m a n i l a g i r l

“Good afternoon mam, grade six 26, grade five 36, grade four 44, grade three 38, grade two 32 and grade one 42 ito po numero ng bata by grade sorry matagal hindi kasi kuwan ang isang kamay ko dahil nasa ospital ako ngayon,Cge maraming salamat po.  Advance happy valentines day.”

- Text message on Jan. 17, 2007 from Mang Narsie Adais,
Community Leader and Mt. Pulag Guide

            I never thought I’d have “text pals” after getting back from my first climb up Mt. Pulag in Kabayan, Benguet.  I also brought home two dead toenails and a nerve-racking survival story but friends like my group’s mountain guide Mang Narsie Adais and Department of Environmental Resources (DENR) Officer Ms. Tamiray Emerita were most definitely the better end of the deal.  I actually thought I’d just have another once-in-a-lifetime experience in a less frequented part of the Philippines, go back to Manila, tell my friends about it, post it on my blog and that was it.  I’m eternally grateful things didn’t pan out as I expected them to.             

Our group on the dangerously challenging Akiki Route of Mt. Pulag in Benguet

(December 2006)

A mountaineering enthusiast since college, I’ve always dreamed of making it up Mt. Pulag.  A long-time favorite among mountaineers, it stands 2,922 meters, towers over all other peaks in Luzon and is only second in scale to Mt. Apo in Davao farther down the Philippines'  extreme south, in Mindanao.  Mt. Pulag is located in a national park of the same name which is also home to indigenous communities of the Ibaloi, Kalanguya, Kankana-eys and Kara-os.  The period from November to March is actually the best months to visit while May to August is riskier because of thunderstorms and slippery trails. 

I climbed Mt. Pulag for the first time last December 27-30, 2006 with a motley group of young professionals based in Manila.  On the 29^th, our group struggled through the bone-chilling cold of Pulag’s mossy forest after lunch on the rolling hills of Marlboro Country.  It was only drizzling then but the weather turned really ugly late that afternoon.  A fierce thunderstorm caught us on the almost-vertical winding slopes of the grasslands before we could make our way to Saddle Point, our last campsite before the summit.  The winds were relentless, pushing up the edges of our raincoats against our faces.  I had to hold on tightly to Mang James, one of our mountain guides, because there was no other way I could keep myself from falling off the steep mountain face with the sheer might of the winds.  We mountaineers got separated from each other and suffered through the cold: two never reached camp that night and one of us got hypothermia (her teammates kept a close vigil on her the entire night and took her down the mountain early in the morning to seek medical attention).  Six of us huddled side by side on an “earth pad island” surrounded by freezing rainwater that kept leaking into our tent, all in a desperate attempt to keep warm.  My fingers were numb and felt like it had a sheet of ice wrapped all around them.  The night was so frigid that even though I knew my lips were moving when I spoke, I couldn't feel them and couldn't pronounce words properly.  It was 8:00 p.m. that night when we hunkered down inside our tent but the rain and cold kept on until we broke camp at noon the following day.       

 All in all, it was a harrowing experience.  It was one of those rare moments in life that had me praying Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s a hundred times over and mentally bargaining with the Higher Power for our deliverance.  The experience that I couldn’t shake in all that misery was how Mang James led me by the hand through the haze of brutal wind and rain to the near safety of camp.  When he thought he could leave me alone to brave the rest of the way or wait for others to come along, he went back to look for and aid our friend struck by hypothermia.  Mang James, Mang Narsie and our other mountaineer guides were, simply put, heroes.  We mountaineers thought of ourselves as real risk-takers when we decided to join that hike up Pulag’s steep Akiki route without any second (and third, fourth, fifth) thoughts.  Our Pulag mountain guides, however, showed us what true courage was all about when they shouldered our heavy packs, led us by the hand and put our safety first before theirs (and who were we, anyways, but just another bunch of mountaineers?) through one violent, freak storm.

