I am here to share with you my transformative story with pollinators. During the pandemic, one of my favorite activities was to read (as I think many people did), and one of my favorite readings was Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway, and right after that, I read Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, and I was “Ahh!”—feeling, like, blessed for having discovered them, and inspired by their ideas of multi-species relationship and collaborative survival and ethical responsibility.

I decided to establish an allowance with an endangered species, and it all started when my good friend Rodrigo, who is also a beekeeper, talked to me about the possibility of the modern city as a sanctuary for pollinators, because there is less use of pesticides, compared to the fields—where monoculture thrives, and there’s a very high use of this kind of venom for pollinators. And I was amazed by that. Because I would think that pollinators are healthier like outside the city, in the crops, but that’s not necessarily true. And especially not where I live: in Guadalajara, there’s a big, big monoculture thriving around agaves (that’s what tequila is made from), berries (a lot of berries), and avocado (because avocado right now, it’s like super in fashion…).

So I decided that I wanted to learn from pollinators: to listen to them, to observe them, so I could fight with more passion and from place that’s empowered—like the hive is, and like pollination is, as a gesture. And so, during the pandemic, I invited a queen bee to establish her house on the rooftop of my home, and on the day of the bees’ arrival, I offered the hive a mask, a plaster mask of my face, as a way to seal our new relationship. And the bees finished sculpting the mask with wax, pollen, and honey.

And lately I’ve been expanding my relationship not only with honeybees, but I have started to work with butterflies. And there is this amazing oasis-like park inside our city, which we’ve managed to preserve, and they have these— We call it mariposario, but it’s this butterfly dome. And so I’ve been working in collaboration with biologists that study caterpillars and butterflies and their symbiotic relationship with special plants, and so I’ve been going there to like feed caterpillars and feel them, and look at them. Inspired by that, and wanting to do something with butterflies, I found out about the story of the hermanas mariposas—which is “the Butterfly Sisters”.

The Butterfly Sisters were three women from República Dominicana. Their names were Patria, Minerva, and María Theresa Mirabal. And during the ‘60s, they were fighting against the dictatorship of Trujillo. I like to think that they were called the Butterfly Sisters because they were pollinating, like, ideas about resisting and ideas against gender violence. And Trujillo was hitting on one of the sisters, like flirting or wanting something with her, and of course, she didn’t want anything to do with that, and so Trujillo incarcerated the three of them. And on the 25^th of November of 1960, because of social pressure, finally Trujillo let them go. But after letting them go, somebody picked the sisters up and drove them away, and after that, their bodies were found—so they were murdered. So ever since then, every 25^th of November, it’s the commemoration of the Day Against Gender Violence.

So I was amazed at this link between butterflies, resisting, pollination, and this day. And in my country, there’s a lot of femicides and gender violence, so I wanted to do something in conversation with all that. So I developed these butterfly feeders and drinking stations made out of clay, and they are wearable ceramics. You can wear them on the central part of the neck. It’s a flower-like thing, and when you put it like this (demonstrating), there’s this little pool inside, and you put like water and a little salt, so butterflies come feed. And these pieces of the necklace feature many, many names of women who have been victims of femicide. I looked up a list of the names, and it’s not that easy, because we don’t even—there’s a lot of “gray areas,” and there’s not like official lists of all the women that have been murdered. So it was like a labor to look for that.

And the ancient Mesoamerican people used to revere the butterfly, right? It was a sacred animal. So they would take a butterfly and (demonstrating gently catching a butterfly from the air and bringing it close to her face) tell the butterfly a secret. Like “pspspspsps.” Then they would let her go. And the butterfly was believed to be a messenger for the gods and goddesses, to another level of consciousness. So what I was trying to do was like—the butterflies come, and feed, and there’s the names of all these women that have had a violent death, and it’s kind of a metaphor: the butterfly takes that away and, I don’t know, gives it another life. Another life in another level.

This is what I wanted to share with you. (And I haven’t shared with anybody because the piece is not yet ready. But it moved me a lot.) And when I was writing the names on the clay pieces, I could feel like, you know, like I had to cry. I had to cry, and my clay teacher cried with me—it was so powerful. Naming them. Their presence was there, in a joyful, good way.

Thank you.

My country, the Philippines, is made up of thousands of islands, but it was a river that bonded us together.

The Pasig River splits the metropolis in half and connects the sea to the lake within. And from her grew three kingdoms—one of which is Manila—and many other communities whose existence spans 500 to 1,000 years. The people here are called “people from the river,” or taga-ilog (which eventually became Tagalog). And it’s to these people that I owe my heritage, for I am a Tagalog as well. Even now, Tagalog is a predominant language in our archipelago. That means that this heritage has lived for at least 1,000 years, despite our country being a country “officially” for just 100 years. So there’s like—whoah. There’s a huge retention of our history in our language, in our identities.

And the Pasig River is a place of tranquility, of myths, of beauty. Right now, she is, of course, in the middle of a metropolis, so she’s full of concrete, full of shanty towns and buildings. But before, she used to hold sandy banks with mangroves and forests, with animals like deer, water buffalo called carabao, horses, birds, and many kinds of fish that you can eat. Women and children bathed in the river—none of which you can see any more. For example, there are no more carabao on the road. There are no more horses.

But for a long time, people told stories about the water and worshipped in the massive stone formations in the middle of the river. There’s one stone that’s shaped like a crocodile: it’s said that once there was a Chinese traveler on a boat when a live crocodile attacked. And the traveler blurted out a prayer to a Catholic saint—even though he was Chinese—and that turned the crocodile into stone! And that stone can still be seen when the waters dry up or run low. And then there’s also another legend that says that a woman lived in a cave by the river, throwing parties and throwing treasures in the river.

