Lantaka

Every city has its gem. A place that echoes the beauty of its past that lives through ravages of time. Like an Almadovar movie, each time you see these places you find something new to marvel about. A piece of ceiling mount. An ornate wall divider. Etchings on a glass door. Comfort room signs. A brass sarimanok. An 1867 canon from Seville Spain.

The hotel is situated on a grey beach a stone throw from the new pier. The entrance is an ornate green tavern roof that abuts into the street like English pubs. As you turn right, the front desk is a study in ornate 1960's decor with wooden carvings, silver plates and mother of pearl inlaid on wood. The walls abound with paintings of local artists. A favorite is a colorful seemingly abstract painting with swirls of yellow, red and blue. If you look intently or take a picture with a camera you will see that it is actually a rendition of a mother and child. Huge carved wood are set on corners arranged with anthurium and green tall cogon grass as floral motif. Capiz chandeliers and lamps hang on water logged white ceilings with dark brown brackets and mounts. The lounge opens to a view of the sea and on clear days, the Sta. Cruz islands and Basilan.

It has character and it is one of the reasons it is still running today. One see beyond the old table linens and curtains that have not been changed since visitors came there as far as ten years ago. One of the visitors remarked that she was afraid of using the towels beacuse they might rent when she dry her hands. The rooms are musty with dust mites and the bathrooms have stains that must have been there for ages.

In its glory days I was told, it was one of the best places in the city. That is evident in the furnishing that echoes the opulence of the era. I am afraid that in remodelling the place, it will loose its soul. I hope that if the management does make changes it will keep in mind the essence of Lantaka.

The Diary

The first time I had a chance seeing her was when I opened the door as I was leaving the last day of my class. I walked across the stretch of corridor that leads to the stairs and I was greeted by familiar faces and her. Short brown hair and hazel eyes with a lanky walk trying to orient herself in her new surroundings. I proceeded greeting the last person on the line heaving as I made my way four floors down.

It did not occur to me that we will meet again that night as I entered my friends car, I was greeted this time by a familiar face. I still could not figure out the features in the dark but when we got to the well lighted restaurant I knew she had me. It was typical of me to set a distance. My long held notion was to worship from afar and see how things work out. But nothing follows most of the time. Afraid to take a chance, I quietly contended with talking about the weather and the traffic.

But the hazel eyes won't quit me. They haunted me while I drive, while I lay waiting for sleep to come, while I sip my coffee like with fever spikes at unpredictable times of the day. I was maimed and sick in a wonderful kind of way.

I tried every known cure. But I know it is the calmness of her face as she walks past me like a whisper of an angel that can calm my beating heart.

Greg and Ryan

Greg and Ryan just arrived from Ottawa, Canada. They are here for the usual exposure trips to the third world reminiscent of the Belgians and Germans I encountered when doing internship and residency.

I could not remember the name of the German whom I worked with during internship. All I remember was the night we went out in Malate for drinks at the former trece mundo on the terrace with the sampayan decked with clothes then later on forcing him to eat fried pig ears which of course remained undeclared until he ate two morsels of lard dripping fried meat. He was the descendant of the owner of the apartment where Jose Rizal stayed in Hiedelberg. And his prized posession when he left was a barong tagalog which he said was better looking than the one the mayor of Hiedelberg owns.

I only encountered Justin twice during my first year of residency. He is english and as I gathered from the friend who was his constant confidant he would frequent a shady folk restaurant on the outskirts of Ermita and had a fascination with the unanos of the Hobbit House.

The Belgians were very lovely people. At that time the contestant representing Belgium for the Ms. Universe was the favorite among the locals. I gave them a lecture on infectious disease and the whole time they were saying amazing. They learned how to put iv lines which was an amazing procedure for them. I gathered later that there wasn't much admissions in Belgian hospitals except for trauma and appendicitis. At that time smoky mountain in Tondo was a big thing like a cultural icon which the Belgians would never dare miss to visit. So on three separate ocassions, they asked permission from me to visit the site. I readily agreed wondering all the time why.

The lady from Malawi was a missionary working for an overseas hospital. She wanted to see what practices she can adopt for the hospital in Malawi. She only lasted for three days, I guess she opted to rest befor going back to a more depressing place than the Philippines.

The American was a bit easier to deal with because she is married to a Filipino and just wanted to see how things work in a Pediatric ward in the Philippines. I guess she was testing the waters if she could work here. Cordial, sweet and easy to get along with. She never demanded for attention but wroked things out on her own.

