A week in SANGILIN or PARADISE!
Its been a month since our immersion in the mountains of mindoro with the mangyans as a part of a subject and its a big mistake if i wont blog about it.. :)
So, it was a seven day heaven hell experience! but generally i enjoyed it! 7 days w/o the comfort of your own bed, bathroom, transportation and social life (both online and not) but it was also seven days of peaceful mind, simple life and learnings..
I admit, it wasn’t easy for me. it was hard to detach myself from my normal life. I am not used to not seeing my boyfriend for 2 consecutive days but i did it for 5 days (because the days was for transpo he accompany me in both out departure and arrival). another challenge was conserving our cellphone battery for us to have even a little connection to the city and to the people we can’t live w/o talking.
These pictures were in the RORO on our way to mindoro. it was my first time to ride in a big sea vessel! and im not for it! :( haha! the last picture was during our super late lunch in Mang inasal at Calapan City Mindoro before we had our shopping. We bought all the essentials in living in a mountain like charcoals, kersone, lots of matches, utensils, plates, improvised stove, pans etc. it was fun but its not easy to carry all the stuff! the first day we stayed in the monastery and in the next morning we already went to the mountains. we rode a jeep for about an hour then climb up in the mountain with all our stuff! i swear it was the worst physical activity i did!! i experienced extreme trainings during my cheerleader days but i never gave up but with this challenge i did!! it was really hard do go up in the mountains and thinking that you are carrying the whole world in your back! Thanks to the mangyans who offered their help in bringing some of the stuff. it was such a big relief!!
The other challenge! the food preparation! It was not hard actually since all of us in the group can cook and do food preparation. i was assigned in preparing the fire (which is not an easy job cos its hard to make “baga” using charcoal and woods”) and cooking the rice! some groups are just eating canned goods since they dont want too much jobs and they cant cook, while my group are cooking as if we are just in our homes! we cooked adobo, tortang talong, ginisang munggo, inihaw na liempo etc! it was really fun! and cooking really helps a lot to let time pass and not be bored cos honestly it was really boring not to do anything!!
with the “budangs” or the mangyan kids! i so love them! they were all so sweet to us! they gave us flowers and go to our kubo every morning to say hi before they go to school and after school they will go to us again to invite us to play with them. we played chinese garter with them and they were all good at it! they were playing bare feet cos some of them do not have slippers :( i had really fun with them especially when we all took a bath in the river. they used to tell us that we are “maalo’n”, its the mangyan word for beautiful. see they are really honest! LOL!
One of my favorite part of the experience NATURE TRIP! mindoro has a lot to offer when it comes to natural attractions! especially in the mountains. it was so fascinating to see luscious green trees and plants everywhere! it was the total opposite of manila! cold breeze fresh air, birds flying animals everywhere and the fire flies at night was awesome! The river is one of my favorite place in the mountain. I was a 30-45 minutes walk from our community, long and tiring but worth it. the water was so clean, clear and cold! it was my first time to see a clean river like that. I had so much fun swimming it the water and playing stone skipping with the budangs. Another part of the mountain was the falls but it was very dangerous to go in there. This part of the mountain is to steep but we still tried. The view was breath taking. It was worth the risk of going down and almost falling down. All thanks to the kids for accompanying us and letting us experience their home’s treasure.
On our last day in the Mountain, we went to the highschool of the mangyans. It was almost a two hour walk! and we crossed two rivers! imagine their effeorts just to go to school. It was a relief for all of us since that part of the place has electricity. We were all so eager to charge our phones. And i realized the value of electricity! haha..
The first picture was with a Mangyan. Old mangayns has the ability to read your palm. And they were so great at it. This lady told me that i will be super rich! and i will travel a lot (thats why they are great!) hahaha! Generally, the mangyans are very friendly people. the are really super good to us! they don’t sleep unless we are already asleep, they gave us woods for our cooking and banana leaf for eating. They offer us root crops for us to experience it and so much more. And another thing i noticed about them that they are very NON violent people, they hate it actually. There are issues regarding the low landers/tagalog or in short US not treating them right but still they welcomed us with open arms and shared what ever they can to us. I really admire them for choosing to preserve their culture instead of going with the flow in the cities.
That second picture was our home for the week. We were 8 girls in there. We do everything in there. Eat, sleep, change clothes. And the last picture was us sleeping. We were like sardines every time we all lay down to get some rest and call it a day. It was really hard. and literally hard beause it was bamboo so every time we wake up all our complaints was body pain! and oops do not forget the 3x large mosquito biting us. Off lotion was useless!
Living the simple life made me realize so much. It made me appreciate the small things i got. Our village name was “SANGILIN” which means paradise, and yes it was. I experienced to live with simplest people ive ever met. I saw how contented they are in their life. How lucky we are to have everything we’ve got but still we complain at times we cant get what we want. The Mangyans are more than what we think they are. Their way of life does not make them less of a person than we are, maybe they are even more humane than us. Given a chance, i would like to go back there. The experience was very hard but its all worth the sarifice. And i can say that i became a better person because of the experience.
*note: how matter i indent the captions and put the pictures in center, it wont! thanks to my blog theme! LOL*
