April Updates

I have not written anything for this blog for the month of March—for the past several months, in fact, since I have just been cheating in my previous ten posts or so. Most of them are merely lifted from a book and other sources.

I got preoccupied with what I believe is an important project. I also just lost interest in updating this blog. For several days, I even made this blog private and seriously considered setting it so for good. You see, doing a thankless job can be draining. I don’t earn anything, money or otherwise, from writing in this blog, and every now and then I ask myself why the heck I continue doing this. I don’t have to, and sometimes I don’t want to.

For the said reason, I have resolved to update this blog just whenever I want to. I’ll stop trying to beat my self-imposed weekly deadline. On one hand, this will mean unpredictable schedule of posts. On the other hand, this might result to better-written posts. Only one thing is sure: I won’t close or delete this blog—at least for the next few months.

I no longer post selfies on Facebook, but I can’t fully resist the temptation yet, so I’ll do it here—hopefully just this time or for personal updates only. I’m catching fish here, by the way. When I went to a relative’s house this Holy Week, in the mountainous half of Bagumbayan town, we drained their fish pond because we abstained from eating meat. I couldn’t resist the mud, so I waded in even if my huge wound on my feet had not completely healed.

October Updates

I am momentarily suspending my Photo Friday project. My hands are and will be full with some other tasks. I can’t find time to go out to take pictures, digitally crop or enhance them, and write about them. I’m not sure when I will resume the mini project. In January next year maybe.

As to my Monday posts, starting the first week of October 2014, I’m using again excerpts from Defending the Land, a book about the tribes in Mindanao that are working on their ancestral domain claims. This time, I’m using the section on the Teduray people. Most of the Teduray live in Maguindanao Province, but some of them are in the Municipality of Lebak, Sultan Kudarat Province, at the periphery of Kulaman Plateau.

The series is running for nine Mondays. After that, I might use the section of the book about the Maguindanao, for I found out that the specific Maguindano clan that is staking their ancestral domain claim is in the Minicipality of Bagumbayan, Sultan Kudarat Province, also on the periphery of the Kulaman Plateau.

So in the coming weeks, I can assure you only of one post per week. But I’ll post additional write-ups in case I find some topics that do not take much time and energy to write.

Logo for the Portal

While thinking about the introduction for this post, I thought of this sentence: “I wasted two hours of my life creating a logo for this blog.” After seeing my final product, however, I don’t feel at all that the time I spent was time wasted.

I’m no graphic designer, and I have no aspiration to be one, so of course, the logo I’ve created isn’t much to look at. Not Olympics-worthy. But I’m pleased with myself. For this blog, I was again forced to be more creative, to do something I usually don’t dare to do, just like what happened when I had to draw the burial jars in the Silliman University Anthropological Museum because picture taking was not allowed (or, more accurately, because the surveillance camera was right above the jars).

The logo is really nothing more than the letter P inside three circles whose sides touch at some points. The letter stands of course for portal and plateau. I didn’t use two P’s or PTTP (for Portal to the Plateau) because it would be more work for me. I felt that the more complex the design, the greater my chance of screwing up. The simpler the better, as the cliché goes.

Don’t ask me what the three circles mean. They don’t freaking mean anything. The shape does not represent cycle of life, the world, or similar stuff. The number of circles does not represent a number of places, persons, or tribes. They’re there for aesthetic purposes. While I’m at it, let me tell you that the color, likewise, has no particular significance. I used red to match the dominant color of the layout of this blog, and I chose this design template because this seems to be the most “tribal” among the templates Blogger offers.

Using the logo, I also created a masthead (or a Facebook cover photo, though I didn’t bother to check if the size is appropriate). For the URL, I used the font MV Boli, which I’ve been using recently to mark the photos in this blog. I want to use Longfoot in Pixlr.com, but the font seems to be exclusive only to the website, and as I’ve told you in my previous posts, I’m back here in Kulaman Plateau, where there’s no reliable Internet connection. So I mark my photos now using MV Boli, which is available in Microsoft products and in PhotoScape, a free and downloadable photo editing software.

I’m not changing yet the header of this blog. For the meantime, I’m using the logo and the masthead for posts and pages only. If ever I change the header, I might incorporate the image of Ilyan Hill that I manipulated using PhotoScape. It’s a red silhouette of the mystical hill, and I also spent two hours tinkering with the original image. It took that long because I was just starting to explore the software. Again, it wasn’t time wasted. I think no matter the output, the time I spend for this blog is never time wasted.

