OUR CHURCH AND TOURIST DAY AT HILANGOS
LEYTE,
BEGINNING WITH A PRE-DAWN RUN FROM LEYTE TO OWOK
AND
BACK ALONG THE SEASIDE BEACH
TO
MATAPAY FISHING VILLAGE AND RETURN,
THEN A “PUMP BOAT” EXCURSION ACROSS THE SEA
TO A DESERT ISLAND WITH A LIGHT HOUSE NAMED
CANIGAO,
AND
RETURN IN THE SUNSET
January 26, 2003
It was wonderful! I had planned to run this morning, but last night as I was typing up the report of the reception at LBH and the celebration of the 29th anniversary in which I had given my “encouraging remarks”, I heard a knock on the door, and Dr. Bhaby had come over with another curious person who had wanted to see me, and together we talked about my planned run this morning. She had talked a fellow named Jasper in going out with me for a run, explaining that he was not known as a runner, but he was their local tennis player and should be able to keep up. It was thought that we might probably go to the local school and just go around the oval a few times and then come back home, but I had intended a far more interesting course and a chance to see the people and places of the Leyte town of Hilangos and the surrounding seaside fishing villages. And, so we did, just as they were coming awake at the dawn before the overhead sun got hot.
I awoke too early, courtesy of a chorus of guinea fowl, turkey, fighting cocks, quail, and a few swine, all squawking in anticipation of a sunrise the was still two hours away. I got up and dressed in running shorts and my TECH tee shirt, and went out to see when Jasper came by and greeted me wearing a knit stocking cap ( it is cold in winter here---about 70* before sunrise!) and we waded through the already stirring guinea fowl. We walked out to the road, and walked a bit further when he asked if we should turn into the school and use the track. I said I thought the town and its streets, with little traffic at dawn would be a better idea, and off we went.
We had gone “almost a kilometer” by Jasper’s measure, when he said he was ready to slow down. “Only 43 more kilometers to go!” I replied. He won’t be running with me again.
We had crossed an extensive bridge over a river whose name he, nor anyone else I asked, knew. There was a sign I saw as I passed, announcing that Gloria Malcanang Arroyo’s government had invested Philippine pesos 300,000 in the improvements to the access for the “barangay” (the local unit of measurement of a small voting unit, headed by a “Captain” and several together constitute a municipality of which several make a town, of which several make a zone, of which zones the 78 provinces are made) so that the fishing village of Matapay was the benefactor of US $6,000 in public works—not a bad investment for the 700 voters in the barangay of Matapay—at least enough for them to raise a pillar and list on it the names of the Captain and all officers of the barangay as loyal parts of GMA’s government of the RP (Republic of the Philippines.) GMA was inaugurated on the same day as GWB, each under circumstances of questionable electoral and constitutional issues. Her predecessor was a movie actor thrown out because of fraud, and she as vice president (and daughter of a former president---does all of this sound familiar?) was sworn in rather tentatively at the time of my first visit, but has weathered the challenges of many assaults, including an insurrection among the military. So, even a fishing village on the seashore under coconut palms with nets drying along the river is worth her attention in announcing her presidency.
I ran on to a village with an even more fascinating name, along a small creek with the same name. This is the village of “Owok.” What does the name mean? It means “Raven”, since the name “Owok” is the sound a raven makes! Perfect!
There, I waited for Jasper to catch up in his walk/running behind me. I asked to go down to the seaside, and we turned west to go through picturesque small clusters of bamboo shacks under coconut palms, each with platforms on which large piles of nets were drying. There was a seaside place with which he was familiar since the church had once held a youth retreat there, now a resort. At every turn I saw people first stare at me, and then smile when they saw a European running and an exhausted Philippine coming up behind him. They were startled since they were just up from their night and were on their way for their morning bath in the sea or to go out fishing with the outrigger canoes and the nets. They all asked if I could stop and offered me a ride (there are many tricycle pedicabs here) or offer me something to drink—coconut milk, I presumed.
I ran along the beach as I got slowed down waiting for Jasper, and when he arrived, I took a few photos of us in front of the beached graceful outrigger canoes with the bamboo floats pontooning them for buoyancy and stability. I only had one exposure left when I came to the very picturesque fishing village of Matapay along the as yet unnamed river at its entrance to the sea. I figured it is just as well, since I was already 12 km and 90 minutes into my run, and I might have stopped to admire the local bamboo architecture like that of Micronesia at Pohnpei which it reminded me of, and as described in a book I subsequently read o the anthropology of the Pohnpei Micronesians in their interaction with the Polynesians “Nests in the Wind.” I resolved instead to come back the next morning, on the run. Alone—now that I know where this little gem of undisturbed natural and anthropologic history happens to hide out.
