If you have been following the news from the homeland lately, you would have known how water lilies and hyacinths have caused a whole city to drown; well — almost.
For many days, Cotabato City where I had spent a great deal of my youthful life was submerged in deep water that put life in that city to a halt. Schools, including my alma mater Notre Dame University, were shut as the campuses, including the roads leading to them were transformed into rivers.
It was water everywhere, dirty water, with few dry places to find. Residents, who couldn’t go anywhere, had to stay put in their respective homes. There was no way for the katulong or the homemaker to go to the market as the tricycles and the jeepneys couldn’t navigate in knee or navel deep waters without risking their engines to go dead.
Some people say that they don’t need to go to the market anyway as fish from the rivers voluntarily swim to the pot to dinner table. It’s a joke of course, a Pinoy coping mechanism to lighten impact of tragedy; a classic Pinoy trait. But that’s another story.
Of course, the flooding in Cotabato and many places in the Philippines, or anywhere in the world, is no joking matter. Hundreds of thousands of families are displaced and millions of crops and properties are destroyed causing hunger, disease, and in some cases death.
Quebec, Manitoba, and Alberta in Canada have not been spared either.
In Cotabato, the water lilies, particularly the hyacinth variety, are not new to the waters of Rio Grande de Mindanao, the second largest river system in the Philippines, second only to the Cagayan River in Luzon. I remember in the 70s watching huge pads of hyacinths flow by as we cross the Matampay Bridge during our daily commute from the seminary to the university and back.
Languidly they float, providing amusement to us as we wonder what’s hidden beyond those large swaths of green, — a body part perhaps? No. They were just harmless water plants that have chosen this part of the Rio Grande to be their home.
But not anymore. These water plants called hyacinths have become a menace to the waterways, choking the natural flow of water, not allowing the river to breath that has now caused the current flooding in Cotabato City and other municipalities nearby.
The hyacinths no longer just float by as they used to in our younger days. There could be as large as 20 hectares in one area of the river alone. And they are there as permanent fixtures deeply rooted making the pads so thick that people can actually walk on them without a slight fear of sinking. I could imagine Matampay.
To unclog the rivers, civilians, the military, and other groups including the MNLF have to use electric chainsaws, dredgers, backhoes, and other sharp implements to cut the hectares of hyacinths to smaller pieces so the river could breath, preventing the overflow that has deluged the city.
Relentless rain cause tributaries of the Rio Grande to swell rushing only to be blocked by the weeds thus overflowing beyond the riverbanks onto the city’s streets unable to reach the waiting seas where they are normally destined.
Aside from clogging the waterways, I believe the uncontrolled multiplication of hyacinths also suck up a huge supply of oxygen from the water depriving other water creatures, like fish, of needed intake of oxygen for their own survival. In total, it causes an imbalance in the environment.
Hyacinths are native to the eastern Mediterranean region, west Iran, and Turkmenistan. The garden varieties of course are also grown in parts of Europe. Hyacinths are sometimes associated with rebirth. I hope they do the same to Matampay and the Rio Grande de Mindanao.
The Hyacinth flower is used in the Haftseen table setting for the Persian New Year celebration Norouz held during the Spring Equinox. Hyacinth bulbs are poisonous; they contain oxalic acid. Handling hyacinth bulbs can cause mild irritation to people with sensitive skin. Protective gloves may be worn to avoid irritation.
Myth has it that Hyacinth was a beautiful youth loved by both the god Apollo and the West Wind, Zephyr. It was also said that the youth’s beauty caused a feud between the two gods. One day, Apollo and Hyacinth were taking turns throwing discuss. Zypher thought that Hyacinth preferred the radiant archery god over him and in a fit of jealousy blew the discuss that killed the boy. Ahh jealousy…
Apollo did not want Hades, the unseen god of the underworld or the dead, to have Hyacinth in his domain so he turned him into the hyacinth that we now know that now have caused havoc in Rio Grande de Mindanao. Then perhaps, it is time for Zypher, the west wind god, to blow these destructive weeds to smithereens, send them to Hades; that would be revenge!
The Rio Grande has to be cleared of hyacinths to allow it to breathe again and let water creatures like the halwan, katipa, tilapia, kasili, and fresh water shrimps and lobsters live again. Now, this is not myth.
