Cesárea Innecesaria

Muy buena campaña en contra de las cesareas innecasaria y de los medicos lucrandose de algo que estan natural, el parto. El cantautor Carlos Padilla tambien estudia monos ademas de componer canciones. Apoyen el video dando de ‘like.’ Gracias!

First day back

This is my first morning by the dock after a long holiday vacation. A nice sunrise to start the work year is always a welcome respite. Happy new year everyone!

Impressions on a Visit to Guanica

This blog article can also be accessed at my other blog site, Anthropology Corner.

The southern end of Puerto Rico is a place one could easily associate with old Western films because of its crusty and brown rolling hills. The mighty central cordilleras, a rugged spine of verdant forest across the island, trap the moisture that should have been reserved for these parts, rendering the terrain dry and desert-like.

The 2-hour drive from San Juan to Guanica is a good trip for understanding the impact of the central cordilleras on the Puerto Rican natural environment. Starting from Salinas, the surrounding topography turns yellow and brown, different from the usual tropical green valleys we associate with islands around the equator. Instead of trees dominating the landscape, what you see are grasses, shrubs, short scraggly trees, and cacti while a flock of migratory turkey vultures hovers above.

The situation of being at the wrong end of the central cordilleras (with seasonal rainfall averaging only 860 mm annually) does not stop life from blossoming at this southwestern part of Puerto Rico. The unique topology and microclimatic conditions created a biome that has been described as the “best preserved and best example of a tropical dry forest in the Caribbean.” This United Nations Biosphere Reserve is home to nine of the fourteen endemic bird species of the island and a host of other flora and fauna.

This 4000 ha. forest reserve however is sandwiched in tourist, agricultural, and urban development zones. The main road leading to the Guanica State Forest shows a landscape bearing its story of human occupation. A cursory look by the roadside would show that certain portions of the land are devoted to cattle and horse grazing. The plains are turned into fields of banana, papaya, and vegetables–the primary cash crops of Puerto Rico. Back in the day, historians recorded that the southern area also had a thriving sugar industry like the rest of the island but was abandoned when the world prices of sugar dropped to record lows (Guanica ending it in 1981). Vestiges of that sugar culture can still be gleaned from the artisanal production of guarapo, a sugarcane juice drink, and ron cana, a toxic sugarcane rum that burns your insides.

The seaward edge of the Guanica dry forest is a winding road that threads the series of hotels and beach spots along the coasts. Sightseers and tourists go to this area primarily because of the beach and Gilligan’s Island, an islet just across the forest. From the road, footpaths go deep into the forest reserve where hikers climb the rocky hills and explore the remarkable flora and fauna. Occasionally, a Santeria shrine of a saint could be found bearing offerings of fruits and flowers.

I don’t know how much of an impact human activities contributed to the Guanica Dry Forest. I tried searching through the literature and found that studies along this line have been wanting. What I saw instead was a comprehensive study of the influence of hurricane winds on the dry forest cycles. Apparently, dry forests are resilient enough to confront winds as strong as 152 knots. But droves of people? Who knows.

Thinking hermit crabs today

What is it with hermit crab these days? I find them by the mangroves, the sandy beach, decaying trees, and across various spaces on this little island. I literally trip over them and sometimes hear a crunch under my boots whenever I search for my monkeys. Many of them prefer to hide under the shade to escape the glare of the sun and, if you lift a decaying log, there they are in clumps, one over the other, packed like cars on a junkyard.

Nothing is more poetic than the union of an abandoned ivory shell and a crustacean in need of a home.  The hermit crab, devoid of its shell, has a belly so soft that a little squeeze can spread its guts out. It looks ugly and walks like a drunk pirate when left out “naked” in the open. Once it meets the shell of the proper size and condition, it wriggles itself in, making the shell a part of its anatomy until the crab outgrows it and has to find another shell again. The shell is the toughest armor in the crustacean world; after all, if the previous owner was safe in it, so will the current occupant be.

The shell is the central axis of the hermit crab’s defensive repertoire. A little movement and they retreat to their shells, shutting the entrance with their claws, and never to come out unless the danger has gone. Too slow to run because of the weight of their shell, they embrace themselves tight that in the process they close off the world outside. They’d rather fall from a higher ground and come down hard to the beach floor than fight off intruders. Their claws, while capable of slicing a finger, are designed more to be impenetrable doors than weapons.

If you wish to elicit a response from the hermit crabs behind their shell fortresses, try knocking on the bigger ones, especially those that have grown bigger than your fist. Every knock is answered back with a complaint. They scratch the insides of their shell, emitting a sound like a cross between the grinding of a pencil sharpener and the turning of a rusty wheel sprocket. When everything is still, the hermit crab slowly emerges from its hiding place, stretching its spindly legs, one after another. The antennas poke out of the shell like copper wires and then the rest of the head emerges. The eyes, matchstick black, scan the surrounding and in a rush the hermit crab lumbers to the nearest thicket. Once it feels safe, the crab curls back up again inside its shell.

