 cities are members.

People rarely suffer alone

Why cities and city mayors?

“Tragedies usually come to the cities,” Akiba said, adding that there was a lot that could be done at the city level.

“Mayors generally arise from the collective consciousness of their cities. We are close to our citizens. We suffer when they suffer. City mayors can influence their national governments more effectively.

“People rarely suffer alone. The suffering of any individual is actually the suffering of at least a family, if not a neighborhood. And a city is a vital, true and personally relevant level of collective identity.”

That is why we speak of Guernica, Ypres, Auschwitz, My Lai, Dresden, Akiba said. “This is why cities that suffer massive destruction become cities that work for peace.”

Past examples must be followed, Akiba urged. “The Ottawa Process that led to the treaty to ban antipersonnel landmines is one. The Oslo Process that led to the treaty to ban cluster munitions is another.”

In 2003, Mayors for Peace forged ahead with a “2020 Vision” campaign to pressure governments to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020, the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings.

In 2020, Akiba said, the average age of the hibakusha would be 86.

In 2008 the movement issued the Hiroshima-Nagasaki protocol, a road map to guide governments toward total abolition of nuclear weapons.

Akiba considers the 65th commemoration at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial early this month very special because of the presence of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

“He was the first UN secretary general to attend the ceremony,” Akiba said, “and he met with the hibakusha.”

For the first time, the US government sent a representative to the ceremony.

By working together, Akiba mused, people could create a world free of war, violence, starvation, widespread environmental destruction and institutional slavery.

And nuclear weapons would have no place in such a world. With a report from Inquirer Research

Bangladesh's RM awardee: Disabled also have dreams

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—Inclusive, barrier-free and mainstreaming. These are key words that A.H.M. Noman Khan has turned into reality for countless disabled persons of Bangladesh and beyond.

Khan is one of the seven 2010 Ramon Magsaysay awardees who will be honored on Tuesday, birth anniversary of the late President after whom the award is named.

Khan, 59, is being recognized for “his pioneering leadership in mainstreaming persons with disabilities in the development process of Bangladesh, and in working vigorously with all sectors to build a society that is truly inclusive and barrier-free.”

Khan is a big and able-bodied Asian who had no direct experience with disabled persons in his early life, but after being exposed to them and their plight in the early 1990s, he became totally devoted to this special sector. And there was no turning back.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award has caused quite a stir in his country, Khan happily tells the Inquirer. He is certain the award will significantly increase people’s awareness of the issues affecting the disabled in Asia.

Khan is the 10th Bangladeshi to win the award since it was started in 1958. One well-known Bangladeshi awardee is Muhammad Yunus, who received the award in 1984 and, later, the Nobel Peace Prize. The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation has honored 267 individuals and 17 institutions in the past 52 years.

Inclusion opportunities

Khan, who holds a master’s degree in commerce and management, is married and father of two, is the executive director of the Center for Disability and Development (CDD), which he cofounded in 1996.

Based in the capital city of Dhaka, the CDD has trained over 10,000 development workers from 350 organizations in Bangladesh. Many of these organizations, though not directly serving the disabled, are now working toward providing services and create “inclusion opportunities” for persons with disabilities.

Under Khan’s leadership, the CDD developed the Community Approaches to Handicap in Development (CAHD), a unique strategy that strengthens the capability of communities to respond to the needs of their disabled members. It also seeks to mainstream disability so that mainstreaming becomes part of the development work of both government and nongovernment groups.

Ambitious, revolutionary

Called “ambitious and revolutionary,” CAHD addresses disability in a holistic way and not through piece-meal, small-scale approaches. This means that wheelchairs are not the end-solution to physical disability.

“If you only use a medical approach,” Khan says, “you will not solve the problem. Because those with disabilities can do so much more.” He then reminds that there are those who prefer to use the words “physically challenged” instead of disabled.

Khan cites the example of a person with disability who went on to finish a master’s degree but could not find a job. “He committed suicide,” he says. “The problem is with the system, not with the impairment.”

Training

Society must open up. Families and communities must be given skills and their awareness must be heightened side by side with the disabled.

“We’ve held dialogues with schools and the department of primary education,” Khan says. “We’ve trained NGOs. We’ve trained teachers. At first they were resistant, but after the third day of training they were OK.”

Khan argues that teachers in regular schools need not know the entire thing about Braille for the blind or sign language for the hearing-impaired for them to include the disabled in their classes. The disabled will learn if they are provided the right tools and setting. And so will their teachers. But that is easier said than done.

Hidden, marginalized

Khan says that in Bangladesh, a developing country with a population of 158 million, there are an estimated 13 million people with disabilities. Cultural beliefs have caused their exclusion and marginalization.

“Many families would hide them and even avoid mentioning them,” Khan says. But little by little, they have opened up.

Khan adds that the major causes of disability are disasters, diseases, poverty and bad pregnancies.

The CDD now operates seven service and training centers in Bangladesh. In partnership with organizations, it has reached out to 52 of the 64 districts in Bangladesh. A good number on its staff of 175 are disabled.