The 50th Post: July Updates

Time flies so fast, as the cliche goes. This is already my 50th post for this blog! I've been writing about Kulaman Plateau for 9 months and 20 days now, and this blog so far contains at least 15,000 words, more than 20 original images, and 5 original video clips. I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I'm happy to prove to myself that I can write (almost) regularly about a topic, whether inspired or not and whether I have the spare time or not.

I knew from the start that writing about my obscure hometown would be a thankless job. I knew that writing about a remote, impoverished place, a vanishing tribe, undeveloped tourist spots, and ignored archaeological artifacts would not make me an overnight Internet sensation. So far I've been right. I'm no blogger of the year or rockstar journalist. My efforts, however, have gotten some attention. Some unexpected opportunities came knocking on my door, or slipped into my inbox.

When my write-up about the burial jars was published in a youth column of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the write-up piqued the curiosity of a group of wealthy antique collectors. The group invited me last summer to go to the nation's capital (free plane tickets and all) to give a talk on the archaeological artifacts, but because of my schedule, or lack of it, I was not able to accept the invitation for their desired date. I was also wary of granting the request because the group and I might not have the same interest. I wish the burial jars to be brought back to Kulaman Plateau, while they probably want the artifacts to grace their personal collections.

Yesterday, I received another invitation related to the burial jars. This time, the person who contacted me was asking if I could write about the artifacts for a government-sponsored educational project. My article would be included in a book or some learning materials that would feature the cultural wealth of Region 12. This is one endeavor that I'm willing to be part of. I hope the project will be pushed through.

I assure you that this 50th post is not going to be the last. I will keep on writing until the hundred caves of Kulaman are declared a Unesco world heritage site, Senator Ninoy Aquino becomes a first-class municipality, and the ancestral domain claim of the Dulangan Manobo is granted. From here to there, I'll be your humble scribbler.

May Updates

I made a little change in the description of this blog. It now reads, "A Guide to Kulaman Plateau and Its Manobo People, Lost Burial Jars, and Hundred Caves." Before, it was "A Research Guide to Kulaman, Its Manobo People, and the Lost Burial Jars." I dropped the word research because, lately, I've been posting more travel write-ups than academic texts, and I added the phrase about caves because I realized that Kulaman means caves mean Kulaman. The natural wonders are probably what's going to put the plateau in the Philippine tourism map. As I've said before, this blog will never stop evolving.

With the changes mentioned above, I felt that the page "About This Blog" had become unnecessary, so I deleted it. For nostalgic and record-keeping reasons, I'm keeping here a copy of its short content:

If you are conducting a research on the Manobo people of the Cotabato Region, this is probably the best place to start. This not-for-profit site provides links to available resources online, downloadable documents gathered by the author (none yet), and some original write-ups. Feel free to use materials and data provided in this blog, but kindly observe proper citation of sources. Furthermore, check with the original source for copyright concerns. For your comments and corrections, or if you want to contribute relevant information, contact rj2ortega@gmail.com.

Furthermore, "News" is now "Kulaman in the News," and "Bibliography" is now "Webliography." The latter, though, still has five items only, and the latest title is dated 2002. Sultan Kudarat State University has quite a number of theses on the Dulangan Manobo, conducted just for the past few years, but copies are not available online.

Starting this month, I'm including original fiction in this blog. The first such story is "Gods of Yore." It's composed of more than four thousand words, so I decided to divide it in three parts. The installments will run on May 20, May 27, and June 3. So Portal to the Plateau can also be categorized now as a literary blog.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure how to classify my May 13 post, "The Hidden Treasure of Kulaman." The main character, Charito Santiago, is an actual person, and he only told me the barest of facts about the events narrated in the article. I just made up the rest. I guess I can call it semifiction. I want to post the second part next week, but recently I can't find enough time to write. I've been employed again, and I'm on adjustment period. By June, hopefully, I will be able to continue writing and finally reveal to you what really the hidden treasure is.

Thank you, friends and readers! My stats shows Portal to the Plateau has been visited for more than 1,900 times. I think it's not a bad performance, considering that, aside from occasionally posting on my Facebook timeline, I don't promote this blog. Don't get me wrong. I don't practice SEO and stuff not because I don't know how to but because I want to keep this blog low-profile. All I want is for this blog to serve a special, specific community.

