Bangkayanon is what we called of that western part of my grandparents' fishpond (my mother's side) with an area of around 5 has. It has been with the Inventos long before I was born. I practically spent my entire childhood walking around that that area. It has my growing footsteps all over it - so to speak. I learned to swim there - by my own, sometimes alone. When I was small, I remembered looking for mudcrabs around it during the night with my uncle with a gas lantern we called Petromax. I remembered swimming it around midnight chasing somebody who was trying to steal some fish (I found his gill net the next day). It's a sweet piece of my childhood and I want to keep for the Inventos.
Here's my plan for this property:
1. Buy it from the heirs of my grandfather
2. Get a valid lease agreement with the gov't for 30 years.
3. Fence the perimeter
3. Build a fishpond on a selected portion of the area.
4. Build my house in the middle of it
5. Plant mangrove trees on the perimeter and part of the area and protect it (nipa, bakhawan, pagatpat, bungaw)
I envisioned Bangkayonon to become more like a wildlife sanctuary - home of the mayas, the tikarols, the lapays, the haw (monitor lizard). This I believe is what Bangkayanon was before Lolo Pacio found it - a wildlife sanctuary. I will replant and rehabilitate its perimeter, guard and preserve it for the benefit of those who can appreciate nature. You can build a limited but profitable fishpond operation in this area and have a place for wildlife to thrive. The result would also benefit the fishpond operation by restoring mud for construction purposes and also attracting wild fries.
If this place will be left in the hands of the people in the nearby community, it will probably become a bare and barren mud flat in less than ten years. When I was there a couple of weeks ago, people freely cut the surrounding mangrove trees for forage and wood. This has happened to most "katunggan" (mangrove swamps) in the area.
I can think of many other ways to make a living more efficiently than operating a fishpond. Fishponds are a thing of the past - the future is mariculture (fish cages). I intend to take over Bangkayanon and operate a fishpond in it not for commercial reason but for something else - to preserve a place two generations of our clan call home and make it a home again for the wildlife who lived there before them. If that is not a cause worthy of my spare time and money, I don't know what else.
This is the satellite image of the Bangkayanon area:
It's just a part of a 20ha mangrove swamp occupied and cultivated by Lolo Pacio since the 1950's (below):
This is home.
