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A JOURNEY DOWN THE AGUSAN
Day 3
Talacogon to Butuan
The extended El Niño summer
had taken its toll. The river just
past Talacogon was low, laid
bare: I was unsettled by a fear
of shallows, and the thought of
hidden rocks wreaking havoc
on our propellers. The trunks of
giant trees and fallen clumps of
bamboo that once lined her banks
now sat midstream. This was a
very different Agusan, hemmed
in by tall ramparts of scoured,
gnawed and retreating earth.
Strands of gravel, widening with each
flood, created ever-expanding shoals
that transformed the smooth flow into
swirling turbulence. Here and there,
our boat was forced to navigate at a
crawl, with boatmen using poles to
pull us through in a slow, gingerly
slalom. Clearly, the land was changing
at a pace much faster than the river
could handle.
The river was teeming with life.
Kids bathed in the shallow fringes as
soulful sailfin lizards slithered up the
The Agusan river basin gives wealth and life
to easternMindanao, refreshing a belt of land
that stretches almost 350km
bank. Laundry women wrapped
in
malong
, or tube skirts, chatted
with one another and giggled by
the water’s edge, as they must have
done for many years. At almost
every bend, birds of every size
and shape — herons, egrets, terns,
ducks — stood, stalked, living off
the bounty. All around stood sago
palms, in this day and age still
harvested to produce starchy-
sweet
onaw
, a favorite local treat.
Herders watched as their tethered
