Philippine Island Hopping

3 - 14 December 2007 

It was a long, involved journey from Manila to Tablas Island. Raymund drove Eden and the three new volunteers to a bus leaving Quezon City for Batangas Port. Dr Kelley Wulfkuhle, a third year resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Burlington Vermont, is volunteering through CERV at a clinic in San Agustin on Tablas Island. She had raised over 2,000 $US, more than the annual budget of the clinic. She and Eden had bought 6 boxes of medicines in Manila and taken them out to the island the week before. Eden had bought medical supplies in Manila with more of the money so we had five cardboard boxes in addition to our own luggage to take to Tablas. Luckily there were porters at every spot on our journey to help us. 

 The bus ride was about 2 ½ hours to the port of Batangas, south of Manila where we bought food for supper and boarded a large ferry prior to its 5 PM departure. We had reserved beds for the overnight trip. We claimed our four upper bunks in a large room that held about 200 upper and lower bunks. We were lucky. The choice for those without a bunk bed is to sit up all night in the canteen or put down cardboard to sleep on the floor wherever there is an empty spot. It was not a quiet voyage but amazingly I did sleep off and on.  Carly and Eden fared less well as there was a party going on in the lower bunks below them. A large band and a multitude of supporters were traveling to Sibuyan Island for their annual festival. Plates of rice and pork were being passed out to 20-30 people and beer was being consumed. They were in a party mood but really very well behaved. We almost wished we could join them for the festival.

 The Philippines are an archipelago of 7170 volcanic islands, the second largest archipelago to Indonesia. Tablas Island is the largest of the Romblon group of islands. We landed at Ondiogan on the east coast but our destination was Long Beach on the northwestern tip. About 1:30 AM the captain announced that we were nearing land. The boat was arriving one hour earlier than scheduled. Our entire luggage was tied onto the top of a jeepney and we climbed inside. The jeepney has a jeep front end and an elongated body. The sides are open and inside, benches for passengers run along each side. A third bench ran along the middle of the interior but it was piled with additional luggage. Off we went into the night, arriving at a crossroads about 1 ½ hrs later. We transferred to a waiting tricycle, a motorcycle with a covered sidecar. This is the most popular mode of public transport in the Philippines. Jeepneys ply the more popular routes and tricyles, either powered by a bicycle or a motorcycle take you everywhere else. The third mode is a “single”, a ride on the back of a motorcycle.

 The view along the coast to Long Beach couldn’t be seen in the dark that night. We got to appreciate the view later traveling back and forth to our projects. Tablas Island is a long line of high green mountains falling sharply to the sea. Any area flat enough between the mountains and the sea is planted in rice, the staple diet of the Filipinos. The road to Long Beach follows the sea coast around small bays and rocky points. Small patches of concrete road alternate with long sections of rocky unpaved road. I wondered if there was any correlation between how the residents voted and whether they got their section of the road paved.

 There are several rice crops in a year. No sooner is one field harvested than it is tilled and planted for the next crop. Some farmers till by hand using a water buffalo and others use a large roto-tiller. Planting and harvesting is done by hand. Once cut the rice is separated from the stocks and laid out on tarpaulins at the edges of the road to dry. Almost no one has a car and the singles and tricycles know not to trample the drying rice.

 Our hosts for the month, Sally and Rey Mores have one of the best houses in Long Beach, so we are lucky. The outside is unpainted concrete but the inside is well decorated. We have our own bedroom and the shared bathroom has a flush toilet and a cold water shower. There is no dishwasher or washing machine. Everything is done by hand. Most houses have a toilet but it is bucket flushed and you shower by pouring cold water over yourself. Most Filipinos do not see the need for hot water in such a hot country. We are adjusting.

 Sally is a school teacher in the local elementary school and Rey is a manager for the Romblon area for SiKat, Center for the Development of ndigenous Science and Technology (the acronym makes sense in Filipino). Sikat promotes and manages 14 fish sanctuaries in the Romblons. They have no children of their own so they take care of nieces and nephews when they go to High School. Mycel, who has lived with them for 12 years has now completed her training to be a teacher and is hoping to pass her last exams and get a teaching position next year. Mycel’s half brother Roseleer, 13, in his first year of High School and Rey’s niece Caren, 15, rounds out the household. Everyone pitches in and helps with the chores without grumbling. That would never happen at home!

