Dacawi: An unlettered farmer’s legacy

Saturday, January 7, 2012

(Again, I turn this story for the simple message: we are not what we own.)

ONCE in a while, a story comes along that needs to be told and retold -- for the human virtue it inspires. It seems easier to find it in fiction. The real world tends to breed cynics among us. A good man or woman is hard to find nowadays, except in paperbacks and in the movies.

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I heard one such story, not in fiction but of one who was flesh and blood. It’s about selflessness. It’s about one ordinary man with deeds so extraordinary you'd think he was a novelist's creation. He existed -- and lived a full life. Until now, he's unknown, except in the remote Ifugao community he built and lived in.

The story is no bull. I first heard it from then regional director Stephen Capuyan of the education department. He remembered it the moment we met, excited to tell a fellow Igorot a story literally close to home.

Manong Steve recalled his disbelief when a farmer appeared in his office at Teachers' Camp, to seek help in figuring out a serious, albeit personal, problem. It was about the man's dwindling livestock. He insisted only the education department could help in saving whatever remained of his cowherd.

"The moment I heard about cattle, I thought I knew he was barking up the wrong tree," Manong Steve said. "I advised him to direct his woes to the Department of Agriculture."

But the man was unfazed and persistent. He admitted he was losing his cow heads but not his head. He insisted he went to the right office to spill out his grievance over the education department's lack of a sense of urgency about agricultural sustainability.

"Dandani maibusen dagiti bakak (I’m about to lose all my cows),” the man tried to explain. “Dakayo met koman apo ti agbayad kadagiti agisursuro idiay barangay mi ta awanen ti maisueldok kadakuada (I hope you can now pay the teachers in our barangay as I can no longer pay them)".

Manong Steve's visitor was Mongilit Ligmayo, an unlettered Ifugao farmer. His story began to unfold many years ago in Ambasa, one of the interior barangays of Lamut town in Ifugao. Lakay Ligmayo, originally from Banaue, resettled there as a pioneer farmer. He plowed the remote Ambasa wasteland into a farmland. Gradually, the isolated place drew more farmers and gradually developed into a barangay.

As the farmers produced more rice and more children, Mongilit clearly saw the need for an elementary school. He offered over a hectare of his land for the school site. He knocked on government offices for help. He went on to help build the school with his personal resources. His sons helped him fashion out some of the desks and fixtures.

In no time, the first batch of kids was in the sixth grade. Soon, they would need a high school. The nearest was in the poblacion and there was hardly a road linking Ambasa to the town proper. Mongilit, then the barangay chief -- a position he would hold for 20 years --, decided again.

He sliced off another two hectares of his land for the high school site. Again, he directly oversaw the building construction and, with his sons, again built desks and tables.

But even with a barely finished classroom, there were no teachers. No provision in the education budget to hire them. So he offered to bankroll the initial teachers' initial salaries and the first high school class opened.

More students meant more teachers to pay. To keep them and the students in class, the old man started selling some of his cows. One day, he could hardly count any and decided to travel to Baguio.

The story sank in. I was gripped with a yearning to meet and interview the old man. I needed to write a feature, to attempt to do justice to his story. The article would shake off the thickening jadedness a journalist gets coated with over the years.

Just meeting him would bless me with what May Sarton described as a sacrament of the ordinary, a spiritual purging, a renewal of my sense of the sacred. That must be the feeling of those going on spiritual retreat, They cry a river and come out with the purest of intentions, like those in the cursillo or a government values orientation workshop – and then return to normal.

Suddenly, fulfillment was at hand.

"Talaga mit a, makapasangit dayta istolyam, Manong (Truly, your story is a tear-jerker)," I told director Capuyan in flawless Ifugao diction. He laughed. The story hit me like when folksinger Conrad Marzan dished out Gordon Lightfoot's "Second Cup of Coffee" or that time I was reading Maeve Binchy's "The Glass Lake".

Director Capuyan promised to tag me along in one of his official visits to Ifugao. Somehow, I forgot about the self-proclaimed mission as fast as dry paper burns. It came back when some of us Baguio journalists were asked to judge in the regional schools press conference in Kiangan.

From Kiangan, Peewee Agustin and I failed to reach Ambasa, blocked by the swollen river dividing the village from the rest of Lamut. We detoured to the municipal hall where then mayor Linda Bongyo-Chaguile received us and validated what director Capuyan narrated. "He's here now; let me introduce you to him," she said.

After some photographs, we repaired to a carinderia for lunch with his wife. I was at a loss for words, unable to figure out the questions. The diminutive fellow was reluctant to talk about his achievements and I did not pursue. Still, I felt fulfilled, honored just having met him in his quiet dignity.

I struggled to shrug off the lurking vanity we newsmen feel when rubbing elbows with conventionally greater mortals such as traditional politicians. I basked in his glory when Manong Juan Dacawe, a non-trapo, made it as vice-governor of Ifugao. "Is he your relative?" somebody asked me after the elections. "Did he win?" I asked back. "Yes." "Then he's my relative, not quite distant."

I lost the photographs and again forgot to write. Some years back, I learned Lakay Mongilit had gone to work Lord Kabunian’s farm. In 2003, Lamut officials led by Mayor Angelito Guinid renamed the Ambasa Elementary School after the farmer who never learned to read and write. The enabling ordinance, which local legislative secretary Dominador Valenciano took pains to fax me, cited Lakay Mongilit's unwavering doggedness in building the school.

In 2004, Ifugao Representative Solomon Chungalao filed House Bill 01043 that separated the Ambasa annex of the Lawig National High School, and renamed as the Mongilit Ligmayo Memorial National High.

Kapitan Mongilit never ever thought of recognition. Monuments can never measure true greatness. As novelist Richard Paul Evans observed, "the greatest acts are done without plaque, audience or ceremony." Yet stories like Lakay Mongilit’s need to be told and retold, passed on to our kids, to inspire and nurture in them the sense of community the unlettered farmer lived by (email:mondaxbench@yahoo.comfor comments).