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By Jo Martinez-Clemente
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:42:00 06/28/2008
Filed Under: Economy, Business & Finance
BACOLOD CITY -- IN HER time, your lola must have boiled this for use as antiseptic to wash off acne or even athlete’s foot. Today, in the generation of take-home dinners, we are familiar with its tangy taste that flavors litson manok.
“Tanglad” or lemon grass, a backyard plant, is going mainstream as its oil is now being extracted for industrial use.
What is abundant in the country is the West-Indian lemon grass or Cymbopogon citratus variety. It contains active ingredients such as the myrcene, effective as antibacterial and pain reliever. Its other active components are citronella, citronellol and geranilol.
The lemon grass is 65- to 85-percent citral. The combination of higher myrcene and citral makes the lemon grass oil less irritating to the skin and thus a good ingredient for cosmetics makers.
Its antibacterial ingredients, on the other hand, can be used for pharmaceutical purposes.
Negros farmers
A nongovernment group called the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation Inc. (Adfi) wanted to provide farmers with alternative sources of income.
Set up in 1990, the Adfi is a proponent of sustainable agriculture through organic, diversified and integrated farming systems.
In 2004, Adfi chose as their project site an isolated upland area of Mambugsay in the South of Negros. According to Aladino Moraca, an officer of the Adfi, it was a training at the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) that introduced the Adfi to lemon grass oil essence and there, they saw the prospects of lemon grass oil production as a good project.
After years of research the Adfi was able to establish the viability of lemon grass for essential oil as well as fabricate a high-efficiency distillery plant. Farmers were encouraged to plant lemon grass in their backyard or in patches of idle lands. In time, the Mambugsay Essential Oil Producers Association was born. Adfi provided the distillery plant and a ram pump for the provision of water while farmers committed to grow the grass using organic fertilizers. The first plant started operations in 2005 and today, a second plant had been established in Escalante, Negros Occidental.
According to Nelson Cabalu, Adfi’s coordinator on Organic Agriculture and environmental protection, even as the planting areas were only in patches, the total land planted to lemon grass has reached 6.2 hectares. They expect to increase this to 10 ha during the year as membership has also grown from 28 to 42 farmers.
Distilling process
To extract oil from lemon grass, Adfi fabricated a distiller that can process 400 kilos of lemon grass leaves per load. On a rainy day, this can yield an average of 1.5 liters of oil but higher at 1.9 to 2 liters during dry months. It takes 2 to 3 hours to produce the oil doing a very simple process: Hydro steam distillation, condensation and cooling to separate the oil from the water.
The water acquired from this distillation process is called Hydrosol or Hydrolat. As a by-product, it is a pure natural water or plant water essence that contains the same components of the oil but in lower concentrations. This makes the water very suitable in the production of skin care products such as lotions and creams or even as facial cleansing toner in its pure form.
To ensure a steady supply of leaves, farmers have scheduled harvesting. It takes six months to grow the lemon grass but once the leaves are mature for oil extraction, farmers cut the leaves but retain about 15 to 20 centimeters of the plant rooted on the ground so it can grow leaves again. Second cropping can be done after two months.
Fair Trade
According to Moraco, the Adfi practices fair trade thus farmers are paid based on actual oil produced by their leaves. A liter of oil will give a farmer about P1,200.
Adfi develops products from the oil so they can have revenues they can plough back into their programs. Aside from selling organic unadulterated lemon grass oil to industrial users, they also have “Negros Oil” which Adfi’s Enterprise Development Coordinator, Marilyn Celis, says is used in aromatherapy by mixing lemon grass oil with virgin coconut oil.
They also sell Hydrosol to industrial users. Aside from Manila and Cebu, Celis says they also get orders from France and Brussels but hopes that more will get interested in using lemon grass oil for their products.
Last year, the Adfi took part in a Business in Development Challenge (BID Challenge) mounted by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and won P100,000 as one of the 10 finalists. Their prize money, says Celis, enabled them to develop a new product line out of Hydrosol. The product branded as “Citra Pure” is a hand sanitizer that will soon be out in the market.
http://business.inquirer.net/money/topstories/view/20080628-145358/Tanglad-goes-mainstream-yields-essential-oils
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By Jo Martinez-Clemente
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:56:00 03/08/2008
Filed Under: Regional authorities
SAN JOSE, Antique – She was born on Dec. 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Concepcion and died on April 6, a Good Friday. Through most of her 78 years, Tomasa Dioso Salinog or “Lola Masing” suffered in silence, carrying a cross brought upon her by a war she would rather forget but could not. And so, way into her twilight years, she decided to unload her burden, tell her story and recover her dignity.
