Trainings were on vegetable production and bio-intensive gardening (BIG), as well as on natural farming systems, botanical plant protection and vermi-composting. About 52 and 22 households participated, respectively, in sitio Lactad and in the Ati community of sitio Ubog.

Participants, most of them women (because the men were out fishing, they said), raised questions about their plants, for example, the varying sizes of their amargoso (bitter melon) and squash and the lengths of their beans.

“Those are just some natural cases that come out when you raise vegetables,” explained PIE program head Rey Genine. “You should also expect the effects of lack of water and pest infestation,” he added.

Pests, he said, can be managed by using botanical plant protection agents, which the participants were also trained to do, and by cultivating in the same garden flowers and herbs that give off strong odors that attract pests and keep them away from the food crops.

The dry season is just beginning and the warm weather usually stunts the growth of vegetables.

“Plants do not grow well during the dry season, even if you have enough water to give them. The heat in the air causes the leaves and stems to become dry and shriveled,” he also said.

Still, the villagers were happy with their produce, some of which they cooked for lunch for everyone to partake of during that day.

They were happy that this time they were able to produce their own vegetables. Vegetables sold in the village talipapa still come from as far as the Terminal Market in Iloilo City. So it is quite expensive.

One mother was proud to say that her son now brings the surplus family harvest to school for his teacher to buy and he uses the money he earns for his school expenses.

GRASP program in-charge Ramona Parreñas encouraged the residents to go on with their activities as these are easy to sustain, while also explaining the reasons why PRDCI could not as yet go on regularly with this special project.

“This project, which is out of our area of coverage, is PRDCI’s special initiative to express support to the people affected by the oil spill in Guimaras. Because the oil spill was a man-made disaster, we were advised by prospective funding agencies to leave the responsibility of rehabilitation to Petron and MT Solar I,” she said.

“But since you have seen the prospect of organic farming in the province, you might as well continue the efforts you have started and develop it into a full-blown industry. Don’t you like Lanipe to be known as an organic vegetable producing barangay in the whole province of Guimaras?” she posed the challenge to the participants.

It was a bit different for the Ati residents in sitio Ubog where training participants expressed hesitance to join the assessment. They sent word that they could not attend because they had to make a living. But further probing revealed that they did not like to say anything about the training and have their pictures taken because they do not like being “used” again by NGOs to raise money in their name. They said they have been burned several times by this experience because despite all the proposals and projects, no substantial impact has been made on their lives.

Several Ati families now live in houses by the roadside but they still go out to the forest to hunt for the remaining wild animals and also to the seashore to gather shells and seaweeds which they sell in the market. Integration efforts have resulted to them now having Christian names. But in what direction these integration efforts would lead nobody can tell exactly.

Federico Palacios, one of the Ati leaders, said they are waiting for the dry season to end so they can start using the techniques they learned from the trainings on vegetable gardening.

“We will start raising our own vegetables when the rains come,” he said.

As of now, perhaps we should leave them at that.

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According to the 2006 United Nations World Water Development Report, there are more than one billion people who remain without access to safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion who have no adequate sanitation.

Control and monopoly of the water industry are the focus of attention of the giants whom we call the transnational corporations (TNCs). Most of these TNCs are European companies but their presence and operations are found in poor countries like the Philippines.