THE sheer size of Davao city never ceases to fascinate, even this long time resident who has ventured into more crevices and cracks of this city than older and more adventurous denizens.

And so there we were on a horse, butt sore, ready to give up, but cannot, giddy-yapping on our way to sitio Balawal for their fiesta.

Sitio Balawal is a Matigsalog village that's a three hours ride on a horse down Marilog highway to sitio Upian across Upian River up Mondo Hill and down toward a stretch of Davao River across sitio Alon in Barangay Malabog, Paquibato district.

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It's a village with 24 households where having a second wife (duway) is allowed. This means some households may have more than an already big rural family since it's made up of two sets of children. Easily, it is home to more than 200 people where the potable spring water source is more than a kilometer walk away. No potable water, much less electricity. Bathing and washing is by the river, less than half a kilometer down. They cross the river to their neighbors in sitio Gumitan, still in Marilog district right on the other bank, using inflated rubber tire interiors.

Balawal was carved three years ago from sitio Sumilop. Children of Balawal go to school in Sumilop, several kilometers over rolling hills and plains away. That is, if they ever go to school. Those who make it past grade school, although there hasn't been any so far, go to Marahan along the highway for high school.

In these mountain villages, some families of indigenous peoples still do not send their children to school, not because they do not care about education, but because they have been discouraged from sending their children into that giant boiling vat where the Alagase (evil giant) rules.

Still holding on to remnants of their oral traditions, lumad stories are full of representations. Schools for some remain to be that boiling vat where children are trapped in and stripped of their beings for the Alagase to eat or imprison forever. Beneath this seeming simple story is an unwritten story of how lumads have been stripped of their identities by a system of education that was imposed on them, which were insensitive to their cultures and norms. This same culturally insensitive religions saw generations of lumads losing their belief in the nature guardians (tinugyan) of the Supreme God (Manama) replaced by prophets and saints who have not even made any reference to the forest that is the lumads' bloodline.

To this day, there is still this vestige of distrust made more convenient to uphold because of the sheer distance and expense it takes to send a child to school.

Balawal is but one of several sitios, which are predominantly Matigsalog, in barangay Marilog, where basic services have not yet reached and it is in Davao City, one of the country's highly urbanized cities.