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Keeping the Faith
There is nothing quite like the sound of monsoon rains on a tin roof. Sometimes it is a lulling and soothing drum, perfect to fall asleep to; at other times it rises to a roar—nearly deafening, drowning-out all other sound, completely encasing you. The tin is a sort of paradox, shielding you from the storm itself yet amplifying its presence. You cannot feel the force of the water being thrown from the sky, but the sound conveys its power. Even as the roof provides shelter, the pummeling rain serves as a reminder that you are still very much at nature's mercy.
It seemed appropriate that ISO's youth leadership workshop took place during the “ amihan,” or northeast monsoon, and that our three rainy days were spent under the largest tin roof on the island of Apuao Grande. As we gathered a remarkably wide range of about 30 kids—ranging from 15- and 16-year-old locals to Manilanian college students in their 20s—the amihan was an almost poetic backdrop, reinforcing the weekend's reflections on the place of humans in their environment.
This visit to Camarines Norte took a strikingly different approach than my earlier one, and I have to admit that I was skeptical. Most of ISO's fieldwork fits under the banner of coastal management in a fairly traditional way: coral reef surveys, fish sanctuary patrols, meetings with local bureaucrats, focus group discussions, and so forth. Though my impressions of them have varied, all these activities fit cleanly into the paradigm of resource management work. The youth workshop was different.
Some of my uncertainty may have come from the names. The workshop was part of the “values-based education” program of the “Institute of Social Order”—it sounded creepy and Orwellian. But questionable naming aside, the idea of values-based education presented some real philosophical and practical issues that fueled my skepticism.
Environmentalism has an ignoble reputation of imposing outside priorities on local groups. What's worse, this imposition tends to follow along the lines of exploitation that already plague society: from rich to poor, educated to not, urban to rural, west to east, white to non-white, developed to developing. In the United States, this reputation has left environmentalism to be seen as the sole province of the urban and elite; internationally, as a luxury of developed nations that is too often forced upon developing ones. Regardless of that reputation's validity, it has certainly dented the halo of environmentalism and left it more polarizing and controversial than it should be, even—and especially—within the progressive development community.
Community Based Resource Management, the paradigm that ISO at least ostensibly subscribes to, was born partially out of these concerns of outside imposition. At the core of such efforts is the idea that, given the resources, the structures, and most importantly the control, local communities will inherently protect their own environment. Rather than treating locals as ignorant, misguided or lacking in proper priorities, the CBCRM philosophy argues that they are trapped in a system that prevents sustainable management.
This approach is not without flaws, but it offers humility and respect for local communities and values that that have too often been woefully absent from environmental and other development initiatives. With this background in mind, I bristled when I first saw “values-based education,” a sentiment that was further heightened by the fact that ISO is affiliated with the Catholic Church, an institution that has a very long history of imposing, for better or worse, its values on the people of the Philippines. And having participated in more “youth leadership workshops” that I would care to admit, I know that despite the best intentions, they are often hopelessly corny and ineffective.
The minute that I met Jimmy, I knew that my appraisal had been overly cynical. To run the workshop, ISO had stepped outside itself and enlisted Jimmy, a young sociology teacher at Ateneo, still working on his PhD. From his introduction onward, he seemed more like a comedian, or perhaps an actor—an impression truer than I first realized. Barely 30 years old, Jimmy had taken a less-than-traditional route to the academy, first making stops in London, New York and Toronto as a cast member of Miss Saigon. Somehow, he made the jump from professional acting to sociology seem entirely natural. He was funny and dynamic, as well as critical and sacrilegious, wryly observing that the primary response to the previous day's shopping mall bombing was horror… horror that they would have to find a different mall in which to shop. If I had feared orthodoxy or indoctrination, Jimmy seemed to present the polar opposite.
With Jimmy at its helm, the workshop moved deftly, and he combined the skills of drama, teaching and sociology, all while trying to be heard over the pounding of the amihan rains. There were role plays and games, but there was also theory and science. But as impressive as Jimmy's work was, I was equally struck by the students. Most of them came from Apuao and nearby areas of Mercedes, others came from Manila or other coastal communities. The local students were mostly of high school age; many of the Manilanians were college students who had volunteered with ISO before, and who walked a line between being counselors and participants. It was a frighteningly wide range of participants, and a perfect recipe for cliquishness. But instead, I saw amazing maturity and interaction. In one of the first activities, participants were asked to find a natural object and then introduce themselves by relating to characteristics of the object. I didn't know quite what to expect, but what emerged was an impressive amount of thoughtfulness and appreciation for metaphor, if perhaps less than absolute humility. Natural metaphors lend themselves to hyperbole.
The entire workshop was an admirable blend of maturity and silliness with Jimmy leading the way on both extremes. We walked the island, observing environmental conditions and relationships, and then built an amazing 3D map of the entire island, even as the amihan rains resumed after a brief pause. It was a wonderful conglomeration of art project, group dynamics exercise, environmental lesson and sandbox play. The next day, a more serious morning of discussions was capped by an afternoon cross-dressing environmental beauty pageant, to predictably amusing results. I have never seen more proudly worn grass skirts or coconut bras. Later that same night, an informal conversation morphed into a sort of group debriefing, entirely without adult prodding. By the meager light of a couple of flashlights, these kids went in a circle, describing each other's first impressions or favorite moments. It may be that I just have a soft spot for such activities, but especially when done unprompted, this seemed like a clear indication that things had gone well.
Over the course of those three days, there had been serious discussions of reefs and mangroves, but perhaps even more importantly, also of power and politics. One of the most resonant activities to me was a “power walk,” where the participants were asked to interact with each other using body language that conveyed the social status for the various actors. As images of lowly fishers and haughty government officials appeared, the role-play progressed into a re-conceptualization of politicians and bureaucrats, not as the feudal lords of patronage that they currently are, but as legitimate public servants.
