Go local
I overheard one of my colleagues make a negative comment on the type of coffee me and my crew have inside our editing suite. “Wa’y lami,” was the term used - pertaining to the local beans we grind and brew daily at the start of the afternoon. What was tasty to the palate for her and maybe a few others who agreed with this comment, was imported coffee, processed and shipped to the Philippines.
It was very disappointing to note that we can’t bring ourselves to love what is ours. Up until today, we are blinded by the lights of colonial mentality. An author once gave a prophecy on the Philippines and said that we are the only people who, despite being given freedom, as are still enslaved. It holds true up to today - even if we are under an administration with a so-called iron first, we are dependent on the world’s superpowers and can’t stand on our own feet. Heck, we even don’t assert our rights to our own land such as the China dispute among others. Thank God for leaders who care for what belongs to us.
Although the taste and quality of imported, processed coffee and food may be incomparable to what we have, the soul and story of every product gives it a certain kick. My love for local coffee started when I visited a plantation in Negros Oriental. It was vast but infected with cherry borers. The coffee farmers who painstakingly weed out the best cherries for roasting only earn less than a hundred pesos a kilo. With their efforts, they are still unappreciated and underpaid. My heart is breaking at how an agriculture country like ours refuses the wonders of the world. We import our own rice and fish, when we should be producing these in the first place. Since then I have fallen in love with anything local that may help alleviate poverty so others may have a better life.
Have we lost touch with our original calling? Our ancestors knew the land by heart. They knew at the top of their heads that our soil is a gem to the rest of the world. In fact, conquerors wanted to colonize us for the resources that we have yet we are blind to all these. We are blind to the treasures that we have and are made to believe that we are worthless monkeys, only good enough for domestic jobs abroad. Today we are faced with the reality of food shortages when we could have produced our own food in the first place.
I guess it’s time to give this mindset a spin and love our own. We should go back and learn the ways of the ancestors. It is our obligation to study the terrain, the archipelago that was given to us then we would understand what we can do to address the many problems that we are facing. An ordinary person may not have the power to change governance, but a small positive act can do wonders.
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