Lola Masing rose to become an icon for Filipino women for her “undaunting and uncompromising quest for justice.”
On the occasion of her 79th birth anniversary last year, her province of Antique gave her an accolade – the “Lola Masing Center for Culture and Peace.” Set up in a permanent place at the Museo Antiqueño in the capital town of San Jose, it was dedicated to her, “an Antiqueño comfort woman who in her struggle for justice showed the world dignity despite poverty.”
Under the auspices of the Binirayan Foundation Inc. (BFI), the center is envisioned to be a multimedia resource facility that will provide learning and instructional materials and services on culture, gender and peace studies.
“The story of Lola Masing is also a story about Antique,” says Alex delos Santos, executive director of the BFI. “This was how we were during those times and how Lola Masing picked up the pieces of her life in itself is a story of courage and determination that should inspire us. And we hope that through this center, we will share and continue to draw such inspiration.”
Who is Lola Masing?
Lola Masing was one of the so-called “comfort women,” a term coined during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II to refer to those who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.
Born in Pandan town in 1928, Lola Masing lost both her parents early in life. Her mother Patria died a month after she was born. Her father Evaristo took her to San Jose where she completed her elementary education.
Lola Masing was barely in her teens when the war broke out – and tore her apart. Evaristo was beheaded while resisting Japanese soldiers who broke into their house. She, in turn, was abducted by soldiers assigned to the Wakamura Detachment and brought to a house near a garrison on Gobierno Street, where she was raped and abused. She escaped several months later, only to be captured and raped again. She was only 13 then.
In December 1943, the garrison was moved to Davao, but those who remained in Antique did not spare Lola Masing. Her captor, a certain Colonel Okumura, and his friends sexually abused and enslaved her, forcing her to do household chores.
Freedom from abuse came with the 1945 liberation of the Philippines, but it was not until 47 years later when she came out to tell her story, that she freed herself from the ugly images of the past.
Seeking justice
In November 1992, Lola Masing heeded a call for Filipino comfort women to come out and demand justice. She first told her story to an Antique-based lawyer, Roberto Operiano, who helped prepare her documents.
She sold her blanket to raise her fare money to go to Iloilo City. From there, the story of Lola Masing and those of others like Rosa Henson of Pampanga would be told over and over, across the country and in other parts of the world, especially in Japan.
In April 1993, Lola Masing, along with 17 other surviving Filipino comfort women, filed a case with the Tokyo district court, demanding justice, apology and legal compensation from Japan for the abuses committed against them during the war.
In a court hearing held in October 1993, Lola Masing explained what brought her to court:
“I decided to file a lawsuit because I know this is one way to obtain justice for the wrong done to me by the Japanese Imperial Army. My testimony, as well as those of other comfort women, points to the fact that a war crime of rape and sexual slavery had been committed against us.
“As a surviving victim of war, I can only offer my experience to serve as a lesson for all governments and the international community that wars bring only violence and women become the most violated human being in times of war.
“I demand from the Japanese government to fulfill its legal responsibility, sincerely apologize and grant compensation to all victims of sexual slavery. Justice cannot be fully served unless the Japanese government faces its responsibility. This is the only expression of justice that I understand.”
In 1998, the court dismissed the case. Paul Kazuyoshi Okura, representative priest of the Catholic Tokyo Archdiocesan Committee for Justice and Peace who was with her, described the scene:
“Lola Masing started crying. She said, ‘I cannot go back to Antique in shame like this. I want to die here now.’ A lot of Japanese people cried with her. I felt terribly sorry because it was the Japanese government and the judges, who do not recognize their own responsibility for the crimes, who are at shame.”
Lola Masing and her group filed an appeal with the Tokyo appellate court, but this, too, was dismissed in December 2000.
On Christmas Day in 2003, the Supreme Court of Japan dismissed the case with finality and nailed it down for good.
While the case was being heard at the Tokyo district court, an Asia Women’s Fund was allegedly set up by Japan from donations of Japanese citizens and intended for the comfort women. Lola Masing rejected the offer.
Says Yuichi Yokota, Lola Masing’s lawyer: “I met Lola Masing for the first time in November 1992 in Iloilo City. I was gripped by the overwhelming severity of the sexual violence that Lola Masing had suffered from the Japanese Army and was taken by deep shame as a Japanese person.
“From the following year in April 1993 through December 2003, for 10 years and eight months, I took on a litigation struggle with Lola Masing claiming compensation from the Japanese government. The Japanese judiciary refused to adopt any legal remedies. As a sole solution, the Japanese government established the Asian Women’s Fund which conceals and hinders state responsibility and tried to impose this fund to Filipina, Korean, Taiwanese and Dutch women survivors.
