Raul is a 27- year old co-worker from a CFCA Antipolo subproject who recently converted to Islam and wants to attend film school. He has been helping with the filming of Zamboanga. He was very proud to show me his home and the incredible “resting” house he has been building on his weekends for the past one-and-a-half years.
The tree house is built completely from bamboo. It sits on the bank of a small brook in the village where he grew up. He told me that when he was young he would climb the mango trees in the foothills of the government land that the locals farm.
Raul says, “The Philippines is Alcatraz.” An analogy I have been contemplating a great deal.
The Philippines has a major “brain drain” problem and it seems if you are lucky enough to be one of the very few who has the opportunity to escape “Alcatraz,” then you do it. Raul seems to be one of the few young people I have met who admitted he wants to leave, but just for a few years, so he can raise enough money to go to film school and buy a good camera so he can return to his homeland and make “real movies about real Filipinos.”
The Antipolo staff took us to meet a group of men in this area who are organic farmers. I really admire these farmers because they are taking the time to do things the right way rather than the easy way. That same brook that runs below Raul’s tree house is unusable for irrigation because it has become so polluted from the corporate pig farm that opened about two years ago a few miles upstream.
My co-worker Monte, from CFCA-Kansas, asked about the farm implement used for plowing and the next thing I know they’ve got us out there plowing a field behind a carabao, an animal much like an ox. The plowing was extremely difficult, giving me even more of an appreciation for the commitment these men have made to organic farming.
It was a day full of adventure, emotion and amazing people!
I just got back from a concert, organized by the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, in the jungles of Zamboanga on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. All I can think is how cool and unbelievable that sounds!
That is probably the best way to describe the concert (or “Filipino Festival of Life,” as I like to call it), cool and unbelievable! To hold a concert of this magnitude anywhere, let alone the jungle, would be an accomplishment. The generator, which supplied the power for the show, looked like a relic from World War II as it stood hidden in the bush, cleverly soundproofed by egg cartons and plywood.
The concert was appropriately named “A Gift.” The CFCA families of the Zamboanga project treated it as if it was a gift, many traveling far distances for many hours not only to attend the concert, but also, in the weeks leading up to the show, to help pitch in any way they could. A field, large enough to accompany the 10,000-plus people (and a few Filipino cobras) that attended, needed to be clear cut.
