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SENTRONG PAALARAN NG MGA AGTA

Adapted from Inquirer.net, Agta School Seeks Government Recognition

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/208171/agta-school-seeks-gov’t-recognition#ixzz3tu4L4gw8

 

Like any other children in the country, young Agta people in the Sierra Madre mountain range go to school to continue their quest for knowledge. And like any other public school, the Sentrong Paaralan ng mga Agta (SPA) also lacks books and other basic learning tools.

 

Nestled deep in the forests of northern Quezon, the SPA has yet to be recognized by the Department of Education (DepEd) as it relies on the kindness of religious people and other Good Samaritans for survival.

 

“We will again depend on the generosity of our regular donors to fulfill the school’s task for the whole year,” Wilma Quierrez, an Agta and school principal, said in a phone interview on Monday.

 

The SPA, an alternative school of learning, was created by the Tribal Center for Development (TCD) and the Catholic Prelature of Infanta in 1987 in the mountain village of Catablingan in General Nakar town.

 

Quierrez, 43, who completed a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education degree at a community college in Infanta town, is steering the SPA toward its aim of providing young Agta with basic education. She is helped by four teaching “facilitators,” three of them natives. Two are college graduates while the other two are SPA graduates. They regularly receive “little” monthly honorariums from sponsors.

 

Barangay Catablingan is a half-day hike from the town proper. It may be reached by an occasional tricycle ride that costs P350 for six passengers on a half-hour uphill, bumpy route.

The SPA’s three-classroom building was built from funds given by the TCD and the Church and bayanihan-style Agta labor, Quierrez said. Before, religious laymen and other volunteers had been teaching the children in makeshift huts under shady trees.

 

Last year, the total school population reached 204, of whom 108 were in the main school in Catablingan and the rest in four “community learning centers” found in different tribal villages. This school year, Quierrez said the SPA has yet to complete its list of students as “we are still finalizing the curriculum.”

 

She said the school had not received a single centavo from the government. “The concerned government agency told us we should not expect funding because we are not recognized by the state.”

 

Ramcy Astoveza, an Agta leader and TCD director, said the tribe’s pleas for government help have fallen on deaf ears “on the pretext that our school lacks recognition.”

 

“So why not recognize the school?” he said.

 

Alternative Learning

 

After some graduates passed the “accreditation and equivalency test” given several years ago, the SPA was able to receive teaching modules from the DepEd through its Alternative Learning System. The curriculum was designed for multigrade teaching and the class was divided into various levels of competent and learning skills.

 

“But there was no funding and other forms of assistance from the government—national, local or provincial,” Quierrez said.

 

She was grateful to the Camp Nakar-based Army’s 4th Light Armor Battalion (LAB), which chose the SPA as one of the beneficiaries of its “Project Shoebox.”

 

Lt. Col. Thomas Sedano Jr., head of the unit, said the distribution of shoe boxes stuffed with notebooks, pads, pencils, crayons, erasers, books and personal care items like face towels, combs and slippers would kick off in the SPA next week.

 

It would reach out to 52 other schools in Southern Luzon, Sedano said.

 

“For the first time, we will receive some kind of material assistance from the government,” Quierrez said.

 

SPA graduates who want to take up higher studies in the lowlands are still required to take and pass the accreditation tests to qualify despite the certificates issued by the SPA.

 

Scholars

 

“Some of our graduates are now college and high school scholars. Their school expenses are being shouldered by their sponsors,” Quierrez said.

 

Franciscan missionary Fr. Pete Montallana, an advocate of Sierra Madre protection and defender of the Agta tribe, said the long years of isolation, poverty and exploitation of the indigenous people by the lowlanders had resulted in their lack of interest in education.

 

He saw hope, however, for a bright future as Education Secretary Armin Luistro has been focusing on the need to give state recognition to the alternative learning system of the indigenous people.

 

Outside a classroom 
Outside a classroom 
Reading storybooks to the children 
Children playing with a makeshift slide

PROJECTS UNDERTAKEN AT SPA

#1 THE NURSERY

The main projects we undertook during the time at SPA were building a nursery, constructing a community hall, weaving and mural painting. This was enough to occupy us for 8 days, and manpower was spread quite thin because there was so much to complete. \

 

We were tasked to help the villagers to prepare and construct a nursery from scratch - this nursery would be used to house crops and herbs that would either serve as a source of income for the villager (to sell in the lowlands), or for their own sustenance. 

 

Prior to the trip, we had been preparing ourselves for some gardening work by visiting the Ground-Up Initiative @ Bottle Tree Park, Yishun. For more on our pre-trip preparation, do head over to this page.

