Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo By Any Means (22 page)

Wilfredo was totally committed to the organic way of life, so much so that in English his granddaughter’s name means ‘organic farmer’. He said he had a responsibility to future generations and his children shared his vision.

Using a couple of shelled snails as bait, we hooked two catfish and took them inside. Wilfredo showed me how to hold the fish without getting stabbed by their spines. Once they were gutted and cleaned we stuffed them with lemon grass and cooked them in boiling oil. I ate mine with a ginger and pepper sauce, together with a cup of rice. It was delicious - there’s nothing like eating something that you’ve caught and cooked yourself.

Claudio wasn’t filming, or eating either. This was unusual, to say the least. Instead he was drinking beer and carefully inspecting infected mosquito bites on his legs.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked him.

He made a face. ‘You get one little mosquito bite and you scratch it in the night. Then it gets infected and it just goes on and on . . .’

‘But beer before lunch, Clouds?’

‘It’s medicinal.’ He waggled the bottle at Robin. ‘He has a saw on his Leatherman, we’re going to amputate later.’

Stuffed full of rice and catfish, I was back on the road, looking for a bus to take us to a place called Malaybalay City, before the last stretch up the mountain to the monastery.

As usual there was no bus to be seen and no jeepney either. Standing outside Wilfredo’s restaurant I began to feel like Steve Martin in
The Jerk
- the part where he leaves home then has to wait for days outside his parents’ house, hoping to hitch a lift.

At last a bus came along. It was a Fiera, a more modern version of the jeepney we’d been on this morning. It looked pretty crowded but there was room for a couple more and we were only going as far as Los Amigos anyway.

I took a seat and started to think of the journey ahead, how many islands we had to cross and how much of this part of the journey would be by water. It would be ferries, mainly. I don’t mind ferries so much . . .

After changing buses at Los Amigos we arrived in Malaybalay City late that afternoon. We were only half an hour away from the monastery now, so we hailed a couple of tricycles - motorbike taxis with a sidecar - and left the main road for the mountains.

It was an interesting journey. The drivers weren’t exactly sure where they were going and the road was bumpy and pitted, twisting through the palms that covered the hillside. There were no signs anywhere so we just kept climbing. Eventually I spotted a clutch of white buildings in the distance and decided that must be the place.

It was dark by the time we reached the Monastery of the Transfiguration, and I was exhausted. Father Adag, a gentle but enthusiastic man with an infectious smile, came down to meet us. He showed us to the guest quarters - simple, comfortable rooms with just a bed and a basin. And it was peaceful too, just as I’d hoped it would be. Father Adag promised to show us around properly in the morning. He suggested we meet up some time after seven, because he would be at prayers between three-thirty and six-thirty.

The Benedictines came to the area in 1982, taking over what had been an old American ranch. They not only built the monastery but planted all the trees. Father Adag told me that originally the whole area was clear - the ranch ran cattle and there were no trees. Now all you could see were trees, and to think that the monks had planted every one of them was mind-boggling. He also said that in those first days there was no dirt road up from the highway either, so they had to walk.

Back in the 1980s the Filipino government encouraged people to grow coffee. Seed plants were given out and while most of the villagers did not have enough land, the monks took full advantage of the scheme. This was prime coffee country with the perfect tropical climate, much like the mountains in Papua New Guinea, and the coffee bushes grew in abundance.

The Benedictines not only grew the beans but harvested, roasted and ground them. The blend was then shipped all over the world. They did the same with peanut brittle. I love the stuff - they make it from boiling water and sugar, peanuts, salt, sesame seeds, vanilla essence, yoghurt and lots of butter. The whole place is a hive of activity employing a lot of people from the surrounding area. The revenue goes into a collective fund and everything the monks need comes from that. Not that they need very much. Theirs is a simple life and, according to Father Adag, a very happy one.

 

 

Father Adag kindly provided us with our means of getting down the mountain again - a little red bus called a multi-cab. It was only 1000 cc and so slow even the petrol tankers were overtaking us. We were doing about 20 kmph and there were at least fifty between us and the Del Monte pineapple plantation where we would pick up a truck to take us to the town of Manolo Fortich.

Oh well. The only thing to do was sit back and ignore the sight of buses and bicycles meandering by. We trundled through tiny towns of multicoloured buildings, market stalls, little shops selling cold drinks and take-away food. In one town I noticed a barber’s shop and, stroking my goatee, I suggested that later we should find somewhere I could get it trimmed. I’d heard that barbers in the Philippines are popular because of their prowess as storytellers, rather than their ability with scissors. Apparently the better the story, the more custom the barber is going to get. A local idiosyncrasy; it would be interesting to find out if it were true.

We stopped briefly at the Del Monte plantation, just because I’d grown up with the man from Del Monte saying yes. The plantation was colossal - 25,000 hectares covering five municipalities. Every year they harvest 750,000 tonnes of pineapples and the operation goes on 24/7. Pineapples are native to the Philippines, but not the kind used for canning. These pineapples had been brought over by the Americans from Hawaii. According to our guide, the canning variety was grown here because back in the early 1900s Hawaiian pineapple farmers suffered a pestilence disaster. Their land was ruined so they had to look for another economical place to grow them. The soil here was perfect apparently, so the company moved its operation. Now Del Monte employs four thousand workers in the fields and another two thousand at the cannery. The fruit is cut by hand from thorny-looking ground plants that cover entire hillsides. I pitched in and had a go. It was pouring with rain now, the landscape coated in mist, and I was wearing shorts. By the time I’d been working for half an hour my legs were not only covered in mud but cut to ribbons. The mud got into the cuts and from knee to ankle I felt as if I were on fire.