How This Blog Came Into Being

I have long been into blogging. Since 2005, I have been jumping from one blog to another. I could not find a topic or theme I could regularly write about. I have created at least five blogs, and the longest I stayed in one was perhaps a year.

Now I think I will be able to maintain this blog for a long time, maybe years. I am passionate about Kulaman Plateau and the Dulangan Manobo, and I have a rich material, both personal and from other sources. The idea to create this blog, though, came to me rather accidentally and slowly.

It all started when a cousin of mine asked for help for her graduate-studies research. Her goal was to gather the folk tales and similar stuff of the Dulangan Manobo. She’s not tech savvy, and she could not find adequate references online. Googling master me came to the rescue. I loved googling, for a hundred reasons, which I won’t enumerate here because they’re irrelevant. To cut the story short, I was able to find about half a dozen downloadable academic papers and other references that were quite helpful to my cousin. I saved copies in her laptop and in my own.

Though I did not help my cousin write a word of her thesis, I read the materials. I was personally interested in the Dulangan Manobo. I dreamt of writing a novel about the life of Manobo women. My interest intensified when I learned about the lost burial jars of Kulaman Plateau. One Google result led to another, and I eventually realized that for a few weeks I had been spending hours almost every day doing research on the Dulangan Manobo. The more surprising realization was that I had been spending much of that time on sifting Google results, not on reading the materials.

I thought of how difficult and time-consuming the task was for researchers. I wished no one else had to go through what I had. So I decided to create a blog on the Dulangan Manobo that would direct the readers to all available relevant materials online. At first I wanted the blog to be academic and technical, but later on, I just couldn’t help blabbering about my personal experiences in and knowledge on Kulaman Plateau.

I hope you readers find my personal adventures and misadventures interesting and not a clutter you have to brush aside while doing your research. I can’t promise you’ll like each of my posts, but I promise that this blog will keep on evolving and expanding to always give you something new.

Manobo Population

I’ve got here for you the population data of the Dulangan Manobo. The photos below show the results of the census taken by the Indigenous Peoples Ministry of the Archdiocese of Cotabato in November 1999 to February 2000.

Unfortunately, this is the latest and most reliable study I could get my hands on. As far as I know, the ministry has not conducted a follow-up study since then. I’m not also sure if other NGOs or a government agency has a Manobo population data of its own. For the meantime, let’s be thankful for this document, which is an appendix to the dissertation submitted by Fr. Francis Efren Zabala, OMI, to the Catholic Theological Union at Chicago.

The ministry recorded a total of 37,139 Dulangan Manobo living in eight municipalities. Six of the municipalities are in Sultan Kudarat Province, while two (Ampatuan and South Upi) are in Maguindanao. A note in the bottom of the document states that Sharif Aguak Municipality was excluded, probably because of the peace and order situation at the time the census was taken. It’s not likely, though, that there is a significant number of Dulangan Manobo living in Sharif Aguak. I think most of the indigenous people who live there are Teduray.

Note also that the study was conducted only in the parishes under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Cotabato. Some Dulangan Manobo live in the provinces of South Cotabato and Sarangani, which are part of the Archdiocese of Marbel. Therefore, there might have been several hundred or a few thousand Dulangan Manobo who weren’t counted. The total population of the Dulangan Manobo in 2000 might be more than forty thousand.

In the document, the population of the Dulangan Manobo is at the lower part of the right column. Beside it is the population of the Lambangian, who seem to be a group of people who have a mix Teduray and Manobo blood. It’s my first time to learn of these people, and I’ll keep in mind to research more about them. They numbered 4,276 in year 2000.

Another surprising info for me from this list is the existence of a Manobo tribe in the province of Cotabato (old yet more popular name: North Cotabato). In 2000, seven towns in the province were home to 7,329 Aromanon Manobo. This means that using the term Cotabato Manobo for the Dulangan Manobo may be confusing to some people. I should avoid doing this from now on. Note that the papers written by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, listed in this blog’s bibliography, use Cotabato Manobo and refer only to the Manobo living in and near Kulaman Plateau, in Sultan Kudarat Province.

