Camille Gloria

We are back in Bontoc and tomorrow the boys will leave for Manila. The visit to Libas was great fun. It was a forty five minute trip on motorcycles down a rocky road. We took two motorcycles with three people on each motorcycle. This is called riding Habel-Habel, and since the vehicles are going about the speed of a bicycle, it is relatively safe. Libas is a place way out in the country, and the green mountains and rice paddies are truly beautiful. There are no internet cafes or cellphone connections in Libas, and there are just a very few televisions in the town so people really interact in way you might have remembered if you lived in America in the 1950's. Asa would try to tell me that everyone was staring at me because I was the tall American, but actually all the girls were staring at him and at Elliot. And they were really staring. We stayed with Judith who teaches at Libas National High School. She is Glory's niece, and I had given some money to build a teacher's store room at her high school. Ha ha. Well, someone had to build that store room. I am glad it has no plaque with my name on it.

As soon as we arrived, the kids started to gather around Judith's house and look at us. So we juggled for them and then I played the flute for them and then we practiced Cebuano with them, and after it was clear that we were tired about twenty of the kids came in the house and watched a television program. Hey, they were not idly watching television. They were glued to it and really listening.

The next day I taught in a couple of classes, and the main one was Judith's classroom where they were studying biodiversity. This was a major success because that is what I had talked about with students two years ago, and Judith was really implementing some of the ideas of the Haribon Foundation which has big environmental education component. I even told them I would contribute some money so that they could continue with their project of planting epiphytes on the trees outside the classroom.

It was after class that everything became really fun. Asa and I showed the kids how to juggle, and then everyone crowded around asking for pictures and our autographs. A couple asked for Asa and Elliot's e-mail addresses, but since the nearest internet cafe is in Bontoc, this will not be frequent chatting.

One of the class leaders was a girl named Camille Glory. She and her friend would come up to me and laugh and say, "Picture with Daddy" and then while posing for the picture the other twenty or thirty kids would crowd around to be in the picture. Camille gave me a map of the Philippines and said that this was a "remembrance" so that we would not forget her.

Just like Queenie in Montalban or Caren in Payatas, it is easy to pick out some of the kids who are leaders. Everyone would follow what Camille said, and if it became too quiet she would point it out so that there were no uncormfortable pauses.

As I was walking down the path she told me that she really had never seen her father. Her mother worked in Manila so she lived with her aunt here in Libas. My friend Mike once came back from doing some volunteer dentistry (in Guatamela I believe), and he said that poverty is when you see a beautiful woman with two of her front teeth missing. This was the case with Camille Glory. She is a truly beautiful young girl, but you notice that she always keeps her mouth closed when she smiles. Maybe it is the lack of medical care here or maybe it is the success of Coca Cola or maybe it is both. poverty is when you see a beautiful woman with two of her front teeth missing.

-Zeus