After being sorted on a conveyor the pineapples were transferred to a lorry, then driven to the cannery, forty miles away. We weren’t allowed into the cannery because the owners were terrified we might be carrying swine flu, but we did get a lift in one of the lorries, and the driver dropped us in Manolo Fortich.

En route we stopped so I could wash the mud off my legs and I spotted a barber’s shop across the street. A sign in the window indicated they were advertising for an expert barber. I needed a beard trim and Claudio had been looking to have his hair cut for a while now.

‘A number one,’ he told me. ‘Someone with a pair of clippers will be just fine. It’s too hot to have my hair this long.’

‘I’ll do it for you.’ I nodded to the sign. ‘I’ll get my beard trimmed then see if they’ll take me on. If they do, I’ll tell you a story while I cut your hair.’

Inside, I told the barber what I wanted and with a hot towel over my face I waited eagerly for his stories. He didn’t seem up for telling any though. In fact, none of the guys were. It’s not that they were unpleasant and the place seemed popular enough. It’s just that it’s difficult to tell a really good story when your face is covered by a dust mask. The subtleties are lost, the little nuances that make a good story. It seemed everyone here was terrified of swine flu.

Anyway, I let him shave me with a cut-throat razor. I had my beard trimmed and my head massaged. Then, persuading the owner I was an expert barber, I sat Claudio down and picked up a pair of clippers. I must say I was slightly hurt by the anxious expression on his face . . .

 

 

The next morning, with Claudio successfully shorn of his locks, we set off for the island of Camiguin, or ‘Come Again’, as I dubbed it. It was two hours by ferry and after we got our tickets, we made our way to Cagayan de Oro and the docks. Three army trucks were lined up next to a naval vessel and a troop of soldiers was unloading boxes of ammunition. We wandered over to have a look and instead of the security guard demanding to know what we were doing, he told us to make sure we didn’t leave without seeing the General MacArthur memorial. The soldiers didn’t seem worried by us either, they were all waves and smiles, even the skin-headed guy in charge of loading. He just waved to us and asked us how we were doing.

Taking the security guard’s advice we climbed some steps and there was MacArthur’s hat . . . literally a gigantic sculpture of his military cap, facing out to sea and supported by five gold stars.

The ferry was a large catamaran. I’d been on something similar when we crossed from Iran to Dubai during the last trip. They’re made in Australia, very comfortable and very fast. The sea was calm and the two hours it took to get to the island flew by. Once ashore we quickly found a jeepney. It was another of the 1000 cc multi-cab things we’d been on yesterday, so I knew it wouldn’t be very fast. No matter - I was getting used to the different pace.

Heading up the coast, we met up with Benjamin, an anchovy fisherman, who was waiting with his crew beside a slender outrigger canoe. Benjamin was forty years old and had been fishing all his life, though these days his income was supplemented by what he could make from coconut oil. The Philippines is a poor country with 80 per cent of the people living below the poverty line, and although much of this island looked like paradise, there were lines of little shanties dotted along the shore.

Benjamin explained that the fishing is not what it once was. He could remember when the whole area was teeming with anchovies, but like so many other places it’s been overfished and now much of the coral is dead. The only section that is still alive surrounds a sandbar he called White Island, a few hundred yards off the beach.

Clambering aboard the canoe, we chugged out to where a dozen or so other boats were already fishing.

‘The sea is too calm,’ Benjamin muttered. ‘Not enough waves, there won’t be many fish today.’

It is a very hard life. These guys get 10 pesos per can of anchovies and when you think there are about 70 pesos to the pound, that’s not a lot of money. A kilo of fish brings in £1.05 and there are at least three men per boat, all of whom have families to feed.

At White Island we paddled out on a second boat Benjamin had prepared with the nets. The waters here were so still and clear you could almost see the bottom. Paying out the folds of narrow mesh, we formed a semicircular barrier while one of the crew put on a dive mask and slipped over the side. His job was to try to spot the shoals and scare them into the net, but Benjamin said that when the sea was as calm as this, it was much easier to scare them away instead. A few waves made things a lot easier.

We didn’t catch anything - it was just one of those days I suppose, and we spent most of the afternoon fixing the engine. Benjamin had left it in the other boat and it got soaked, the coil was wet and it wouldn’t start. It was only after much banter and exchanging of spark plugs with other fishermen that we finally got it going.

Nevertheless the sandbar had been a pleasant place to while away the afternoon - the island a dramatic backdrop, very green and dark against the sky. The mountains looked like a sleeping giant, the head at one end and a big stomach in the middle, his feet lost in cloud at the far end. I just felt bad for Benjamin - it really was a tough way to make a living.

Back on the beach we had a couple of beers and one guy picked up a guitar and sang us a song about how happy he was with his simple life as a fisherman. But it’s a way of life whose days are numbered, a reality that was brought home to me when another boat came in and we helped unload the catch. By the time the anchovies had been bagged and weighed the three-man crew had made a profit of just £3.50 between them. It was seven o’clock in the evening and the boat had been fishing since four that morning. Benjamin told me that he doubted there would be much fishing for the next generation and that didn’t bode well. Apart from a little farming and a few jobs in tourism, fishing was the mainstay of the economy. Every day some two hundred boats fished the area around White Island and that just wasn’t sustainable.

Benjamin and his family were the perfect hosts. They cooked us a beautiful dinner of fish-eye soup and rice, then I strung my hammock between two palms and spent another perfect night on the beach.