 

The villagers had prepared a plot of land upon which to build the nursery prior to our arrival. Our task was to clear the land of any vegetation (weeds, wild plants, etc) and to till the soil to loosen it and ready it for planting. Then, we would shape the soil into four mounds, forming rows to plant the crops in. This would be followed by using quartered coconut husks to demaracate one plot from the other (some of us even followed the villagers to take a trek in the jungle to look for these dried cocont husks). Finally, we dug uniformly spaced rows and planted the seeds in them, before covering them with banana tree stem halves to shield the fragile seedlings from the harsh sunlight, then erecting a structure with large wooden tree branches, some netting material, and string - simple, basic, and practical.

 

The nursey was situated a little further from where the main village was, so there was what the villagers termed a “short walk” to an empty patch down/uphill. For many of us, every step had to be calculated with caution because of our lack of agility when it came to traversing the jungle terrain, much to the amusement of the villagers. They were, however, wonderfully accomodating, and held our hands to help us along.

 

We finished work on the nursery within 4 days, planting a variety of vegetables such as eggplants, bok choi, carrots, spring onions. The nursery made us realise just how resourceful the villagers were when it came to their way of life in the highlands. Cut off from the nearest urban civilisation by more than an hour's drive, they have to make do with what nature can offer them if they want to keep up with their lives in the most efficient, effective and hassle-free way possible. The nursery was constructed with no use of machinery at all, and all the materials used to contruct it were obtained directly from the forest (e.g. twigs, banana stem, coconut husks). Of course, when work on the finished product was finally concluded, it looked wonderful all the same.

 

#2 THE COMMUNITY HALL

#2 THE COMMUNITY HALL

The tribe sometimes hosts visitors like us - visitors from the lowlands, mostly. Whenever they did, they found it difficult to find a place for their visitors to gather. Hence, they were keen on building a small shelter to allow people to hold meetings, or just to rest and chill out, and we did our best to help them in that process.

 

When we first arrived at the site the villagers were already hard at work, and it was here we realised that they didn’t particularly need our help, because they were working rather marvelously efficiently on the community hall, which was a simple shelter composed of a nipah-leaf roof lashed together with vines against a small cluster of trees. It was a marvel, a complete work of art and in my sincere opinion a fantastic architectural brainchild, largely because of the extremely clever use of natural space that the shelter was designed around. In the small space, there were some trees. The logical response one would usually adopt if you decided to build something would be to clear the land, and in this case, chop down the trees that were obstructing the designated construction site. The villagers, however, cleverly decided that the trees would serve as their pillars, so that they didn’t have to use additional resources to build pillars for the structure. Instead, they would build around the trees, and they would use the trees to their advantage.

 

To build around the trees, the villagers had nailed temporary wooden planks and poles around the trees to enable them to walk around above ground to construct the roof. Because they are wonderfully agile, they didn’t need many poles and planks, since they could leap over large gaps and scale the trees if they wanted to, but now that we were in the equation and had made our intentions to help them clear, they felt inclined to make the work environment more conducive for us. The villagers started bringing wooden planks over and nailing more of them to the trees, testing the temporary structure for its strength and sturdiness. It was then we realised that they were building additional structures and redesigning their work space for us, so that we could go about carrying out the project without falling through holes or falling down from the tree, hospitality that we really appreciated and were extremely grateful for.

 

We weren't particularly fantastic at building the hall, but we tried our hand at hammering bamboo strips to form the benches in the shelter, lashing the nipah leaves together with vines to form the roof, playing with the little pet monkey that the villagers had near the construction site, and spent several afternoons enjoying halo-halo, in comforting silence, with the villagers under the half-built roof of our hall as we worked.

 

 

 

 

lashing nipah leaves together to form the layers of the roof
lashing nipah leaves together to form the layers of the roof
tying the layers of nipah leaves to the structure
tying the layers of nipah leaves to the structure
almost done!

#3 WEAVING

We wanted to help the villagers to weave mats that they could sell in the urban cities. While we started off slow and inexperienced, the patient guidance of the villagers really did help us along, and we managed to weave a decent number of mats after many back-breaking hours of bending over our mats and weaving the long leaves together.

#4 DOCUMENTATION

#5 CHILDREN ENGAGEMENT

In the words of one of our team members

 

Beyond the tasks we went to the village to carry out (such as the building of the vegetable nursery and the painting of the classroom mural) most of my time was spent playing with the children of SPA and Malatunglan. The children were incredibly inquisitive, playful and so quick to love, often giving us gifts they made by hand, such as a tiny shell bracelet or a braided leaf crown. They’d drag us around, shouting “Ate, ate!” (big sister in Tagalog), eager to play and eager to show us everything they knew.

 

Ready with affection and filled with boundless energy, the kids were always expectantly waiting to play a game with us, often dragging us out to play right after we were done with work, or even beseeching us to come play while we were on break. Over the few days we spent with them we learned to play countless games, as listed here:

 

  • Wigana ABC

  • Wigana X

  • Wigana JIGS

  • I love the flowers, bulaklak sa…

  • The boat is sinking! Group yourselves into [number]

  • B-c, apple, lemon juice, tell me the name of your sweetheart! Anong pangalan ng first love mo first letter ng ang sasabihin mo!

