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Sunday, June 11, 2006
Art Camp 163
By Stella A. Estremera
IT'S that time of the year again when my buddy Kublai would gather his friends to help him haul off paints and stuff and get entangled with kids for an art workshop for Bantay Bata 163.
Having been through a few weekends of such workshop last year, there was the promise of fun and new friends, and thus I had to call in reinforcement in the form of my seven-year-old niece, Trish.
We all packed ourselves in the Bantay Bata van amid drums, food, art materials, rainmakers and a lot of other stuff, and Kublai's polka dot car with guitars and drums and more guitars the whole gang: the workshop master Kublai; the group dynamics master and everybody's Mama Ross from Camiguin; the music artist and story teller proudly from the Talaandig tribe of Bukidnon, Waway; fellow music artist from Boracay, Bebot; the hegalung master cum entrepreneur of the T'boli tribe in Lake Sebu, Maphil, and the photographer cum free labor, that's me, plus Maan, of course.
With Waway, Bebot, Kublai and Maphil taking their positions in the center of bonfire area of Campsite 1 at the Eden Nature Park, and Ross putting her group dynamics cap amid some sudden twist that only children can play on adults who have not yet figured out what their role is in the whole tableau, I found myself right in the middle of four children, as a member of their group.
Uh-oh... I'm gonna be a participant, after all. I should have learned my lesson last year, but I still can't get it through my brain: that is, when mingling with these children, you have to appoint yourself some important position lest be smothered in paint-splattered hands, welcomed into their midst as their "favorite playmate" cum "ate" and be dragged into games that will make your forty-ish knees and back groan and creak a day later. I didn't so I was groaning the day after that...
I did manage to sneak into my main role -- as documenter, in between running around, drawing, cutting cardboard (my main job after I was appointed as such by the two other groups of children flanking mine), and just being mobbed. A good thing my niece have found her own set of friends lest I would have already lost her as early as an hour into the morning's activity.
Drawing, cutting, "silk-screening," and a hilarious hand show (the one that uses black light)... actually, it wasn't intended to be hilarious, but because it was unrehearsed, Kublai, Ross and Bebot just stumbled and bumbled through it all.
After an early dinner and the hand show, there was still the puppet show for the children to present, but my niece it seems have had enough... make that too much. She was ready to fall asleep on her feet. It was time to go home...
At my mom's house, where I dropped off my niece, she was dead to the world as soon as we arrived. Uh-oh! She enjoyed it, yes, it was just too much for one day, I guess.
The kids? They were still there for two more days for some team building rope sessions with the YMCA and counseling. My role was done for that program and there was regular work to return to, but we'll be back, to have fun once more amid shrieks and laughter and hugs and tugs... After all that's what childhood is all about.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (June 11, 2006 issue)
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