This account is actually about how some friends of ours in Hong Kong spent this past Christmas. I think it is so amazing and I hope someday I can do something half as wonderful as this:
Our project this year was focused on children's books. This came about partly because we know how much our own kids love books and partly out of a desire to give something that would last longer than the current school year. After spending some time thinking about the location for the project, we decided to concentrate on the areas around Bayombong, in the Nueva Vizcaya province. Initially, this was because we decided that it would be nice to spend Christmas with the family of a Filipino who works for us and has become our friend, Elnora Cadauan. The thinking was that this would not only allow her to see her children (left behind in the Philippines when she came to Hong Kong seeking work, and with whom we would fall in love), but would take us to a relatively remote, mountainous area of a country that we mainly associated with beaches. However, after we told her we were going to her hometown for this year's Christmas project, we soon realized the fantastic but unintended consequences of our decision.
Elnora immediately set to work contacting her former colleagues and friends in town and in the surrounding provincial governments. She found out which of the nearby schools had chronically received the lowest levels of funding. We learned that funding levels are typically determined by three variables: 1) distance from major city, 2) size of school population and 3) average per capita income of the area. In sum, those schools that are the smallest, farthest from town and among the poorest segments of the population are allocated the least amount of government spending on a per pupil basis.
With these facts in mind, we selected 12 schools located in the mountains to the west of Bayombong that could use some help. We contacted the principals of each school, as well as the mayors of the municipalities in which the schools are located. We queried them on the state of the schools, with particular focus on the condition of the library. As we suspected, none of the schools had any library at all. The most that any of the schools had was a few ancient textbooks to be shared among all the pupils, and only used during school hours. We told the principals that we would like to help their schools with a small library of children's books. We asked the principals to help provide logistical support to get the books from Bayombong up into the mountains, as well as coordinate help from from the administration, faculty and PTA to help cover the books with a plastic covering to extend the book's life and implement a book check-out system.
A great source of unanticipated help came from Elnora's cousin Dax, a law student living in Manila with a real love for books. After hearing of our trip from Elnora, Dax asked if he could join our efforts by helping us select some appropriate Tagalog/English books in Manila. We agreed, and he spent numerous days in bookstores in Manila, negotiating prices with the stores and picking out the best books for elementary students. We picked these books up when we flew into Manila on our way to Bayombong. Dax also was of great service in finding accommodations for us while we were in Manila, as well as giving us good running commentary on government and politics.
The second day after we arrived in Bayombong, we came into contact with the leaders of a local church group. After we told them what we were doing, and mentioned that we were open to anyone who wanted to help, they introduced us to the folks in charge of the youth section of the church. Since the youth were all out of school on Christmas vacation, they predicted that there may be a few who would like to help out. This turned out to be an understatement, to say the least. We asked them to instruct any interested youth to meet us the next morning to make the first trip up into the mountains. The next morning, more than 20 teenage (and 20- and 30-something) Filipinos were waiting for us when we arrived.
The targets for the first distribution were four schools in the Ambagio municipality. We set off that morning in a jeepney. It had been raining the night before, but we did not clearly understood what implications this had for the roads leading up into the mountains. The driver of the jeepney mentioned nothing (although clearly aware of the roads' conditions), but after driving for 45 minutes or so, up a dirt (mud) road, we were stuck. After trying for a half hour or so to get the thing unstuck (bouncing up and down on the back bumper and trowing rice husks under the spinning wheels), we resigned ourselves to the fact that the jeepney was going nowhere soon. The group, now up to around 30 people, got out and started walking up the muddy, steep road leading to the school while the driver made phone calls to try and find someone to pull his jeepney out of the mud. Because he was also the son of the former mayor, he was able to call in a few favors and get the baranguy captain to come and load the group into the back of the town four-wheel-drive dump truck.
The dump truck took us to the first two schools. The reception at each school, which would eventually be repeated at every school we visited, was unexpected and touching. Tables had been set up for the book covering work, teachers and students were waiting, and piles of food were laid out. We were moved by their gratitude and expressions of hospitality.
