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Mayon volcanoMAYON REVISITED:Courage under fireA photo update by Isagani Serrano and Chris QuintanaIn Bicol Province of the Philippines (see yellow onmap), with its more than 300,000 hectares of landdedicated to rice farming alone, calamities such as theMayon volcano’s eruptions and raging storms translateinto huge losses—almost 30,000 sacks of rice in justone cropping season. Yet, despite these devastatingcircumstances, farming communities continue to thrive.The people of these villages have learned to calmly slipback into their daily routines and courageously facethese calamities as part and parcel of their daily lives.For a region often rocked by Earth’s fury and floodedfrom the sky, it is no wonder that its people havecharacteristically been known as oragon—a local termthat captures their tenacity and resilience in the face ofadversity.Editor’s note: In October 2006, Rice Today featured the Mayon volcanoand how the changes in its mood affect the farming community in Bicol,Philippines (see Rice in harm’s way on pages 24-27 of Rice Today Vol. 5,No. 4), and again in January 2007, when the rains of Typhoon Duriandislodged tons and tons of Mayon’s volcanic ash into the rice fields andvillages below (see Once were rice fields on pages 20-25 of Rice Today Vol.6, No. 1). When the volcano started grumbling again late in 2009, ourteam of photographers returned to capture its fits of temper, as wellas the struggle of the people who continue to live under the “moody”26 Rice Today April-June 2010 volcano’s shadow.