June 2016
BAMBAN, TARLAC: The Aeta village consists of about 150 families who were the most hardworking people I have encountered among the Aeta communities. The chieftain is one of our Aeta honorary members. There is a school nearby and a Catholic priest who helps them. However, they require more seeds to grow food so they can feed their families.
We provided them with one sack of root crop seeds at Php 25,000 (US $500), which was to be distributed equally among the families. Instead, they wanted to work together as a community. They wanted to plant the root crop and eat only what they needed during the harvest season with the hope of doubling or tripling the amount of seeds available to plant the following year and so on until they have excess to sell on the open market. They were looking to create employment for their village and to sell excess food on the open market or share it with the neighboring communities.
The Aeta walk long distances to fetch water, but they don’t mind the long walk. I walked with the elders to see the water source and discovered it was about a mile from the village. It was a spring water and it was being pumped by a generator using a battery. There was no electricity in the village and they had very few containers. We hope to provide them with 150 5-gallon blue plastic containers in 2017.
We provided them with one sack of root crop seeds at Php 25,000 (US $500), which was to be distributed equally among the families. Instead, they wanted to work together as a community. They wanted to plant the root crop and eat only what they needed during the harvest season with the hope of doubling or tripling the amount of seeds available to plant the following year and so on until they have excess to sell on the open market. They were looking to create employment for their village and to sell excess food on the open market or share it with the neighboring communities.
The Aeta walk long distances to fetch water, but they don’t mind the long walk. I walked with the elders to see the water source and discovered it was about a mile from the village. It was a spring water and it was being pumped by a generator using a battery. There was no electricity in the village and they had very few containers. We hope to provide them with 150 5-gallon blue plastic containers in 2017.