Buslot Buntong (Drain Bamboo Poles) Challenge: An Anti-Dengue Campaign

In many neighborhoods, bamboo fences are common fare.  The use of bamboo as material for fence is most affordable for Filipinos especially in rural and sub-urban areas.

 There is a proper way to cut the poles – near the nodes. A wrong way of cutting, however, exposes us to risk. If cut too far away from the nodes, the open bamboo cylinders are receptacles of water and — possible mosquito breeding sites. Dengue fever is one common condition not only in poor communities in the tropics. Even developed city-states like Singapore have to deal with it.

Let us not host mosquitoes in our homes. Often, we are reminded that receptacles or catchments should be turned upside down, be emptied to help drive away mosquitoes.

Receptacles on bamboo poles in fences, however, could never be turned upside down like pails or canisters. Instead, we must put a hole at the bottom of the receptacle to drain water. This will rid us from breeding sites for mosquitoes and possibly mosquito-borne diseases like dengue.

With a hole as drain, you may also cover the bamboo receptacle with anything clean to block entry of liquid.

We know this is an old practice for many. I got reminded of this by a family member. It’s time to share this practice to others so they can also do it in their neighborhoods.

Things needed: A hammer or any hard object like a rock to be used to pound. A steel bar or any pointed concrete object.

Time needed: Five minutes only.

Apil na sa Buslot Buntong Anti Dengue Challenge!

What can be done? Include anti-dengue measures as an item in the agenda of meeting in the purok/zone or barangay. Invite a health advocate to speak on dengue and what can be done against it. During community work or pahina, include the checking and draining of bamboo poles used in fencing the neighborhood as part of the many anti-dengue measures.  If you are already doing it, you may post the photo/video of you taking the challenge in your neighborhood (Optional).

One simple safety act a day, keeps the danger away.

Waltzib of Kalasungay, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon, Philippines
Email: waltzib@gmail.com

 

Bamboo poles receptacles are mosquito breeding sites, too.

Bamboo fences are in every community

One pound to do it

Simple tools for a noble act

Beginner’s Random thoughts on running in Malaybalay City

1. Come to the race to compete only with yourself.
2. Expect to be laughed at; laugh with them, it’s another exercise.
3. Stretch your body before running and your limits, too; but do not be suicidal
4. Prepare for the race and your needs after it, including one more item at the drug store: muscle pain ointment.
5. Listen to encouragements from friends, ignore negative remarks from ‘friends’
6. Use water and food to keep you going, not to slow you down
7. If you can’t run faster, go slow, or walk; but don’t stop.
8. Dress light and feel light.
9. Smile, don’t talk, to an acquaintance while running to save breath
10. Thank God, family, friends before and after running, it counts to be grateful of the gift of the human life.
11. Run even if there is no race or competition; if you feel good about stepping on the finish line; be aware that the best is yet to come.
12. Help keep our community peaceful and free so we still have fields, trails, and streets where we can still run.

I made it!

I got these points printed in my mind from the starting line of the 4.2 km. Panahik night run on January 22 up to dinner tonight.

Finally, I was able to write it down.

I’m sure there will be more I can remember later on.

To those who have other thoughts to add, please key it in as a comment. (or make your own list.)

We don’t know, maybe in the future we can write a book about the gift of running in the free streets of our communities!

Cheers!

The Outsider

Traveling to communities have brought me to many experiences —mostly encounters of acquiantances.

You just don’t get to meet a person or group of people, you get to meet and have a chance to be in touch with their culture, their history, and their varying experiences.

The different-ness and uniqueness at the point of my contact with them result to dialogues (and sometimes when less fortunate about it, insightful frictions). It makes for wonderful insights, some of which figure in some of my writings/ reports.

Corruption inside bus No. 2075

Inside the crowded air-conditioned bus from Davao, the faces of the passengers looked weary and their eyes looked tired. At least 15 new passengers embarked from the busy, old Valencia City terminal. 

For a moment the vehicle looked like a wet public market, and then sounded like one.

The passengers settled in the vacant seats at the rear end of the bus, and then almost simultaneously released sighs of relief. 

It was probably the last air-con bus to leave for Cagayan de Oro before dinner.

It was not quite relieving, however, for others who have to stand as all seats were taken. Some others were left waiting eternally at the messy terminal.

Shortly after, the bus rolled off.

Still tired, most of the passengers were silent for a moment, and another. 

At the front portion of the bus, the conductor, a stocky middle-aged man with a rounded face, called on the passengers bound for Cagayan de Oro for tickets.

“Kinsa pa’y wala’y ticket diri?” he asked a column of “standing” passengers.

The never ending story of war —right in our backyard

Waking up to a broadcaster howling against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front one morning, I was tempted to turn the radio off.

 

The grain of his voice has pestered me in my space in that corner of the house.

