"Talk about our country on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Multiply because our country deserves a visit from the world."----Philippine Department Of Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez.
I Am Talking, Rather, Writing, About My Country In Blogger
By: Iris P. Concepcion
Philippines before a one year old's impressionable eyes is a pebble on a dirt-mud road, claylike when rains fall, adrift with soiled feet shod in craggy boots without naturally alarming the newly-cut logs.
This is Mindanao in the 1970's, a southern most island in this archipelago where my small town, Magpet, has known poinsettias but not electricity, fireflies but not clear running water, bulldozers but not highways, Singer sewing machines but not lamp posts.
Mt. Apo, the country's tallest mountain peak, stares boldly with its one-eyed tip in front of my primary school where old pine trees are lined, leaves detaching from branches like hair strands in grainy green. Gifted with lush hills and terrains, it snubs any citified intrusion like a dame guarding her chastity from demons.
The Philippines is Nature and Wildlife and Animals and Heat and Small Stores and Rain and Logs and Men In Pomade and Pious Church Goers.
Bedecked in rivers and uncemented roads but with a galaxy of fruit trees ready to be teethed and be eaten from the bushy backyards of neighbors, I learned the word "sweet" from its sugarcane produce, "sour" from the kalamansi vine, "salty" from a wooden box filled with salt sold by a local merchant in used, lubricant oil plastics.
River in the Philippines is Life itself. We bathe, dive, swim, frolic, wash our laundry in this bountiful stream of water adorned with mossy rocks. What it lacks in spiritual symmetry, we propel for underground pop art. Dug water wells in "batyas" carried by maidens in "sarong." A Norton Anthology of English Literature and traders plying the roads with encyclopedias can delight a surprised visitor whose cultural slant may consist of us, locals, camping, up there in trees with G-strings on.
We lack basic utilities then but I had tasted bacon, cheese and peanut butter from a mother who insists on having them as staples. She brought with her stories about chocolates freely given by Americans to little children when her own hometown in the North, Laguna, had been bombed by the Japanese during World War II. Philippines does communicate with food instinctively. We had battered roads but compensate for it by owning extraordinary snack food. I did not own a bulb but ate Chiz Curls.
Native bags are gifts from a school nurse; dresses from parents who insist to doll me up with ruffles as an impressionist's elan prior to my weekly doctor appointments.
My headline: Magpet Bedazzled By Dawn Rain. Lifestyle section: Beads From Manobo (local tribe) Doubly Yarned. Sports: Under The Twinkling Stars, Little League Scores In Patintero. We had no lights but we had the most mystifying moon.
It is strictly the woods without the cabins. I was pitched out from this habitat when I turned teen.
The roads in Kidapawan, where I took my secondary school learning, is paved with cement and asphalt. It has a fanciful restaurant named Rendezvous, gasoline stations, printing office and hardware stores. Its public market sells plenty of shoes in neatly arranged boxes. Some of the vendors speak my mother's dialect from Luzon, "Tagalog". Its church is called a cathedral. Streets are adorned with pine trees. A radio station is near my Catholic-run high school, the Notre Dame of Kidapawan for Girls, where a radio deejay wakes up people, goats and cows in "Ilongo" (a dialect from the Visayas) unhaltingly at 5:00 a.m. This is my first foray into the urbane. My classmates had electricity. I offered my mother's tastiest goat meat and cosmopolitan macaroni salad with chicken bits to balance my lack of flourescents. And I had white gabardine pants and wool tee shirt from my brother who was studying in the capital of the country, Metro Manila, which made me look impeccably scrubbed.
I lacked water source but I had breeding.
Eventually, light and water were introduced to my town when I was in high school.
This is a traditional Philippine development component. You shall be judged according to your access to basic utilities. The farther you are from the sources, the least your ranking shall be in societal circles. It is a caste variant. Point number one: investing in water and electricity in hinterlands is a democratized manner of giving people their dignity and pride. It is not a badge for the few.
Luckily for tourists, now that we are in the year of God 2011, most parts of the Philippines trekking along my own habitat narrative are already electrified with safer water systems being further developed. The country is opening up to other players in tapping energy and water resources to pull the costs down as preparation for year 3011 when cars could be flying above humans like airplanes.
A visitor to the country always lands first in Metro Manila. This is where I took my college degree in Communication Arts. Since most of the travellers end up here, explore it without using guides and maps. Filipinos never use maps. Get lost if you can; better to try our own myriad of transportation means. Railway, buses, jeepneys, tricycles and taxis. You are lost in this city, you shall always be bumping into a new mall with information directions. Or schools and universities.
Today, Manila has sprawling malls comparable with the best of the world. Our new tourism czar is asking Filipinos to write about the Philippines in Twitter, Facebook and Multiply links and I must do my share of writing beyond our mesmerizing shopping complexes.
I have said it before and I shall say it again, our magic lies in our people. Immerse with them. Sit down and share a can of Coke with them in their households.
Forget about the structures and Westernized opulence that we now have and the vibrant spirits of creativity sprouting from everywhere. Linger on my first sentences when we had virtually nothing but had seen our country as a Fairy Tale setting.That is the charm of the Philippines. Filipinos talk a lot that we become virtual palm readers without our batteries dying out. My co-Filipinos have better stories than I do. They have better comedy skits than the Three Stooges. Discover them and you discover the country that we have shaped along the way. They may have travelled half the world but they can recall and reminisce with glinting eyes the times when they had no lights but had gobbled Nutri-buns (protein-rich, gift and subsidized to malnourished public school children in late 70's) with ice-cream under tree shades.
Discover A Filipino. Discover The Philippines.
Ninety per cent (90%) of the population can speak and understand English. Their twang could even be better than a native Yankee.
You can get here not very original souvenirs, but you shall be bringing to your home fabulous tales, street fright, sometimes awful stench, odd people, dirt and smog that you can wipe off immediately running to another, well, mall. Our beaches and underground Nature can speak for themselves. They are God's creations without needing any pamphlets.
To wind up, the best souvenir item you can actually lug with you is, you guessed it rightly, a Filipino.
P.S. The photo grab above is my university alma mater, the University of Santo Tomas. It does look European in structure; this is the color hue of my childhood memories, minus the wintry look. If ever you get lost, go to this university and ask for directions. Thanks to the photographer Dolly Z. Arroyo whose avatar on her Facebook account is that of a cat. I hope she does not mind my posting here her beautiful picture.
P.P.S I am actually dreading my proposal here. We might not need the RH bill anymore if Filipinos become souvenir items (lessening the population via trans-migration). Imagine if every foreigner brings, like trophy, a Filipino to be cleared through Immigration. And declaring at Customs the words: "Exquisite Find".