Richard Rorty

“We cannot regard truth as a goal of inquiry. The purpose of inquiry is to achieve agreement among human beings about what to do, to bring about consensus on the ends to be achieved and the means to be used to achieve those ends. Inquiry that does not achieve coordination of behavior is not inquiry, but simply wordplay.”

Mario Bautista, MD Revisited

It's funny how heroes fall. But that is the true test of the real thing. If you go back to it over and over again and your experience is the same as the first time then you have the genuine deal. But for flukes and flash in the pan deals, they just cannot sustain their brightness longer than fireflies and the changing of seasons.

I guess it all boils down to sincerity of your intentions and the pureness of the person. I am easily persuaded by technical mumbo jumbo and lofty permutations of mundane topics. Siguro it is really about time that we go and dissect what every politician is saying. Beyond the emotions and empty words, what do they really want to say. Enough with long rhetorical statements. Plain and simple like a chemical equation, tell us what you want to do and will see if its really of benefit. BUT PLEASE NO SELF-INDULGENT PALABOK. ONLY KRIS AQUINO CAN DO THAT AND GET AWAY WITH IT.

Independence Day

It is the lack of history that made its colonial master manufacture Philippine history for its minions. Lacking a strong and real civilization, like its neighbors that it can truly claim as its own, the Filipinos are subjected to cultures after cultures and like cannibals devoured each with relish resulting in monstrosities that we see today.

Take the Philippine Independence. It's like a Vatican Dogma. If the Pope says so then it is the truth. So while our neighbors are celebrated rising new nations, we dare and claim to celebrate the centennial of our independence. But were we truly free all those years? Were we not under colonial rule? But some guy out there turned a blind eye, had the brilliant idea and our independence was reset to 1896.

Maybe they never looked up the meaning of independence.

Breastfeeding Sites

The current state of breastfeeding in the country is not just solely the fault of the milk companies. It is also the fault of us health workers. We always want to take the easy way out, the path of least resistance in Ohm's law. But also because most of us do not know what to do when there are problems with breastfeeding. The first being there is no milk. How many of us checks if the baby is correctly latching on? How many of us know that repeated feedings increase brestmilk supply? I bet all of those midwives who were interviewed in the "Formula for Disaster" would never know what the answer is. So I am asking all the proper authorities, all the breastfeeding experts available and willing, all those concerned about this problem, PLEASE TRAIN US NOT JUST THE BASIC KNOWLEDGE THAT BREASTFEEDING IS THE BEST MILK, BUT HOW TO GO ABOUT COUNSELING THESE MOTHERS. HELPFUL LOCAL LINK. INTERNATIONAL LINKS

Love and Other Moons

Perhaps it is the waiting,
That finally takes its toll
On travellers who do not know
Where they are going.

The loneliness of past summers
In unnamed islands
Supposing one would return.

Ideas that are just that
They remain like moons
Returning to that same place
Again, again, again.

Breastfeeding

GET REAL
A serious health issue


By Solita Collas-Monsod
Inquirer
Last updated 02:34am (Mla time) 06/09/2007


MANILA, Philippines -- One reads (Inquirer, 6/7/07) where Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno is continuing to make waves -- the first time with his stern reminder against corruption in the Court of Appeals, and now with his determination to use the Court’s power under the Constitution to protect human rights. All of which is very reassuring.

It is in this light that one wishes to call his attention to the fact that it has been about 10 months now since the Court put on hold, via a temporary restraining order, the attempt of the Department of Health (DOH) to prevent needless infant deaths (16,000 in 2000) and sickness that make the number of extrajudicial killings/disappearances look puny. Deaths are deaths, whether they are caused by sins of commission (by the military or others) or omission (by the Court’s not lifting the restraining order).

The 16,000 figure refer to the number of child deaths (under 5 years of age) in the Philippines -- out of a total of 82,000 for 2000 -- that, according to the international scientific community, can be traced to inappropriate feeding, including the use of infant formula. Aside from the deaths, there are other costs to such inappropriate feeding, all enumerated in a fact sheet: 1.2 million more illness episodes from diarrhea and acute respiratory infections (ARI), plus 10 million more days ill, plus 450,000 more health facility visits, plus 36,000 more infants hospitalized.

All these have financial implications: P320 million for funeral expenses, P1 billion in lost wages caring for sick infants, P100 million of out-of-pocket expenses for health facility visits and basic drugs, P50 million for out-of-pocket expenses for hospitalizing the infants, P230 million in government expenditures on hospitalization. The worst part is the estimated P21.3 billion used to purchase formula, most of which could be saved because it doesn’t cost a centavo for mothers to breastfeed their infants.

