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Monday, June 4, 2007

I am Igorot and am Proud of it

I come from a not-very-remote village in Baguio City, Philippines. It is about five kilometers away from the town proper. We hail jeepneys to go to town. If we can afford it, we flag down taxi cabs instead. The taxi drivers in my hometown are very dedicated and unlike most taxi-drivers here in Manila where I am currently working, they are not opportunists nor do they take advantage of their passengers. In Manila, cab drivers don't give your change back. They give alibis such as they have no more spare coins. If you are billed 90 pesos and you hand over a hundred, there's no point of standing by the taxi's door expecting the driver to give you your change. That reminds me of my Korean boss who is now back in Korea. When he was here in the Philippines and when tired, he would rarely drive his own car to and fro his condominium unit somewhere in Ortigas. He would end up borrowing fifty pesos from me on some ocassions because of fear of losing his change when he hands in over bigger bills. He definitely had had some bad experiences with the cab drivers in this capital city of the Philippines.

My village is where most natives like the Igorots thrive and have their sanctuaries there. (These days though, the natives there have been outnumbered by the invasion of people from the lowlands and from Manila. The small city which was originally created by the Americans many years back was intended to accommodate only roughly around twenty five thousand people. These days, people there could be estimated at around half a million.)

I have an Ibaloi blood though my mom is from Leyte-an Island in the Visayan Region. My country the Philippines is an archipelago consisting of more than 7,000 islands. It is further sub-divided into three major group of islands, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. So my dad is from Luzon and my mom is from Visayas.

Going back to my hometown, it is a small city with denuded mountains of pine trees. It is still holds its title though as the "Summer Capital of the Philippines'' because of its cold weather which tourists really get attracted to all year out. Oh and I miss that small city of simple life. I miss the rainy days where I could stroll down Session Road and drop in some singing rooms and coffee shops, savoring the cool weather under thick jackets and sweat shirts.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was born in Leyte, and proud of it! :)