BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental, Philippines – The clearing of waterways has hit a snag here in one of the urban barangays after the local Risk Reduction Management Office ran into grown balete trees, commonly believed to be houses of spirits, that delayed the declogging of the Mambuloc Creek.
“It is difficult to find people who are willing to cut these trees down,” physician Anna Maria Laarni Pornan told DNX as she confirmed that a cultural belief about the balete, locally known as a lunok, is delaying clearing nd desilting operations.
The lunok refers to the tree as a home of malevolent spirits that can bring bad luck on those who cut it down.
Pornan, who heads the local Disaster and Risk Reduction Management Office told DNX aside from the difficulty in looking for people to cut down the trees, the sheer size of the trees presents risks, like branches falling down during cutting on houses that have been built by people near the trees, some in the middle of the creek itself.
Mambuloc, a creek that runs across at least eight villages near the city center, usually overflows during heavy rains as its banks are populated by informal settlers aside from being heavily silted and choked by garbage.
The creek’s part that passes through Barangay 10 near the Reclamation Area is one of the usually flooded areas during monsoon rains and storms.
Pornan said the parts cutting through Barangay 9 and 18 – both near Lacson Street, a major thoroughfare, also usually experience flooding.
The creek just behind the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital is the part where at least four grown balete trees can be found.
Residents who have built makeshift houses near the trees, some in the middle of the creek’s dried up part told DNX the trees have been growing there for several decades with one of them estimating the trees to be around 25 years.
All of them claimed the trees are lunoks with unod (beings living inside), which explains why no one had dared to bring these down for fear of bad luck.
