The forest off my window

Soudelor delivered a two-punch swirl on Saipan and the view off my window, where a forest growth once kept the birds chirping and the wild mango tart, was dismal. Green turned gray. The forest wilted.

With a dab of graying from Champi, we are back to green normal, and doves coo more than they used to, fluttering their wings, oblivious to the next typhoon. Ecological evolution triumphs and Mother Nature is in charge, in spite of the eco-apocalypse of a 5,000-km swath of a forest fire in Indonesia and the garbage patches in several locations around the world.

Now Walt Woodbridge and Korean contractor Chang Yoon Suk says that typhoon is not our foe, termites are. I can relate to that. The untreated wood used in my apartment drips with termite droppings periodically, dancing with the pest control man who bores a hole and squirts chemical to offending places, only to be replaced by another infestation two feet away. The duo informs the public of prefab options that can deal with the termites as well as keep the roof in place.

I take my island paradise for granted. I hosted a Japanese Rotarian on Mactan Island in the Visayas once and sitting under a coconut tree, my guest said, “I spend a year earning to afford a trip like this, to sit under a coconut tree and imagine if the fruit will stay or fall, while you live here all year round, probably not needing to make a tenth of what I earn to get by. You are lucky.”

My fellow Rotarians were too polite to contradict the guest, known to damn their dismal fate to be stuck on an overcrowded province in a forsaken island in the middle of a limestone rock formation in salty and sultry Visayas.

A roommate at an Institute in Rizal’s Mi Retiro Park, Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte ‘63 kept saying: “It is all a matter of attitude.” The Jesuits’ influence relied on reason to attain certitude so we were not too enamored with attitude to gauge sensible matters. He was clear of the effect of attitude on behavior, becoming Pea Eye’s solicitor general after a degree in jurisprudence at U.P. Diliman.

The Japanese Rotarian got more mileage out of his two-week vacation in Mactan than I did living there all year round. A matter of attitude. Indeed.

The devastated gray of Mama Gaia at the back of my apartment came up green in a jiffy, saying a lot about the resilience of nature more than it does humans’ capacity to survive setbacks.

FEMA recalls assistance it provided to “unqualified” CWs, as if Soudelor went around choosing whom to devastate. “Umm, you are CW so I will spare you the bother!”

A culture of dependence is fostered when folks strut around and inspect the damage before they can determine help. They cow victims into submission to bureaucratic procedures. A month after Soudelor, I commented that volunteers and parents would assist to rebuild a school. The response was: “Oh, no, not until FEMA determines the damage.” Eager folks tweedledee’d their thumbs while FEMA walked around with clipboards.

Filipinos were patriotic anti-Spain when the galleon trade used Manila as port, and ignored the Stars and Stripes as it flapped over Ang Bayan Ko at Subic & Clark. Even with the rising sun that promised Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, Nippon calling the shots had Pinoys being demure. Unfortunately, Pinoy contrariness cum creativity carried over to Saipan.

After WWII, Pea Eye gained its independence from Uncle Sam, prescribed in the 1935 Constitution. WWII cost a bundle. Pea Eye fought Nippon as a U.S. Commonwealth duly commissioned in 1941 by President Roosevelt to fight with similar bolo-ferocity shown by woolen grunts in Samar at the century turn. Pinoy fighters expected veteran’s benefits. Didn’t get it.

Congress passed the Rescission Act of 1946 before the Fourth of July that excluded Pinoys as vets with full benefits, and those recognized received piddly with reluctance. Some in the U.S. Congress had the temerity to suggest that the $200 million given the nationals after the war paid for the cost of their servitude. We came cheap.

My father had a mimeograph machine at his church printing subversive rags against the Japanese. A Nippon lieutenant told him to skip town when his name showed up on the Kempetai list of active U.S. collaborators; otherwise I would have been an orphan. The lieutenant turned out to be a Christian who took his religion above his national worship.

CW’s in the CNMI are mostly from the Philippines. Not surprisingly, FEMA is treated as another federal agency to be milked. Uncle Sam spoke with a forked tongue before and its word had not been found reliable. FEMA feigns aches as folks suckle its breasts. SBA does no better; it just released its figures of only 274 approved projects from 8,806 applicants.

The forest on my backyard is green again. White doves chase each other on coco fronds as nature shows it’s ahead of humans in the recuperation process while depositors are baffled at the bank why they cannot withdraw their FEMA-issued funds. Must be the termites!