SUBIC BAY FREE PORT—While rainy days herald a rebirth in the countryside and newly planted fields promise the bounty of later harvests, farmers who coax a living out of the earth have to endure long lean months of bare existence before their crops could be brought to the market.
This was exactly the situation in two remote agricultural communities in Morong, Bataan, where personnel from the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) recently carried out a community outreach project under its corporate social responsibility program.
“The rainy season is really a hard time for us farmers,” said Edralin Ocaya, leader of the farmers cooperative in sitio Timak, where residents are mostly rice and corn farmers. “From June to October, we have to endure some periods when there is little or no food at all.”
Nixon Gerance, who heads the farmers group in the nearby community of Dose, added that it is during the rainy season that they simply had to make do with whatever they can gather in their fields.
“We gather what vegetables and root crops are available, and sometimes we trap wild animals like labuyo [wild native chicken]—if we can,” Gerance said.
According to Armie Llamas, head of the SBMA Public Relations Department, Timak and Dose are among the most isolated communities within the boundaries of the Subic Bay Free Port.
Llamas said both communities have neither electricity nor potable water, and the nearest school is an hour away by foot while the nearest market is a 40-minute ride by tricycle.
“These villages are in real need of assistance from the SBMA, or any other group that can provide some help. We thus conduct regular medical missions and other socio-civic programs here,” Llamas said, adding that even “little things” like the SBMA’s periodic food-relief project can make so much difference in these needy areas.
Llamas and other employees from the SBMA Corporate Communications Group gave away some food packets to about 35 families from sitios Timak and Dose. The packs contained rice, canned goods, coffee, sugar and instant noodles.
The group also fed some 100 children from the two remote areas, and then later gifted them each with a new pair of rubber slippers and a pack of candy.
The “little things” evidently cheered the children.
“They [SBMA team] arrived just in time,” said 13-year-old Miguel Monte, showing his old, worn slippers whose rubber straps were about to snap off.
“Thank you for the slippers and the food,” he told the SBMA team.
Ocaya and the other parents also expressed deep appreciation of the SBMA assistance that would help tide them over the hard times.
“We thank the SBMA for helping us,” Ocaya told Llamas. “We really appreciate your effort in climbing up the mountains just to make our children happy.”
