Miracle in Mambing

                                           

We're having a resort break on Samal island, one hour off the coast of Davao, Mindanao. As per last time, the highlight of our trip has been the visit to Mambing, and Netty's tribe - so different from our life! Leaving to return to the world outside the forest, I feel both a deep melancholy and a sense of guilt courtesy of my living the western lifestyle with its inherently wasteful nature

We completed this most arduous and adventurous section of our trip using three forms of transport, having a police escort and traversing some of the worst roads one can imagine. At one point, on a particularly muddy/slippery section, where there was evidence of a recent landslip, there was less than 30cm between the left-hand side wheels of the 4WD police vehicle we were riding in and a sheer drop.

The disarmingly handsome Police Chief Investigator had kindly offered to deliver us safely to the village. As it transpired the road was declared impassable for four-wheel drive!  We were quizzed by the PCI as he flashed one of his dentally perfect smiles, “How do you know you’re in New Corella?” “That’s when the road gets very ugly,” I retorted to a wider grin and the police equivalent of “High–ho-Silver–Away”.  The police departed in their parade-ground uniforms (a smartly fitted blue pin-stripe with polished badges, patent leather shoes and an armoury of hardware) and their now mud-besmirched vehicle - only after we were left in the capable hands of our friend, Datu Mencio Balong, and the local taxi service. That’s to say we changed over to a hubel-hubel (motorcycle with basic extensions carrying four people) and a ‘skylab’ (motorcycle with major extensions and roof carrying three people, bulk provisions for the village and our stripped-down luggage).

I hadn’t the nerve to risk our new HD video camera, so I pocketed our old Canon, hoping to capture the raw abandon of helmetless westerners with children in tow hurtling along the mud infested byways. The locals were doubtless wondering why the camera? After all we do this every day…

The road snaked its way up the mountainside and along the ridges. Each level area or down slope had a resident mud bath lying in wait – a yawning quagmire of freshly turned mud with ridges of harder earth between. The riders throttled their steeds down to a lower gear before slithering through clutching and blipping the throttle to retain traction. At times they lowered the landing gear – thongs paddling the mud like ducks in a pig-pen – and then we were through, until the next obstacle.

There were sections of tractable road upon which I extracted the camera and attempted to record the journey despite the ravages of road, wind and the continuously howling exhaust note. The rather tenuous feeling of the wheels oscillating through mud-baths gave me cause to pocket the camera on each occasion, in order to focus on staying aboard and upright, with the unfortunate consequence that no footage of the mud-voyages was taken. This was justified as in one particularly well-lubricated morass the bike stalled and we pitched sideways, though the bike was at a standstill and we all dropped the landing gear on that occasion. Heather’s sandal was sucked from her foot as she waded to the shore. I take solace in the fact that it will all be there next time….

Just after taking the video, we were caught in a wet season downpour, fortunately we were close to the village. By this time the cause of the earlier engine-stalling episode became obvious – we were running out of fuel. The rider rocked and laid the bike on its side, in an effort to extract the last droplets of petrol lingering in the fuel tank. We walked the level and inclined sections, coasting down the ever-wetter hillside and clutch starting the motor to negotiate the remaining mud until we rolled into town. Welcome to Mambing!

Purok 7 Mambing is one of nine or more villages dotted along the spine of the rugged mountain range, which includes Mt Apo – the Philippines’ tallest mountain. The area has been stripped of its original forest cover by a plague of loggers. The Mangguangans subsist on the hillsides and narrow ridges growing camote (sweet potato), corn, bananas, coconuts, and raising chickens, goats and pigs. A few carabao can be seen (a compliant and powerful beast of burden tasked with hauling heavy loads, plowing fields ) grazing peacefully.

According to a local official, the (local) government has tried to initiate reafforestation, but the farmers remove the trees in order to survive through farming. (You can’t eat trees and the farmers can’t afford to wait until the timber is advanced enough to generate income). Farmers plant into the precipitous hillsides, almost bare of vegetation. The resulting erosion is destructive, with heavy downpours removing the fragile layer of productive soil - dragging it off the hillsides to be deposited as silt in the creeks as rivers draining the area.  Areas of dense vegetation and remnant forest surround the farm plots.