Human dignity
“In December 2000, amid heightened energy of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal, Lola Masing rejected this fund, resolutely pronouncing that this fund does not fulfill her sense of justice. Our hearts were overcome. Thanks to Lola Masing, I was able to deeply appreciate afresh the magnificence of valuing human dignity,” says Yokota.
Moved by her resoluteness, concerned Japanese citizens formed a group called the Para kay Lola Masing Network-Japan (PLMN-Japan) to support the Filipina in her struggle there. Members had repeatedly visited her at her home in Antique. Beyond death, the group is supporting the Lola Masing Center for Culture and Peace alongside the Asia Women’s Rights Center-Malaya Lolas.
Lola Masing was a member of Malaya Lolas, which was organized in 1996 by the Filipino comfort women. The group has 102 members whose experiences under the Japanese Imperial Army had all been documented. About 30 of them had already died.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/regions/view/20080308-123465/Antique-honors-Lola-Masing-comfort-woman
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By Jo Martinez-Clemente
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:25:00 05/10/2008
Filed Under: Economy, Business & Finance
SIBALOM, Antique -- “Golden wishes do not grow on trees,” says an old scouting song, but jade, jasper and onyx do.
Called gem trees, these are produced by a farmer in this town who goes by the monicker “batologist.”
When he started scouring the riverbeds that embrace Mt. Porras here—picking tiny stones left and right and throwing back some, here and there—people had thought this man was one “unfortunate soul” who needed psychiatric help.
That was more than 10 years ago when Leovic Gellangarin, a 54-year-old farmer from Barangay Iglanot was still learning about semiprecious stones that lay abundant in his town of Sibalom.
Today, Mang Leo runs a backyard business of stonecraft producing a variety of items—from pendants to home decor made of these gems from the river.
‘Batologist’
Today, he is regarded as the towns’ “batologist,” being a disciple of Sibalom’s acknowledged gemologist, Florentino Esponilla.
Mang Leo says his enchantment with precious stones was sparked in 1994 when he met Esponilla in the province’s capital town of San Jose during a stonecraft demonstration mounted by the provincial government, the Department of Science and Technology and the MIRDC Machine Designs.
There, Mang Leo says, he watched Esponilla grind, cut and polish the stones to bring out their natural shine. Before he knew it, he was already deep into learning the different types of gemstones that form part of Antique’s rich natural resource.
Mang Leo looks at Esponilla as the Father of Sibalom’s Gemology, saying that he was the first to know and learn about the gemstones.
Driftstone, sei seki, gem trees
Under the label “Mr. Gemstone Craft,” Mang Leo’s items include gem trees, paperweights, mosaic, souvenir and collector’s items and pendants.
He, however, takes pride in creating an item he calls the “driftstone,” a new art form he invented, he says, that makes use of “powdered” gemstones that are embedded into driftwood.
He also says he has become an expert in sei seki—a Japanese term that means water and stone, but he uses it to identify stones he was able to gather that were “carved by water” to form various things like animal figures, islands and even color-abstracts.
Mang Leo explains that he has mastered the art of “reading the sei seki and seeing something in the stone’s natural form.”
For instance, a heart-shaped blue colored stone was fashioned into a pendant.
He says his most popular item is the gem tree. He shapes the gems into leaves and flowers and he fashions them into “trees” of different shapes and sizes using a design machine he made himself.
Mang Leo says he gets inspiration from bonsai plants. As the entire process is very delicate and intricate, it takes him a day to finish a medium-sized gem tree.
Price depends on the kind of gemstones the tree is made of. A medium-sized gem tree that is about 8 to 6 inches in height made of white jade would cost around P3,000. A smaller size of the same kind would go for about P1,200.00.
Mini trees for office tables that would have just a couple of branches and a few leaves would cost between P100 and P200.
Mang Leo says people buy his gem trees for different reasons but most buy them for luck.
Tektite wish
Mang Leo says his goods are yet to find national exposure as he has yet to join a trade fair in Manila. But he has already made inroads into the local market as once a month he gets invited to participate in trade fairs in Iloilo City.
Mang Leo knows that the rivers surrounding Mt. Porras—like Imparayan river where he gathers his gemstones—are within the Sibalom Natural Park, a biodiversity conservation area, but he stresses that people are allowed to gather stones in the area.
What is forbidden, he says, is outright extraction or quarrying.
The one stone he has kept for himself is a wishing stone called tektite.
And with his tektite wishing stone, Mang Leo’s wish is for government to help more entrepreneurs who want to further refine their craft and improve their business.
http://business.inquirer.net/money/topstories/view/20080510-135771/Growing-gem-trees-from-Sibaloms-riverbeds
