Routes
A poem and the Iloilo River
About a decade ago, I wrote a prose poem titled "Composed Upon Forbes Bridge," which was published by the now defunct National Midweek by its then editor canonical writer Gregorio Brillantes. The prose poem tried to parody the classic "Composed Upon Forbes Bridge" by William Wordsworth.
The closure of "Composed Upon Forbes Bridge" clinches the entire textual gist:
"The Forbes itself is the big theater here for it repeatedly runs Iloilo City in a three-act play of knives rats and paper houses."
The lines above tell more about the social, environmental and economic conditions prevailing at the Iloilo River at that time as symbolized by the knives of crimes, the rats of trash, and the paper houses of homelessness.
Whether "Composed Upon Forbes Bridge" succeeded or not in achieving its original literary purpose has become immaterial to me. What I consider more relevant now is the content of the poem on the state of life of the Iloilo River and the state of life of the poor people who dwelt and still continue to dwell along its banks from a vantage pint on the bridge.
Many things have been written about the Iloilo River, but these were non-literary, as I still have to see one that is.
I have read several dozen poems about rivers of Iloilo, including Magapa and Suague after having been contracted as a consultant in a conservation campaign for these endangered rivers through a multi-methodological approach, which included literature and music co-sponsored by the Dutch Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICO)-funded NGO Panay Rural Development Center (PRDCI), Inc. and the local government units of the six (i.e., Pototan, Mina, New Lucena, Maasin, Janiuay, Badiangan) watershed municipalities constituting the Magapa-Suague River Basin Management Council (MSRBMC).
I learned from Ecology class that a river has a headwater source on the mountains. But I was able to practically corroborate that after hearing from family friend and former Iloilo City Engineer Pablito Mijares that the Iloilo River is not actually a river but an estuary. Engr. Mijares is the same person from whom I first heard the idea that one good solution to the growing problem on informal settlers concentrated on the shorelines of Iloilo City is reclaiming certain foreshore areas in Molo district. That was way back in the 1980s.
Rehabilitating the Iloilo River has long been considered a vital socio-econo-environmental concern. But it was only last year that a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate it has been concretized and made public in a hearing . The study for the 10-year Iloilo River Master Development Plan was funded by the American Assistance for Environmental Programs, the Asia Foundation, and the Iloilo Business Club.
To recognize the participation of the Iloilo Business Club may be encouraging for it follows the multipartite design for development, which aims at maximum stakeholder building.
The life of the Iloilo River is not the sole burden of the poor people who settle along its banks and fish for a living on its waters and are most often perceived to be the ugly picture of the river. By giving more support to the rehabilitation efforts, the Iloilo Business Club could firmly assert its socio-econo-environmental relating role, and it can do that by giving regard to the empowerment of the marginal fishers literally living on the soil and water of the river.
The multipartite paradign of development became a shift not only to achieve maximum stakeholder building, but also to strengthen the cooperation among government agencies, non-government organizations, people's organizations and the private sector (My wife, a development worker and co-author of (among others) the book "Gender, Population and Development' of the University of the Philippines Center for Women's Studies and The Ford Foundation agrees with me regarding this).
I expect that with all before this, the implementation of the Iloilo River rehabilitation will be socially broad, economically forward and also culturally aesthetic.
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The above article first appeared in the November 28 - December 4, 2003 of The Visayas Examiner. That was when there were only four primary bridges that crossed the Iloilo River: The Quirino-Lopez Bridge, Drilon Bridge, Forbes Bridge and the Carpenter's Bridge.
In June last year (2005), the first Iloilo River Week was celebrated in time with the launching of the USAID-funded Local Initiatives for Affordable Wastewater Treatment (LINAW). During the celebration, the NGOs, Pos, and the private sector cooperated with the Iloilo City Government more palpably.
(To be continued)