Tribal Outreach

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As part of DTS, we went for two weeks to an area of Palawan called Ransang, where we did minor outreach to tribes in the mountain. This is journal-ized description of those days.

Saturday, Feb 02/08
We left the Santa Lourdes base at 3AM. I walked with half the group for about 45 minutes to the highway and more, until we got picked up by the multi-cab who took the first group to the bus stop. The bus ride was typical at first, but then got pretty bumpy as we approached more remote areas. These buses are built like army tanks. The long-distance buses double as local transit, so there tends to be a lot of people on a bus. Also, these people put everything on a bus. A basket full of stuff they bought in the city, a live rooster, large sacks of rice, lumber or other building supplies, etc. Simply put, if someone were to order a boat and they needed to get it to their place near the water, they would probably put it on top of the bus. Anything unable to drive itself goes along. Obviously, public transit is crucial transportation here.
We went from Puerto Princesa through Narra, Quezon and Rizal to Ransang. It was a 6-hour trip that was hot and dusty. Every time we stopped, we had to cover our mouths to keep from tasting the gravelly air. After we arrived at YWAM Ransang just past noon, we kicked it back. I slept a while to atone for the 3-hour night preceding the excursion.
The main house at the base is smaller, and there is only one other house for the DTS students. Since it’s mostly families attending the tribal DTS, there’s not a whole of space here, but it’s good to have a river with clean water for cooking and laundry. There is no electricity in the Ransang barangay, but we have a solar cell that can collect about 2 hours of light to use in the evening. Also, we have a tank to collect rain water for drinking. It actually tastes good. People seem nice here.

Sunday, Feb 03/07
In the morning, we took a little walk through the bush to a lowlander tribe called Sumorom, about 20 minutes away from the YWAM base. They seemed kind of sullen, as in not too excited. I had yet to learn that none of these tribes really have it in their culture to show too much excitement about anything. One or two of them did let us pray for them though, and they definitely appreciated us being there. After our service we went to go visit an old lady, over the age of 90, who is no longer able to walk and is completely blind. She was having lunch on the floor of her shabby house when we came, and ate Ria explained that she was a great intercessor who has been praying for God to reach people around the world since she was young and still living in the mountains. It was an amazing thing to see someone with such drive to still be able to pray so much when she was so immobilized. She prayed for us and was very happy that we would go to Magtanor, where she was originally from.
When we got home, I was so tired that I slep in the afternoon and missed going to the "black beach" Ive been informed of. I hop I can find another time to go during the week. Time is so elusive here. One day you feel like you have a lot of time to spare, the next day you realize you didn't, and you have to make up for it. Not to mention, catching up on sleep is delightful but a complete waste of time if nobody else is interested in being quiet or maintaining a decent sleep hour. Today, I really felt unenergetic and unmotivated to live out the rest of my experience. I get those days here and there. I hope it's just "one of those days", but I already long for the end of DTS. I'm glad I started, and I'm not disappointed with it, I just really need my independence back. It will come as a reward for my patience and hard work though, and I just need to stay focused.

Monday, Feb 04/08
We did "construction" on the future outreach dorm at the base, even thought it was more like destruction. All we did was break the red earth, shovel it into wooden boxes, and haul it out to the dumping pile. 6 hours of that under the sweltering sun is pretty tiring. Me and the guys went to a bigger river about 30 minutes walk from here to enjoy a delightful chilldown.

Tuesday, Feb 05/08
More "construction" in the morning. In the afternoon, we went to the local community centre, which is a basketball court with bleachers, and cleaned the place up. It was a busy day because we also had to prepare for our excursion to the mountains of Tao't Batu, where the several tribes we were to visit were located.

Wednesday, Feb 06/08
We left the base yard at 6:15AM on a strenuous and intense hike to Obodun, which we approached at 11:30. Considering many of us had never gone on a serious hike before, 5.25 hours was a good time. Our director guessed it would take us between 6 and 8 hours. The path was often so narrow that I had to wonder if our guide (pastor Lumikay Diklay) really knew the way. Of course he did, because he hikes down and back up to his home in Obodun every week. He was our guide for a reason. We stayed at his families house and even thought most of us were unable to speak a word of Palawano them, they made us feel welcome.
Our water source was a treachorous 15-minute hike down a slipper slope away from our place, and was the equivalent of a stream of pee running our of a piece of bamboo. I was to learn in the future, that this was the water works of moutain people. This is how they get the water running between pieces of rock into a usable form. There is no limit to how many piece of bamboo they will link together to get running water to use. And no slope is unscalable for their bare feet. Our washroom is a bolo and a hidden patch of earth in the bush. Talk about living simply. It makes perfect sense, though.

