(I have been looking for a home for this piece but then decided to just share it here. Maybe it will be found and shared by a reader someday).
THE DAVAO DIARIES
Leny Mendoza Strobel
In this other land, I wake up to the view
of the mountains and the water. Am I a stranger here or someone who has come
home to embrace your Water and your Mountains? Are these mountains connected to
the crust of the ocean's bottom that connects to my oceans back there -- in my
other home? I have written about islands and continents before -- how I
straddle both, how I live in both, dream and imagine in both. I imagine that
You do the same. We are not bound by time and space. Such mis-imaginations only
create distances. Always I need to feel connected to You and You to Me. (Journal Entry: Davao, July 16, 2006, Day 6
of Fulbright trip)
These stories are long overdue. But
perhaps some stories need to marinate awhile and live in the dense forest of
memory before being born as healing medicine. Yes, stories are medicine. It
took me a while to gather these stories into a medicine bundle. I am offering
them now to you, dear reader, in the spirit of gratitude for the gift of healing
and transformation that I have received from the stories. May it be so for you.
I came with a group of mostly
Filipino American teachers from California to Mindanao in 2006 and 2008 through
the Fulbright Hays Group Study Project. We came because we wanted to become
better educators for the sake of the Filipino American children in our K-12
classrooms. We wanted to improve our curricular offerings and enrich our
students’ knowledge about their own Filipino heritage. As an academic project with our host
institution, Ateneo de Davao University, and In-country host, Fr. Albert Alejo,
we co-created a program that satisfied all the requirements of the
Fulbright-Hays program. For six weeks in both years, we toured national
historical sites, visited public and private elementary and high schools,
interfaced with local teachers and exchanged ideas about multicultural
education, visited indigenous communities, met with public officials, stayed in
homes with host families, befriended lumad scholars, enjoyed the lectures from
distinguished scholars, and learned about the many facets of Mindanao. At the
end of the trip, the California teachers worked on creating curriculum in
language arts and social science that shows how they have integrated materials
gathered from the immersion program. In the post-Fulbright conferences, these
materials were shared with several
hundreds of California teachers.
I knew deep down in my heart that
this trip would transform the teachers who came with us; that they would be
challenged in ways they’ve never imagined and they will fall in love with their
homeland and see it with new eyes. They will learn concepts like
decolonization, white privilege, critical multicultural perspectives, and
privileging indigenous paradigms. We learned all of these and more.
What I didn’t foresee was how I
would be transformed by these experiences. As I look back on those years, I see
now that it was the small stories that opened the doors and windows of my life
to a vista that I couldn’t have imagined at that time. Prior to the Fulbright
experience, I have already written a book on the process of decolonization for
Filipino Americans and published many journal articles and popular essays about
this pagbabalikloob or Turning Home.
What began as a way to understand myself as an immigrant to the U.S. led to an
academic journey that eventually took me to Mindanao – the part of the
Philippines that beckoned to me as my search for my indigenous heritage
deepened.
The vignettes that follow taught me
how to become a more embodied person. In my heart, I’ve never wanted to be a
mere scholar who lives in her head. I wanted the body-mind-spirit integration,
this kabuuan ng Loob, so I could walk
about this earth secure in my sense of belonging to a Home. I give you the
small stories and I want to string them like sampaguita buds here, nuggets of
memory that have returned with the lessons that they’ve taught me.
Beauty
Please! Allow us to express our Beauty! I
hear her voice in my head still. The woman elder from a Manobo tribe spoke from
her heart as she addressed a small group of teachers from California who came
to hear her share the struggles of her indigenous community.
I
remember being struck by her choice of the concept of Beauty. She could have
asked for Justice, or Peace, or Freedom but no, it was Beauty that she claimed.
I remember being rendered speechless and awestruck as I let this sink into my
body. The indigenous woman knows this sacred Beauty. In a world where this
Beauty has been marred and scarred by capitalist greed, she is making her voice
heard: Please allow us to express our
Beauty!
I’ve re-told this story to various
groups of audiences since then. I tell it to honor the voice of the indigenous
woman elder. I tell it to claim my own re-connection to my indigenous spirit. I
tell it to re-claim the Beauty of my people. I have stepped into the river of
Memory where this Beauty can be remembered through the oral and literate
traditions of indigenous peoples – the myths, stories, dances, songs, chants,
weavings – all of which are still alive and powerful when reclaimed by those of
us who have awakened to the nightmare of modernity.
