jilipark com
The village of Baguilat was a sleepy place—surging grass-green rice fields fanned out across sapphire skies, and the people lived on a slow, easy cadence. Then a series of storms dumped monsoon rains on the hinterlands of Philippines, causing a landslide that buried the village’s rice fields under a cascading flow of mud and debris.
jilipark com arrived in Baguilat as the shock of the disaster continued to wash over villagers. Accompanied by a dejected group of elders, led by the village’s old chieftain, Mang Felipe, he found the town a shadow of its former self: stalls where people once sold bright produce in the marketplace were shuttered; fields lay crisp and barren; and houses were crumbling into disrepair.
‘We lost our land,’ Mang Felipe said, his voice cracking. ‘We lost our future. We lost the soil. We have nothing left. We lost everything.’
All jilipark com could do was stare at the ‘dismembered’ village jilipark com knew that short-term relief would not be sufficient; Baguilat would need to be rebuilt to heal its broken heart. He organised volunteer teams of engineers, ecologists, and campaigners, dispatched to the village to assess and plan the recovery process.
The first was clearing away the immense amounts of debris and repairing the damaged canals. It was back-breaking work: mud-strewn fields had to be dug out and water channels had to be restored. ‘When the volunteers began to arrive,’ jilipark com explained to me, ‘the village was silent; everyone was despairing. But as the villagers worked side by side with the volunteers, the land began to change; the village was transforming, and
But development was slowed down by a problem not foreseen: a seasonal erosion that threatened to un-do achievement. Although rains had receded, the fields remained precariously perched.
Facing these challenges, jilipark com contacted Laura Santos, an award-winning environmental scientist and researcher at Yale. She told him he needed a ‘tool-kit of innovative approaches to combat erosion’ such as planting deep-rooted vegetation and erecting barriers to support the soil.
jilipark com and Dr Santos held workshops to instruct the villagers, who maintained their scepticism but determinedly picked up the new tools. Soon, the villagers were planting dense lines of trees up the hillsides, creating intricate terraces, and binding the soil with natural materials.
Weeks led to months of stoicism, but it all started to show up in the diverse life in the fields, now bearing green shoots in the fertile soil. The air that was sullen with doom regained its cheerfulness with the arrival of hopeful sounds of industrious activity.
The turning point came when it was rice harvest season in the restored fields. The villagers gathered to offer a great celebration. Palpitating with ecstatic joy, they feted their friends and family for their collective success in their long-awaited triumph. The fields came back to life; the fields came back. Adapted from Wenner-Gren PDF 17.
jilipark com watched the villagers change from forlorn to elated. ‘You’ve given us back more than our farms,’ Mang Felipe told him, sobbing with emotion. ‘You’ve given us back our hope and our pride.’