By Manny Piñol
There is hope and a bright future for this country. That is if we have many more of Rolando “Rolly” Tugade, an Ilocano farmer in the remote village of Pisan, Kabacan, North Cotabato.
On Friday last week, I was asked by the Director of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Milagros Casis to officially turn over to a farmers’ group in Pisan a communal irrigation facility which was built from out of the savings of the office amounting to P8-M.
What I discovered in the area was not just a community of people getting help from government for the first time but a burly and dark man, typical of Ilocanos, with a heart of gold.
Rolly Tugade, one of the many Ilocano settlers from Cagayan Valley who now call Kabacan their home, owns a 40-hectare land with a lot of hills, a few hectare of plain, half-hectare rice farm and a small lake about one-hectare wide.
(Kabacan is where the University of Southern Mindanao is and it is populated by a mix of Maguindanao Muslims and Ilocanos, including several Igorot families from the Cordillera. The language used in the town is Ilocano.)
Just below his farm is a vast rice field that does not have irrigation water and farmers could only plant once a year.
Last year, he approached the village chief, a Muslim, and offered to provide water to his neighbours rice farms if government could build a water impounding dam.
The barangay chairman, who was shot and killed recently, approached the DA and government engineers were sent to the area to design the irrigation system.
Now, the irrigation system is operational and serves about 50-hectares downstream while Rolly Tugade only has one-half hectare which benefits from the project.
“Sabi ko Sir, basta makatulong lang kasi kung maganda ang buhay nila aasenso naman ang barangay namin at matigil na ang patayan,” Tugade told me when I met him last week.
Pisan is a troubled village beside the huge Pulangui River which flows down from Bukidnon to Liguasan Marsh then to the Rio Grade de Mindanao and the Moro Gulf.
That was not the only act of kindness that Tugade has shown.
He has also allowed 30 Blaan families to stay in his farm and plant corn and vegetables without asking for any share.
“Kawawa naman kasi sila Sir at walang mapuntahan,” he said of the tribal Blaan families who were displaced by the conflict from the nearby town of Carmen.
The Blaans built their huts in Tugade’s land and have been protected by the kind Ilocano farmer.
Soft-spoken and unassuming, Tugade bowed his head when I told him that he must be a relative of Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade who also hails from Cagayan Valley.
“Mahiya man ako magsabi na kamaganak ko sya, kasi mayaman man daw yon (Sec. Tugade) Sir,” he said.
I had to reassure him that he was just as rich, if not richer than the Transportation Secretary, because his greatest treasure is his heart of gold.
When I left Pisan after the turn-over ceremonies, I was convinced that there is still hope for this country.
I believe we still have many Rolly Tugades in the countryside and all that we need is just to discover them.
(First photo shows Rolly Tugade while the last two photos show the Tugade Clan of Pisan, Kabacan. Photos were taken by Alan Jay Jacalan and Lito Degorio, DA AFID)
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