The Nun
Sister Rose, a Bagobo, spoke softly and
emotionally as the daughter of a Bagobo datu (Duhay Lungsod). She cried as she
recalled for us how she saw her father struggle to preserve indigenous culture
amidst colonial pressure to become civilized and Christianized. Now as a
Catholic Nun she has come to embrace her indigeneity and now also works
alongside indigenous peoples’ advocates.
So
one can be indigenous and be a Christian, I thought to myself. I pondered what my own story would have
been if I had learned about my own Kapampangan indigenous roots alongside my
Protestant upbringing. How different it would have been! Now Karl Gaspar has
written a book, Mystic Wanderers in the
Land of Perpetual Departures, where he calls on Catholic devotees to
reclaim their Filipino indigenous
values and spirituality in order to become good Catholics who can affect social
transformation.
This
gives me hope.
Roadside Sign
Children waving. Please wave back.
So
we did.
We
saw this sign from a jeepney on our way to Malagos. The uniformed children were
walking home. They waved to us and we waved back.
I
thought about the many folks in the U.S., who are baffled when they see smiling
children in poor countries. How can they
be so happy when they are so poor? they ask. I hear this often in my
classrooms from white suburban students whose education has taught them to see
the world in “us versus them.” In one of my exasperated moments, this poem came
to me:
the child
who appears in your photographs infomercials and youtube videos
so that
you can appeal to your funders' sense of do-gooding
for the
poor of the world
was she born
thinking she is poor?
who
impoverished her?
who stole
her country?
you say
that the poor barrio folks are primitive
left
behind by progress
so they
need you and your aid
and yet
you do not say why the poor makes you feel good
why their
smiles and gestures of kindness
warms
your heart. makes you feel human.
why do
you need the poor this way?
your
tears do not fool me.
Bai Diwa Ofong
She looked just like my grandmother, my Impo - the one that, as a
child, I never got to know very well because she lived in the city and we lived
in the province. In Lake Sebu, I sat with Bai Diwa Ofong with two other
Fulbright teachers, and Jenita, a young lumad scholar and community leader, as
translator. At first, Bai cried and apologized for not speaking any other language
than Tiboli, for not having anything to give us because she is poor. She said
that our visit gives her hope because we are teachers, because we can reach
children. She appreciated our respect and interest in the community. We cried and hugged and cried some more --
as if we have been touched by the recognition of our primordial ties to each
other in this ancient land.
Can
we know our grandmothers again? Can we reconnect with our ancient ancestors?
During a meditation, I called on my ancestors and expressed my regrets for not
knowing my genealogical lineage. How can I reclaim my indigeneity without this
information? Who are my ancient people? What is our creation story? What did
the Land teach us? Then they whispered: Leny,
you may not know our names, but we know you. We have always been here. We have
never left. Thank you for remembering and calling on us now.
BEAM
I took down these
notes during a lecture about education issues in Mindanao:
·
BEAM
program (Basic Education Assistance for Mindanao) funded by the Australian
government to the tune of $30M.
·
The focus of BEAM support is
"capability building."
·
Two of its notable programs are the Lumad
Integrated Functional Education (LIFE) and Providing Educational Access for
Cultural Enhancement (PEACE). Note that the Institute for Indigenous Peoples
Education (IIPE) is also partly-funded by BEAM.
And wrote this
as sidenote in my journal:
During Dr. L's lecture, we noticed two
corporate logos on the BEAM project materials and we asked who these
corporations are. She didn't know. Later in the afternoon, one of our
participants googled the names and found out that they were mining or
mining-related corporations. (The Philippine government has recently re-issued
the Mining Rights Act which opens up Mindanao to mining corporations).
The
Fulbrighters asked what the motives might be of mining corporations in
supporting education. Is it to “tame the wild” and subdue it so that it can me
made submissive to the development-oriented capitalist system? What business is
it of ours to question this issue? We asked ourselves this question. Many of us
are critical of corporate globalization and to see it so closely linked to its
impact on indigenous communities and ecological environments in Mindanao was
disturbing and so we argued with the lecturer. Were we wrong to do so? How can
we deny that funding to education is needed regardless of its source? Sometimes
it is easier to embrace an ideology theoretically than to grapple with the
realities on the ground.
If
I want to sharpen my self-reflexivity and critical thinking skills, I must
struggle with these issues. I bring these scenarios in my university classroom
in California. Today I hear myself telling my students: The onus of
responsibility lies in us Americans who have the largest carbon footprint on
the planet. Before we question the practices in modernizing countries, let us
ask ourselves what our responsibility is towards the global mess we have
created. Who is paying the social, cultural, political, and moral mortgage?