How did the DOH get involved? Because of the 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey which showed that only 16.1 percent of our infants are exclusively breastfed up to 5 months of age (19.1 percent for the United States). It also showed that 13 percent of infants were never breastfed; that 39 percent of infants used instant formula in their first 12 months; that half stopped exclusively breastfeeding by the third week of their lives.

The record of the Philippines in breastfeeding, among the 56 countries that have conducted National Demographic and Health Surveys in the past 10 years, is deplorable: We have the most infants below 2 months of age who are not breastfed. We rank No. 4 when it comes to infants below 6 months who are not breastfed. And we have the worst not-breastfeeding rates in all of South and Southeast Asia.

Which is why the DOH considered it high time to tighten up the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the Milk Code (Executive Order 51) approved by then President Cory Aquino in view of the importance of breastfeeding in preventing infant deaths, sickness, malnutrition, underweight problems, etc. And it proceeded to do so, in consultation with industry and community groups, as well as the World Health Organization and Unicef. In May last year, it promulgated the revised IRR, which covered information and education, research, quality and standards, marketing and advertising of milk products and breast-milk substitutes.

And came up against the Pharmaceutical and Health Care Association of the Philippines (PHAP), which promptly went to the Supreme Court, asking for a temporary restraining order on the implementation of the revised IRR.

The Court turned PHAP down, and PHAP promptly appealed. Now I have absolutely no doubt that the timing was coincidental, but within days after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo received a letter from the president of the US Chamber of Commerce protesting the revised IRR, the Court handed down its decision to indeed grant the TRO. Yet, scarcely three months later, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, officially congratulated the Philippine government on the DOH’s revised IRR.

What rule did the PHAP object to? It objected to the ban on the advertising and promotion of milk substitutes for children up to 2 years old, with an absolute ban on false health and nutritional claims. The Department of Justice apparently took exception to the practice of the milk companies (all foreign-owned) of making false claims about the nutritional and other benefits of their breast-milk substitute products, all under in the guise of promoting breastfeeding. Plus their practice of giving incentives to health workers (doctors, nurses and midwives) to promote these substitutes.

What is galling is that these companies would not dare make those claims in the developed countries where they operate, but they do it with impunity here. Worse, the claims, in the absence of contrary information, are lapped up by gullible mothers who think that the breast-milk substitutes will make their children talented, intelligent, taller, etc.

It is also highly suspicious that these milk companies have often recalled their products, mostly in developed countries, because of evidence of contamination and quality defects, but not in the Philippines.

PHAP would have the Court believe that what the DOH is doing is in restraint of trade. Nonsense. This is not a trade issue, this is a health issue. In this case, the DOH is on the side of the angels. And the Department of Trade and Industry is on the other side.

-- This is an article written by Solita Monsod for the PDI June 8, 2007 issue. Breastfeeding is certainly not a trade issue. We have prostituted ourselves so much to foreigners that even our newborns suffer. We wonder why up to now Filipinos have colonial mentality. Could it be because of the milk formula we are given? All the infant formulas are imported. We have got to take action. Families who cannot even buy food for their table are mind set to buy formula for their infants, not thinking that breastmilk if free, readily available and appropriate than any cow's milk formula.

When I was studing in Malate, I saw a pimp with his family on a curb in Remedios as usual waiting to pry on tourists. He immediately approached a unwilling tourist and offered his wife for five dollars. The tourist said no. Thinking that the tourist might prefer males, he called to his eldest a twelve year old and said he can have him for four dollars. The tourist declined again, looked up to the stop light praying it will soon turn green. The pimp then grabbed the arm of her six year old daughter thinking the tourist might prefer them young. "Two dollars just take her for two dollars." The tourist declined again trying to move farther from the family. "Okay the pimp said, here take my three month old daughter you can have her for a dollar." When the tourist declined, the pimp said "Okay you can have her for free. Just take her."

We, Filipinos have been sold all of us from our flesh to our spirits. And like the pimp we were sold by our leaders on a losing bargain all the time.

Scribblings

I am very volatile lately. It must be that the chemicals in my body is in such a fragile equilibrium that only very minor occurences tips me into mood swings. I was not able to go to Manila as I was planning to. I have studied for the two day infant stabilization course bought the tickets but unfortunately I came down with the flu the night before my flight. I know I could take my chances and go ahead with the plan. But I don't know why I didn't and I just slept through it that Monday afternoon. When I woke up I was not forgiving myself for what happened. Why do I let others always decide for me? why can't I make myown decisions? do I have to wallow in someone else's tears all the time?