Many development workers from other countries, including the Philippines, have trained at the CDD and learned the CAHD approach.

“We do not have something as big as that here in the Philippines,” a Filipino NGO worker who trained at the CDD in Bangladesh told the Inquirer.

Disability-inclusive

The CDD’s “disability-inclusive projects” include those in education, food security and disaster risk-reduction. It operates centers that provide information, counseling and therapy.

“We now have well-equipped buses and ships that could reach communities,” Khan proudly says.

Another CDD breakthrough is the National Resource Center in Assistive Technology that manufactures and distributes orthosis and prosthesis devices. The center has also successfully developed a sign language in Bangla, Bangladesh’s national language which is also spoken in some parts of India.

Policy advocacy

The work is never done. Policy advocacy is part of the CDD. As secretary general of the National Forum of Organizations Working with the Disabled, Khan has worked hard to strengthen collaboration among groups and to reach national and international levels to achieve a disabled-friendly society.

At his public lecture four days ago, Khan fielded questions from an audience that included persons with disabilities who used sign language as well as Filipinos who had trained in CAHD at the CDD. He was proud and at home in their midst.

“What is for me should also be for the blind,” Khan says.

“Persons with disabilities have dreams which they want to fulfill like everyone else—to work, to sustain a future, to exist side by side with others. All they need is a proper environment to work in and lead life as equal to everyone else.”

2 RM awardees cancel trip

Philippine Daily Inquirer/NEWS/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo and Christian Esguerra

THE ANNUAL Ramon Magsaysay Awards rites have become another unfortunate casualty of the botched hostage-rescue fiasco.

Two of the three Chinese recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards for 2010, both government bureaucrats, will not be coming to receive the honors on Aug. 31.

But the third Chinese awardee, photojournalist Huo Daishan, is already in the country and is participating in the series of lectures and meetings that have been arranged by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation.

The Inquirer was scheduled to interview yesterday the two awardees—Fu Qiping, a farmer and village chief in China’s Zhejiang province, and Pan Yue, a vice minister in the Ministry of Environmental Protection—but was told by an RMAF official that the two would not be coming.

The RMAF source said one of the Chinese awardees “might have taken ill,” and did not give a reason for the second one’s nonappearance.

There are speculations that their absence may have something to do with the diplomatic tension between Beijing and Hong Kong on one hand and the Philippines on the other caused by the Aug. 23 hostage crisis in Manila that ended in the killing of eight Hong Kong tourists.

Fu, 62, reportedly sent an urgent letter to the RMAF on Aug. 25, saying that he had “suddenly taken ill” and could not come to Manila to receive the Magsaysay Award.

RMAF officials had to cancel all the planned activities for Fu, including the customary public lecture and a forum with the Asian Institute of Management and the Galing Pook Foundation.

Shera Tanjutco, the RMAF communication officer, denied that Fu’s decision not to come to Manila had anything to do with the hostage tragedy that drew furious reactions from Chinese people, particularly those in Hong Kong.

“No, he just suddenly got sick,” she said.

The Fu cancellation came two days after the Chinese embassy informed the Makati Business Club that the visit to the Philippines of Vice Premier Li Keqiang, scheduled for Sept. 7, had been “postponed indefinitely due to urgent official tasks at home.”

The MBC was one of the organizers of the China-Philippine Trade, Investment and Economic Forum on Sept. 7 in which Li was to be the special guest.

Tanjutco said Pan has yet to send word on whether he will be present at the formal awarding ceremonies on Tuesday.

“We have not heard from him since Aug. 1. He did not say if he was coming or not,” Tanjutco said in a phone interview.

Not the first time

There have been a number of times in the past that several Magsaysay awardees from China were not able to attend the awarding ceremonies because of the sensitive nature of their work that could put their government in a bad light.

But last year, two awardees from China, both environmental advocates, came to receive their awards, delivered public lectures and visited several places in Metro Manila.

The Inquirer was able to obtain a copy of a letter dated Aug. 26 that RMAF president Carmencita Abella had written to Juan Miguel Luz, associate dean of the AIM Center for Development Management, which was organizing Fu’s lecture for Sept. 1.

“We regret to inform you that Mr. Fu Qiping sent us an urgent message yesterday afternoon (Wednesday, August 25) that he (had) suddenly taken ill, and thus (could not) push through with his planned trip to Manila to receive the Magsaysay Award,” Abella wrote.

Abella informed Luz that Fu had opted “to send a representative just for the awards presentation ceremonies on Aug. 31.”

“We have no recourse but to cancel all the planned activities for Mr. Fu, including the awardee’s public lecture,” she wrote.

Exemplary public servants

Fu and Pan were cited by the Ramon Magsaysay Awards for “their exemplary vision and zeal as public servants at two levels of the state bureaucracy, in advocating the inseparability of development and the environment in uplifting the lives of the Chinese people.”

Fu is credited with turning his small village in China’s Zhejiang province into a model community that is both environmentally healthy and economically secure. Tengtou, now known worldwide as a “miracle village,” is home to 830 residents.