In
my journal entry of August 2, 2006, I have written:
As I write this, I am reminded of a comment
made by a Nigerian working in the diamond mines: "We have diamonds...why
are we poor?"
Ritual
Journal entry: Day 18, July 31, 2006, THE HEALING RITUAL
Earlier in the day, we told the group that
we will meet in the evening at Ponce Suites. We didn't give any further
information about the place. We told them they should plan on arriving an hour
earlier. I went by myself two hours earlier so I could videotape and be alone
before everyone arrived. I brought the candles that Paring Bert asked for.
Kublai at Ponce Suites created a labyrinth
on the top floor made of dark and pale round stones in the form of a lizard. We
arranged the chairs on the edge and lighted three candles and placed them in
the middle of the circle. (The wind kept blowing them out though).
Paring Bert tried to lighten up the
now-quiet mood by saying: "well, what do you think?" and then he
chuckled...and then began to speak slowly: why we were gathered in this place;
he reminded us of his remarks on the first day that on this journey, many
things will happen that are transformative, deeply transformative.
Paraphrasing Paring Bert: Now we are here.
In the last few days you have learned a lot about the Philippines but you are
also learning a lot about yourselves...as individuals and as members of this
group. Your emotions are raw and on the surface; you have had a lot to think
about; your interactions with each other elicit strong emotions. You have
expressed your thoughts to each other. Now we need to have a sense of closure
or a sense of forgiveness and healing.
Perhaps there are things you want to
express individually but haven't done so. Maybe you want to say "thank
you" or "i'm sorry" to each other. Maybe you want to say
something that you've been holding back. So if you want to do that now, pick up
a candle and approach the individual you want to speak to. Stand face to face
and talk to each other. After you receive the candle, you may then return the
candle to the center or you can bring it to another person.
A few moments of silence.
Paring Bert stood up and brought the first
candle to me to say "thank you for being here." I took the candle and
brought it to Cheena and I told her how happy I am that she went from Fear to
Courage and am glad to have witnessed it. Slowly, one by one, we picked up the
candles and passed them on. Soon everyone was standing face to face with one other
person hugging tightly, tears flowing and once in a while you would hear Paring
Bert's chuckle.
I was specially touched by Miriam who said:
"I already know you have four sisters, but I want to be your sister,
too." "You became my sister the first day I met you," I told
her.
"Thank you..." "I am
sorry..." "I am afraid...." -- when all was said and the tears
have turned to laughter...we knew that was the transformative moment we had
talked about and anticipated (we just didn't know how and when it would
happen).
We sipped chamomille tea and smiled. Ritual
had found us and we are whole again.
Ritual
has found its way into my life since those Fulbright days. I have become more
conscious of how ritual connects us to the ancient memories held in our bodies.
I am learning how to tap into the wisdom of my body after decades-long
conditioning of living mostly in my head as an academic. I see more acutely
that norms of patriarchy and colonial thinking are embedded in academic
institutions and I cringe at the extent to which I, too, have internalized
these norms. How then can my academic life transform itself into a more
embodied practice that honors my indigenous soul? Can the academe be
indigenized? Where are the indigenous responses to the imperial order?
As soon as
I posed the questions, the answers started to trickle in. I am in good company.
In fact the phone rang just moments ago and a Hawaiian elder told me that she
could see that I am transitioning from being an academic scholar to a cultural
practitioner and that the work that I do now through the Center for Babaylan
Studies (www.babaylan.net) will evolve
and shift to a more embodied, culturally-rooted practice.
The
ancestors do not like being put on hold, I chuckle to myself. Ask and you will
receive. Sooner than you expect.
Politics
and Governance
Lecture on
Politics and Governance
The Fulbright participants
posed these questions to the political science professor:
How should we (Filipino Americans) address
the question about the perception of the Philippine government as being fraught
with corruption? How do you suggest we answer this question?
How can you say that the U.S. governmental
structure is working when most Americans are not politically engaged, don't
vote, don't inform themselves about crucial issues especially foreign policy
issues that affect countries like the Philippines?
If colonialism has imposed a governmental
form that is not "user-friendly" to the people and the culture, why
do we keep insisting that the form remains?
Why do you think the Philippines continues
to look to the United States for "what works" when the rest of the
world is becoming aware that most U.S. economic and foreign policies are deeply
flawed?
