Mangyan moments
We never expected it to be so far away! We (the ECHOstore trio composed of Chit Juan, Reena Francisco and myself) were traveling to get to the source of one of our ECHOstore community products, and to see the indigenous community who produce them. It was an experience in itself: Land travel at the dark of dawn (two and a half hours), onto a ro-ro over sea (two hours), over mud rough terrain (three hours), through army checkpoints, viewing beautiful rice fields and the changing sky... to get to the Mangyan-Alangan community in the nine-hectare parcel of land within the 220-hectare Mangyan Reservation in Paitan, Nauhan in Oriental Mindoro. We tagged alongside the amazingly energized Holy Spirit nun Sister Cel Zabala, who was driving her AUV, co-piloted by 75-year-old Sister Victricia.
Over at the foothills of Mount Halcon, the Tugdaan Center for Learning and Development houses both the cooperative of Mangyans called SANAMA, Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Mangyan Alangan and Tugdaan School. This center is a foundation established in 1989 by the Assisi Foundation, run by the SVD priests and the Holy Spirit Social Center. It is dedicated to serve the eight Mangyan Tribes of Oriental and Occidental Mindoro.
Tugdaan means “seedbed” in the Mangyan-Alangan dialect. They chose this term to stress the program’s commitment to root the development and sustainability of the Mangyan community in the realities of their life and culture. The center helps preserve the Mangyan life and culture, deepening their connection to the land and environment while the Holy Spirit Social Center nuns and volunteers teach farming, livelihood skills and the legal rights to make the Mangyans keep their ancestral lands. This community is empowered and self-reliant as all their programs are planned, conceptualized, implemented and directed by a management team, which is composed mostly of Mangyan people.
To help the Mangyan community generate its own resources for the sustainability of their programs and activities, there are livelihood programs like poultry, swine raising and handicraft making. They also have a food processing center, which makes all the delicious jams of guava, pineapple and herbs. We touched the gumamela flowers growing in the wild that give us the hibiscus nectar juice concentrates and the calamansi plants in full bloom all around that yields the calamansi nectar concentrates. Pure honey is gathered from their ancestral lands and they also make coconut oil. Their popular guava jelly is a rare species given that the guava tree (native señorita variety) already faces extinction. Some members of the community have succumbed to charcoal making by burning the guava trees to also make both ends meet. This worries the Tugdaan leaders who know that there is a steady demand of guava jelly to supply an outside market.
Bokal, our tour guide for that day, tells us that their learning center focuses them in their own culture. She relates this to me as we climb through beautiful stone-laden pathways up the mountain to the Balay Lakoy Center. As she smiles, her orange-stained teeth and lips showed years of their people’s betel-nut-chewing tradition. She points to the Balay Lakoy, a traditional Mangyan-Alangan architectural designed native house that is the repository of their living indigenous culture and knowledge. It has a collection of articles and write-ups about the Mangyan-Alangan culture, books, manuscripts, sound recordings of their music and chants and artifacts.
We stayed for barely two hours in the community, grabbing a quick lunch, tour the place and purchase all their products before we headed back for the long trip home. I look back at how long a journey the guava jelly (and all Tugdaan products!) had to take to get to the store shelves. The Mangyans may not see how our customers take the guava jelly from the shelves of ECHOstore in Serendra and Podium, or from the Echovillage Store in Loyola Heights, but from now on, I will savor my guava jellies in such a different light!