 We share all our meals with the family and yes, rice is served at every meal. In fact the same food is often served at each meal. We have fish, chicken or pork with most meals although the pork tends to be much fattier than we are used to. Vegetables tend to be variations of squash or greens grown in the backyard garden. We have also had papaya, served ripe as a fruit or green and grated as a vegetable. Everything is served in bowls from which we help ourselves so we can take what we like best and sample small portions of unfamiliar foods.

Everyone leaves early in the morning. School starts at 7:30 AM and we have been traveling to our assignments early so breakfast is often over by 7 AM. We return for our lunch and a rest then go back to work on our afternoon assignment, then return to join the family for the evening meal about 7 PM.

The first day we were not expected to go to our volunteer placements. We were encouraged to catch up on lost sleep and explore on our own. Long Beach is a fishing village, a barangay, spread along one road parallel to the ocean. The hills are too close to the ocean for any rice paddies in Long Beach. There is an elementary and high school and an outdoor community center where boys play basketball, another national obsession. The only stores are tiny mini-marts selling goods from a wooden booth at the side of the road. San Agustin, 10 km away, is the main market town.

If you walk down the road you will probably followed by several dogs, three of which live at our house. You have to exchange greetings with everyone you pass and answer queries of “What is your name” and “where are you going”. If you stop to answer you better be prepared to stop and chat for Filipinos love to talk. Otherwise you just quickly tell them your name, which in our case is “Tatay Ray and Nana-I Jeanne”. Elders are always shown respect as reflected in their names. We are Father and Mother while the younger volunteers are Ate or Kuya, Older Sister or Brother. 

Carly, Ray and I were all assigned to the Environmental project. Alexis Rife, from Arizona, has been with the project for three of her six months assignment. Scott Ince, from Melbourne Australia, arrived the week before us to spend six months with CERV. Ray and I visited the Fish Sanctuary where the project is located. There is a nice bamboo hut with a thatched roof, built by a previous Peace Corp volunteer, with space for education sessions and a small mangrove nursery. An extensive raised walkway was built some time ago through the mangroves but a succession of typhoons has destroyed almost all of it. Our main jobs will be to fix up the nursery, plant mangroves and start more seedlings. We will leave the walkway repair to future volunteers.

We continued on to Sugod Elementary School where we met Vincent Embile, a CERV employee and Colette Perry, a volunteer from Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories. Colette lives with Tess and Felix near the school in Sugod. It took Tess and Felix five years to save enough to build their simple three bedroom home and they are still paying for it with loans taken out of Tess’ teaching salary. Their money is spent on educating their five children for now so the inside remains unfinished. Two daughters are attending college in Manila, one on scholarships and one son pays for his transport to high school in another community by making and selling caramel candies.

This is the first time the Sugod School has welcomed volunteers. The Principal, Flor, a friend of Eden’s, asked to be considered for help as soon as it was available. Painting one of the school buildings a bright yellow with white jalousie windows bordered in blue is the maintenance project this year for CERV. The school was built with German funding and painted by the community in 1994 but the government does not provide any maintenance money. Several of the buildings were in need of new paint and CERV is providing the materials and workers.

 We were not scheduled to start our Environment project that day so we decided to return in the afternoon and start painting. With four of us working we made great progress. The teachers are all very appreciative and the children are sweet. At each break time we have an audience of several children watching silently or asking “What is your name”. Their instruction is in both Filipino and English but their English is still in progress, hence the questions that they have learned in class. We enjoyed the painting experience so much that we returned Thursday and painted all day, with a break to return for lunch with our host family. We intend alternating between the Environment and the Painting projects during our stay here.

 We travel back and forth to our projects by tricycle driven by our trusty driver, Typhoon. His real name is Rodel but when a typhoon was named Rodel several years ago he acquired the nickname Baguio, which means Typhoon in Filipino. The Anglo volunteers all call him Typhoon and he seems to like his new nickname. Typhoon’s ambition is to buy his own tricycle as he rents his current vehicle Typhoon lives a few km from Long beach with his wife and three young children in a typical simple home without electricity or running water. He has kindly invited us to a birthday celebration for his son who turns three on December 23, just two days before our grandson Atticus.

