Those Star Apple Trees Whose Branches were Filled with Saliyaw

"When you start felling down pine trees in the City of Pines, you are slowly felling down that city's identity.  When you rob the saliyaw of their thriving ground, you rob lovers of their beloved." 

The sad incidence in Baguio City where so called developmental change being introduced by SM Management within its property that alarmed several environmental groups has reminded me of three seemingly unimportant realities of the bygone years of my town. They may be regarded as insignificant although I suspect that they have had touched and influenced quite a number of persons over the years. These three realities were as follows:

• Those sweet-smelling Saliyaw which used to thrived on Star Apple trees around the then town plaza;
• An unassuming young Franciscan Nun (God bless her soul) who came by for some brief passing moments to introduce and conduct workshop to several youths on theater arts (PETA); and 
• Gary Granada's Paligid 

OF SALIYAW AND STAR APPLES
       There was a time when commuters from far-off Iloilo or Roxas City, on their way to Kalibo, would note upon smelling such unique sweet scent in the air that they were passing through Balete. The odoriferous perfume permeating the darkening sky served as balm and reassured the weary travelers that they were nearing their destination. To trained nose, the sweet scent comes from the blooming Saliyaw (an indigenous/wild orchid) thriving on the many Star Apple Trees in the Balete Town Plaza. To many of us who got used of their presence and odor, they were just ordinary and irrelevant. Yet those were the years when Star Apple trees were still adorning and giving off shade to the park benches around the plaza--and giving off free milky treat to kids during its season--when Balete was identified by outsiders as a Saliyaw-smelling town by the dusty road connecting Kalibo to Iloilo and Roxas City.

THE GIFT OF THE FRANCISCAN NUNS
      The presence of the Franciscan nuns (Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception-SFIC) in Balete was hardly remembered. Like their founder, they shied the limelight and toiled silently with the poor and the marginalized sectors--the women and the out-of-school youth. Precisely that they are remembered only by those whose lives they touched. It was when Msgr. Pedro C. Frac was parish priest of Balete (August 9, 1997-July 31, 2004) when they passed by our town. With them was a young simple professed nun who engaged the youth to task of honing their dramatic skills to come up with a stage production on the vesper eve of  the town fiesta. (I learned though that she died in Zamboanga port some years ago--an innocent victim of the violence that has been besetting that place.) Today, those youth are playing relevant roles in the society at large. I saw some of them engaging today's young ones and passing on those legacies they have had learned in their theater art workshop with the late Sis. Dulce.

The cover design of the album, Ang Pagsamba at Pakikibaka

PALIGID ACCORDING TO GARY
      One legacy Sis. Dulce had shared with the youth of yesteryears was Gary Granada. She gave then his album Ang Pagsamba at Pakikibaka which they used as a material for their production number. Paligid is the opening piece of the eight cuts that comprised the 1989 album. It is a song that is critical of the feigned development in the City of Pines and of displacement and calls on the hearer to do something to care for our dying ecosystem.

I always thought that the incident in Baguio is not an isolated one. No matter how it went and the circumstances around it, it affects us even though we are far off. We were rob of that positive association with the sweet scent of Saliyaw without our noticing it. The people of Baguio fears and are proactive about such fear of the day when they wake up without the pine trees in their midst. They are showing us the way. The echoes of their voice are relevant to our town now beset with flash floods and of the reality of our diminishing forest.

We need to do something about it. Now is the appropriate time.