Back home, we call the hermit crabs umang. They are way smaller than the ones on the island. Children in fishing villages collect them and put the umang inside a tin can. Sometimes, they would play with the critters: two hermit crabs are held face-to-face by the back of their shells to make them fight. As expected, they don’t fight. They didn’t evolve much for fighting. The umang merely push each other out of the way and then pinch the skin of the holders’ finger to escape. I think what excites the child’s curiosity is not so much the “fight” but the sword-like movement of the legs, almost like a samurai’s katana in hypnotic movement. When they fall from the child’s grip, the umang are picked up again for another round of “fighting.” This will only stop when the children smash the shell with just enough force,  breaking the shell but leaving the hermit crab exposed. Then, the tender and soft belly is separated from the rest of the body. For these child-fishers, hermit crabs are fish baits.

So if I ask again what is it with the hermit crabs today? Tell me it wasn’t smashed for fish bait this time. Tell me that I am squishing them under my boots.

after the lull, i’m back

I’ll be writing back here in Time Travelling after a rather long blogging hiatus. What has become of the other blogging site, Anthropology Corner? Well, I wrote one post there and never get to writing anything. I think Anthropology Corner will stay there in its non-space in the internet, like an hermit’s cave, a place of contemplation, of silence, of not writing nor thinking of anything–frozen in cyberspace yet forever pregnant with potentialities. Of course, I’ll still maintain Anthropology Corner as a monument of sorts. A token of what it is like not to blog at all and just fling myself into the rough-and-tumble world of behavioral data collection–constantly stalking monkeys in sweltering heat, recording every bit of scratch, bite, mount, sleep, eat, gurney, etcetera while being preyed on by annoying majes (insects no bigger than a ballpoint dot yet relentless in their bloodsucking ways).

After almost two years doing this, I am still fascinated by monkeys and caught in the day-to-day ordinariness of their world. It’s almost like a meditation in its ordinariness–me, staring at the monkeys with a minicomputer on hand (Psion), them, immersing themselves in their monkeyness. In the world of mass information, the respite that I get in following the monkeys in silence is golden, somewhat similar to a monk’s religious epiphany when flower petals slowly unfold before him. In the best of days, behavioral data collection is like dreaming wide awake–all senses tuned in to what the monkeys are doing yet you hear yourself think, really think, and admire, really admire. This silence must be the same silence that poet-philosophers like Lao Tzu pursue when they go to the mountains, live in caves, and sleep under the trees; and when they feel like they’re settled already, then they move again, just wandering aimlessly, savoring the breeze and scenery for its visual, tactile, and auditory pleasures, like going to another fiesta where nature is the host.

Of course, it’s not all ordinary. I perk up whenever the monkeys perk up. Their excitement becomes my excitement too. Just a few days ago, huddled together with the monkeys (okay, not huddled but pretty close to them, like 4 meters from the next monkey) , I had the chance to see a primiparous mom in labor. I saw her heaving, reclined on a rock jutting out of the bushes. Whenever the labor contractions came, she would squat and then stand, raising her hands to balance herself while trying to force out the infant inside. The contractions came in intervals and she rested in between, visibly exhausted, the hairless patch of skin red due to hormones. Her brother, a two-year old juvenile, would come and hug her. When the hugging stopped, the brother  groomed her (grooming is what primatologists call that behavior where a monkey combs–and sometimes pound like a drum!–through the hair of another monkey, as if searching for parasites or dirt, but is actually more than that). Or take for example an old male monkey which I was very fond of (thus some of the staff named him after me), slowed by age, walking gingerly with its back arched like a turtle shell. Once a middle to high ranking monkey weeks before, he was now left at the edge of the troop and at the receiving end of attacks from other monkeys whenever he ventured close. Then one cold and dewy morning, I found him frozen in rigor, partially hidden by the grasses he once ate.

Here’s a poem I recited when I found him dead:

kamatayon sa unggoy’ng tiguwang                                                     death of an old monkey

pagkaupos sa imong katiguwangon                                                    when your senescence is at its end
inanay kang mitikuko sa kasagbutan–                                        slowly, you bent like the grasses where you now lay–
tuhod sa siko, palad sa ulo–                                                                  knees on elbow, palm on your head–
puya nga kinulipad                                                                                    a child spat out
sa tagoangkan.                                                                                             from the womb.

hilom ang pag-abot sa katapusan:                                                       the coming of the end is silent:
hoyohoy’ng gisabak sa dughan.                                                           a breeze nursed in your chest.
sa yanong pagpanghupaw,                                                                      in a simple sigh,
nakalingkawas,                                                                                             freeing itself,
nahimugso ang imong pagtaliwan.                                                      birthing your death.