“Collectively organized as an economic enterprise, [Tengtou] has built a base in agriculture and ecotourism, operates business companies and hosts some 60 investors engaged in textile, food processing and other activities,” reads the profile on Fu at the RMAF website

.

It said that all this was made possible in large part by the innovative leadership of Fu.

Pan, 50, is a key figure in the Chinese government’s efforts to protect the environment. As an environment official, he has been given credit for “proactively” enforcing environmental laws, taking on some of China’s biggest industries.

The Ramon Magsaysay Awards cited Pan for “his bold pursuit of a national environmental program, insisting on state and private accountability, encouraging state-citizen dialogue and raising the environment as an issue of urgent national concern.”

Chinese photographer wins RM for helping save a river

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

ONE DAY, Chinese photojournalist Huo Daishan was shocked to see that the Huai no longer looked like the river of his childhood.

It was highly polluted, emitted toxic fumes, yielded dead fish, and killed people. It had become a river of death.

“I lived there,” Huo, 56, told the Inquirer. “I played there when I was a child. The water was clear and we could see fish. We could even drink the water.”

Huo is one of the seven 2010 Ramon Magsaysay (RM) Awardees who will receive honors on Aug. 31, the birth anniversary of the late President after whom the award is named.

He is being recognized for “his selfless and unrelenting efforts, despite formidable odds, to save China’s river Huai and the numerous communities who draw life from it.”

Huo is one of three Chinese RM awardees this year, and the 16th from the People’s Republic of China since the RM Awards began in 1958. The two others, both government bureaucrats, will not attend the awarding ceremony. (See banner story.)

The RM Awards Foundation honors individuals and institutions that have shown “greatness of spirit in selfless service to the peoples of Asia.”

The award is given to “persons—regardless of race, nationality, creed or gender—who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity, and in doing so have made contributions which have transformed their societies for the better.”

The great Huai River is known to have cradled ancient Chinese civilization.

By its banks lived great figures in Chinese history, among them Confucius, Mencius and Laozi. Legendary figures Fuxi, ancestor of all Chinese people, and Dayu, water control hero, were associated with it.

The powerful river gave life but it has also been known to take its toll, through floods, on communities thriving near it. A thousand kilometers long, it meanders through four provinces and forms a major agricultural basin where more than 150 million people live.

In recent years the Huai came close to dying because of pollution. Also dying were many people living in riverbank communities that became known as “cancer villages.”

Industries had long been unleashing millions of tons of waste into the Huai, turning it into China’s most polluted river.

But Huo, a newspaper photographer from Shenqui, did not want to give up on the river and the people that he loved.

He embarked on his crusade by showing the state of the Huai through thousands of his photographs. His efforts opened the floodgates of concern that led to a concerted action to save the river.

Full-time mission

In 1987, Huo started documenting the river’s dying. He was alone when he began.

“I had only a Minolta camera, a notebook

and a pen,” he recalled.

Although the Chinese government had tried to address the Huai problem with a multi-billion rehabilitation project, its impact was not enough. Worse, a local government produced a fake report on the river’s state.

Huo resigned from his newspaper job and, in 1998, decided to make his river documentation a full-time, self-funded mission.

In 2000 he formed a group called “Guardians of the Huai River” and mounted his first photo exhibit that showed the true state of the river and the communities near it.

With the help of his wife and two sons, he hung photographs on clotheslines along a street in his village. He had little resources to go by, but he was so determined that he eventually drew the attention of the public to the dying river.

He was no longer alone.

Huo’s efforts over the years yielded more than 15,000 photographs taken in more than 20 cities and counties across Henan.

He has held more than 70 photo exhibits in cities, villages and schools. His photographs of children wearing masks to protect themselves from the Huai’s toxic fumes shocked many.

Research and training

Huo and his group produce not only still photographs but also video documentaries in DVD that can easily be shown to big numbers of people. (But a book of photographs and stories is something Huo would really like to do.)

Apart from producing photographs, Huo also did research and organized river visits for students and interested groups.

He trained hundreds of volunteer “guardians” who monitored the Huai and tested the water. One of his group’s shocking findings was the high incidence of cancer, particularly in the respiratory and digestive systems, in the riverbank communities.

Huo also discovered that the water used for agriculture and even the ground water for drinking had been contaminated by the pollutants in the Huai.

Initially, local officials and factory owners did not look kindly on Huo’s advocacy. At one point his website was hacked.

But he was undeterred and continued working hard until his relations with uncooperative groups improved. In fact, one major polluter of the river, a producer of MSG, now collaborates with him in putting pollution controls in place.

Huo has succeeded in involving government and private groups in his crusade to save the Huai. But the so-called cancer villages remain among his major concerns.

He worked to have deep water wells and low-cost filtration systems installed in the riverbank communities and for hundreds of cancer patients to receive medical aid.

Huo hopes to see the Huai restored to its original pristine state in his lifetime, the way it was when he was a child.

