dreams
i read
in your eyes

child
of today
plundered, forgotten, found

lost again and
reclaimed by
whom?

***

My aunt lived and worked among the Mamanwa people of Surigao. They were curly haired, wandering folk who lived in the mountains. She slept with them under the arms of trees. She was a young woman when she began--graduate of nursing, doctor's daughter, home from the US after intensive training.

She did not ask for fame or recognition. She never asked for her name to be broadcast in capital letters.

For years, she wandered as the tribespeople wandered.

Under the ceiling of sky she slept. I wonder if she dreamt of the day she would live again within the enclosure of four walls. How must it feel, I wonder.

In time, her patience bore fruit. The tribespeople learned to read, and write. They learned to till the land, to plant vegetables, to tame the mountain, to build houses with walls. But the sky kept on calling to them and the land and the longing to wander still flowed in their veins.

My aunt grew old among these people. She never married. These people are her children, these tribe is her family, the mountain became her home.

They weathered storms.

First, came the soldiers and the rebels.

"Why must we choose sides when all we want is peace?"

Then, came the loggers.

And then, the miners ...

They chased the people off the mountains, there is copper in the ground or some such precious ore. For profit's sake, the tribe is driven off... again, and again, and again.

This is the inheritance of a generation to come. Deep caverns emptied of wealth, mountains denuded of trees, a government that has sold off the future for a fortune that does not last.

My aunt has grown old with memories of children lost to forgotten wars. Her hands tremble when she writes--a legacy from years carrying heavy bundles up and down the mountains. Her dreams are haunted by shadows in uniform. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees apparitions. They are there, she cries. Men who come to steal away the innocent, men who come to steal away the land.

There is no shelter.

In this land, in this country of our broken dreams, our desire is frustrated, our longing for a better future is put to death by our fellowmen.

*********update note*************

Apparently what these miners are shipping to China is laterites with 1.5% to 2% Nickel and cobalt. The Chinese are also buying laterites from Palawan and so far they have shipped more than 2million tons of these soil.

They are shipping our soil? Transferring shiploads of earth from PH to China? That's a mind-boggling thing. OMG, the sf dwende is jumping around inside my brain.