Thain and the Sugarcane

Hello guys, this is your angel, Thain. It’s been a while since I was able to write articles here.

Did you miss me? 😁

Just kidding. 

Anyway, the reason for my absence these past few days is that I went on a little vacation. I don’t know if you could actually call that a vacation, maybe a break or so. I visited my mom’s place. And that is where some of her siblings also reside. Well, they basically grew up in there. 

The catch is that the place is not that civilized yet. No electricity, rare signals, and just simple life. Away from pollution and the loudness of car engines, What you can actually hear there are the sounds of crickets in the night, the birds humming in the morning and the occasional mooing of cows.

The house is also isolated from other houses and meters away from the nearest store, but the household owns a motorbike, which they normally use when they need to buy something essential. 

It was inside a mango plantation, near a river, and a few steps away from fields of sugarcane plantation. Aside from sugarcane, the place was also dominated by bamboo trees. And there are actually turtles living there. I saw two of them in broad daylight when I went outside to walk around the place. 

Nanay said that during mango season, they flood the plantation because they like to eat fallen mangoes. And there are really a lot of them given the geography of also having swamps and low water. 

So I stayed there for quite some time, and I just arrived here this morning. Yes! This morning, my phone was dead-bat already, so I had to charge it. The power bank I brought will not also suffice. But that's the great thing about being in there. You won't be able to see what's happening on social media, just pure calmness and serenity for a while. 

I actually took some videos during our trek. Since the fields, although just a plantation of sugarcane, vary in altitude, some fields are in the highlands and others are in the lowlands. All the pictures posted here were mine alone, captured during our walk. I could've taken some more landscapes if I had had a battery though. 

This one intrigued me while we were passing a series of ponds. It is analogous to scarecrows placed in corn fields, but this one stands in the middle of the pond. 

The pond caretaker said that they do that because a lot of birds hunt fish, especially those who are stuck in low waters when they intentionally prevent water from crossing other ponds so fish would swim in a particular area.

Almost all the ponds we passed had this stick with clothes in them, and indeed it was effective, as I spotted no birds in ponds where no actual man was working.

I find it amusing, however, because many adventurous bikers like to take the route on the other side of the pond when they stroll around the city, and I wondered, what if they have come here for the night and come across these scary crows, especially when they are placed in water?

I don't know how they will react! Since there are really some people afraid of ghosts or anything unusual. 

After crossing the ponds, we have already arrived in the sugarcane fields, and like I've said, some are placed on high lands and others on lowlands.

And we're walking in the heat of the sun with a 29° Celsius temperature at 8AM. Who knows how much 8 a.m. can hurt?

While walking, I have the time to reflect. There are a lot of sugarcanes thriving to grow, and yes, sometimes people are like sugarcanes too. 

Like sugarcane, which grows on almost all classes of soil provided that it is fertile and well-drained, People like us, although we are scattered in different fields by the time we have been planted, crave for an environment that enables us to grow into a full stalk that yields a great product. 

We yearn for an environment that provides opportunities for growth and people who will nurture us.Help us by providing us with an adequate amount of motivation and energy to continue. But we know, in the end, that it is always up to us to thrive in the given environment. 

Being in a field combined with other stalks one is placed to basically survive and become useful. This means we outgrow some of us. 

Some sugarcane receives too much sunlight, some receives too much water, especially when placed in a waterlogged environment, and some receives too much fertilizer in hopes that it is what the plant needs. 

But the thing is, people's growth isn't maximized when too much is provided. One may be overwhelmed, stressed and thirsty for the actual need being given too much attention and work.

The other may be drowned, being unable to absorb all the needs given. And the other might manifest sourness and spoilage in its growth as it receives things it doesn't need in the first place. 

Like sugarcane, people like us bloom in our own season. When the time is right and the situation is good enough, But provided that the weather is disturbed and cyclones may come to destroy the fields, we are left to thrive on our own. Those who are deeply rooted take as much time to be turned down when the winds blow as those who band together to conquer together.

And finally, the harvest comes, when stalks are cut for sucrose to be produced after a series of grindings. And just like sugarcane, people like us specialize in different fields. Some are like sweetening agents, which make someone else's day, others are like ethanol, which cleanses, some are muscovado, which colors, and others are biomass and biofuel, which serve as alternatives. Ready to take on any role for a system to continuously function. 

We had taken a few more steps before we spotted that average-sized bamboo house from afar, and while approaching it, all I could see was solace in the following days.

But now that it's already over, I'm back in our house where noises are everywhere, but at least I have the time to refresh. I hope you had yours too. 

This is again your Angel, Thain.Thank you so much for reading.