Thursday, Feb 07/08
After breakfast, we headed towards the caves of Signapan, which are well-known by archaeologists and reasearchers in the world. The government has even tried to take ownership in attempt to "preserve" it as a piece national culture and something like that, but fortunately the Diklay family still has full ownership of it and it is still completely natural, instead of being modified to be tourist friendly.
Before we reached the cave, we stopped to do some much needed laundry at a river while our tribal companions went to go pick some delicious tropical fruits for our tastebuds. We ate many buko (young coconut) and star apples, which tend to leave a sap-like on your face if you're not careful (which is hard when it tastes so good). Then we headed towards the caves again.
We walked into the big cave for about 15 minutes and had to turn back because a very large tree that had been carried in by flooding was blocking the path further. Kuya lumikay said we hadn't even reached half of the length of the caves, so it was a bit of a disappointment. We went out and the guy went to another place higher in the rock where Lumikay takes his family when there is typhoon or any other danger for people living at the peak of a mountain. It was a tight squeeze for a chap like me, because we had to crawl through some small openings, but I refused defeat and reaped the benefits later, while standing on the ledge of the cliff. There was an even higher opening which Lumikay said his father had lived in. He had been unable to scaled the wall when he tried, but his brother had made it up there and said there was still many old things up there from his father's living there. These items are artifacts for many researchers and visitors, and several people have offered high prices for these items. Some of them were sold, but now missionaries have explained to them that they are very valuable piece of culture and the family has decided not to sell any more. This place is still a natural wonder. No wooden stairs for weak legs, no railed walkways to guide you safely through the caves, no DO NOT signs, and only it's original owner to guide you through. In that sense, it was better than the underground river.
We returned to the river for lunch and broke into our most prized fruit, a dorian. Delicious. We returned to Obodun in late afternoon. I went on 2 20-minute water runs down the mud-path to the pee-stream, pounded some rice grain, and kicked back to write this entry.

Friday, Feb 08/08
Today is one day closer to No Lover Day, AKA Valentine's day. Surprisingly, this is the least I've thought about Valentine's day in many years. That's perfectly fine with me.
After breakfast we hiked another hour through the mountains to Simbang-Pangi, another tribe in the Tao't Batu who are no longer animists but Christians as of recently. Within less than an hour of reaching the place, I already got the hook-up for pastor Lumikay to make me the kind of guitar that I saw here. 2 strings (technically 1), 8 notes. Simple, but pure goodness. Because it will only be finished in a month, I really hope I am able to bring it back with me. I'm actually hoping I can obtain some other instruments in future travels, but I'm already gonna have to come up with a plan for where to keep this while I travel, because it is far too big for my backpack, and I'd hate to drag through the wear-and-tear of backpacking.
In the afternoon, we dressed some wounds on the children and taught Tagalog literacy to them. 99% of people understand only Palawano here, and are unable to write or spell it, so getting them to read Tagalog's English characters from a large sheet of paper was quite a task itself. I really learned to be thankful for my knowledge. How many of us know that being able to read and write is a blessing? Could you live without it? But this situation is still weird for me, who had never been rendered so verbally useless before. I chose to do my DTS in the Philippines largely because I had the advantage of knowing some Tagalog. But now, only 2 out of our group are able to speak the language. Of course this is part of the extremity of this place that I am enjoying, but if I was ever to live in Palawan, I'd be on the fast track to learning Palawano. I was able to hand out some candy I brought for the kids, but unable to ask first "do you want some?," so I just did it in silence. They were equally incapable of thanking me, so it was kind of weird. Oh well, there's only so many languages I can learn out of the thousands in the world today.

Saturday, Feb 09/08
Hardly had we woken up, when a woman from the tribe told us that someone had been seriously hurt down the path we had taken to here. I was expecting it to be a broken leg or something. Our director asked for a volunteer to go. We say in silence for only 3 minutes before I volunteered, even if it meant going alone. Two others volunteered soon after and we headed out out, me singing to myself in the style of an early 90's cartoon series theme "Rescue heroes! Here they come!" Bringing the first aid kit I had prepared for our moutain trip and some guava leaves, we found fixed the young teenagr had cut himself witha bolo while preparing cassava for breakfast for himself and his wife, who was too sick to do anything but lay there, and fixed his profusely bleeding finger. After we OKed everything, he gave us some of the cooked cassava. It was dirty and our own breakfast was waiting at Simbang-Pangi, but I ate it because that's what you do when someone thanks you by giving (and because I was hungry already). Cassava is actually pretty good, despite that it's a root crop these people eat every single day.
By the time we got back to Simbang-Pangi, they had finished eating breakfast, so we caught up with them to teach more literacy. Not much happened in the afternoon and evening.

Sunday, Feb 10/08
A 10AM, we took a 45-minute hike to another tribe called Magtanor, where we were made very welcome with the ever-popular cassava and cassava leaves which they gave us. When we performed a church service for them in the afternoon, they were so happy we had come. The tribe has been Christian for over 30 years, and the church is self-sufficient here. The pastor we met here has outreaches in several tribes and walks an intense moutain just to maintain things. He is known to build a house wherever he next ministers and leave it when time comes to go to another tribe.
Again, it pained me to be unable to talk to these people, especially the young boys that would constantly play around the corner of where we slept and cooked (the church). I believe more church buildings should look like this one instead of corporate complexes, but I divulge from opening that can of worms in a travel blog...

