Christmas Break Adventures

I went to four Kalanguya villages and one Ayta village over Christmas break, and also visited CFM (the Kalanguya missions center in Bambang). First, Bob and one of his German friends, as well as myself and two classmates went up to the province of Ifugao on Dec. 23 for the 25th wedding anniversary of another classmate, Dalmas, then back to Nueva Vizcaya and up to the village of Mapayao the same afternoon. One of Bob's nieces posted some pictures from our trip to Ifugao here: http://ironheart.multiply.com/photos/album/22

The next day, we hiked for a couple of hours up to the village of Oliweg, where it was cold and they have no electricity. We had a small pig and a dog killed and cooked for Christmas Eve dinner. I took some nasty pictures when they were dissecting them, but I’ll refrain from posting those:-).

Then the next day, we hiked for several hours all the way down from Oliweg and Mapayao. When we reached the lowlands, someone offered us a ride in their “tricycle,” back to CFM, and all 7 of us (8 with the driver) managed to ride on it.

That evening, we traveled to Aurora province, and arrived in an Ayta village by the ocean the next morning. The Ayta are the short, curly haired people of the Philippines who are very poor and usually wander from place to place. We ate our meals with our fingers, with banana leaves for plates. One of the women in the village has leprosy, and some of the children might have it, but they can’t afford to go to the hospital. We got to talk to the missionaries there who are trying to help them.

The next day, we left Aurora, said goodbye to my classmates, and traveled back to CFM. After resting for a day, we went up to the village of Acab for a Kalanguya single’s camp. We traveled part of the way there in a jeepney, then hiked across muddy mountain trails that were was very slippery cause it was raining that day. We stayed the whole next day at the camp, then left on foot the morning after that and spent New Year’s Eve in Nansiakan, the village that Bob is from.

In Nansiakan, We stayed with one of Bob’s sisters, which is also where his dad lives (who is already in his eighties and is one of the last Kalanguya people who don’t know English.) We had to hike down into the rice fields and then up to get there, and it was muddy and steep. I had a hard time walking without slipping in the mud, especially since I had injured my big toe and had to wear Bob’s flip flops to hike.

The next day, January 1, we rode down and then up to Mapayao again on the back of a dump truck, and then went down that night and visited some people at the SIL center in Bagabag on January 2. We went back to Manila on January 3, but it wasn’t easy to get a bus from Bambang cause the busses were mostly full of people going back to Manila after celebrating the New Year with their families in the province. We had to ride a non-air-conditioned bus (standing for the first part), then got onto air-conditioned bus in the town an hour or two away. After about an hour, the “air-con” went out, and we had to ride all the rest of the way to Manila without it. But I was glad to be back and get some rest before school started again on January 8.