By Vinia Datinguinoo
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
July 1998
Photo by Luis Liwanag
http://luisliwanag.multiply.com/photos/album/53/Happy_land_Ulingan#4
Bonglo, Bordon, Cebu—JOSEFINA Flores is only 40 years old, but she looks at least a decade older. Thin and gaunt, the mother of six seems in no condition to do even the least of her daily chores at her farm here in this mountain barangay, about 80 kilometers from Cebu City.
But she does them all, and beginning at the crack of dawn until late evening, Josefina is in constant motion. She starts the day with a two-kilometer trek to fetch water, and continues on to cooking meals, gathering and selling firewood, making charcoal, cleaning the house, looking after the children and her husband, and seeing to it that everyone in the family has something to eat.
Of all her chores, it is the last that Josefina is finding hardest to do these days. Hunger is a familiar feeling in Bongdo-a community of nearly 400 families-as it is in many other poor farming communities elsewhere. But in this prolonged season of El Niño, the situation has gone from bad to worse, and there has been even less food here to go around. And the mothers, as usual, are having it toughest.
"Life has been hard," says Josefina in Cebuano. "But there must be something that my husband and children could eat. If there's any left, then that's what I eat."
Every year, the National Nutrition Council declares July as 'Nutrition Month' in the hope that some attention, however short-term, would be given to the kind of diet Filipinos should have. But the annual event seems to have become a mockery in places like Bongdo, where there is almost no food to be had, and where the women are especially unlikely to ever be in good health because of malnutrition, if not sheer hunger.
To be sure, health workers would be hard pressed in finding any Bongdo resident-male or female-in sound health today. After all, Bongdo is among the areas that have been declared to be in a state of calamity by the Cebu Sangguniang Panglungsod because of the drought, and people here now count themselves lucky if they had at least corn lugaw to eat.
But it is the mothers who have it worst, because, say nutrition experts, "culture" dictates that they eat last-and often risk eating nothing at all.
This is a practice not unique to Bongdo. "Kung isda ang ulam, yung pinaghimayan niyan na halos tinik na lang, yun ang sa nanay (If the viand is fish, then the mother usually gets to eat whatever is left clinging on the bones)," says nutrition anthropologist Catherine Castañeda, who did a 1994 study on how food is distributed in Filipino dining tables.
The explanation goes something like this: The father should have something, because he's the "breadwinner." And the children should have something, too, because they are children. As for the mother, Castañeda notes: "She's the one that is expected to make the sacrifice."
But such a sacrifice exacts a heavy toll on the women's health, making them weaker in the long term.
Women menstruate, get pregnant, lactate, and give birth-activities that take so much out of them that there is need for the women to slow down, space births and eat well in order to regain their lost energy. But before they can even recover from giving birth, women in poor communities often get pregnant all too soon. There is also no slowing down because there is simply too much they have to do. And eating well is out of the question for most of these women.
The result is that anemia, for example, remains a very pronounced health problem among women. The 1993 National Nutrition Survey found that 43 percent of pregnant Filipino women were anemic. This is higher than the 40 percent cut-off set by the World Health Organization for mild and moderate anemia in that population group.
Other nutrient shortfalls among women are being found survey after survey, among them deficiencies in iodine, protein-energy, vitamin A, thiamin, and riboflavin. Goiter, which manifests iodine deficiency, is most prevalent among women than in men, in all age groups.
Experts have said malnutrition makes women susceptible to disease, exacerbates fatigue, and reduces their capacity in the workplace and at home. It is also particularly dangerous for pregnant women.
The irony is that these same women are made almost solely responsible for the health and nutrition of the rest of the family. Says Castañeda, who is with the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), which monitors malnutrition in the country: "When you talk of a nutrition program the priority is always the mother and the child. And when you talk of the mother, you talk of the needs of the mother and how they relate to the nutrition of the family." Always, she says, the state of nutrition of children is dependent on the mothers.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has also said that women are key to guarding children's nutrition, and that ill health in women often translates to not being able to take care of the children properly.
There is even a term nutrition experts use: "maternal time allocation," which measures the time a mother spends on her duties that include work, child care and child feeding. As for the fathers, Castañeda says, "walang pakialam iyan (they couldn't care less)."
She does say, though, that fathers are now attending government-sponsored "mother's classes," where they are lectured on their role in caring for their children. That's why, she says, there are now fathers sharing the burden of monitoring the children's nutrition and general well being, though still "the exception more than the rule."
Such lectures may also be lacking in listeners today in places like this farmingcommunity, where people would much rather spend their time looking for food than discussing balanced diets. What had been a three-month dry season has stretched drastically to the current nine-and still counting-and people can now see clear across fields where rows and rows of corn stalks had once obstructed their view.
"Dakong kausaban (There's a very big difference)," says Pelagia Olivares, 45, when asked if life has been the same after El Niño. And she does not just speak of the springs drying up, making them hike longer trails to find other sources of water.
Before El Niño struck, her family could afford a ganta of corn for every meal, says Minda Arnado of Bili, also here in Borbon. But these days, they are down to five gantas per week. "Wala na mamunga," she says, "walay lubi, kamote, saging."
The lowly corn lugaw has become the staple for families here. On very bad days, they make do with malunggay, boiled in water with salt. On worse days, there is only salt. Mothers have also taken to making coffee out of corn grits to replace milk for the infants.
"It's pitiful if it goes on," comments Castañeda. "Making infants take coffee made of corn grits could be tantamount to neglect." She also says a prolonged lugaw diet can have disastrous results, quipping, "Kung puro lugaw ang kinakain, magiging utak-lugaw yan (If all they have is porridge, they'll have porridge for brains)."
White corn, which Bongdo residents use for their lugaw, is an energy-giving food. It does not contain vitamin A, which the yellow corn variety has, but it does have carbohydrates. A balanced, proper diet, however, requires much more than carbohydrates almost every meal. Other nutrients are needed to keep the body functioning normally. (The FNRI has drawn up the recommended dietary allowances for these nutrients; the RDA is different for different age groups.)
Especially for growing children under seven and pregnant and lactating women, the effects of inadequate diet could be long-term and irreversible. Malnourished pregnant women give birth to underweight infants. Iodine-deficient mothers, in particular, suffer frequent miscarriages, still births and early infant deaths. For their babies who do survive, the chances are high that they will be born deformed, mentally retarded or even complete cretins.
Read the second part at:
http://www.pcij.org/stories/1998/women2.html
