Holy Week in Philippines

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The reason for choosing to come to the Philippines at this time is so that we could spend Easter with our Friends, Carl & Cheryl Rich and their15-year old son David. This and our Exodus tour starting in late February were really the two anchor dates for our whole trip. Fortunately, the rest of the people we were to visit were flexible enough to accommodate a couple of aging Americans with a thirst for adventure.

Our time leading up to Good Friday services found us exploring the SIL compound and surrounding towns with Carl and Cheryl. We visited classrooms, school activities, Bible studies and pray times. We became familiar with some of the local Ifugao (the regional people group) customs and even visited an American expatriate living in a nearby town.

We ate breakfasts by ourselves at the guesthouse and had lunches and dinners together with the Rich’s. The meals there are a combination of American and Pilipino styles but more on the eastern side.

On Good Friday morning we drove to Kiangen, a small town about a one hour drive north, into the mountains for services. The Rich’s lived here for 11 years prior to moving to Bagabag.

The Good Friday message was (surprises, surprise) to be Jesus’ seven last words from the cross. Although the congregation is only about 50 people, they have two pastors and they broke the message into three parts. First was his word from Matthew by one pastor and then this three words from Luke by the other pastor. The congregation had had asked Carl & Cheryl for one of the four of us to deliver the last part, the thee words from John - I was elected.

They all speak English, even if a bit haltingly, so my portion of the message didn’t have to be translated. The preparation was fun and I was able to relate to our visit to Jerusalem just a month earlier. When I told them about it being hot and dry in Jerusalem, I was able to relate to the temperature in the Philippines. It’s hot (boy, is it hot) but not so dry. I told them that back home it was 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) and when it’s that temperature at home, we dress as I was dressed that day - in cotton slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. None of them could imagine any place being that cold.

Cheryl and Cheryl shared a pair of songs that were well received. Both are familiar to us, but neither are particularly well known in the Philippine mountain regions. The congregation has no piano or organ, so they sang without accompaniment. They sang very well and even harmonized a bit.

After services we walked around the village a bit and then returned to the church for a pot luck lunch. We were to go farther north another hour or so to Benaue (pronounced ben OW we) but David would rather spend the time with his friends back in Bagabag. Carl drove him home and the ladies and I got to take public means of transportation in two stages to Benaue.

The first stage was to get down the mountain into the valley and the provincial capital town of Lagawe. For this stage we chose the every popular “tricycle” taxi that is prevalent in the Philippines. This tortuous device is the Philippines’ equivalent to the Cambodia/Thailand tuk-tuk. It is a sidecar welded onto a 100cc motorbike and is the conveyance of choice for in-town and short distance trips.

Since the sidecar can only hold two American-size adults (don’t ask about how many Pilipinos), Cheryl and Cheryl squeezed in there and I got to ride on the back of the motorbike - side saddle. I started out by straddling the seat behind the driver as you normally would if it were just a motorbike. However, there is no place inside the contraption to put my oversized clod hopper, so I had to sit sideways and keep both hooves on a little bar welded on for just that purpose.

It took only a couple of minutes to get used to “riding like a girl” and we were off, careening down the mountain road at a frightening pace of 15 or 20 mph. Soon I was able to overcome my fear and even take some pictures one-handed while gripping the flimsy bar at the top of the canopy for dear life. At the end of our 45-minute 200 peso ($4 US) flight careening down the mountainside, I was ready to get off.

After short a stop for recuperation and an ice cream at a local restaurant in Lagawe, we were ready for the next leg of our public transportation day. It was still mountain roads but uphill and quite a bit further to Benaue, our next stop. Besides, it was starting to look like it might rain. Clearly, a trike was not the answer to our transportation needs. Of course, we could have just ridden back south to Bagabag with Carl and David and then north again, through Lagawe and on to Benaue. However, it would have been pretty boring even with Carl’s sterling company. Therefore, our planned transportation was to take another popular Pilipino conveyance, a jeepney.

A jeepney is a semi-homemade contraption with a front end that looks like a Jeep (c’mon use your imagination) and the back end that sort of looks like a bus (keep that imagination active). It follows a set route sort of like the colectivo in Mexico or the dolmuş in Turkey. However, both of those are far more civilized and sophisticated. It looks like it should hold about a dozen people plus a driver but the driver wouldn’t consider starting unless he has at least 20 passengers. By the time we left town our jeepney had 34 passengers - 30 inside (yep, wall to wall) and another 4 on the roof. Roof riding is acceptable in the provinces, but illegal in Manila.