 

“Maayo ng girahon sila kay gusto man diay nila og Independence!” Gusto pa gyod nila iapil ang tibuok Bukidnon aron mohimo sila og regional government!” (It’s good to go to war with them since they wanted independence. They also like to cover the whole Bukidnon in a bid to form a regional government!).

 

I was really forced to get on my feet even if I only had three hours of sleep yet and dialed the radio station.

IBP laments slow pace of cases in Bukidnon courts

Justice delayed is justice denied and in Bukidnon, whose courts are swamped with cases, resetting a trial today would likely mean waiting for 2010, an official of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines has warned.
Anastacio Rosos, IBP Bukidnon chapter president, said the problem has hampered the speedy dispensation of justice in the province’s four regional trial courts.

He said the lack of judges caused each of the four courts to have a load of at least 1,000 cases, affecting specially the hearing of criminal cases. Read full report here.

He said one indicator is that the courts’ schedules had been filled up, that cases

to be reset for hearing could be scheduled in 2010.

Rosos said IBP found the whole year of 2009 is filled with court hearings. He said they have started plotting out schedules for 2010.

Released Philippine eagle killed in Mt. Kitanglad

Three-year-old Philippine Eagle “Kagsabua” was killed by a local airgun shooter near the village where
he was released just four months ago inside the Mt. Kitanglad Range Natural Park, an environment official said.

Felix Mirasol, community environment and natural resource officer, confirmed to MindaNews Wednesday that witnesses have identified the culprit described as a young man who failed to attend information
drive on the Philippine Eagle (pithecophaga jefferyi).

Mirasol is the Mt. Kitanglad Protected Area superintendent.

Kagsabua was last sighted on July 7 and was known to be missing between July 8 and 10, Mirasol said. He said a search operation was immediately launched.

Love in the time of insurgency

That Bukidnon is a peaceful province is now a myth.

One cannot play blind to the kind of stories we hear from both the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the New Peoples Army about gaining strength against each other.

Both camps, even with disproportionate advantages, have brought the battlefield from the mountains to the media.

The news room has become a fierce war zone of propaganda.

Kalilang in a hotel under renovation, and identity in Mindanao

It was a bit awkward for me and Omar, a reserved Maguindanaoan who tried to be informative, as we took a peek at the wedding of a couple from two big Maguindanaoan families in Cotabato City.

We were looking through the window from our side of the conference hall— we looked like kids wanting to gate crash or something. Everybody in the training was doing just that as we waited for our morning session to start.

We were holding grassroots documentation and reporting training next door and the arrival of wedding guests drew our attention —especially when traditional wedding songs and hymns began to play.

Pikit stop over: Pamogon coffee break

Pamogon Store
Stall No. 04
Pikit Public Market

For coffee drinkers, a natural choice for a stop over in between Cotabato and Davao cities aside from rest room visits and road side meals, is the Pikit Public Market.

Aside from it being a vibrant and busy market place, it offers Pikit’s famous Pamogon “excelsa” coffee.

We scoured for that ‘aromatic’ redemption and found it for sale in many stalls at P130 per kilo.  

I had been curious about what makes the humble native Pamogon coffee unique. I’ve been drinking this coffee for a while and I wanted to know more about how this was made.

And in this recent trip to Central Mindanao I wanted to know the answers.

In RP, Mindanawons least hopeful in greeting 2008

Is this survey valid and reflective of reality? 

From the MindaNews dispatch >>>> Hope for the New Year is high nationwide at 91%  but in Mindanao, residents were more hopeful for 2007 than they are for 2008, a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed.
The survey, conducted nationwide from November 30 to December 3 but released only on December 28, showed Metro Manila as the most hopeful,  at 95%; Visayas at 94%; the rest of Luzon at 91% and Mindanao at 87%.

The survey asked “Angdarating na taon ba ay inyong sasalubungin na may pag-asa o pangamba?” (Is it with hope or with fear that you enter the coming year?).

Police trainer nabbed for large-scale illegal recruitment

A police trainer was nabbed for alleged large-scale illegal recruitment during an entrapment operation by the National Bureau of Investigation last Sunday. The suspect, identified by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) as Jay B. Zambrano, 31, allegedly collected a total of at least P1.3 million from the victims, lawyer Arcelito Albao, NBI agent, said. 

Albao said Zambrano is a lecturer on fingerprinting, among other subjects, at the Philippine National Police Regional Training Center and also teaches criminology at the University of Mindanao. 

Three women accused Zambrano of large scale illegal recruitment after he allegedly failed to deliver his promise to help them process and facilitate their immigrant visa applications. 

Zambrano allegedlly hired and recruited the victims, identified as Grace Cardenas, Letecia Sierra and Judith Paccial to work and become United States citizens. Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.