PTS at 100: Continuing the fight against TB

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

EVEN BEFORE Magellan set foot on these islands in 1521 and long before scientists pinned down the bacillus that caused tuberculosis (TB), Filipinos already had various names for the disease. The Kapampangans called it malalangi while the Ilocanos called it sarot. The Tagalogs called it sigan while the Visayans called it anos. The tubercular patient in the Visayas was called anoson.

In present-day 21st century Philippines everybody just says TB.

There seems to be no record of the natives’ attempts to fight the disease before and during the Spanish era. It was only after the Spanish-American War or the beginning of the 1900s that TB began to interest health authorities. And it had to compete with deadly pestilences of that time, such as the bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera and dysentery, that exacted a dramatic toll on populations all over the world.

TB was (and is) more of a silent killer. Many historic figures, consumptive saints among them, died of the lung disease. The Philippines’ own president, Manuel L. Quezon, succumbed to the disease in 1944 while the country was fighting a war and lay in ruins. But the name Quezon not only lent a real face to the ailment, it also opened the door to TB patients who would otherwise have languished in penury and pain.

The imposing landmark, the Quezon Institute (QI), that stands on a sprawling prime lot in Quezon City (donated by the Ortigas family) is testament to this. But before QI, there was its founding organization, the Philippine Tuberculosis Society (PTS) that operates QI and PTS clinics in the country.

This year is the society’s 100th in operation. The non-stock, non-profit PTS is the pioneering institution in TB prevention, control and treatment in the Philippines. Its corporate predecessor, the Philippine Islands Anti-Tuberculosis Society, was founded in 1910, antedating both the Philippine Commonwealth (1935) and the republic (1946).

QI’s beginnings date back to 1918 when 14 nipa huts for TB patients were built in the area where it stands now. The place was called Santol Sanatorium and it operated on the belief at that time that isolation, bed rest, fresh air and nutritious food were the effective cure for TB.

Quezon recognized the threat that TB posed on Filipinos. In 1934 he signed RA 4130 establishing the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PSCO) to support PTS. QI, the tertiary hospital dedicated to TB, was built not long after.

Today, the PCSO and PTS/QI—along with the Department of Health—continue to work together. (The PSCO now occupies a significant portion of the QI compound.) With the threat of the drug-resistant incarnations of TB intensifying in the new millennium, PTS cannot let its guard down.

Until 2000, PTS operated 52 chest clinics throughout the country. Financial factors and advances in the DOTS (directly observed treatment short-course) led to the reduction of the number of clinics to 11. PTS continues to participate in the National Tuberculosis Control Program of the DOH. In the last two years PTS has been taking steps to revitalize itself and be in step with advances in TB control.

PTS has downsized its QI operations. It is looking at the American Lung Association as a model and is investing in research, training, advocacy and education. It also intends to promote mass health screening and lobby for relevant health measures. PTS has expanded its services to prisons where TB is prevalent among inmates. DOTS is still among its important contributions to TB control.

A long way from the time when the country’s most famous TB patient, Quezon, had to seek treatment in a foreign land and eventually die there at the age of 66, Zeneida Quezon-Avancena, the surviving daughter of the late president, continues to head PTS.

TB is still considered a global emergency. The DOH is reported to be aiming to attain the millennium development goal (MDG) of reducing TB deaths by 50 percent in five years or by 2015 even as a World Health Organization official has been quoted as saying that the “Philippines has a long way to go” in detecting, treating and curing highly infectious TB patients.

According to a PTS report, the number of TB deaths is an average of 75 Filipinos every day. Although curable, it is the sixth among the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in the Philippines.

TB is a contagious disease that spreads through the air from infectious patients. According to WHO, each person with active TB disease will infect an average of between 10 to 15 persons every year. But not all who are infected will get the disease. Only those with weakened immune system could get the disease.

Some grim WHO facts:

Someone in the world is newly infected with TB bacilli every second.

Overall, one-third of the world’s population is currently infected with the TB bacillus.

5-10 percent of people who are infected with TB bacilli (but who are not infected with HIV) become sick or infectious at some time during their life. People with HIV and TB infection are much more likely to develop TB.

WHO estimates that the largest number of new TB cases in 2008 occurred in the Southeast Asia Region, which accounted for 34 percent of incident cases globally. However, the estimated incidence rate in sub-Saharan Africa is nearly twice that of the Southeast Asia Region with over 350 cases per 100,000 population.

An estimated 1.3 million people died of TB in 2008. The highest number of deaths was in the Southeast Asia Region, while the highest mortality per capita was in the Africa Region.

August, the birth month Quezon and also the month he died, continues to be Tuberculosis Awareness Month.

Oca on community organizing and ballroom dancing

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

A GREAT pillar in community organizing (CO) and the Church’s programs of social action, justice and peace has passed on.

Oscar Francisco, “Oca” to the countless many, passed away on Aug. 15 at the age of 64. He was many things to many people. He was an activist, organizer, builder, trainor, legislator, writer, dancer. He was also a great raconteur and romantic. He left behind his wife Edna (also a seasoned NGO worker), their three children and countless communities and groups that he had touched.

It was the heart attack, not the diabetes and failing kidneys, that claimed him.