Several times along the route, the vehicle stopped and some people got off. At other stops people got on - all heading north toward Benaue. About halfway into the one-hour trip, it started to rain. It not only rained, it poured. With a quick stop by the side of the road, the passengers inside rolled down the side curtains to keep us inside dry (let’s call that less wet) and the guys on the roof scrambled down into the relative safety of the inside. Fortunately by this time enough people had gotten off so that the inside could contain all 26 of us. Price for the one-hour trip? 35 pesos (about 75 cents) each

We arrived in Benaue none the worse for the wear after about an hour and without further incident. We wandered around a couple of shops in the market and ended up at a coffee shop for quick cup. I neglected to mention that when Carl & Cheryl first arrived in the Philippines 17 years ago, they lived in Benaue for the first year or so before they moved to Kiangen. They still visit there often and have many friends among the local population. One of those friends was the owner of that coffee shop and she wouldn’t hear of us paying for our refreshments.

It was there that we met up with Carl and also their friend, Linda, who runs Noah’s Arc Children’s Home high in the mountains above Benaue. The coffee shop looks out over the river and the terraced rice fields for which the area is famous. From the veranda of the coffee shop we could see the orphanage, the apartment where the Rich’s first lived, the river valley and the rice terraces. It was a beautiful scene indeed, even with the inclement weather.

After touring some more of the shops in the market, we went for dinner at the local fancy-schmancy hotel at the outrageous price of well under $10 per person. After that, Linda and her ever-present 7-year old daughter, Casey, piled us into her van and drove us up the mountain to her orphanage.

The term “orphanage” is perhaps a little overused as a good many of the children who are there are from disadvantaged families with one parent who cannot adequately provide for them year-round. Linda takes them in and provides them with food, shelter, education and most of all love.

Since it was semester break for two weeks, most of the older kids had gone home to their villages and only the dozen or so actual orphans were there. When we arrived, it was well after dark and the kids were already in their PJ’s watching TV together. They greeted us excitedly and posed for pictures like pros. Something tells me they’ve done this before.

We retired to Linda and Casey’s apartment for pie and then toddled off to bed in the orphanage’s guest apartment. In the morning, we reconvened for breakfast and then had a tour of the orphanage and a look at the kids in their play environment before we set out on our tour of the Benaue sights.

A ride down the mountain to the town and then up the other side of the valley brought us to several “view points” where we could gaze out at the beautiful river valley and rice terraces. Of course each of the view points is surrounded by scads of shopping opportunities. These range from real hand made treasures to real hand made junk. This gave you-know-who a chance to ply her skills at selecting just the right souvenir from the area. Do I need to report on her success?

After lunch, Carl drove us back to Bagabag so we could prepare for Easter Sunday at the SIL compound. The hour and a half car ride was pleasant but not nearly as colorful as the tricycle and jeepney rides to get us there. We could see much more of the mountain scenery on the way back, however.

Easter Sunday at the SIL compound in Bagabag starts with services that are a bit different from any I’ve experienced before. The non-denominational protestant service has Bible readings, hymns, children’s sermonettes, etc. - nothing unusual about that. However, the flow starts with Palm Sunday and carries through the Last Supper, the Trial, the Crucifixion, the burial and finally the Resurrection. It was really quite new to me. I was, however, afraid that we’d never get to the punch line!

The ladies served a wonderful Easter dinner consisting of ham, potatoes (get that? no rice!) and other American-style accompaniments. However, all of this was merely the warm-up for the Easter Egg Hunt! They did it in two stages with the Jr High and High School age kids in one area/time and the elementary and pre-school age kids in their own, separate hunt. Guess which one this grandma and grandpa watched.

We stayed up late to make a Skype connection back to our home church during Sunday services there. It was nearly 11 PM in the Philippines by the time we got a slot in the service and then we had a power outage in Bagabag. Once the generator kicked in, we re-established our connection but within a couple of minutes the electricity switched back again and we lost the connection a second time. By that time, we’d made our greetings and decided we had better get to bed since we were due to leave for Manila at 4:30 AM the next day.

zzzzz

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Photos

the Rich's
and those other two also

Preacher Hal
catch the enraptured pastor at the left of the photo

our tricycle
That's Cheryl Rich inside the sidecar

Passing another trike
that's the driver and me in the mirror

jeepney
they fill 'em up!

our jeepney
ours was a Mercedes Bernz, about one third of them are MB's another one third are Rolls Royce

Benaue
the Rich's first apartment is center top. If Cheryl dropped any sox, they fell all the way down

orphans
what a bunch of posers! John Ray at center front has CP