TABLEA CHOCOLATE

The San Jacinto TABLEAS are back.

Back read the story:

SWEET SURPRISE IN SAN JACINTO. We met an elderly man named Juanito who accidentally

created a cocoa business. It’s the type of accidental story that RuRi is quite familiar with. Twenty five years ago, Juanito’s company Marcopper Mines in Marinduque was closed down after causing the worst environmental disaster in Philippine history. A fractured drainage tunnel dumped 1.6 million cubic meters of toxic mine tailings into the Boac River, flooding nearby villages. Jobless, he returned to his hometown of San Jacinto, Pangasinan to eke out a living as a tricycle driver. One day, he saw a fruiting cocoa tree by the side of the road. He persuaded the owner to sell him some of the pods for five pesos each. With much perseverance and trial-and-error, Juanito managed to parlay the seeds in those pods into an orchard. At the back of his house he has 200 fully mature and fruiting trees, and each one provides him an income that is able to sustain him in his old age. What a success story, one that is literally about finding the “seeds of opportunity”. How it inspires me to write this.