Healing body and soul

MANILA, Philippines - After 17 years of traveling the world as a flight attendant and becoming a chief purser for a major international airline, Miggy Miguel just had enough of travel and decided to call it quits in 1997. Then, she decided to make Davao City her home upon her early retirement from flying. Though she was born and raised in Manila, Miggy saw the quiet of Davao, and felt this was her new home, away from airline schedules and away from the usual “on call-fly-go home” routine that was her life for many years.

But not long after, bad news came her way. Diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer, Miggy thought it was near the end for her. She asked to see an oncologist immediately but unfortunately then and fortunately now, she could never get an appointment with the specialist. She instead found Dana Calimbas, an alternative medical specialist who had just managed her own mother’s lung cancer at Stage 3 (Dana’s mother is still alive, 20 years after her initial diagnosis). Miggy followed Dr. Dana’s advice and never got even a dose of chemotherapy.

Dr. Dana advised her to eat only organic vegetables and to avoid meat, MSG and other processed foods. But this was 2003…where in Davao will you find organic vegetables? Miggy attended a natural farming seminar of Davao-based Andry Lim and then started to plant her own food. She started with lettuce, arugula and herbs she was familiar with.

Many months after, friends started to order vegetables from her, too. Even without an entrepreneurial background or a business degree, she sharpened her pencils and did the math. “As long as I do not lose money and am able to eat organic vegetables, I am okay,” she says.

She soon expanded her farm to a bigger place in Arakan Valley, more specifically in a town called Katipunan, where you have the cool climate of being 1,200 meters above sea level. Though it was quite a hike down to her vegetable plots, another steep incline to visit her strawberries, herbs and lettuce, Miggy is planning to build her little rest house on the higher ground, with a grand view of the hills around her. She can rest easy as she watches her Matigsalog colleagues tend to her gardens down below.

Today, Miggy supplies most of Davao’s high end restaurants, cafes and even the newly-opened ECHOstore Davao. We asked her who her other clients are, just so we know where to eat “clean” in the bustling southern city. 

She licked her cancer a second time two years ago, when she was told it had spread to the other side, and immediately had it operated on. But the biggest news is: she never had chemotherapy. She may have lost her breasts, but not her hair nor her cheery and sunny disposition. And it has been eleven years since she first saw Dr. Dana. What an inspiring model for healthy living and beating the big C.

I asked her what else she wants to do now that she is more settled in her farm, with her health and with her ever-growing organic vegetable business. She only wishes to help more IPs, the indigenous people she found in the outskirts of Davao – the Matigsalogs. She has talked to their chief and their leaders to encourage more of them to go into organic farming. There is so much land that is classified as ancestral domain. Yes, they are lands that the IPs own, but unless these lands become productive, these tribes will remain hungry, in need of shelter and lacking sanitation, as Father Franco of Don Bosco Center has told us.

Fr. Franco and Miggy are a mere 20 kilometers away from each other’s farms. They deal with the same indigenous peoples and Miggy shares the sentiments of  Father Franco.

“If we can teach them to at least grow their own food, and put up a shelter of sorts, they will stop foraging and finally settle in one place, eating healthy and being productive,” the two say in unison.

And that is exactly what Miggy did, too. She grew her own food. She settled in her farm. And now she is willing to help spread the word to be an inspiration not only to the IPs, but to other patients who were diagnosed with cancer, as she was, many years ago.

There is life after cancer. And Miggy is a living example.