Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Sita makes and sells silhig, brooms made out of coconut midribs. She peddles the silhig
house-to-house in Baybay. One daughter, Genedina, helps earn money for the family
by doing laundry in the neighborhood for P50 ($0.95) a day when she is not in school.
Donio and many other farmers like him survive principally by utang, or borrowing
money or goods perpetually. They become chained to those who lend to them because
of two things: (1) they do not earn enough to pay what they borrow and (2) because they
often cannot pay in cash and thus they pay with their produce. This is often more costly
than paying with cash.
1.1.3 The Family
Donio and Sita have seven children, one died at 1 year old and one at 2 years. The living
children are: Grace, 22, who is married and has one child. Renante, 19, also married, fin-
ished only grade 4, Monic, or Nano, 17, also has an elementary education. Genedina, 14, is
in her first year of high school. She helps in the household chores and in the farm when not
in school. Roger, 12, is in grade 5 and does not help much in the house and farm because he
is in school.
1.1.4 The House
Structure.
The family lives in a 5-m 7-m (16-ft 23-ft) one-story house made
of wood and bamboo frames, bamboo floors, and nipa roof and walls; see Figure 1.5. It
has three bedrooms, one for the male children, one for the female children, and one for
Donio and Sita. The bedroom floors, made of bamboo slats, are raised on stilts about a
meter from the ground. Under the floor is the storage area for firewood, chopped
coconut husks, and other things including chickens.
Adjacent to the bedrooms are the kitchen and dining area, which occupies about a
third of the house. The floor of the kitchen-dining area is the ground, which becomes
muddy when it is rainy. Last year its walls and roof collapsed and were rebuilt by
Donio. Below the roof of the kitchen are two baskets for the chicken to lay eggs and
incubate them. Adjoining the other side of the bedrooms is a living room with a
table at the center.
1.1.5 Household Appliances, Utensils, and Utilities
Donio and family live a bare existence. Their only appliance is a small,
battery-operated (they do not have electricity), Avegon radio, worth P200 ($3.81),
which is their major source of entertainment and news.
Their kitchen utensils include three aluminum pots of different sizes where they
cook rice or maize, three aluminum kettles of different sizes, and one aluminum
frying pan. They also have some ceramic and plastic plates and glasses and some
ladles and forks and spoons. Their two stoves, fueled by firewood, gathered from
around the neighborhood, and chopped dried coconut husks, are made of a rounded
iron bar supported by a tripod of iron bars.
At night they light the house using a lamp made of bamboo, tin can, and
1
2
-inch-diameter pipe; see Figure 1.12. A cloth is inserted into the pipe from end to end
