Shown
above is Kai-Lin Kalas, a 5-year old Alangan Mangyan girl living in the
highlands of Mayba near the upper portion of Amnay River. Beautiful yet she would
not make it in any beauty pageants when she grew up, for sure. Or be on
television or in the movies for that matter.
Neither
she could be an academic someday but can be intelligent in her own indigenous, ingenious
ways. She does not have to draw life’s meaning by outshining in certain
scholastic discipline or from publications and citations as what the renown academics
did, but she can surely find personal happiness in the meaning that her roots
have created and be relevant for her contributions to humanity and her
ancestry. It this sense, she’s still a lovable child hereafter.
In
reaching adulthood, Kai-Lin, together with the tribal elders and other Mangyan
dwellers would participate in Agpamago,
a ritual of prayers for bountiful blessings for their community. It is a
profound prayer asking for the enjoyment of inner peace where the written laws
and the limit of science would not dictate the existence of man’s life.
Kai-Lin
cannot afford to be like the raised like a princess and debonair Serena
Marchesa to marry the most handsome Simon Vicente Ibarra (nee Tenten) who now
owns the Marchesa’s ancestral villa in Askovia. Kai-Lin will definitely
avoid, when time comes, the highly mechanistic society where citizens want to
find explanations for everything that affects their lives like the characters
in telenovelas. Human life, for the soon-to be woman of simplicity like her, needs
not be measured in having the information on how everything works.
Someday,
in the darkest of the night, Kai-Lin would sing the same lullaby sang to her by
her mother while as a baby she sleeps on a hand-crafted native hammock. Telling
stories she learned in school when the moon is shining in its fullness above
the skies. The nourishing milk that flows from her breasts is understood only
as a nurturing substance but so clueless on how colostrum works for her child.
In
the meantime, the sweet little girl Kai-Lin and all the beautiful yet murky
children of her age in geographically isolated areas have to take hours of barefooted
walk, though accompanied by their parents, are exposed to dangers in the terrain
especially during rainy days or at night, back and forth as pre-schoolers at Rang-Ayan
Elementary School in Barangay Proper of Pag-Asa in Sablayan town. They already have
a school building back in Mayba constructed 5 years ago and could accommodate
all the pre-elementary pupils there but the Department of Education-Division of
Occidental Mindoro still failed to station an additional teacher with permanent
item to Kai-Lin’s place. With very high probability, Kai-Lin and her classmates
would end up as drop-outs as their parents would later arrange their livelihood
than being idle taking care of their little children away from home and from
their economic base. Like many of the parents before them, their children’s
education would ultimately not their priority.
Somewhere
inside the school compound is boldly printed: “Education for All” but nothing
is mentioned about its accessibility….
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(Photo : IPAO File)
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