Over 20 years after Mount Pinatubo eruption, Aeta victims still struggling

More than a million people were left homeless when Mount Pinatubo erupted in on June 15, 1991, considered as the "world’s most violent and destructive volcanic event of the 20th century." Mount Pinatubo's eruption caused the deaths of 847 people, and left 184 others injured, 23 missing, according to park.org, a website devoted to Mount Pinatubo. Days after Mount Pinatubo erupted, former Philippine ambassador to China Alfonso Yuchengco asked Sister Eva Maamo to ride with him in a helicopter to see the extent of the devastation. Maamo, a surgeon-nun, is the founder of a group called "Barefoot Doctors," which was established in 1974 to help indigenous communities. Mount Pinatubo lay dormant for 400 years before it erupted in 1991 "so violently that more than five billion cubic meters of ash and pyroclastic debris were ejected from its fiery bowels producing eruption columns 18 kilometers wide at the base and heights reaching up to 30 kilometers above the volcano’s vent," park.org said.

"For months, the ejected volcanic materials remaind suspended in the atmosphere where the winds dispersed them to envelope the earth, reaching as far as Russia and North America. This phenomenon caused the world’s temperature to fall by an average of one degree Celsius," it added.  

Sick, skinny, and homeless children  

In an interview with GMA News Online on Thursday, Maamo, 71, recalled that in 1991, “Near Santo Tomas River, we saw [a group of] Aetas waving at us but when we approached them, there were sick and skinny children."

 

Despite the condition of the survivors, Maamo said the Aetas only wished for food and a relocation site where they can see “Apo,” a name they used to call Mount Pinatubo, a god they believe in.

The Foundation of Our Lady of Peace Mission, Inc. (FOLPMI), a charitable organization headed by Maamo, thus worked with the Aeta Tribal Council to build a resettlement area in Sitio Gala, Subic, Zambales, where the Aetas can see their “Apo.” Called the Aeta Resettlement and Rehabilitation Center, it is a 72-hectare donated land located within the hills of Subic that can house about 100 tribal families or 700 Aetas. FOLPMI co-founder Fr. James Reuter, S.J., in the official website of Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF), said: “Our Lady of Peace Mission is meeting our national problem of poverty at the lowest level: survival. We are trying to meet the primary need of all people in the third world, everywhere: life.”

 

FOLPMI assists tribal groups, street children, the poor, and the underprivileged by providing them with food, shelter, clothing, and medicines.

 

FOLPMI also helps them with health and medical care, education, self-sustaining livelihood, community organization, and spiritual formation.

 

“We have clinics in several areas. The hospital will allow babies to be born safely. It will allow the sick to get back to normal, like other people. It will allow the old to die with dignity,” Reuter added. FOLPMI currently needs funds to replace the bamboo houses of the Aetas with concrete homes.

“Barefoot doctors” Aside from housing, the Aetas also need medical assistance. Currently, the foundation that Maamo established -- Barefoot Doctors — is helping the tribal group. The foundation has its beginnings in 1974 when volunteer doctors set out to help minorities in Cotabato where tribes such as the T’Bolis, Ubos, Manobos, and some Muslims live.

 

At the time when the foundation was established, Manobo tribespeople were sick because of viral and bacterial infections, Maamo told GMA News Online.

 

“When I visited the Manobos, I saw a child die without seeing a doctor,” Maamo said. “I saw people dying without seeing a doctor or a nurse. So I decided to teach them how to take care of their own people.”

 

“I cannot just do it myself so I started training barefoot doctors,” she said. “But due to the lack of resources in the mountains, we are sometimes forced to use natural resources such as banana stalks and bamboo in performing surgeries.”  

With the help of 300 volunteer doctors and nurses from all over the country, they trained 229 barefoot doctors from the 118 tribes they found. In just a year, the cases of infections they saw before were reduced by one-third, she said.

 

“Joining the mission is not easy. It is a sacrifice of oneself, a selfless rendering of service to humanity,” general surgeon Dr. Gabby Peñas said in the RMAF website.

 

To donate and volunteer for FOLPMI’s Aeta Resettlement and Rehabilitation Center, please contact Sis. Eva Maamo at (02)8257653 and 09215341433 or visit www.folpmi.org - with a report from Tracy Cruz, VVP, GMA News