Oca’s name is synonymous with CO. Despite his twice-weekly dialysis in the past two years, he remained active in the field of CO, having co-founded the Institute for Democratic Participation in Governance. Why, he even had a network he named with tongue in cheek, Dialogue (Dancing Instructors Action for Local Governance and Empowerment).

Oca recently served a year in Congress as representative of the Alliance for Rural Concerns. His ailment did not prevent him from shuttling between Manila and Leyte-Samar.

Last March he invited a bunch of us to Tacloban City and Balangiga, Eastern Samar, to show us people’s participation in local governance and community development. He invited fellow “alumni” from the National Union of Students of the Philippines, Student Catholic Action and the Church-based National Secretariat of Social Action (where Oca spent many years in justice, peace and development work and where I got to know him)—and brought us down to the grassroots to see for ourselves changes in people’s lives. I did write about that trip (“Balangiga in the cusp of development,” March 18, 2010).

Oca also wanted to stress to us the significance of getting back the bells of Balangiga that were carted away by US soldiers during the Philippine-American war. Oca wanted the bells returned to Balangiga by September (next month) and had again scheduled a trip for us there. He hoped newly elected President Aquino would strongly push for the return of the bells after 100 years. Two are in Wyoming, USA, and one is in South Korea.

One of the stuff Oca gave us to read was a serious discourse he had written, “Reflections on Community Organizing and Ballroom Dancing.” Oca presents CO as an act of creation and celebration and smashes the totalitarian view that there is only one correct reading of the world and history.

Oca’s colleagues are planning to put together many of his written works. Here are excerpts from Oca’s reflections on CO and ballroom dancing.

“Community organizing, like ballroom dancing, is a conscious and creative undertaking. Its main nemeses are irrelevance and atrophy. The organizer must be like the dance instructor who does not view dancing as routinary work but as an act of creation and celebration. Today’s organizers have been molded in a particular ideological crucible which demands one vision and line of action. The effects of this totalization (uhm, did he mean totalitarianization?) of perspectives are so well-entrenched that new ideas are immediately suspect.

“If organizers are committed to effect societal change, they need to develop a world view that does not pretend to exhaust description and analysis. The challenge of reeducating them involves not only introducing them to other theories or modes of social analysis and paradigms of development but also finding out how old concepts could now lead to new actions.

“Organizers have simply begun to rediscover voices of history drowned out by louder ones. These voices are reasserting themselves in the current discourse. The re-visitation of the humanities, especially the study of representations, could be an attempt to recapture such voices. After all, imagination allows us to see the moment and beyond.

“The shared tradition of CO work in the Philippines has spanned over 25 years. CO is a process of constant innovation and creation based on lessons from actual experience. Whatever the situation, the necessity of organizing people for power remains….

“Though the years, CO has had considerable achievements in empowering communities and has contributed to the cumulative development of people’s movements and coalitions that achieve both social and political power.

“More importantly, CO discovers and develops the power that lies in ordinary people, in ‘the poor and the powerless’ which, like oil or water, may be found deep inside the earth. This is combined with the fundamental faith of CO that ordinary people have the capacity to better their lives within existing structures and to participate in transforming these structures.

“Empowerment, like art, has many different expressions and methods because it is a process of releasing the potential and creativity of people. The people’s path to empowerment is a long and winding road. With the best of intentions and skills, we make mistakes and suffer defeats.

“CO is like ballroom dancing (or if you want to go local, baile sa baryo) is a conscious and creative undertaking. Thus the organizer must be like the dance instructor who does not look at dancing as a routinary work but as an act of creation and celebration. For those of us who struggle and hope for change, we should know when and how to celebrate.”

Oca then writes on about the need for organizers to re-imagine the world. He smashes the Marxist thinking that there is only one correct reading of the world and history. “To borrow Michael Foucault’s language,” Oca writes, “the only valid tribute to thought such as Marx’s is precisely to use it, deform it, to make it groan and protest.”

Sr. Menggay of the Aetas

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
“MAY YOUR spirit fly to the bosom of Apo Namalyari,” a sobbing Aeta leader wearing only a G-string said at the funeral Mass for Sr. Carmen “Menggay” Balazo last week, on Aug. 5. We were gathered at the convent chapel of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMM) in Carmona, Cavite. Present were Sr. Menggay’s fellow FMM nuns, her immediate family, friends and representatives of the Aeta community who came all the way from Zambales.

After the Mass we all proceeded to the FMM convent in Tagaytay City. Sr. Menggay was laid to rest directly in the ground in the FMMs’ beautiful burial place on the ridge which has a breathtaking view of Taal lake and volcano. The sun broke through the dark clouds as we bade Sr. Menggay goodbye, sang and threw flowers at her moist grave. Everything around was suddenly bright and green and the lake beyond turned misty blue.

And I thought of another volcano, Mount Pinatubo in Zambales, at the foot of which Sr. Menggay and her fellow FMMs spent years living and working among the Aetas. I knew their work. I had gone there in the 1980s when they began, and followed them after the 1991 world-class volcanic eruption that set them off on a historic exodus. But I am going ahead of the story.