I felt that
it was good for our group to wrestle with these questions even though we didn't
always arrive at any complete answer (nor should it be expected). As we locate
ourselves as diasporic or transnational peoples, we can at least develop a view
from both sides and wonder aloud about how we should formulate our own
positions. It is always good to ask the kinds of questions that push us to
think in ideological terms -- a good exercise!
Speaking
of ideologies, there are other Filipino American scholars who are critical of
my work because they deem it as nativist and essentialist because I privilege
indigenous paradigms. Perhaps in
telling the above vignette, they would know that I am deeply engaged in
political questions precisely because in using indigenous paradigms to critique
modernity, I am able to reference a much larger discursive context beyond
modernity. I wish they would read the Babaylan book where I describe lengthily
how I came to use indigenous paradigms as a critique of modernity’s projects.[1]
Kublai
Day 16, July 30,
2006, Journal entry:
As Kublai described his creative process
that night on the rooftop of Ponce Suites (reminiscent of Gaudi's
architecture), I felt his Fire envelop the space and I slowly felt it warming
my tired bones and spirit. He works "very fast" he says because it
all comes out of him as energy that needs to be released. As for the giant
sculptures (in churches, parks, public spaces) he is usually able to harness
the community's or parish members' cooperation to help him. He works with
cement so he needs to work fast before it dries, so oftentimes he works
continuously without pause, high up on the scaffolding. In one near-death
accident where he fell from the scaffold, he hurt his back and today still
works with excruciating pain on his back.
He spoke of his then 5year-old daughter and
his newborn son (10days old). When his daughter was three years old, he
introduced her to paints. Kublai then ushered us into a room where 500
paintings by a three-year old daughter were proudly displayed. Aside from the
"public" walls of the suites, he also showed us the
"private" rooms where he works and the rest of the art that is not on
the walls.
Kublai doesn't like to talk about selling
art. He says it's not his job to sell art. However, he did speak of friends who
have received gifts from him. His mother told us that she is supposed to do
some marketing for him but so far, she hasn't gotten around to it either.
If I were a young graduate student today,
I'd probably do a dissertation on this young Filipino artist -- to document his
life, his work, his legacy. He is a culture-bearer but his work transcends
culture. I don't know of any other artist who is simultaneously a poet,
sculptor, photographer, painter (abstract, mixed media, collages) and works
with varying themes: surrealistic, transcendental, indigenous, nature, people,
religion, spirituality, technology, politics, resistance.
I
have postcards of Kublai’s work tacked on my wall in my office. There are days
when I daydream about Ponce Suites and the large installations around Davao and
how awestruck I was then and now. Once someone asked me if I am an artist. I
said: if Life is an Art, then I must be.
Culture-bearing
Filipino artists are my teachers and inspirations. In Kapwa: The Self in the Other, Katrin de Guia’s stories about Kidlat
Tahimik, Angel Shaw, Aureaus Solito and others point to the powerful creative
Fire in the indigenous and indiogenius alike. The sariling duwende that manifests in their art continue to inspire my
own attempts to live an artful and gracious life that is not blind to
injustice.
Lumad
Scholars
I
have Retchor’s pen and ink drawing on my kitchen wall where I see it everyday.
Retchor is one of the many Lumad scholars that Paring Bert supported throughout
their college careers. Retchor was studying to be an architect. I wonder where
he is now. Does he know that when I see his drawing, my heart lies still and
calm? Does he know that I think of him often? His drawing reminds me of each of
the scholars who became our friends during our stay. Who could forget that
night when we went to their dormitory and we were fed so lavishly with food and
stories about their aspirations.
This
was the key moment when the Fulbright teachers realized the parallels between
the Lumad scholars and the Filipina child in a California classroom. The Lumad
scholars shared with us their feelings of vulnerability as minorities in a
largely affluent, middle class, Christianized school. We heard the sighs of
homesickness, of being away from family for too long because they do not have
the money to visit often. We heard the resolve to become teachers,
anthropologists, and architects because they want to serve their communities. I
also saw the strength of their indigenous soul – were it not for the core
conviction that to be a Lumad is to be whole – perhaps, survival in the
university would be much more difficult.
