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LIGAO CITY, Albay: On top of Kawa-Kawa hill in this
city, upland farmers use bunkol in planting seedlings of dinorado,
a variety of palay (unhusked rice)
that produces aromatic and expensive rice usually eaten by
wealthy families in the Bicol Region.
Bunkol,
a long, perforated and slotted bamboo tube, when used to
pound the ground produces a sound similar to that made by a drum.
Kawa-Kawa hill is about 236 meters above sea level and offers a good
view of Tuburan barangay (village) in Ligao City. Atop is an
eight-hectare farmland. Downhill are the Carmelite Sisters convent
and the resettlement houses for those who had been dislocated by
rumblings of Mayon Volcano and typhoons.
The upland farmers still practice
bunkol, primitive farming and after which the bamboo tube was named.
Also known as hasok, bunkol, apparently, has defied modern farming
methods.
As the farmers pound the soil
with the bunkol, women from Tuburan
place seeds on holes made through the pounding, in a seeming
ritual called bubod.
“The bunkol way of dinorado
rice planting was practiced by our ancestors. We want to continue
with it and show it to the younger generation as an effective
farming method,” former Albay governor Fernando Gonzalez told The
Manila Times.
Gonzalez said bunkol the bamboo
tube also serves as a means of communication especially among those
living in potentially hazardous areas.
 --Rhaydz
B. Barcia
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