DAY 17 (Community Quarantine)

     FORTIFIED-Seventeen days of community quarantine and fifteen days of enhanced community quarantine. People please behave, stay inside, let's flatten the curve, or else the quarantine will be upped another notch to the Fortified Enhanced Community Quarantine or "FEC-Q".

      TAKIP-SUSO- It's an herb (not lady's breast) that looks like the cover of a snail. When we were young we used it  to cover bleeding impetigos (mamaso)to prevent flies from landing on the open sore, usually on the legs. We lick or  spit on a leaf and then put in on top of the affected area.     

     On reading about this plant, I found out that farmers in the US, where takip-suso is a weed called pennywort,  believe that when their cows eat the weed it damage the cows' liver killing them. But studies found that the culprit were the parasites, worm larva, that live on pennywort's leaves.

    There, we were licking the leaves with without washing them. Thank heavens we still have functioning liver and are still alive.

    There used to be a lot of these plant in our neighborhood. It is found on wet and damp area, under the the batalan, lababo, on the moist and damp base of hollow block walls, and under banana trees.       

     But now, since there are no batalans and almost every surface is cemented, takip suso is extinct here.  

    I got mine from Baguio, from my mothers garden. 

    I have two varieties here one is the Gotu Kola (or Asian pennywort), it has tuber or rhizomes, and the other one is dollarweed (pennywort) which has creeper roots. The leaves are also different. Dollarweed is round; gotu is kidney shaped, like a half of a clover. They are related to the carrots and celery, the umbelifera family. 

    Both are edible. The leaves can be eaten raw or mixed with vegetable salads and other recipes. Of the two, the Gotu Kola is preferred by asians, obviously because it's the native variety. 

   Eating three leaves a day is supposed to boost brain power, slow down aging plus gazzilion other health benefits. But there is always a caveat, some medicinal plants have side effects and some can cause allergy and upset stomach.

     I haven't tried it, but I will do so once I have propagated them, and I have grown enough for a sustainable supply.

     NARRA- I passed by my grade school alma mater. Had a look around. My heart is yearning for the old school, the Marcos type building, the open ground, wooden desk, nothing is the same anymore. The old is gone, everything has changed.

     I think that is why old school or university buildings in the western countries evoke a deep sense of loyalty from the alumni because their building and the campus stand unchanged for hundred of years, upgraded and retrofitted but still the same.  Alumni can walk around and still see the same landmarks, trees, bricks, and relive all the memories. Here it's different. When I visited my alma mater, it's not the same school anymore. 

     Anyway, I am looking for a memory anchor. I was looking for the old narra tree that stands at the center of the school. It shaded us on countless flag ceremonies. It should be bigger and taller than how I remember it to be, but all the tree I see look young and where the old tree should be stood a twin-trunked young narra.

    Maybe the old tree was cut down during construction.

    But on closer examination, there it is. The old, gnarled trunk is buried under two meters of landfill and concrete. 

   The twin trunks are it's main branches, reaching for the sun.