Mt. Pulag’s famed sea of clouds behind a group of mountaineers
gathered in awe at its summit (February 2007)

 I thought I’d bring back with me just a few stunning photographs of the sea of clouds on the summit of Mt. Pulag and fresh bragging rights, but I actually brought back more than those.  Rene San Andres, a school administrator from the Ateneo de Manila and a former Jesuit Volunteer in Davao in the 1980’s, asked what it was that made a place beautiful.  From his volunteer years, he realized that it was the people that made a place truly beautiful.  The beauty of Kabayan, Benguet and Mt. Pulag in particular has become ingrained in my heart and mind because of the kindness, helpfulness and steadfastness of our mountain guides.  I have a greater respect for the place, its people and their spirit because of them.   

Brave and helpful Mt. Pulag mountain guides rest
at the Babadak Rangers’ Station (February 2007)

            Mang Narsie Adais, my “text pal,” was one of our brave guides during the storm.  He is also the president of the Parents-Teachers-Community Association of Abucot Elementary School.  Mang Narsie mentioned that Typhoon Seniang had wreaked havoc in their locale just a few weeks earlier before our December climb and replacements for destroyed textbooks were needed by the children.  It is my memory of his and his other companions’ generosity and courage that had me e-mailing heads of various organizations for book donations immediately after I got back from Mt. Pulag.  Less than a month after the climb, I was beginning to despair of being able to text any good news to Mang Narsie and his community.  Little did I know that Ms. Mardy Halcon, the Marketing Manager and CSR Coordinator of Bato-Balani Foundation, Inc. (the active Corporate Social Responsibility arm of book publisher Diwa Learning Systems, Inc.), had gotten the approval of BBFI Director Ching Jorge to answer our call for help.  Bato-Balani Foundation, Inc. donated 996 Science, Math and Filipino textbooks for students from Grades 1 to 6 or P222, 365.00 worth of school books to Abucot Elementary School.

So how did a freelance writer with limited resources like me get those 996 textbooks or 46 boxes of books up to Mt. Pulag?  I did it with the help of an army of a few good people.  I got back in touch with Ms. Tamiray Emerita, the friendly DENR Officer in Kabayan, Benguet who regularly gives highly engaging and informative pre-climb orientations to Pulag mountaineers.  She referred me to outdoor enthusiast, photographer and food stylist Patrick Gutierrez who was climbing the mountain again on February 2-4, 2007 with friends from advertising agency Campaigns and Grey and the IT Group of ABS-CBN.  Patrick and Mike Trinidad of ABS-CBN agreed to take up the books with them to the DENR Office for absolutely nothing.  After a few text messages back and forth, I found myself shoving clothes and other mountaineering essentials inside my backpack to join them.

The textbooks almost didn’t get to the children of Abucot, though.  I couldn’t find anyone to help me transport the 46 boxes of books from the Diwa Learning Systems Operations Center in Paranaque City to the bus station where we mountaineers were going to meet on the night of February the 2^nd.  One of my good friends from way back in college who also lived in Paranaque, Sheryll Cordero, got another utility van and along with ours, we were able to deposit all 46 boxes at the bus depot.  I had to pay a security guard at the station to keep an eye on the boxes while I secured some other equipment for the climb and I think Patrick may have also done the same with the bus conductor when we boarded the bus with all our “excess baggage”.  (If only these people knew we had little extra money ourselves and were actually embarking on a “relief mission”!)

So there we mountaineers were in the heart of Manila, loading 46 boxes of textbooks into the baggage compartment and aisle of our Baguio-bound bus late at night.  At three a.m. the following day in teeth-chattering cold, we packed and tied the boxes onto our “biyaheng langit” jeepney.  We rode in the cover of darkness to Bokod through Ambuklao Road with Mang Roger, a trusty 9-year veteran driver of the dangerous route.  It was a tired but cheerful group of mountaineers that greeted Ma’am Mering (Ms. Tamiray Emerita) with the 996 textbooks for the school children of Abucot Community on February 3, 2007.  The deed of Bato Balani Foundation’s contribution hangs up there in their elementary school.  The significance and uniqueness of the entire effort, in turn, clings to my memory and the warmth and generosity of everyone who helped in our small textbook delivery lingers in my heart.