 Friday afternoon the whole gang of volunteers, including Dr Kelley, took the boat from San Agustin to Romblon Town on Romblon Island, next to Tablas. Romblon has a restaurant with Western food and Internet, both lacking on our part of Tablas.

 The 1 PM boat was not the most comfortable we have been in. The interior of the long wooden boat is only 2 ½ M wide. The cabin at the back has two rows of benches designed for the tiny Filipino people, not larger Westerners. Ray and I sat squished onto one bench with our knees almost hitting our chins and our heads scraping the ceiling. We were advised to sit on the right hand side as those windows were more likely to be open. Our seats although cramped proved to be better than the spaces chosen by the others. The rest of the group started the 1 hour voyage on the roof over the front of the boat but were driven inside by the rough weather when we were in the middle of the channel. They ended up in a cramped storage space under the front deck and got wet from waves breaking on the bow and coming through the cracks in the decking

 We found a comfortable room in a hotel in Romblon Town and found an internet. I had just started this Episode when the power went out. That was the end of that. When we returned to Long Beach, I switched to writing on my host’s computer, which does not have Internet connection, and saving it on a memory stick I brought with me.

 The gang of volunteers was joined by Mycel for dinner at the Revolution Restaurant. Mycel had been invited to join us for the evening so she had come over earlier with Rey Mores, who has an office in Romblon. We had pizza and other western dishes. One person even had roast beef. Ray and I called it a day just after 9 PM but the others carried on. Karaoke is big in the Filipinos and the group found a club where they could sing along with varying degrees of success – Mycel was voted the best.

 Colette and Kelley were staying another night on the island at San Pedro, a small beach resort about 12 km from town. The rest of the gang was returning to their homes on Saturday but Ray and I decided to join Colette and Kelley at San Pedro. Colette took the first two sessions of a PADI diving course at Marble Beach, next to San Pedro. Kelley, Ray and I spent a lazy afternoon sunning on the beach and swimming. The small crescent beach has corals just a few feet from shore. I had my snorkel and mask, plus new fins bought in Manila so I was anxious to try them out. The water was warm and clear. Much of the coral has been killed by typhoons and illegal fishing practices, such as dynamiting but it is coming back and there were quite a few fish to watch. The only danger for us was black sea urchins but the water was deep enough to swim safely over the long black spines.

 The food was good and the atmosphere relaxing but we had committed to come back on Sunday. We opted to take the big boat back to San Agustin, a much more comfortable option. We were back in Romblon Town by noon and were told the boat the boat would leave at 2 PM but to be at the dock at 1 PM. That meant we had time to have lunch and wander around town. Romblon is the biggest source of marble in the Philippines and one section of the town is devoted to marble carvers selling everything from small souvenirs to large statues. Marble is heavy so we just looked and didn’t buy, fearing carrying around extra weight on our travels.

 We returned to the dock at 1 PM, got on the boat, found seats and were surprised when the boat departed at 1:20 PM. We expect schedules to be a little late, but this was very early. The motto is “Be Prepared”.

 We arrived back at the house to great excitement. Sally and Rey’s home is surrounded by the homes of other relatives. An Aunt lives next door, a brother lives next to the Aunt and another brother and a sister have homes on the hillside behind their home. Rey helps them out whenever he can. The sister’s home is in danger of collapsing and the family is unemployed. Rey is preparing to help build them a new house on better land behind his own home but there is a large Mango tree right where the house will sit. The Mango wood is also useful for lumber to build the house. A tree cutter with a chainsaw was on hand to take the tree down. Ropes were attached to the Mango to ensure it fell safely and most of the extended family was on hand to watch the action. The tree cutter sawed a big notch on one side and then cut properly on the other side. That is when the saw got jammed in the tree. Rey’s brother climbed up a coconut palm tree to attach more ropes and Rey climber another to do the same. Finally the tree was secured and everyone pulled on the ropes. The saw was released and the tree came crashing down, but not where it was expected. Fortunately it landed in a better spot than was planned and no one was hurt. To think we spent all that money to hire men and equipment to take down a tree at our house this summer and all we needed was a man with a chainsaw and multiple relatives.