Born 71 years ago in Misamis Occidental, Sr. Menggay passed away on Aug. 3 after a year-long battle with a lung ailment. She was ready to go. As the story went, the day before she died, she raised her arms and exclaimed several times, “Now, Lord!” And then conceded, “Tomorrow na lang.” (How we laughed over that.) Tomorrow did come and she was taken into the bosom of her God whom the Aetas reverently call Apo Namalyari.

I came to know Sr. Menggay during the martial law years. A bunch of us greenhorn activists (religious and lay) frequented the FMM convent in Pandacan where she was based and later became superior. Now I can say that the place was a hub for praying, reflecting, eating and, uh, plotting.

While fixing my files of photos and negatives last weekend, I found photos of Sr. Menggay. Sharp black-and-white and graphic colored ones that I took show her standing beside a naked corpse of an activist who was killed at a rally in September 1985. We were present at the autopsy.

Sr. Menggay who happened to be in Manila at that time called me in the dead of night to accompany her to the morgue. In the absence of the victim’s family, Sr. Menggay took charge. I was with her in choosing the coffin. In the afternoon, the victim’s next of kin arrived from the province. After snapping a photo of Sr. Menggay comforting the grieving relatives, I ran outside, slumped on the sidewalk and sobbed.

At that time, Sr. Menggay had already begun working among the Aetas. I visited the new FMM community in Sitio Yamot in Poonbato, Botolan, Zambales, in 1982. There was no water source in the area. Water had to be brought from the town and everyone took a bath only every three days. I observed the organizing and adult education work among the Aetas and wrote about it in a magazine.

I did go back after a couple of years (to surreptitiously document and write about the US-RP war games in the area with an Aeta as guide). This time the community had water and was abloom with orchids. The nuns’ cogon-thatched house had become bigger and the Aetas’ homes stood neatly in a row. That was the last time I would see the place. In June 1991 Yamot was buried in volcanic ash and the village was no more. But Lakas (Lubos na Alyansa ng mga Katutubong Ayta ng Sambales), which Sr. Menggay helped organize, would live on. Lakas could be considered Sr. Menggay’s legacy.

Sr. Menggay and the FMMs journeyed with the Aeta-Lakas community as they searched for the “promised land.” I wrote a feature on their search (“Somewhere, a buried village will rise again,” July 7, 1991) for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

The book “Eruption and Exodus: Mt. Pinatubo and the Aytas of Zambales” is about the Aetas’ journey before, during and after the volcanic eruption. Sr. Menggay shot the photos, Sr. Emma Fondevilla wrote the text, Lorna K. Tirol copy edited. My August 1991 column piece, “Yamot is in the Heart,” served as foreword. To show their appreciation, Sr. Menggay and the Aetas brought me sack loads of Pinatubo pumice stones for my garden and a copy of the book with dozens of Aeta signatures.

Let me say, and Sr. Menggay would attest to this, that it was the Aetas, along with Sr. Emma (a scientist who was then also working among the Aetas, and now the superior of the FMM Philippine Province) that first alerted the incredulous scientific community about the rumbling of Mt. Pinatubo which had been dormant for 600 years. It was first in the Inquirer.

Sr. Menggay transcended ideologies, religious affiliations and cultures. After Lakas had become deeply rooted among the Aetas Sr. Menggay and the FMMs moved on. She traveled to far places and readily shared her experiences with the indigenous peoples of the Asia-Pacific region, sometimes taking Aeta leaders along. She was also involved in interreligious dialogue.

Sr. Menggay is truly a daughter of the Church, a follower of St. Francis, a disciple of Blessed Mary of the Passion (1839-1904), the courageous French nun who laid the foundation of the Franciscan congregation in the wilderness of India. Like her FMM sisters who were martyred in China during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion (canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000), she did not shirk danger and remained true to her missionary calling, passionate and compassionate till the end.

The Aetas will always be in her heaven-heart and she in theirs.

Bitter drinks and a sweet harvest

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

IF people clean and unclog their kitchen and bathroom plumbing every so often, why can’t they do the same for their own digestive system?

I did just that a couple of weekends ago upon the invitation of wellness advocate Jean Margaret Lim-Goulbourn of Global Vital Source (GVS), a group spreading the gospel of healthy lifestyle and good nutrition.

Goulbourn, a former fashion model, is known in the fashion industry for her innovative use of locally woven natural silk and for promoting them abroad. She is behind the successful Silk Cocoon line.

But even more important to her now is wellness, having herself faced a life-changing tragedy, the loss of a daughter.

It is a story that Goulbourn does not fail to touch on when she speaks about the need to take stock of one’s health and to eschew the loads of drugs and medication some people take to feel well. Changing the way we live can help us feel better, she suggests.

GVS has held dozens of Cleanse and Nourish weekends all over the country for different kinds of people, including priests in Albay, Goulbourn’s native province. “Mga Nonoy,” (Dear young men), she told the priests, “you have lots of health issues.” GVS drained them clean, a first step on a new road to wellness.

