A Fulbright Journal 2017

From January to April of 2017,   I traveled around the Philippines on a Fulbright U.S. Scholar. It was trip of a lifetime courtesy of Fulbright. My task was to study the impact of globalization on natural fiber textile weavers – known in the industry as handwoven ecotextiles (HWET). The weavers are almost all women, some are indigenous, but mostly local women contributing work in small manufacturing enterprises (SME). Coops, is another way of identifying them,  This is a collection of musings and observations during the course of the period. It is a journal for my friends, colleagues, and family who implored me to share my incredible journey around the Philippines. People keep telling me that the Fulbright is a signal honor and achievement, for which I am fully grateful.  At least, I hope I share with you all the experiences I encounter in the following months that follow. While I have visited the country fairly often, this is the first time in many decades, that I will not merely linger but actually spend weeks at a time in the many places I will do research.  That said, a simple disclaimer that what’s posted here is not and does not represent an official position of Fulbright.  Entries here are entirely accountable to me and commentators. Caveat emtor. Enjoy.

On arrival from the airport, my nephew who collected me from NAIA, took me to the BSA Suites PAEF  has generously made available for the duration of our in-country orientation.  The hotel was oldish, it must have seen better days as a way station for  Fulbrighters. Located on Legaspi Village, tt was not far from Ayala Ave,, my favorite section of Makati before it became horribly congested with vehicles. It would take you faster to your destination by walking. Forget the taxi and  Uber would even dare pick you  up. Were it not for the barriers  along the sidewalks, people would have taken to the street.  Thankfully, the city provided an underpass and overpass that connect to the major arteries like Pasong Tamo and Buendia. Your choice of passage is your choice of poison. Take the underpass, it becomes incredibly hot and the air stale. Take the overpass, you still cannot escape the gas fumes from cars idling in the traffic. Ever ingenious, the Filipino solution to the traffic jam is the habal-habal or tandem riding for hire on a motorcycle. The point is to get you there with the convenience of an hailing app.
The PAEF offices are along Ayala Avenue. There we met Dr. Cunanan, the PAEF director and the rest of the staff, who we have come to appreciate as the key to making your Fulbright stay successful and memorable. For the three days of orientation, between Marj Tolentino and Gigi Dizon, no question was left unanswered or request unfulfilled. With that I felt confident to undertake my journey. My first stop was U.P. Diliman, my alma mater and where my sister, a retired school teacher retired resides with her daughter family and my aging and ailing mom. Diliman would be my base of operations.

Today, Jan 27, I have been able to accomplish what I thought would be impossible — line up 4 tasks in a day and with a few hours to spare to log-in a post to this journal.

8:30-11 Through Fidel’s son Anton who was a former History major and a member of LIKAS the history club I helped found (and how I met Pat, my spouse), I was invited to attend the end-of-semester term paper presentations and an awarding ceremony for a former classmate Malou Camagay as History Professor Emeritus. I thought I was just going to sit and listen in  audience. No, to my surprise they ask me to say a few words. I course, I told them that in 1971, we were more concerned with sit-ins and demonstrations than sitting in class and that I was pleased to see the organization thriving. Apparently, being a founder is a big thing for the association and everyone wanted to have a picture with me as well. Malou Camagay is a ‘herstorian’ and am very pleased with the kind of scholarship she has produced. She was surprised to know that in the 1920s every Filipino household owned a piña weaving loom as well as a piano.

11:30-12 Huggy (a real nickname ) picked me up from A&S and took me to BPI bank to get cash. The routine here is something familiar with what you do at DMV- take a number and wait for your number to flash on the screen. No big deal. Then Huggy negotiated the Ateneo traffic towards UP to meet up with Evie Lesaca who just arrived from Canada (Polly and Bob too) for lunch with Deo, Evie’s High School batch.

12:30-2:30 Lunch was a nabu and bento only restaurant. Didn’t like the looks of the salmon, so opted for chicken. I am beginning to be ‘chickened’ out. And it’s hard to have lunch here without being served rice. At least there was shredded cabbage which helps break the fattyness. We got coffee at Starbucks across the restaurant where Evie and Deo continued their reminisences while Huggy and I drove off to Technohub to meet someone from the Telco Smart Phones to talk about developing a Mangyan keyboard for cell phones.

3:30-5:00 I meet with Darwin from Smart and had a long conversation on how Smart was helping DeptEd and other schools develop a digital platform for delivering appropriate content to rural schools. The Smart outreach to the community is remarkable and worth writing about which I will do once I get hold of their white papers. They have a package called school-in-a-bag that is equipped with a solar-powered cell phone that can be transported to hard-to-access communities and simply download content for use in a rural classroom. Very interesting and the package costs only $2000, training included. Darwin offered to provide me a pair of smart phones to proof-of-concept a Mangyan keyboard but I still need to find a programmer to hack the OS. Hopefully, I might find someone in the School of Engg here at UP.

So there you have it. Huggy of course made it very convenient (he’s off work every Friday, lucky dog) but I would have been able to do the same with UBER which has been my main transport the past days. As long as the EDSA and Katipunan route is avoided, it being in a perpetual traffic jam, some amount of sanity can be achieved. It’s been a hectic week otherwise. I was glad enough to come home intact.

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