In
the U.S., we hear the same refrain from the immigrant child in the classroom:
homesickness, loneliness, and alienation from the mainstream. In schools where
there are Filipino American teachers who can offer nurturance, the children
thrive; where there aren’t any, the students become silent and they bury the
precious parts of themselves so that they could assimilate and function in a
world that requires conformity. Suicide, depression, teenage pregnancy,
drop-out rates are high among Filipino students in urban areas. I sense that,
unlike the Lumad whose memory of being indigenous is intact, our children in
the diaspora are further removed from that core strength making their journey
that much more demanding; and in a culture where we are constantly barraged by
weapons of mass distraction, the Indigenous Soul keeps waiting for a return
that may or may not happen.
Death
and Grief
Kalpna,
a young, passionate, excellent, and beautiful high school teacher at Berkeley
High School left her body in Davao. I remember Paring Bert wrapping his arm
around my body-in-shock saying: Do not
interpret too much, Leny. I tried not to but was only partially able to do
so. As I look back on those days now, I am only filled with gratitude for the
community that embraced us. Tantan
Cena and Katribu took us to the ocean so we could make offerings and do leave-taking
ritual for Kalpna’s transition. The university president and Karl Gaspar and so
many friends and even strangers came by to comfort and be with us in our
grief. This generosity of spirit,
of pakikipagkapwa, is the mark of the
Filipino. Our strained capacity, due to the isolating culture we come from, to
receive such largesse of spirit, was humbling.
Kalpna’s
last words to me were: Leny, thank you
for opening so many doors for me. I knew she was referring to the Beauty of
the Filipino, the Beauty of the Land, the Beauty of the Soul as embodied by the
Lumads and non-Lumad friends who embraced us.
It
took me more than a year to befriend Death and get to know it intimately. In
that time, I learned to develop a relationship with death and dying not from a
place of fear but from the core of an unfolding heart that contained all the
social conditioning about death that I have had to unlearn. This unlearning
took me to the shadowy parts of myself that I had to gaze upon. Oh my heart, what is it that you are afraid
of? And as I named all the things on my list, I gathered them all in the
shade of my Lola’s tree and offered them to her for healing.
Gifts
My
sojourn in Mindanao through the Fulbright Hays project has given me precious
gifts. Our Filipino American teachers learned to sing the national anthem; they
learned how to dance; they listened to lectures that filled their minds and
hearts; they cried, struggled, and wrestled with questions that had no quick
answers. All of our hearts were broken…open.
You
could see it in this picture, don’t you? Can I let the ineffable speak for
itself here?
Dear
reader, out of the hundreds of stories I could have told you about my Fulbright
stories in Mindanao, I chose these few morsels to offer a glimpse of why and
how my love for Mindanao remains. Having been to Mindanao, I can now return to
my Kapampangan homeland and seek its face again and find what it was that I
missed on my first go-around and this time, hoping to come full circle.
For
isn’t this what all journeys are about? Of finding Home -- not as a beautiful
and profound abstract concept but as a beloved Place that gave birth to my
ancestors. It is the ancestors that connect the seen and unseen worlds for me.
Home is the place where my personal history merges with a cultural and
political history that has wrought
damage and pain in the course of modernity and yet, knowing now that the
Indigenous Soul keeps on singing its courtship song has kept me and my people
alive.
I
also offer this as a bridge over the oceans that separate us. I often stand on
the shore of the Pacific Ocean in Northern California and stare into the
horizon. My islands just lie over there, I say to myself.
Once,
someone asked me: Leny, if you love the
Philippines so much, why aren’t you here? I said: I am an accident of History; I had to leave so I could come Home.
I
have always been in search of a language that heals and although am not a poet,
I find the poetic more powerful than the virtuosity of the academic pen. So I
write from my heart now, confident that the mind has succumbed to the allure of
the open heart. Allure. Alindog.
In Kapwa,
there is no Other.
Here
is my closing gift to you, written on the closing days of the Fulbright trip:
First: We honor each other just by
listening...first to our own heart as it beats to the
tune of the unfamiliar words of the Other...words that pierce a corner of our heart where nothing may have yet
broken it open. When the heart breaks open, it is painful at first, like the
pain of childbirth when something is being born within you...it enlarges the
heart's capacity for compassion and empathy. Second: I will not always like
what I hear but I can hear it, hold it in my heart with tenderness and charity.
I can have a conversation with the inner self - the one who is baffled, confused
perhaps, a tad frustrated and disappointed, even lonely. Third: I will ask for
a soft touch, a kind glance, an open palm, a song, a gesture. A minor clue that
you are still with me and I with you.
[1] See
Introduction to Babaylan: Filipinos and
the Call of the Indigenous, published by the Center for Babaylan Studies, 2013