We did work with the others at the Fish Sanctuary environmental site. Our first chore was to clear the beach and mangroves of plastic refuse that continually washes in with the tide. As in every country, every purchased item comes in a plastic bag and candies, soap and shampoo comes in individual packages. San Agustin has a dump but there is no garbage pickup in the smaller communities. Add to that the common practice of tossing plastic anywhere but in a garbage container and you have a problem. It is particularly important to keep the fish sanctuary are clear of debris so five of us filled rice sacks and biodegradable plastic bags with rubbish.

 The mangrove nursery at the sanctuary is in the process of being expanded and we wanted to make sure the neighbouring chickens, pigs and dogs didn’t disturb the new plants. That meant rebuilding part of a fence surrounding the Fish Sanctuary hut. We dismantled an inefficient fence, dug holes for more fence poles and attached plastic mesh fencing to the poles. We were helped in this chore by three local men who are assigned to the project by the community as guards and general help.

 We also managed to plant mangrove sprouts this week. The whole volunteer group, both the School painters and the environment side combined to plant at low tide. It was hard work planting in the rocky soil. Ray and Vincent made holes with crowbars and the rest of us planted sprouts and drove a bamboo stake next to it to protect it from the tides. About 50% of them survive but some are starting to look like mangroves.

 Future environment projects include planting more mangroves, experimenting with starting mangroves from seeds collected from existing trees and caring for the mangrove nursery. CERV will also be gathering statistics to monitor the effectiveness of the mangrove replanting project.

 Colette’s birthday was December 11 and her family, Tess and Felix, invited us all to a celebration on the beach. We stopped our projects early in the afternoon and gathered at a nice bamboo platform built at the edge of the ocean. Tess and Felix barbequed pork kebabs and served a delicious noodle salad, fried chicken washed down with buko juice, young coconut juice with bits of the jellied coconut meat floating in it. It is very good. Our dessert was another specialty. Buko Salaq is coconut milk mixed with raisins, nuts and other fruits and served frozen or very cold. I thought our feast was enough for 20 people but we didn’t leave many leftovers. This has been typical of the hospitality shown us and we appreciate it.

 Colette arrived at school on Wednesday with photos of the morning’s excitement. The houses around her were awakened by the frantic squeals of a pig. A 4 m long python was trying to devour it. The python was killed and the pig was saved. The python was skinned and will provide dinner for several families.

One of the premier resorts in the Philippines is White Beach, on Boracay Island. It was a long voyage from Long Beach, starting at 4:30 AM so we are extending the weekend to Monday. Typhoon drove us in his tricycle to San Agustin where we took a jeepney to Looc. This was a 2 ½ hour milk run picking up students, goods to be sold at market, shoppers and even delivering laundry to another town. Typhoon advised us to ride up front with the driver. That was good advice. The inside was packed, there were passengers hanging on the back and more were on top with the bags of produce. We arrived in Looc just in time to board a wooden outrigger boat for another 2 ½ hour trip to Boracay Island. At least the inside was more spacious than the boat to Romblon Island. The boat measured 4 m across and we didn’t hit our heads on the roof. They even rolled down tarps on our side when the seas got rough between islands. Even so, the swells came through drainage holes at floor level and soaked my feet. That didn’t matter as we had to wade in the water to get ashore at Boracay.

 We felt we needed a treat when we finally got here so we are in a nice Nipa hut made of bamboo with a thatched roof. It even has a flush toilet and a shower. It is a Philippine tourist Mecca, but we enjoyed ourselves.  The main street runs parallel to the famous white sand beach but there is a warren of back streets that have sprung up to accommodate both tourists and workers. We stayed on one of the backstreets on the quieter south end of the beach which proved to be a good choice. Every third building is a dive shop selling tours to one of the many dive locations on the reef just offshore. We were only interested in snorkelling. A dive shop employee pointed out the perfect spot reached right from the beach near our hotel. It suited our needs perfectly.