And exactly what is the significance of our group effort in the face of staggering illiteracy statistics and the huge amount of work in social development we have laid out before us here in our country alone?  What are 996 textbooks for the children of Abucot in Kabayan, Benguet, when even though eight out of ten Filipinos are functionally literate (able to do read, write and do simple arithmetic, according to the Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey of the National Statistics Office in 2003), “non-reading lies at the heart of why the Philippines is so uncompetitive in the world economy and why so many of our people continue to live in poverty or barely escape it” (from former Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz’s essay, “A Nation of Non-Readers”)? 

Some of the people from Campaigns and Grey and I pose with DENR Officer Ms. Tamiray Emerita (3rd from left) after delivering the Abucot-bound textbooks before the start of our Mt. Pulag climb in February 2007

Maybe not a whole lot in the greater scheme of things really.  This is, however, what I’ve learned in all my years of volunteering in different causes and organizations and from other people’s experiences as well: you help when you can, whomever you can and however you can.  A small step taken in the right direction is better than non-action.  You use whatever resources you have and get help from the people in your network.  In my Mt. Pulag Textbook Delivery experience, my mobile phone, my blog and my own hobbies and friends were indispensable!  I still text Mang Narsie and Ma’am Mering who are up there in Benguet and ask them how they are (I’m looking forward to visiting them again soon with a tin can of Sky Flakes crackers that Ma’am Mering has meekly requested as “pasalubong”!).  I see our textbook delivery transitioning to reading and livelihood programs and activities the indigenous communities in Mt. Pulag may want eager partners in.  There are many organizations who are already helping communities all over the Philippines this way – RockEd Philippines, AHON Foundation, the Department of Education and Bato Balani Foundation just to name a few.  I now see possibilities of partnering with or joining these organizations to help strengthen existing literacy programs or start new ones in Abucot and other places around the archipelago where these are sorely needed.     

From L-R, each holding a box of donated textbooks: Ms. Tamiray Emerita,
DENR Officer in Kabayan, Benguet; Mr. Narsie Adais, mountain guide and  President
of the Parents-Teachers-Community Association of Abucot Elementary School
and his Vice President, Oliver

 You might now think I’m special but the reality is I’m like everyone else.  I have difficulties balancing bills and priorities on a daily basis like so many other people in the Philippines and in the rest of the world.  I have my good and bad days and a fair share of both right and wrong decisions.  The difference was that I found a few things I was really passionate about (I had grown up loving reading and was determined that the children of Abucot have the same opportunity with the textbooks we would be delivering up to Mt. Pulag, which was incidentally one of my “holy grails”), then asked for and received an unexpectedly tremendous amount of help with them (my family will counter that I pestered, inconvenienced and put them through a lot of worry in the process too and that’s all true!).

As a writer, I look back on and read some of my work and sometimes cringe at the things I put down on paper.  I’ve reread what I wrote in my blog about my volunteer experience in Mt. Pulag, well, roughly just about a million times.  I’m proud that up to now, I still mean every word I contributed to the world wide web about that experience:

“My mind can't comprehend the enormity of the blessing, possibility and hope this trip has come to symbolize for me. To leave Mt. Pulag (hopefully) a little bit better after trodding through its trails and burdening it with our human presence for a couple of days is one of the best things a mountain climbing enthusiast can ever ask for. I'm truly happy to bring this good news to all of you today. Each and everyone of you - all of us, really - and the Supreme Being (however you call your Higher Power) deserve a deeply felt, whispered or shouted "MARAMING SALAMAT!" ("Thank you!"). Cheers to all of us, then, who continue to seek, discover and contribute to make Life what truly is - full of blessing, possibility, hope, beauty and love. Let's all continue this work in our own ways and in our own lives.”

On Mt. Pulag’s summit, the author savors the feeling
of having made a difference and a few more life-long friends