How much do you remember of your childhood? I hope what you remember are good things because as for me, I only remember fragments; some were good but some are...
Anyway, when I and my family went to Valencia city for a family reunion, we arrived rather too early because we were not informed that the schedule was reset due to a wedding ceremony of one of our relatives which I did not know of.
My mother and nephew got mad about it but since we were on the area already, I told them to enjoy because everything has a reason and God did it for our own good.
Now after our first night on their place which we spend on a tent, my sister woke us all up because they want to accompany us to the city to buy fish for the non-pork eater relatives. Along the way, we stopped by along Polangui River to take pictures.
The Pulangi River (Cebuano pronunciation IPA [puˈlaŋi]); (Maguindanaon pronunciation: [pʊˈlaːŋɪ]), also spelled Pulangui, is one of the major tributaries of the Rio Grande de Mindanao, an extensive river system in Mindanao, Philippines. With a length of 320 kilometres (199 mi),[1] it is the longest river in Bukidnon and the 5th longest river in the Philippines. It traverses through majority of the cities and municipalities of Bukidnon from its source in Barangay Kalabugao, Impasugong, Bukidnon.
It was a bit hard to take a picture since we were facing the East and the sun was just rising that time. But even though the pictures ere not so good, for me it hold precious memories of what we had been through that day.
The funny thing is that while looking at the river, I saw two men on the riverbed and one suddenly fall when he stepped on a muddy and slippery part of the river.
These days, the Polangui River seem friendly, perhaps it's because of the dike built along the river and the water was relatively low due to long days of no raining.
Now as we took pictures on the river, my mother told us that when she was younger, about 6-7 years old, her father was a chainsaw operator and he brought his family with him on the forest where they were cutting trees. I'm not sure how the deforestation was permitted but Mindanao in those days were mmm, ho will I say this... "Neglected" by the National Government because they are afraid that there were many rebels in our place. Not even sure what logging company had prenetrated to harvest the forest but I hear "Valderama" on their talks.
The trees that the loggers cut are more than 10 times the diameter of their body. They did earn well but those poor people have no idea that the treasures, the forest they were given by the almighty was stolen from them and now we are left with global warming and such.
The logs that were cut are being brought from the mountains to the river and they staple a few logs and to save time and fuel on the transportation, they used the river to bring the logs to the sea and there, it will be loaded directly to a ship and bring them outside the country to sell.
Mindanao has a variety of hard wood like red sandal wood that only grown in the Philippines and some parts of Malaysia. There are other hard woods too and some were even used as herbal medicines up to this day.
My mother, as a little child at that time, they used to ride the logs toward a certain place (might be the city). There were two guides on the logs; one on the font and one on the back and they were on speed boats, driving the logs through rapids and anything. They tell the people on board where to stand while the logs were moving of one part gets submerged in the water due to the water.
Only then my mother realized that when they were living a dangerous lives when they were very young and I am very thankful that we did not get to live with the same danger thanks to her wishing a better lives for her children.
One thing my mother regretted in her past is that she was not able to finish school because the school were only on the cities and were too expensive unlike today that the government had lots of scholarship offers. But despite that I thank my mother so much for all the sacrifices she did for us.
I'm glad we were able to see the Polangui river that day or if not, I could never imagine how they lived their lives in the past.
Also posted here