aetas & mangyans

This will be the first installment of my stories.

In the summer of 1988 I joined the the summer internship under the DOH Immersion Program. I was with a group of student nurses. I was assigned to a foster family in Brgy. Taugtog, Botolan, Zambales and stayed there for the whole of May. It was a small hut in the middle of a 40 hectare ricefield. The nearest neighbor was the Aeta village, Sitio Masikap. There I met the chieftain Apo Buyaw. There was something familiar about this man, standing only 4'6" and frail. It was by the end of the month that he told me he was in the film with FPJ in Los Baños. There it was, he was one of the aetas that appeared in the film Agila back in 1983.

My foster family, the Garcias, were nice. Though they could only offer the anti-room for us, they offer all they have. Supper usually ends with stories under the night sky since there were no electricity then. There was no need for electric fan or airconditioning as the night air becomes colder every hour. Unfortunately we can't stay in bed as long as we want to even on Sundays. Why? Those darn American aviators from Subic always break the sound barrier by 7:30 am, the sonic boom from their jets give a out a loud bang that I taught a war game was happening in the kitchen.

Back to the aetas, they say there were of two kinds in zambales, the true aetas that live at the slope of Mt. Pinatubo (it erupted a few years later) and the ones who opted to live in the low lands to pose for pictures. Apo Buyaw is of the latter kind. Everytime a group of tourists would come one of his wards would play the ukelele made of coconut shell and Apo Buyaw would do the monkey dance. The truth is, there's no such thing as a monkey dance as part of the Aeta culture. Buyaw invented it to make an easy buck.

The nun running the NGO center told me of a group of American doctors who tried to enter the upland aeta village with the intention to gather blood samples. They were of the thinking that HIV/AIDS was inherent among aboriginal tribes as in Africa. They were met by the chief who said that the only ones you need to look after for AIDS are your servicemen.

The second time I was in Subic was with the Medical Action Group (MAG). We were supposed to have a dialog with Admiral Riche, then commander of the naval station. He was a no show. That time I was ready to tell him that I never had a fine alarm clock than your after burners, 7:30 on the dot.

Fastforward, October 1998. I was finishing my training on artificial insemination at UPLB. the practicum site was in Naujan, Occ Mindoro. We went as far as Pinamalayan. Yes, there were mangyans. The story that they have a vestigeal tail isn't true, and no they don't copulate in public. They're just wanderers, and that's that. Before leaving mindoro I went to a souvenir shop in Calapan. I wanted a genuine artcile from this island. Of the many things i could take home i chose a framed bahag ng mangyan, five years old and good for coughs and flu, so they say. hehehehe