The weekend session I joined was called digestive clean-up or DCU, part of the Clean and Nourish regimen that GVS offers. DCU is an all-natural method of cleansing the body by giving it the time and circumstances it needs to rebuild and heal. It is a detoxification method of cleansing that causes the discharge of accumulated toxic matter from the digestive tract, liver and gall bladder. There were some 20 of us from all walks of life participating.

Two days before, we were instructed to refrain from coffee and fatty foods. That’s all. And then we were made to fast from food and water some 12 hours before coming to the venue, the New World Hotel in Makati, at 7 a.m. on a Saturday. A medical technologist was waiting to take blood samples for blood chemistry. We were weighed, and our waistline and blood pressure measured.

Breakfast consisted of lots of fruits and water. At mid-morning, we had whole wheat bread and carrot-celery juice. Vegetable soup and more fruits. Waiters in crisp uniforms were forever refilling the fruit platters. By the time the first of the lectures began, we were feeling quite full.

We listened to a series of lectures. Fil-Am Dr. Dale Flores, a doctor of nutrition, gave the orientation talk on H.A.S.H. (holistic approach to self-healing). Flores is on his way to becoming a doctor of medicine. A regular part of the GVS team, he stayed with the DCU participants till the end and was like a walking encyclopedia on nutrition. One thing Filipinos should appreciate more, he said, is buko (young coconut juice and flesh), which we have plenty of. It is an all-time healthy boost and beats all those bottled drinks.

Goulbourn spoke about “My Options and the Power of a Lifestyle Change.” Dr. Christine Gonzales’ topic was “How to Manage the Stressors in the Body.” Gonzales, a doctor of naturopathic medicine, educator and researcher, is the author of “Yes, You Can Prevent and Control Cancer” and “Healing with the Rosary and Herbs.” She is co-founder of the Wellness Institute.

And then there was Russia-based Jo Bilasano, energy and spiritual healer who spoke on “Body Balance.” We are a representation of Planet Earth and its five elements, she said. I deliberately didn’t take notes during the lectures to avoid being in journalistic mode, but I did note down something that Bilasano said about why Filipinos must get out of the “state of poverty consciousness.”

At about noon, Flores gave a “30-day challenge” lecture and at 2:30 p.m. we were served our last meal for the day. No water, no food from then on, except for the drinks that would be given us. We then checked into our rooms and then went for our Bollywood dance exercises with Mariette Besa. And then a soothing massage. We also got our blood chemistry results.

At 5:30 p.m. we had our first DCU drink, a big glass of pink super bitter stuff that we had to down with only a slice of apple to sweeten our tongues. I can gulp bitter wild ampalaya juice without winking but this pink stuff was something else. We were each given a set of “harvesting equipment” – a plastic strainer, a tabo (dipper), a glove, and a small container for the “harvest.” We were instructed on the hows.

There would have been an anticipated Sunday Mass but no priest was available. Off to our respective rooms we went as the clean up would soon begin after the first and second drinks.

At 8 p.m. another big glass of the bitter drink was brought to our rooms. The flushing began. The bathroom was the place to be most of the time. It felt good.

At 10 p.m., the third drink was served. This time it was a thick concoction that tasted like a mixture of olive oil and lots of grapefruit. It was super sour but it was delicious compared to the first two bitter drinks. After drinking the stuff, we were to lie down on our backs for 30 minutes without moving. No running to the bathroom. We had to hold it for a while. After that it would be a good time to catch the harvest (gall stones and other stuff) as they were now going down with the almost clear water coming out of our plumbing. That was what the strainer was for.

After one or two more flushings, sleep came.

At 6 a.m. Sunday, there was a knock on the door. Another big glass of that pink bitter drink. More flushing, more harvesting. At 8 a.m. the fifth and last DCU drink was served. More flushing, harvesting.

At around 9:30 a.m. a uniformed waiter came with a plateful of fruits and a big boiled saba (banana) and water. We were now breaking our fast. I still had several trips to the bathroom. I picked up the last of the tiny pellets from the strainer and put them in the plastic container.

At 10:30 a.m. we gathered once more for a lecture on “Food as Medicine” by Flores. Don’t bring along your harvest, we had earlier been told. We could ask Flores anything. There was time for the participants to share – how they felt, what their health goals were, etc. We were told that if we were to feel a little light-headed (because of the fasting and flushing), we were just to continue drinking plenty of water. We were weighed and our BP taken again. I lost four pounds and an inch off my waist. Of course, I lost mainly water but I felt lighter. I felt cleansed, I felt good.

We moved to another room where we would have more sharing and later, a healthy and hearty lunch specially prepared by the hotel chef for our group. I had specified fish and so was served poached fish that tasted really good, plus veggies galore, fruit drink, and a healthy dessert I could not finish.

More than a decade ago I had gall stones that caused me terrible pain. I must have passed them while experiencing spasms because the succeeding ultrasound test could not find them. I thanked God for no surgery and swore off fatty foods. But all these years I thought there must be some small ones remaining and forming. Indeed, some of them came out after I did a home gall bladder flush by myself a couple of years ago.

