Voices on Mt. Pinatubo

"Pero Boss, layuan muna natin 'to. Galit na ang mga ninuno namin."

We were soaking wet in the heavy May afternoon thunderstorm and Mang Rene, our Aeta guide, was afraid. He held his blackened kaldero firmly in his hands as he implored us to leave the place immediately. He looked at the two other Aeta guides, seeking their support and then took a quick, fearful glance at the towering mountain before us.

Suddenly, lightning flashed across the dark sky. Mang Rene trembled in terror.

"Boss, maniwala ka. Pilit na binutas kasi ito ng PNOC kaya nagalit sila," he said.

"Yes, we will leave as soon as the rain stops," I told him. " Better go inside the tent."

Minutes later, I heard the rumbling sounds of a thousand boulders in surging waters. Lahar.

I was filled with excitement and dread. For the first time I saw the workings of a behemoth that had brought untold miseries to countless people, a tragedy out of which ingenious villains in barong tagalog have made money. As I watched the lahar closely but ever mindful that the elevated pyroclastic terrace where we had pitched out tents was only a few meters away from the channel, I could not help but marvel at the awesome power of nature. Is this the spirits' way of getting back at those who, as our Aeta guide said, had destroyed their dwellings without compunction?

How could Mang Rene believe in such stuff? I had already explained to him that volcanic activity was a complex geologic process emanating from deep within the earth and that the drilling done by PNOC had nothing to do with the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.

But his naiveté was understandable, so much unlike that wristband wearing politician, who a few years ago demanded that the Senate conduct an inquiry into the culpability of the state-owned oil company. Mang Rene and his fellow tribespeople had for centuries, scoured the areas around Mt. Pinatubo, including the mountains around the provinces of Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales. They had their own understanding of the language of the earth and the supernatural forces that spoke of how terribly offended their ancestors were.

"Para saan ho ba 'tong mga buhangin na kinuha natin? Sa baba na lang tayo kumuha para hindi natin magambala ang mga ninuno," our second guide, Mang Pido, suggested with a child-like puzzlement. But I told him that we would have to climb higher to complete the research we were doing on the pyroclastic materials ejected by the volcano.

His question brought back memories of the old Aeta woman washing in the Botolan River who, much to her chagrin and disappointment, thought we were there to give her food and clothing. "Buhangin lang pala ang sadya ninyo," she complained. She didn't care one bit if what we were doing would contribute to our knowledge of volcanoes. But who can blame her for thinking that way? She needed food, and science could not satiate her hunger.

"Bukas magbibigay ako ng alay, kahit sigarilyo man lang at bahala na, sana hindi na sila magagalit." It was the other Aeta guide, whose name escapes me now, speaking. It was the voice of one who was resigned to the whims of unseen forces.

Bahala na. The words reminded me of another "Kulot (the rather unflattering label given to Aetas-to distinguish them perhaps from the more "civilized," straight-haired lowlanders?)" in Botolan who told me he and his family would have nowhere to go if the owner of the land in which they had resettled would decide to evict them. Before they were driven away from the slopes of Mt. Pinatubo, he and his family had everything to satisfy their basic wants, including a parcel of land where he planted root crops and bananas. But that was now a vast, desolate desert of pyroclastic deposits. His cogon home, he said, was now buried under Apo Mallari's hot anger. I could see his anguish, the famed indomitable spirit of the Aetas lost in his lamentations.

Bahala na. The voice of fatalistic surrender. Before, he had a land to till and a simple house he could call his own. Now, he had nothing except the hope that it would not take long time before the spirits would be mollified.

Bahala na. In the next full moon, he would sacrifice more chickens to pacify the spirits. He could not pin his hopes for the future on the government. Why should he? Government officials had such silly ideas as importing camels from the Middle East and setting them loose in the lahar field of Zambales so that tourists would come to see them. Then every year, they would go through the same pitiful ritual of panic as the monsoon came because they could not tell if the costly megadikes were built on kartolina or konkreto.

The Aetas have all the reasons to call upon the spirits of the dead and ask them to rain fire on people who have neglected them.

(This article, written by Taong Bato, appeared in Philippine Daily Inquirer's Youngblood section, July 19, 1997)