On our last visit we discussed two small projects - sponsoring a child's education and making a dictionary of the Managguangan language. So it was terrific to deliver the finished dictionary to Datu Mencio Balong, the local school and to see their excited reaction. They were highly amused at our smallest ability to master Managguangan words and greeted our efforts with great delight. We were warmly welcomed and again stayed in the Datu's house with his three children and wife, Ellen. The village has no electricity and no running water. People rise early (5:00am, before sunrise to go about their tasks) and they use torches fashioned from recycled bottles with compressed paper wicks and kerosene. Several houses have tiny solar panels to generate power stored in batteries for evening use.

The children's games were fascinating and were based around three things - thongs, worn tyres and a single basketball. The thongs were balanced, flicked, carried between the toes and thrown to the hoots and shrieks of approval or disappointment of participants. The games that were devised, each one more challenging than its predecessor, saw the children performing ever more extraordinary feats of agility and skill. Everyone loved it!

The tyres were propelled and guided with a specifically designed ladle fashioned from coconut wood. The boys played this one – racing their tyres through a complex obstacle course, chasing them up a muddy slope before pausing at the top and driving them down again, a precursor to the adult skills of selecting the most stable surface, the best line through a corner, contending with muddy slopes and the myriad skills required to navigate a motorcycle along the treacherous roads.

Rather than dampening the childrens’ spirits, rain seemed to excite and enhance the activities, punctuated by vigorous bouts of washing  (pouring water over themselves from the many barrels and buckets catching the rain which we joined in with relish). While the slipper throwers thinned out, the tyre chasers entered a new and frenzied stage of the game - their tyres whipping up rooster-tails of water, carving their remnant profiles into the gluey mud and rendering the muddy slope a champions-only zone.

The basketball players were divided into three or four groups, the most proficient of which (consisting of very fit and fiercely competitive young men) was dominant. As each group tired of its exertions or were called away, another would gravitate gradually onto the court, generating another game. The court was rarely vacant. The skills were well rehearsed and impressive - certainly the players would have out-played many representative teams at home.

           

On Sunday we attended the local church at which the Datu preaches, having studied divinity at some stage in his past. It was a beautiful service replete with fresh native flowers, heavenly singing and a truly impressive display of everyone’s Sunday best. Feeling somewhat grubby - wearing the same clothes we arrived in, any feelings of discomfort were quickly dispelled as a welcome song was performed, which involved everyone shaking hands. Galatians was preached upon – with reference to slavish adherence to Jewish ‘Torah’ and how looking to laws and human acts neglected what we have been freely given by grace. It was thoughtfully delivered and any relevant passages, delivered in Visayan, were read to us in English.

Certainly, it gave me cause to reflect upon the laws and legalism engulfing contemporary Australian society. Laws intended to protect and prosper the community have grown incrementally, like some malignant tumour or blood clot, clogging the arteries whilst starving our collective heart and brain of oxygen. Example – a child’s fall in the local park results in a broken limb. Ouch – but no-one’s fault right? Wrong. In the rarefied atmosphere of helicopter parenting, driving children to school, scheduled after-school activities and orgies of litigiousness, any suggestion that the child’s misadventure is a normal part of growing up, is met howls of moral outrage.

Working freelance for South Sydney Council many years ago, I inquired of the parks manager, why so many swings, climbing frames and small parks were disappearing. The equipment was being removed, he explained, to prevent accidents, while the parks were being sold off to cover the Council’s ever growing legal expenses. Perhaps such parents feel that their progeny are better off gaming on the couch while the lower-class kids take their chances playing in the street?

Before leaving Mambing, a second plan was devised with Datu Mencio to support the Mangguangan tribe of Purok 7 by engaging members of our community in the Blue Mountains to assist. School sponsorships, livelihood projects involving chickens and goats, cultural and basic needs programs were discussed, costed and charted into a matrix with guidelines to ensure commitment, accountability and continuity. From past experience, rather than waiting for government assistance, pledges of support, business sponsorships or an organising committee, the best advice is -Just do it! *

On our last night there, I finished drafting the plan sitting at Ellen’s dining table as evening gently descended upon the village. The birth of our daughter Netty, has drawn together tribal villagers from rural Mindanao and western suburbanites from Australia to find a common purpose. That’s a miracle!

*(Chorus from their song Do It by early 70’s band - The Pink Fairies)