March Updates

Instead of putting postscripts and addenda to posts, I decided to gather all of them in a single entry. Hence, this post. I also had something like this for February, and this might be a monthly feature of this blog. With this system, I will be able later on to keep track of my changes to this blog, my corrections to posts, and the like.

In my March 4 post, specifically in the fifth paragraph, I created a link to one of my essays that appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. After the piece was published, I found out that the villages I mentioned toward the end are not really named after geographical features. Valley in Dulangan Manobo is lepak, cave is takub, and stream is wayeg. Kulaman takes its name from a Manobo ruler, while I have yet to research why Tacupis and Basag are so called. I wrote that essay while I was away from Kulaman and had no reliable source. My bad.

In January 27, as I was typing my posts for this month, a swift darted inside the house and flew in circles for nearly ten minutes. When the bird came in, I stopped typing, lay still, and watched it. It was black but had a gray underside. It flapped its wing in a dizzying speed, and I promptly learned that how appropriate its name was. I thought of closing the door so that the swift would be trapped inside the house, but my better self prevailed. The bird was probably looking for a nesting place. It kept on touching the wooden ceiling with its beak, producing a dull thud each time. Once it rested on the ceiling upside down, but only for less than a second. I had been observing the bird for more maybe more than two minutes when I thought of checking the time in my laptop. It was 11: 36 a.m. The tiny guest continued flying until 11: 40, often whizzing past my face as close as less than ten inches. It then flew out of the house and came back in an instant. It stayed for two minutes more before deciding our house was not a good replacement for a cave. Maybe it also realized that I might be greedy and I would take its saliva-coated nest and sell it. I was left on the couch a little lightheaded and suffering from a mild stiff neck. My point for writing this is, you only get to have such a simple wonderful experience here in a plateau.

February Updates

I’m having trouble with the comments feature of this blog. I activated it a few weeks ago, but the widget remains hidden. I’ll try to fix it when I find the time. Don’t hold your breath, however. For suggestions and queries, you may always e-mail me at rj2ortega@gmail.com.

Finally, I’m done writing the content of the Manobo Overview page. All the pages of this blog are now complete. For the information on Manobo location, population, and the like, I am greatly indebted to three sources: Violence and Christianization in Manoboland, a book by Fr. Rafael Tianero, OMI; Journey from the Margins, the Doctor of Ministry dissertation of Fr. Francis Efren Zabala, OMI; and Defending the Land, a study by the Tri-People Consortium for Peace, Progress and Development in Mindanao (Tricom).

While my posts are written in Kulaman Plateau, they are uploaded online in Isulan, the capital town of Sultan Kudarat, or in Koronadal City, South Cotabato. Kulaman has no internet connection of any kind anywhere, so at least once a month I “go down” the plateau to update this blog and attend to other matters. It’s a good thing that Blogger has a prescheduling option. I’m able to have a new post come out each week.

The citation format I used for the Bibliography page is based on The Chicago Manual of Style. I chose Chicago because I’m comfortable with it; it’s our bible when I was still working as a copy editor for a self-publishing company. Note, however, that most research journals and academic books use other styles and the publication details are ordered differently.

Burial Jars in Inquirer

My efforts for this blog have paid off! An article of mine about the limestone burial jars was published in the op-ed section of a national newspaper. “Where They Should Be” appeared in the Youngblood section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on December 30, 2012. What an exhilarating way to end the year. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Upon seeing the burial jars, I had to take a deep breath. I had to keep the tears from flowing.

I was in the University of San Carlos (USC) Museum in Cebu City, and the burial jars I had come to see were taken half a century ago from Kulaman Plateau, my hometown in Mindanao.

For several weeks before the visit, I spent hours almost every day doing research online on the archaeological artifacts. By scouring websites and poring over downloadable academic papers, I felt that I had been a witness to the journey of the burial jars—how they were discovered in the caves and rock shelters in our town and ended up in museums in the Visayas, Luzon, and even as far away as the United States.

Seeing the jars for the first time, running my fingers along their vertical ridges, staring straight at the hollow eyes of their anthropomorphic covers, I felt reunited with long-lost loved ones. I had reached a major point in my search for identity. I had found a missing part of me.