Santa Cruz Island

Sarimanok

When I was in high school, I was in the chorus of an original musical entitled "Alamat ng Sarimanok." My parents were not able to watch it and I asked my father to buy all the tickets I was supposed to sell. I really wanted to sing then but my voice was not very good. I was cast as part of the bass. Until now I do not know if indeed I have contributed to the chorus when I we sang.

Nuestra Senora Virgen del Pilar

Legend has it that when huge waves were forming along Basilan Strait, a lady with long black hair dressed in white suddely appeared and walked into the water and the forming tsunami collapsed before it reached the shores of Zamboanga. Other myths were not as dramatic and as colorful. But Our Lady of the Pilar has blessed Zamboanga with her protection and love and has not driscriminated between christians and muslims.

I sometimes find myself wondering if it is okay to ask for intercession for my muslim patients from Our Lady, but love and mercy are universal languages that have crossed boundaries of religion.

Candles

Tausug Tree of Life

This is one of the more famous Tausug art piece that few possess and understand. I still have to know its significance and why it can come to fetch such price.

Rocks

I wonder if the frog prince actually lived among rocks. Although far off, I was thinking Van Gogh and Irises when I took this picture. But it was supposed to be titled spot the frog among the rocks.

La Vista

It is a bit ironic that these images reflect the calm and peace of that Sunday afternoon just near sunset. The next day, US and Philippine troops will be staging a mock battle offensive on the same shores part of the Balikatan exercises that the two governments have been performing since the advent of terrorism.

Folk Art

I remember old Mays. The smell of grass freshly mowned. Gathering wildflowers and putting them on amber colored medicine bottles for the afternoon alay. Waiting for the first rain after the long hot months and bathing under the rain believing it will bring good health for the rest of the year. That was before acid rain ruin the whole ritual.

May marks the middle of summer. Bored because you miss school but not too bored to go back to school. It's the time when summer romances reach their peak oblivious of the coming end of vacation when lovers fall apart as one leaves for the city for college and the other stays at home. It is also the time for visiting the old watepools after the rain. Swimming naked in cold muddy fresh water. Lying lazily under the cool afternoon sun. Watching sunsets while munching on stolen riped mangoes.

Back then adventures were spontaneous. It was what you can think of at the spur of the moment.

The highlight of each summer is the Santacruzan. It brings the whole community together like a fiesta. Called "Tapusan" it marks the end of the month long daily rosary prayed in makeshift chapels or altars under stairs of old houses. The mornings are filled with games like the palo sebo, sack races, rigodillo and when people can't get enough even "paramihan ng ihi" done peeing in a coke bottle with the one peeing the most winning the prize.

Afternoons are used to decorate the carroza with the image of the Virgin Mary surrounded by lights and fresh flowers. The young women dress into gowns and embellished with props to make a costumy representation of characters in the Bible. Infanta Judith, Reyna Sentenciada, Reyna Mora, Reyna de las flores, Reyna Elena, Emperatriz - the whole thing seems redundant because St. Helena was actually the empress. Anyway usually this was done just to appease and give titles to the beautiful women in the community or the most moneyed for that matter.

At night after the procession of sagalas with the carroza and a marching band, people troop to the house of the hermana mayor where dinner is served. A makeshift stage is set-up and entertainment ranges from an amateur singing contest usually attended by the likes of Regine Velasquez, a variety show of bands and circus acts and in more affluent communities, has been or struggling actors doing their "out of town shows." The show usually estend into the wee hours of the morning or until no one is left to watch the show. The moneyed class take turns in sponsoring the event and is thus marred with the politics of granduer and envy.

These have taken away the meaning of the execise which was supposed to be a communities reenactment of the search for the true cross. As fiesta frenzied people, each year was marked with more extravagant events, until people run out of money in the nineties less and less summer chapels were built. Simpler processions and shows have replaced the gaudy and deafening shrieking singing contests. And people learn to truly appreciate what it was about.

There are still those who fashion the procession into fashion shows as what they did in the 1994 Ms. Universe and likewise several events in the country. But taking away the meaning of the ritual actually makes the whole thing fall flat.

The pictures are of folk art representations of the different images of Mary. All with latin flavors. Usually a half foot each. We don't have Santacruzans here. I am now suspicious if its origin is of Spanish extract. But I have to clear my doubts knowing Filipinos it must really be copied from somewhere.