After working on covering the books for some time, we realized that the dump truck was no longer waiting for us outside the school, and we started trying to figure out how we were going to get to the place where we were supposed to spend the night. This was the source of confusion for about the next 4-5 hours, as night and rain fell. Apparently the dump truck driver decided that he had other things to do and left, considering his work done. Everyone was in good spirits except for those in charge, as plans needed to be made for 30 people to spend the night on the school floor, and all we had for food was a few packets of ramen noodles. Picture that these schools are only accessible by dirt road and are bare-bones with wooden floors and cinder block walls. A second dump truck was eventually sent to collect us after a few semi-heated calls to the mayor were placed. Although many in the group wished to go back down the mountain, we were told that the roads were unsafe and that we needed to continue up to the next town, where we had made arrangements to spend the night.
The house we had planned to stay in was relatively large, but we had not anticipated a group of 30. People sprawled out over the floors and the few available beds, and most spent a chilly night on the hard floor with a smattering of threadbare blankets for protection against the misty chill. Through it all everyone remained in good spirits and, in classic teenage style, most of the youth spent the time singing, laughing and joking around.
The next morning our group split in half, with some of us staying at the house to cover books that were to be picked up by teachers from a nearby school. On the advice of one of the school principals, these books would be placed on a quarterly rotational system among 4 different schools, none of which currently had books. The other members of the group headed off on a hike to Ammoweg, which was down in the bottom of a steep, winding river valley.
The Ammoweg elementary school was situated on a flat area the size of a couple of (US) football fields in a bend of the river, the type of shallow, wide and swift running river that is common in the western mountain regions of the US. It was serenely beautiful -- and more than once we thought about just not going back to Hong Kong. The round trip hike took around 5 hours, all of it through gorgeous jungle forests, interspersed with the occasional sweet potato, rice or other vegetable farm.
The next morning was December 23, and we visited three schools that day: Magapuay, Paitan and Amococan. This time we started out riding in the back of a dump truck. We later found out that the driver committed to stay with us the entire day, missing his Christmas party, so that we could visit all of the schools without further transportation difficulties. Again we were humbled by the gratitude of the schools, their staff and the children. Some had put up banners to welcome us, some sang us songs and all fed us. Although maybe to the eyes of an outside observer the gift of a stack of books that would hardly fill up a full-length shelf in the libraries of their elementary school would seem underwhelming, to those we visited it was magical. Students would sit with us the entire day, poring over the books and exchanging excited recounts of the stories they held. We sometimes sat back and just watched them, thinking about our own childhoods filled with books and warmed with a joy that came from knowing that something we loved had been shared with a truly grateful recipient.
Christmas eve and Christmas day were spent with Elnora's immediate and extended family. Christmas day was particularly fun for our family, with lunch and activities out on an old family farm. The farm was literally overflowing with dozens of kind welcoming people, with children running all over the place and way too much food.
The day after Christmas, we headed back up into the mountains, this time in the province of Kayapa. After some consideration, we decided that we should follow the example of the rotational system that we implemented in Ambagio, so that the books could be used by an even greater number of students. We contacted the principals of the schools we had planned on visiting, and they agreed it was the best use of the new resources.
With this plan, our group (large again and packing two jeepneys to the brim with teenage volunteers) met the principals, teachers and some students at the central town in the Kayapa municipality. There we spent all day covering books and preparing the checkout system. Again, I was amazed at the level of dedication and selflessness demonstrated by the group of youth, laboring with love throughout the day and into the night to provide unknown children with the gift of books (while many of them also went to schools where libraries didn't exist). We eventually made it back to Bayombong late that night, and took the entire group to the local pizza joint to thank them and celebrate a job well done.
This was a bitter-sweet moment for us all. We had done a decent amount of work, and now our stacks of books were gone - over 4,000 books were now ready to check out at 12 different schools. We had spent the majority of our Christmas vacation traveling through the tree covered mountains and hunched over dilapidated school desks. We had witnessed a real spirit of giving by a group of selfless teenagers, and had been overwhelmed by the gratitude of the schools we visited. We had hopefully spent a Christmas deserving of its namesake.