OFF TO CHURCH,
FUNDAMENTALLY
When I returned in time for a late breakfast, I took my cold water brackish semi-salt shower and made it after everyone else had finished breakfast in the canteen. There is a fellow who just happened along to fall in with us, and he says he is delighted to be a part of all these famous people, having arrived in the Philippines on the longest visa he could get—59 days—based on a “tugging in his heart” which called him to some form of mission service for the rest of his life—coincident with his having been divorced from his wife who kept the farm in Virginia. He has a specialty to contribute—he sings bass in barbershop Gospel, he said. Now how a barbershop quartet minus three functions I learned twice over—he stands up and tunelessly renders some well known hymn, in the church this morning insisting that the medical staff stand behind him and “as his instrument” clap or snap their fingers as he sang almost pitifully, “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho.” He said he so much admired what it is that I do, that like the notorious Bill from Atlanta—also by no coincidence—he wanted to be identified with such worthy work, even if he had no skills or aptitude. So, later, as he hitched along with us on our excursion, he asked, “Is there some way he could join in my expeditions to anywhere, even if he had nothing he could contribute? “ Haven’t I already done that enough, carrying non-contributors who come front and center for accreditation for the leadership and senior status of the efforts—but “Don’t you worry about me, I will just tag along in the vanguard!” No, there would not be room for him or his kind in the kind of intense and efficient system I have to run, with everyone pulling more than their weight and consuming less of the resources.
Our church service again included an introduction of me and Jennifer, and for a special celebration a “Promotion of Leyte Baptist Seminary.” A Hawaiian based missionary of the Baptist church named Hopper was to “promote” and it was exactly that –an advertisement for his 47-student Baptist Seminary, the “finest Fundamental Seminary in all of the Visayan Islands.” He used the term “fundamental” more often than the strict Calvinists use the term “Reformed.” He was proud to say that he had come to this area in 1952 when it was rife with Presbyterians and had formed the front wedge of the Baptist invasion bringing the people back to fundamentalism after the Presbyterians had leaned too far away from the fundamentals and got involved with the finest subtleties of religion and life. He insisted that there were men and women in the seminary, since there was definitely a place for women in the church—not in the pulpit of course, since no one should hold to that—but there was a proper place for women, so they were also encouraged to join to assist the men he was training and sending throughout the Visayan Islands—from Negros Oriental and other Cebuano speaking areas. A quartet of seniors was being held back before their graduation so that they could deliver the punchy song service of his “promotion” and “Let’s bring them back since you would rather hear them, I am sure, than me anyway.” Right!
Afterwards, he told me he was from Central Illinois but had returned to Grand Rapids Michigan with his first wife until she died, and he was affiliated with the Grand Rapids Baptist’s seminary, and had gone to Hawaii for twenty years, marrying a local for his second wife. He insisted that we visit the LBS and an arrangement was made, despite my interests in doing almost any other thing for the following evening—the end of our big operating day. Right!
OVER THE BOUNDING SEA
TO A DESERT ISLAND—
CANIGAO ISLAND—
IN A “PUMP BOAT” OUTRIGGER CANOE
I packed up cameras and GPS, and my running shorts and towel, and we went to the small barangay to the other side of Hilangos (the name means “Here is the place where many people from Ilho Ilho live”---including my hosts. There we engaged two long covered canoes with their bamboo outriggers slapping in the surf. We packed all of us on top of the central canoe, and, even though we would be slapping along in the surf, I kept my cameras carefully behind my back to protect them from the salt water spray, but available for use if I saw the looming desert island as we came upon it and its picturesque modern lighthouse.
We traveled one hour across 8.36 miles directly south (all according to my GPS) to this small island with palms of coconuts and a central lighthouse with a small Catholic shrine at its base. This is Canigao—the name immediately tells you that the Portuguese navigators named it. Only later did I realize that the lighthouse is the reason for the naming of this stretch called the Canigao Channel, between Leyte and several other small islands and shoal waters. I zipped off the pants to shorts, and splashed ashore to beach comb and to collect small seashells, most of which contained hermit crabs. I brought them back for hermit crab races. I also picked up some brilliant crimson red fire coral. I walked around the island on its beach alternately soft sand and sharp seashell studded coral rock. I met several other people on holiday, all of them Philippine who each greeted me, asked me where I was from, and wanted to know how I found the Philippine scenery climate, and most of all--people. I told them the latter is why I kept coming back. I was again offered the hospitality of each beach blanket I passed, being the only white male on the island, I became a celebrity, and one group told another that I was just cruising along the sand—you know—like normal folk, and rumor had it that I was a doctor operating at LBH.
Not yet I wasn’t, but that would change soon. When it clouded up, and the winds blew, and the surf chopped up to soak us as we made the longer return trip into the wind and waves, we arrived somewhat salted and windblown if not sunburned, and even encrusted with salt, I went right to the LNH to make rounds on the pre-op patients who had been admitted for our operations tomorrow. We had several goiters, one very large thyroglossal duct cyst all to be done under local and regional cervical block—and an older woman with a severe uterine prolapse for vaginal hysterectomy. I looked and called it cancer since there were ulcers along the pendulous uterus dangling all of its length below the introitus. No, but that is just happened in the last few days so it is just some ulcers from the drying and necrosis of this mucosal prolapse. OK, we will see.
But we will see all of that tomorrow on our biggest operating day of this “scouting advance party” to check the suitability of Leyte for a surgical mission in the future. That will happen all day tomorrow, but only after I fulfill my promise to myself, and roll out early for a full roll of film in the Nikon TeleTouch for an early morning solo run to Matapay again before the dawn starts up our clinical day n LBH!