According to multiple cultures in this area, protectors of the river come in many forms, but all are women. The water goddess takes different shapes: like a golden crocodile, or a woman wearing blue. (They say that the name Manila is made up of two different words: mai, a term for women, and then nila, a term for blue. So basically the city is named after a woman in blue, and she is the protector of the city or of the river.) And we also have mermaids in the river. Unlike the usual European stories, in which mermaids are sea-based, our countries have mermaids in the river. So our myths are all based on women protecting our waters.

All of those are tales, but the truth is much more beautiful. Because our people, from thousands and hundreds of years ago, were proud and rich, with their commerce reaching the rest of Asia. They became famous among the thousands of islands that we have in the neighborhood. And the kingdom’s Rajah—so like the chieftain of the kingdom—had a palace filled with gold, jewelry, woolen fabrics. During this time, Spain actually noticed that his palace was almost as big as those in Spain. And the palace’s bamboo fort had cannons that moved—compared to the Spanish ships, which had to turn the entire boat just to tilt their cannons! So we had the high-tech, even though we were using indigenous technology. We had bamboo, and used materials and wood from the forests, and we also had stonesmiths and even silversmiths. That’s why we had cannons, too!

Because of these riches, thanks to the river, the Spanish heard about this place from down South. And the stories they heard led them to travel up to the mouth of the river in Manila. They conquered it, and then called the rest of the islands Filipinas. And that’s why we have the country Philippines right now. Eventually development transformed the riverside, and it was beautifully adorned with palaces, gardens, villages, and churches, with people of various nationalities. Thanks to the river, and European influences, Manila became a global city before airplanes even existed. Unfortunately, given how they regularly used the river since there were no concrete roads for centuries, eventually, the river suffered from neglect.

But right after that came the river’s rescue. Recently there have been like 20 years of continuous effort, so now the river is cleaner. It smells nice, and there are fish and many birds —although the fish are not really—what do you call this—you cannot eat them yet. The water is still quite dirty, but at least it doesn’t smell so bad! Unfortunately, not everyone values the river deeply still. Maybe that’s why it’s not as rejuvenated as what we want. But all these wonderful stories that I told you earlier aren’t common knowledge to us. Our identity as Filipinos is connected to this river, but we still are not using the river in the metropolis as vibrantly as we used to.

So I really long for a renewed connection of the cities and the people with this river, because the heart of these cities and of our country is the Pasig River.

And that’s all. Thank you.

My story is just something that I’ve been thinking about. It’s about my patron god, Ganesha, who is half elephant, half… person/being. (He’s traditionally like half elephant, half man, but I’ve been seeing more and more depictions of him in feminine ways, so now I’m seeing them as half elephant, half non-binary person.)

And Ganesha used to visit my dreams. Since I was really, really young, I would see I would see them emerge around me; I would chit-chat with them. Ganesha is the god of poetry, academics, intellect. And I had always been very academically driven, so they were both assigned to me by people around me, because I was good at school, but I also felt very deeply connected to them.

And I’m from Sri Lanka, where there’s elephants everywhere. So I would also see them in the elephants, in the trees, in the air, in bananas, in things that elephants like to eat. So I really felt their presence for a very long time.

And then we got a little bit disconnected. I got very disillusioned by religion as a whole, and by faith as a whole for a long time. And only fairly recently did I reconnect with Ganesha—during the pandemic, maybe. So we’ve been strong since then, for the last couple years.

But more recently, I’ve also been feeling the presence of my mom’s patron goddess, who is Kali. And she has two sides. She actually has nine sides, but they can be simplified into two sides. One is this incredibly destructive force: she destroys in order to create. She is rage embodied. In most depictions of her, her skin is black or dark blue, her tongue is hanging out. She wears a necklace of skulls, and she has ten hands. In one, she’s holding the head of a man. And another’s got a plate to collect his blood. (Laughs) And in another hand she grips some kind of weapon. She’s a destroyer, and she’s the goddess of, like, endings. But endings in order to create.

And Kali’s other side is motherhood and creation and love and compassion. And my mom has felt very connected to her for a long time. Like if she’s in a Kali temple, her hands get really hot with healing energy, and whatever she asks Kali, she receives.

Lately, I’ve been feeling connected to Kali and trying to figure out, like, how do I reconcile her energy with Ganesha, who’s fairly calm and cool and relaxed, and very like rational. Whereas Kali definitely allows her emotions to lead her more, and is more in touch with her rage. So I’ve been trying to think about how, as a woman who was like an angry child and who was taught to suppress that anger, how can I embrace that rage now? So that’s been on my mind.

And then I remembered the story of when I was in Sri Lanka and I was on a safari ride in Yala National Park, and we had been driving for maybe an hour at this point. We didn’t really see any leopards, didn’t see any bears… we’re just seeing like dry shrubbery the whole time. And then out of nowhere we see this lone, adolescent female elephant.

We see her, she sees us, and then she runs across the road. And I can see that she’s warning the herd behind her. And before we descended on her, she was playing and just like hanging out. And then she sees us, she runs to her herd, and she starts bluff charging. She was running her foot against the soil like she was preparing for a sprint—this was her way of threatening us, saying, “If you come closer, I will charge at you.”

And she looked very young… (the tracker that was with us was able to read elephants’ age and stuff based on prints on their body, and was saying, “She’s really young. She’s probably not even the mother. She’s maybe like the older sister or something in this herd.”) But she was really taking responsibility this time, and bluff charging. And then after we left, she stopped charging and, you know, herded her herd away (Laughs).

So that story has been helping me reconcile those two things, you know? Sometimes the elephant has to embody Kali, and sometimes Ganesha has to embody Kali, too. And there are probably moments when Kali has to embody Ganesha.

Those are some things that have been on my mind that have been helping me connect to my environment, my ancestors, my mom, my nature, and myself.