The body of the article contains mostly facts about the burial jars—their features, where they are discovered, the explorations conducted by some institutions, where the jars are now. The information isn’t much different from what you can read in The Burial Jars page of this blog. The Youngblood article ends this way:

It is sad that the jars were taken away from their original sites, even if the institutions involved have done so much in preserving them and informing the public of their significance. It is despicable that some of the jars are blatantly put on sale online as though they were limited-edition action figures or used laptops. Nobody should put a price tag on archaeological artifacts; they are invaluable treasures of a tribe, a locality and even a nation.

If I had the money, I would buy all the burial jars now on display in California and take them back to my hometown. Unfortunately, all I can afford to do is see the ones that are in museums in the country. I’ve ticked off one destination in my list, and there are a few more to go.

Whichever museum I will visit, however, I have a feeling the experience will be the same: Upon seeing the jars, I will have to take a deep breath. I will have to keep the tears from flowing. No, I won’t let myself cry. I’ll cry only, in joy, when the limestone burial jars are back in Kulaman Plateau, where they came from, where they should be.

You can read the complete article at inquirer.net. Perhaps for the sake of consistency, the editor used “Kulaman Plateau” all throughout the article. Note, however, that in some parts, I originally used “Kulaman” only and I was referring to the barangay. The village of Kulaman is the seat of government of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, while Kulaman Plateau covers an area that includes some parts of Kalamansig and Lebak towns.

Snapshots of my article. Yay! I’m sharing the page with a former chief justice of the Philippines and the present prime minister of Japan.

New Year, New Blog Features

Pardon me for not being able to update this blog for more than a month. I got sick, terribly sick, perhaps the worst I’d ever been. When Juan Manuel Marquez knocked out Manny Pacquiao and typhoon Pablo claimed a thousand lives in Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental, my own foe also knocked me down, confining me to bed for five days.

The good thing, though, is that I’m all right now, perfectly all right, and I’ll be facing the new year a wiser and more health-conscious person.

Speaking of the new year, I’ve decided it’s time to introduce new stuff in this blog. These features aren’t really new in the world of blogging, but in this particular site, they are. Top of the list is I’m now going to allow you visitors to comment on my posts. You may now give me your suggestions, corrections, and the like, in a more convenient way; no need to e-mail me.

I disabled comments before because, having been a copy editor and maybe just obsessive-compulsive, I was a stickler for proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. I still am. But I’ve sat down with myself and told him to go a little easy on you blog readers; you are not manuscript authors, after all.

Feel free to express yourselves. I will approve and even reply to your comments as long as you don’t commit these mortal sins: truncating words (give me a comment, not a txt msg); unjustified . . . and improper . . use of …. ellipsis points; giggling or laughing in a jejemonic way (e.g., jeje) or in more than three syllables (e.g., hahahaha); and shouting (LIKE THIS).

Another change is that I’m now going to use Senator Ninoy Aquino, the official name of my hometown, as sparingly as possible. When referring to the municipality, I’ll use, simply, Kulaman. For the central village and seat government, I’ll use Barangay Kulaman. For the elevated area composed of the town and adjacent villages, I’ll use Kulaman Plateau.

I’m dropping Senator Ninoy Aquino because nobody really uses it save for official documents and in official functions. For the locals and residents of neighboring towns, the place is, and probably will always be, Kulaman. I now believe that instead of forcing the people to use the official name, the official name should be changed to reflect the traditional and the present prevailing practice of the people. (I should research how a name of a certain place can be changed by law.)

The third new move is that I’m now going to welcome fellow bloggers who want to exchange links with me. However, I’m going to limit my links to blogs that deal with culture, art, travel, literature, and similar topics. No showbiz gossip, pop music, or fashion blogs for me, except maybe if we’ve been friends the old-school way, not just in Facebook or blogging. If I find your blog übercool, though, no rules apply. I’ll link you even if you don’t ask for it.

Whew. I think I sound so hard to please after laying out those dos and don’ts above. Oh well. I won’t persuade you to think otherwise. I am hard to please. And I don’t aim to please others. I didn’t create this blog to be popular. In fact, I don’t want this blog to be popular. I just want to help the very few people who need or want to learn more about Kulaman Plateau and its Manobo people. I’ll be pleased enough with a thank-you from even just one graduate student doing his thesis or a travel enthusiast wanting to rough it in Kulaman.

I think this post is already too long for a blog, so I have to say goodbye now. Till next post. May Kulaman be a better place to live in, and visit, this 2013!