So, what more can I say. Time Travelling is back.

Time Travelling has moved to a new home…

Hello readers,

After a month long deliberation, I decided to move time travelling to a new home, anthropology corner. The decision to move was spurred by a friend who helped defray the costs for building my own blog site. While the move is cumbersome, considering I have invested more than a year of effort for time travelling, I see this change as an opportunity to learn new skills–especially in website management. Of course, I do not know anything as of yet–errrr…. what’s a plug-in?–but I know I’ll get there once I get settled in my new home.

anthropology corner will still be discussing about anthropology, travel, primates, and personal stories about Puerto Rico and the Philippines. I wish you’ll follow me there too. For starters, here is the first post of anthropology corner about the Arecibo petroglyphs.

 

 

Click here to visit anthropology corner

 

 

¡Que vivan los estudiantes!

¡Que vivan los estudiantes! Universidad de Puer…, posted with vodpod

on the way to collecting behavioral data

The skies in the southeast coast of Puerto Rico were burning red this morning as the sun showed a hint of itself across the horizon. While the surrounding was as yet dark and the grasses covered with fog, the familiar bluish tinge of the skies started appearing when the sun’s rays, in full reddish regalia, marched on towards its westerly course.

From where I was standing, right by a sandy beach, the sun began its slow ascent from the Caribbean sea, changing the surroundings from grey to orange to pink. The palm trees that lined the coast were silhouettes, assuming form and color only as the rays touched them.

The breeze, a gentle blow from the seas, was of the hue as the sun commanded it. It was today that I could say I breathed color. A stray dog, Tigger, accompanied me to witness earth’s transformation.

At the farthest end of the dock, a group of men cast their fishing lines to the seas. Their fishing poles, fastened at the wooden fence, stood at attention by the edge of this dock. In a little while, the poles will bend seaward to a familiar tug that the fishers are waiting for.

From afar, a solitary yacht sliced through the glassy sea. A few minutes earlier, a couple of yachts anchored near the island of Cayo Santiago. The white-haired captain of the smaller yacht, busy with tying the ropes by the fairlead, glanced momentarily then waved at our passing boat.

Disturbed by my ruminations, two pelicans flew and roosted on a nearby boat wreck. My eyes stopped following them and I started the first focal observation of the day.

Four Stone Hearth #106 and Some

November Updates from Time Travelling.

1. Afarensis hosts a spectacular list of good blog posts for the Four Stone Hearth 106th edition. Head there and read some of the best anthropology-related posts in the blogging world by clicking this: Four Stone Hearth #106.

2. Jigger Geverola, who had been featured here in the Behind Prison Bars post, is set to be released from prison soon after the Philippine courts dismissed the charges of rebellion levelled against him. He spent the last six years in prison as a political detainee.

3. Human rights organizations are currently in Kananga, Leyte–where botanist Leonardo Co and two other people were killed–to conduct a fact-finding mission. Apparently, one of those who was killed with Co, Forest Ranger Sofronio “Poniong” Cortez, hails from my hometown, Baybay, Leyte. A post from the Visayas State University facebook page mentioned the following:

Forest Ranger Sofronio “Poniong” Cortez who died with Dr. Leonardo Co (known botanist from UP) while measuring a century old indigenous tree was a graduate of the Visayas State University (batch ’83 or ’84 of the Forest Ranger Course according to Dr. Ed Mangaoang, Poniong’s former teacher). He has been a forest ranger of the then Philippine National Oil Company (and now the Energy Development Corporation) and from informal talks among his friends he can be relied upon when it comes to indigenous tree species in the watershed areas within the geothermal sites of Tongonan. He was also a member of Gamma Lambda Epsilon (Falcons). His wake is now in his residence in Hikgop, Caridad, Baybay, Leyte. Our condolence!

Time Travelling is one with the Philippine nation in calling for justice. Quick links about the death of the three are provided here in our blog site.

4. November 23 was the death anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre. A personal friend of mine, Atty. Cynthia Oquendo, was killed in this election-related violence together with 57 other victims. Days after the incident happened, we wrote a blog entitled, On the Maguindanao Massacre, decrying the spate of murders of journalists and activists happening in the Philippines during the reign of then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. For this, we light another candle for the victims, praying that justice will finally be served.

5. Time Travelling (bonvito) is one of the finalists for the Philippine Blog Awards (Visayas). Great news!

6. Finally, a lot of people here in Puerto Rico asked me if Filipinos celebrate Thanksgiving. So here’s a Facebook quote from Xiomara Demeterio Glindmeyer that will end all of these questions:

People have asked me if the Philippines celebrate Thanksgiving which is a ridiculous question. We never had Columbus come to our shores. We had Magellan and we greeted him by lopping his head off.

