Life - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Dejavu in Taiwan and feeling at home among its mountains…..

It was so many years ago that I dreamt of walking along a crowded business street, all the signage above every store a combination of symbols that look like Chinese characters. I was thinking then that that was an impossible situation as I would never have the means of going to another country to be able to see these kinds of places. That was so many pounds ago.

Amidst the heavy downpour in the afternoon of September 6, 2008 and a few pounds heavier, I experienced a sense of dejavu as I walked the streets of Namasha Township, Kaohshiung County, Taiwan. It was a small town and we were in the center darting from one store to another dodging the rain. It was a ‘taro town’ (gabi). It was so abundant with this root crop and therefore produces everything out of taro. There were taro candies, taro pastries, taro cakes, taro preserves, taro ice cream and a lot of other products made of taro. Every store sells all of these taro products. There was even a very big taro cement plant near the bridge towards the river. Every store offers ‘free taste’ of all these taro products. Since the cakes, which tasted the best, were expensive for my standard, I enjoyed the ‘free taste’ in every store and ended up full after going through the whole strip of taro stores. One of our companions, a Taiwanese, bought us one box each of taro candies in the end. She also bought us one umbrella each so we can go through the stores faster because we were supposed to go back to the village in half an hour. She was such a generous woman.

Takanua Village, Namasha Township, which the venue of the Asian workshop on climate change and indigenous health that we were holding was half an hour from this town. It was more than two hours by car from Kaohshiung City. I wasn’t able to see much during the drive from the airport because it was midnight. I was only able to notice that the roads were generally good although narrow, except for a few portions which were destroyed by the recent typhoons. Mountain walls were eroded and a lot of road danger signs were put up along these areas. At day time, one could see the cascading mountains thick with tropical plants and underbrush lining the streets towards the horizon. The land is obviously fertile. The Namasha river flows smoothly and cleanly opposite and parallel to the road that snakes through the mountainside towards Takanua. I was told by Ibu, one of the indigenous persons who hosted us, told me that the people in this area still go hunting in their forests for wild pigs and deer. Bamboos are also aplenty. We were fed bamboo shoots almost everyday. Sayote were equally as regularly served.

I felt that I have not left home. Their culture was too much similar to the indigenous peoples in the Philippines. Their traditional costumes were as colorful, their dances and songs as joyful, and their rituals as sacred. They had mountains lush with trees and greens and birds that howl in the night and sing in the day along with the gushing sound of clean river waters and water falls. There are too many similarities in culture but not in development and economic condition. They have good road networks except for the portions recently destroyed by the typhoons and which were immediately being repaired. They had clean environs and one could smell the sweetness of the earth with the rising of the sun in the early mornings. One of the villagers told me that they are poor in this area. But my goodness! Each of them has a car of their own and the public transport is least used so the bus only leaves once in the morning and returns in the afternoon.

But the indigenous tribes in Taiwan are also victims of capitalist oppression leading to the destruction of indigenous culture and environment. One morning, I was amazed at the hugeness of a mango held by a small child. It was almost as big as her head and later, I saw villages packing mangoes of this size for export. I was however saddened when I was told that these mangoes are genetically modified organisms (GMO). Like in the Philippines, the agriculture of indigenous peoples in Taiwan has been corrupted by capitalist interests. In the long term, no one will suffer but the indigenous peoples themselves.

My stay in Taiwan was cut short by a meeting that I had to attend in Manila. I felt sad that I did not have the time to frolic in their clean and cool rivers or enjoy the rush of the water falls.

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