  • Pop Cola! Masarap! Inumin! Pop cola, masarap, inumin, my name is Sharon Cuneta, Robin Padilla…

  • My name is Po, is Po…

  • Nanay, Tatay, gusto ko tinapay, Ate, Kuya, Gusto ko kape…

  • and more!

 

The feeling of learning the Tagalog words to the games from having played them so much was quite amazing, honestly; and it really helped us to bond with the kids as we could sing the words along with them.

 

The children were always so helpful and so loving; always bestowing hugs and clinging on to our legs or our hands. Whatever task we were on they’d run over to help us, whether it was scraping sticky substances off their classroom walls or carrying food items, the kids were always eager to help and make our work easier. Navigating the terrain, certainly in the jungle and even in SPA, was quite difficult as the ground was often muddy and the slopes steep. We also faced the problem of not knowing where to go much of the time. The kids would hold our hands and help us to balance; always patient and careful, earnestly trying to make sure we wouldn’t slip and worrying over our safety even though we were so much older. 

 

And I have learned that age sometimes means very little. For all intents and purposes we were older than the kids, but they were so much more experienced than us in navigating the terrain and I have learned so much from them (and there’s still more to learn). Their relentless, resilient energy, their willingness to open up, trust and love, and of course their sweet innate goodness made me fall completely in love with the hordes of children that would run around us each day. For opening up to us and so eagerly showering their affection upon us, I am endlessly grateful and even after a few months I still constantly wonder how the kids are doing and think about the kind of people they will grow up to be. Even though I won’t be there to see it, the thought of their growing up fills me with so many conflicting emotions; excitement at the thought of them growing and for the lovely adults I know they will become, worry at how they will navigate all of life’s problems that inevitably come with age, and regret that I didn’t take more pictures of them as they were while we were there, tiny and carefree and happy.

 

I struggle to end this post, as my affection for them knows no bounds, but no matter how much time passes I do believe I’ll always be grateful to the kids for opening up to us and allowing us to love them, and giving us so much affection in return. Thank you, Aira, Totoy, Ninette, Sidik, Allaysa, Bryan, and so many more; I miss you all very, very much.  

 

 

In the words of one of our team members

 

The aim of our documentation project was to detail and document the way of life of the tribe, then use the information we gathered to create a short storybook for the children there. The community wanted something concrete to detail their culture and their way of life, so that they could pass it down to the younger generation, and this was therefore what we set out to do.

 

Documentation sessions were rare, because it was awfully difficult to arrange them, but it was during these times when we were given the opportunity to sit down with the villagers and ask them questions about their way of life, their culture, their hopes and expectations, and so much more. There were the hard facts – marriage, family structure, education, religion, history, leadership – things that gave us perspective into the traditions and the heritage of the tribe (see The Agta Tribe for an in depth collation of the information we gathered during these sessions). Then we decided to ask them what they felt about us visiting their community.The chieftan expressed that they felt shy and embarrassed receiving foreign guests like us. They were embarrassed of the food they could provide, the way their houses looked, they way they looked, and everything about themselves. He explained that these feelings probably came from past interactions with people from the lowlands, because people always told them they smelled bad, that their skin was black, that they had kinky hair, that they had different features. I really couldn’t understand it at that time, how a community so rich and full of spirit and so strong could feel such shame and embarrassment, and it didn’t feel good to know that we made them feel this way, when they were everything we could have hoped for as hosts and so much more.

 

But what I couldn’t comprehend most was how I never picked up on this, and they never once showed that they felt this way. Their hospitality, immense patience, innate harmony in nature, simplicity, warmth, smiles and amazing capabilities were everything that they had to be proud of, and everything that put me to shame, and I am nothing but endlessly grateful to them for being a part of my life. I love this community more than I ever believed I could, and the beautiful individuals that form it. But the chieftan’s response made me realise that the community had a lot of hidden feelings that they didn’t and couldn’t express, firstly because of the language barrier, and secondly because they were trying to make us feel as comfortable as possible, even if we could have been making them feel extremely uncomfortable. Even as they might have had these unspoken conflicts within themselves, they never once showed it, which was why the chieftan’s answer came as such a rude shock to me, because the whole time we were interacting with them they were constantly all smiles and laughter. I didn’t like the way they were made to feel this way, and I didn’t like that they still have to. I really just hope that during our stay we managed to accord their beautiful existence the regard and respect and affirmation and appreciation that they so rightfully deserve, but so seldom receive.

 

 

 

 

the whole village sits in for the session

documenting the cultural performances

documentation sessions around the fire

#6 MURAL PAINTING

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