Monday, Feb 11/08
After some more teachings to the people in the morning, we took our toughest hike yet f, which was 4 hours of rain and sliding down muddy slopes. For me, it was also a lot of grabbing thorny things to keep myself from sliding and getting hit in the face by branches. I was so wet and dirty by the end of it, and my shoes were more or less unrecognizable. Several times, I asked myself if I really wanted to continue hiking. I was pretty unimpressed with 3 days of constant rain.
After we arrived in Baluing I changed into my only pair of dry clothes (I had no dry t-shirts). This much rain makes it hard for clothing to dry in less than 3 days (no exaggeration). We stayed in the house of the pastor we had met in Magtanor. Like in Simbang-Pangi, a guy of my height has to be very careful when walking on the bamboo floors to not break through it. Floors here are built just strong enough to handle their weight.
We all agreed it would be a good idea to crap out and just recooperate instead of wearing ourself thin with much to do.

Tuesday, Feb 12/08
Praise the Lord! Sunshine. This lifted my spirits immensely, because I love sunshine, no matter how hot it gets. I only hope it stays hot so our hike tomorrow goes much better. It will be our longest one yet, as we have to head back through one of the tribes we came through just to get back to the YWAM base. This place is making us feel so welcome. Almost every meal, we are given cassava or rice. This started before we had even made our first meal, which 4 times out of 5 we share with the tribes. After lunch we did some teachings, storytelling, singing, thanksgiving, etc.
I don't look forward to walking for 7 hours tomorrow, but I do to be back in a place where I can talk to strangers, but I don't to leaving these people who are so happy to hear what we have to say, but I do to dry clothing. I realize I have a lot more to eventually explain about this culture to my readers, but I'll keep it for when I get back. The gist of it is, don't raise your voice, don't sit or with the opposite gender unless you are married to them, girls must wear something to cover their knees, 12 years old is high time for a boy to get married (and 6 years is not too young an age for his wife), because if you are able to build your own house you are considered able to have a family, eating lots of root crops, and don't give a girl anything unless you want to marry her.

Wednesday, Feb 13/07
We headed out as soon as the sun started to come up for our return to the lowlands. We retraced through Magtanor but took an alternate route past Simbang-Pangi and Obodun to get back to the Balin-Balin market. It rained almost the entire time. We really faced the challenge this time, because our director sprained her ankle, I was seriously pissed off about it raining, and others barely made it down the moutain. After eating our lunch in the market, we went for a short hike to Fatima's house, one of my classmates. When we came back to the market, we did a 15 minute presentation and gave out pansit to eat. We headed back to the base. My feet were in so much pain by now. I wasn't even walking normal anymore. My ankle was raw from rubbing against the back of my shoes and both just wanted to give in right there on the road. Still, I quickened my pace on this homeward stretch. I wanted to get first dibs on showering at the creek. I did a whole of being lazy in the evening.

Thursday, Feb 14/07
Do-Nothing/Relax Day day at the base. No Valentine's day for me. I slept extra-long and visited the "black beach" with Orville. It was disappointing actually, and we had to walk home in pouring rain. Other than a failed attempt at sun-drying my slew of wet clothing, not much happened. As if we really needed this much rain. I was not at all pumped about it.

Friday, Feb 15/07
Typical day with outreach at a high school a few minutes walk from the base.

Saturday, Feb 16/07
We take the bus back to the base in Santa Lourdes. This was so relieving.
In retrospect, I had a great experience, but it was very tiring. I wouldn't make the trip back for only a few days in the tribes, but I would go back some day if I felt the need to. I would go know some Palawano and a better idea of what the culture was like. I would pack smarter (you learn something on every trek) and approach the experience from a new angle. It wasn't very efficient to be there for only 5 days, but I now realize that any outreach I will be doing in my DTS is just a taste. To really create a bond with the people, you have to focus and be patient for many years or months. I think that's the only really disappointment I had. I made it up, I sometimes shared with the people a message from the Bible, what God had done for me, and made it down without dieing. And that's what really matters.

Some things my journals fails to mention that you should probably know is:
-while we were fixing the guys sliced finger, a witch doctor showed up and saw that we had it covered, and left. I didn't know he was a witchdoctor at the time, so to cross the language barrier, I gave the chap a friendly nod, which he returned.
-I had cockroaches in my backpack and sleeping bag when I cam back down the moutain.
-one of the families in Simbang-Pangi has dug a cave in the ground beneath their house where they hide from thunder. They also posed a major problem when our food was sitting on a banana leaf on the floor.
-there was a pig in Ubodon that really seemed to like me. The only thing I can think of to explain this is that I had the first light skin (other than his) that he had seen in a while.
-I ate liquids with a spoon made out of pineapple leaves. Anything semi-solid was eaten using my hands.
-I refused to use water purification tablets on the water because I think they really scheat your immune system out of a chance to get stronger. I never got sick from it, in fact the water tasted better than bottled water in many tribes.
-I slept only in my thin fleece sleeping bag on weak bamboo floors and used my bag of clean clothing as a pillow.

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