After the recent DCU weekend with expert supervision, I’m hoping this harvest would be the last.

Global Vital Source is in U-1711 Cityland Herrera Tower, 98 Rufino corner Valero Sts. Salcedo Village, Makati City, Tel 8181088 or 5021505. Or visit www.cleanse-nourish.com

Death to car thieves

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

A WICKED SMILE forms on my lips and a nasty glint appears in my eyes whenever there’s news of car thieves and carjackers, and their ilk— lowlifes from hell—getting mowed down in a bloody gun battle with law enforcers. I feel like shouting, “And here’s a few more for your skulls, for the car you stole from me.”

And I think of a photo taken years ago that shows me wearing ear muffs while aiming a .45 and firing at a target. I did quite well but that was the first and last time I was ever in a target range. I am not gun crazy but my mind does a Dirty Harry when I think of the lowlifes that menace society.

And why not. I was a victim. That was way back in Dec. 2002, but I will never forget the day, the shock, the rage, the feeling of helplessness. Who said journalists aren’t supposed to feel helpless in that kind of situation? It’s really a nightmare for anyone and you keep wishing you’d wake up in the morning and find your car on the driveway. But no, I found myself in the police station and almost immediately doing the paper trail so that the vehicle could be tracked down, and if not, so that I could get a certificate of non-recovery and make insurance claims.

As they say, the sooner you work on the trauma the sooner you get over it. I had a new car in 30 days because I got my certificate of non-recovery a few weeks after my car was stolen and the insurance paid me right away. It could have taken longer but the head of the Traffic Management Group at that time was absolutely certain this journalist would not fake the theft of her own car.

I became such an expert on the subject of car theft that I ended up writing a long three-part series (with interviews and all) for the Motoring Section of the Inquirer. That is, the hows, the whos, the whats, the wheres. But what was not yet in practice then among car thieves was the use of sexy young women as spotters and social networking in the Internet such as Facebook or Twitter as part of the modus operandi. The latter gave the felons away and led to their capture and the death of one of them, Ivan Padilla.

And so with the latest news headline on the alleged leader of a car theft syndicate gunned down at the ripe age of 23—Padilla, that is—many car owners who lost their cars to thieves should be rejoicing. But this guy couldn’t have been one of those who stole my car because in 2002 he was only 15 years old. But he has ancestors and they must still be alive.

There are several ways to lose a car. The police have codes for them. SWP means “stolen while parked” (even in your own driveway). Mine was stolen in front of a friend’s house while we were having Christmas lunch. FT means “forcibly taken.” FTR means “failed to return,” which applies to rented cars. SWP is the most common.

Faking a car theft in order to make insurance claims and at the same time reincarnate one’s own “stolen” vehicle is an amazing operation in itself which involves a number of accomplices. There are a number of ways to “kill” a car and resurrect it with a new identity.

FT or car theft was what recently happened to the Bernas family that was aboard a van and going home at dawn from the airport. The husband/father was shot and left bleeding on the sidewalk while the criminals sped away with the rest of the family and their driver. The bleeding victim was picked up by a Good Samaritan, brought to a hospital and, thank God, survived.

Those who have lost cars should bear in mind that immediate recovery happens if the stolen car is abandoned after being used as a getaway vehicle in a crime. If there are no leads, recovering a vehicle after a few days have passed is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But the question remains: Where do stolen cars go? Why can’t the police find the places where these big items are brought? These stolen items are not pieces of jewelry that can fit into a box.

Not all stolen cars undergo a make-over and are sold whole. Many are dismantled right away and the parts are sold. This is called “chop-chop.”

But why should a relatively new vehicle that commands a good price be chopped up? The answer: the car thieves, particularly the small-time ones, put in no big investment and use only light instruments to operate. They want the salable parts turned into cash right away. There are always buyers, among them, assemblers of vehicles and dealers in car parts and accessories.

The “chop-chop” operators sell the unserialized parts. The engine and chassis, which have the identity numbers, are relegated to the junkyard for recycling.

According to a transportation official I had interviewed, car theft thrives “because there are takers.” Police and transportation officials know that many stolen vehicles are taken to nearby provinces where “chop-chop” shops operate. On a clear day, one could drop by those places to shop for items such as bumpers, mirrors, fenders, windshields—name it.

Vehicles stolen at random and to be sold whole need only a paint job and re-accessorizing. And new papers, of course.

Many “chop-chop” parts end up in legit car parts shops in cities. These items are called “original” or “genuine,” meaning they came from the original makers. They are sold alongside new “non-orig” parts which are “not as good as the orig.” Banawe Street in Quezon City is one place to go for car parts and installation, if one knows what to look for. But it is also the place where many stolen parts end up.

A pair of side mirrors costs thousands in the casa but in Banawe it could go lower than P500 if one knows how to haggle and intimidate the hawkers, as in, “I know those are stolen and those are probably mine and you could be in trouble.”

Let me end this by saying that car thieves do not operate without coddlers in high places.