On El Yunque

El Yunque towers at the northeastern edge of Puerto Rico. The summit rises at 3,494 feet and gradually reclines to the sandy coasts that embrace the whole island. From afar, the Luquillo mountain range, of which El Yunque is a part of, is a hazy blue, a crest of a Caribbean terrestrial wave shaped by time. Patches of green fill the ridges that scar the sides of the mountain. When the rain comes, white rivulets form on these small valleys, nourishing an oasis of endemic plants that include Crescentia cujete or the calabash plant.

Sands from the Sahara sometimes blanket the cordilleras. These windblown desert dusts from Africa roll toward the Atlantic covering most of the island in a fog of whiteness. When this happens, everything is opaque: even the sun loses its luster, a gigantic egg hanging in the skies, beautiful like opal, resting above the silhouette of El Yunque.

Kathryn Robinson, author of where dwarfs reign: a tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico, explains that the Luquillo range is a remnant of an ancient supervolcano, Hato Puerco. This volcano was “one of the region’s largest and most active volcanic centers during the Cretaceous period.” Paraphrasing a pioneering geologist, Robinson explains:

The early volcanic activity, followed by a period of colossal bending, produced the mountains. Their stubborn resistance to erosion, “giving silent testimony to the ancient majesty of the ranges from which they had been carved,” enabled them to endure. To Myerhoff, Luquillo is a true monadnock, an isolated mountain remaining from ancient topography that rises above the more level, eroded land around it.

What once was smoldering lava has been transformed into a verdant spot in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. Eons of weathering and the corresponding dispersal of soil macronutrients have left El Yunque very fertile. This area is home to 150 native fern species, 240 tree species, an assortment of endemic animals, including the critically-endangered Puerto Rican parrot. The rich biodiversity of the area prompted locals to call this range as “el pulmon de Puerto Rico” or the lung of Puerto Rico. The Tainos, pre-Columban inhabitants of the island, also believed that El Yunque is the home of the god, Yakiyuyu.

El Yunque’s biodiversity however is under threat. Using endemic frogs as biodiversity indicators, researchers have noticed a steady decline of Puerto Rican frogs in the area. In 1993, S. Blair Hedges (1993) said that two of the native Eleutherodactylus have not been seen in recent years. S. Blair remarked:

In the case of E. karlschmidti, known localities where the species occurred abundantly in the 1960s and 1970s have been searched repeatedly during the last decade by myself and other herpetologists and no evidence of this species has been found. The disappearance of E. karlschmidti has no obvious explanation. Some of the localities are in protected and unaltered forest (Caribbean National Forest) on El Yunque. However, rats and mongooses, which were introduced, are abundant in Puerto Rico and occur in undisturbed forest. Black Rats (Rattus rattus) especially are a problem in Caribbean National Forest where they are very common, even in the dwarf forest on El Yunque Peak. It is possible that these arboreal nocturnal omnivores prey on Eleutherodactylus eggs or the frogs themselves. The mongoose (Herpestes auropunctatus), although primarily diurnal, is known to prey on frogs (Walker, 1975; Nellis and Everard, 1983) and this particular species of frog would be especially vulnerable because it characteristically sits on exposed rocks in and around streams.

A follow-up study by Burrows et al (2003) supported the earlier research. They recorded that three Eleutherodactylus frog species are already presumed extinct and eight populations of six different species of these endemic frogs are significantly declining at elevations above 400 m. While Burrows et al are not discounting the impact of invasive species on frog populations, they maintain that climate change and the spread of a chytrid fungi may have been responsible for the steady decline. They said that “possible synergistic interaction between drought and the pathological effect of the chytrid fungus on amphibian populations” could explain the population decreases.

Visits to nature parks always elicit a certain ambivalence in me: that the urge to discover might also be intrusive. The short treks on muddy paths to reach a peak or visit a waterfall are voyages of discovery and understanding. This is our way of seeking connections to the primal and the natural in these times when modernity drives a wedge between our lifestyle and the natural world. But do we in the process change the very environment that we wish to visit, know, and conserve? Is mere human presence enough to have a ramifying impact on other species’ habitats?

There is indeed a need to critically reflect our relationship with the natural world. After all, inscribed in the oral traditions of many cultures indicate that mountains are ancient sources of wisdom. In the Philippines for example, healers (tambalan) go for long treks and settle in caves in search of spirit guides. They would stay long and converse with the spirits and sometimes come out with greying beards and hair. Now endowed with the wisdom of the forest, they would embark in a journey of healing and divination, moving from one barrio to the next to impart the knowledges they learned. For these healers, the forests are not just a collection of plants and animals but are sites of wisdom and contemplation.

Perhaps this renewed sense of awe (coupled with an intimate ecological understanding) at mountains and its environs will be helpful in preserving and conserving El Yunque’s biodiversity.

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EL Yunque pictures