Thursday, June 22, 2006

Failure and its side effect

Failing miserably in the rattan venture where I lost a number of things not the least of which was a logging truck, I got to thinking of something I was told by a friend of mine who was into logging back in the days when there were virgin forests. He said that the natives who lived in the mountains were a lot smarter than us who lived in the lowlands. He behaves like a monkey and is just as clever as a monkey. He said something which I found to be painfully true: all that an indigenous native thinks about is to ge the money from your pocket. It is therefore not inconceivable that he will tell you of fabulous treasures hidden behind waterfalls, or gemstones or of planes that crashed deep in the forest. He will tell you anything and watches your eyes secretly for a glint of interestt. My friend told me that the native was an excellent psychologist and we could never get anything truthful out of him because he knows how to give just enough truth to get away with a bagful of lies.

Having a lot of people who called you "boss" and hanging on to your every word like it was the word of God, I was put in a quandary. I could not very well just disband my little group who stood by my through our adventures in the forest. All told, I had operated in three areas with three separate crews and I thought that I had handled the difficult aspects of the venture well. I was just unlucky, was my loser's thought, in an effort to provide me a consoling thought to salve my bruised ego. The thing that really got me going was the thought that I had an excellent crew who were loyal to me and would go with me to the ends of the earth for an adventure.

After a few months of operating in the mountains, I had gained a rather dubious reputation as a cool operator and pretty soon I was getting all kinds of information about this and that. That I had been burned on the rattan venture was not a reason to leave the mountains with my tail between my legs. As I had said, there were lots of information about a lot of things including gemstones and quartz crystals. I would find people at my doorstep offering me all sorts of rocks and stones: bull quartz, quartz crystals, rhodonite, carnelian, agate and other semi-precious stones. I just collected all of these and filed them in the back of my head until I could figure out what to do with this information while giving whoever brought these just enough money to keep him coming back for more..


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Friday, June 09, 2006

Lessons in the rattan business

I get my first taste in the practical aspects of bringing rattan from the mountains to the buyers in Cebu. Rattan is classified as Minor Forest Products and there are rules and regulations governing their cutting and transport. Not everyone is allowed to cut rattan. One needs to have a cutting permit. This is usually granted to indegenous peoples organizations. While this is meant to provide livelihood to the indegenous peoples living in the area where rattan is being harvested, what really happens is a far cry from what the laws intended. Cutting permits can be bought from whoever has them, It is therefore a fact that those who have cutting permits never cut any rattan in their lives. They just sell thes permits to anyone who wants them.

Transcporting rattan needs another permit. While a permit is used only for one trip, because it is so hard to get a permit to transport minor forest productrs, it is secretly recycled so that it can be used over and over again. The trick is to pay off the forestry officials who man the checkpoints. Transporting the rattan poles by water gives the other government agents another chance to make bribe money. Upon reaching Cebu, the cost would have gone up dramatically. While it may appear lucrative on paper, the actual experience of going to the mountains, regotiating with the cutters, transporting the rattan poles, is so tedious and dificult it was not worth the money you get once you bring the poles to the market.

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