Throughout these activities, I was impressed with the degree of interaction across age and cultural barriers, as the difference in culture between Manila and these tiny fishing islands is substantial. My office supervisor shared this observation, telling me that 10 years ago, at the beginning of ISO's work, the divisions would have been obvious and dramatic. Perhaps the credit goes to Jimmy's skillful guidance or to this particular group, or perhaps is represents a bigger shift in ISO's presence. Regardless, it was very encouraging.
I, on the other hand, was more restricted in my interactions, if only because I shared a common language with the Manila students, but could only exchange a few phrases with the local students (in a mixture of their English and my Tagolog). Still, when my incessant photography developed into a translated group lesson in photo composition, every one of the students was engaged, even as Jimmy and I struggled to find appropriate translations. From that point on the camera was rarely in my hands. In fact, the smallest boy, Charlie, was so diligent in practicing with the camera that he was dubbed my protégé.
Despite all the success of these official activities, for me the most powerful moment came after the younger cohort had gone to sleep and the older students, Jimmy and I sat around a table with a single candle, enjoying a time when the rain has ceased and we could speak in lowered voices. There was no longer any agenda, and small talk developed into something entirely different. A question was posed to no one in general, and soon we were going in a circle, answering questions one by one. We talked of family and love and fear and God, surprising ourselves with the honesty and emotional intensity of our reflections. These are conversations that I love, where mutual reinforcement drives each person to become simultaneously more introspective and more willing to share something of themselves.
As we talked, our conversation both transcended cultural differences and brought them into sharp relief. The stories were deeply personal and fundamentally human; to view them simply as illuminating a culture feels somehow dismissive. At the same time, they gave form to a number of trends that seem particularly pronounced in the Philippines. Religion had a primary role in much of the conversation, as did the centrality of the family. Another underlying theme, it seemed, was the spatial fracturing that is common to so many families, and the resulting tensions this creates between traditional and more “modern” values and priorities. Most Filipinos' highest allegiance is to their family, but such families are often scattered between the provinces, Manila (where roughly 20% of the population resides), and regions abroad (where another 10% can be found).
Speaking in a broken mixture of English and Tagolog, Hussein, originally from the Muslim region of Mindinao, spoke of his forceful rejection of Islam in favor of Christianity, and of the deep and painful rift that it created between him and his father. He went on to declare that despite this tragic division, he remained steadfastly committed to his newfound faith. Another student told his story of reaffirming and separating from his faith. Now studying to be a nurse, he had initially enrolled in seminary, only to find himself at odds with the internal order of the church, and in turn, with the wishes of his family. The far deeper crisis, though, had been with his long-term girlfriend, who had gotten pregnant just before leaving to work in Europe. There, and without telling him, she decided to have an abortion. Both the act itself and his complete exclusion from the decision were devastating, effectively ripping away what he saw as two of the most important people in his life. It was soul-crushing, and perhaps because of that, it only made his faith and conviction stronger. From this evolved a discussion of abortion and premarital sex and gender roles. Throughout the conversation, I was struck by the way in which it was like many conversations I had at Duke, but in other ways it was clearly in the context of an overwhelmingly Catholic society.
In a slightly different form of the same cultural junctions, Jimmy spoke at length of his very deep and personal relationships with God and his family, and how both of them included a great deal of conflict over his homosexuality. Even there, he never explicitly described himself as gay, but made it abundantly clear nonetheless. He hardly seemed self-conscious—his jokes reflected the sensitivities of the New York acting scene—and he never gave the impression of being evasive. Yet he avoided specific labeling. It almost seemed as if he was trying to avoid shattering the cocoon of anyone deliberately deaf enough to miss his meaning.
Still, for all the potentially controversial topics, the mood was anything but charged. Another student spoke confidingly of an overwhelming fear of letting herself be vulnerable. The admission itself inherently created vulnerability, but it was met with support, rather than judgment or dismissal. We talked of being in love, or not being in love, of the things we missed the most or those that were the most important to us.
My own role in the conversation was quietly schizophrenic. On one hand, I felt completely involved as I spoke at length about the people and places that I missed, or the strange place in which I found myself, just out of college, halfway around the world, trying to be completely engaged in my time in Philippines yet still connected to my life back home. On the other hand, when religion entered the conversation, I pulled back and became all but silent. An atheist among devout Catholics, I tended toward observation and questioning, rather than completely frank discussion. Perhaps somewhat hypocritically, I didn't trust how far the openness of the conversation would go, and I was scared to stretch it, to risk breaking it and ending up in religious debate in which I had neither hope of winning nor interest in doing so. I probed the issue of abortion briefly, and felt the tension rise. Some discussions, I decided, were best left for a different time.
I don't know if my reaction was well placed discretion or a hypocritical unwillingness to fully enter into the exchange; perhaps it was both. Regardless, that decision did little to mute the incredible power of the evening in my memory. It became the highlight of what had already been a very encouraging workshop. There was an honesty and reflectiveness about those few days that was refreshing, and a sort of optimistic faith seemed to underlie the whole experience. Perhaps that was the mark of religion.
It's not a faith I can share. Its religious foundation rings hollow for me, and the facts of the situation offer little more. Too often, the vision of healthy and sustainable lives for these communities seems ludicrously far away, and I find myself becoming cynical and discouraged. I don't honestly know if very much progress can be made, or if any kind of hopeful outcome is possible.
But still, there is work to be done. And whatever their truth may be, such cold-eyed appraisals can drain the motivation to continue the struggle. For all my personal doubts, I felt little objection to “imposing” the workshop's kind of faith—its kind of hope. Sometimes, I could use a little of it myself.
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