Vesagas: Dear Ma’am Linda

(Writer’s note: This article is dedicated to one of the most brilliant professors I’ve ever had in this lifetime- the late Dr. Erlinda Montillo Burton. She had been a teacher, a mentor and a great role model for novice medical researchers like me to whom I shall be indebted in this lifetime)

DEAR Ma’am Linda,

In the late morning of September 11 this year, I was stunned in disbelief when news of your untimely demise reached my knowledge through social media. It was a sad day not because of the commemoration of the 9-11 Twin Tower attack in the US but due to the loss of an intellectual giant in the field of Philippine Anthropology.

How our paths intersected can be traced back to the summer of 2011. Being a columnist of this paper, I was tasked by the then editor-in-chief to write something interesting for the Sunday issue.

A rookie writer I was, I could not figure what topic to write about other than climate change or simply something related to “flores-de-mayo” or whatever tradition or custom was being observed in summer like circumcision, for instance. I could not exactly recall what made me decide to write about the lives of the florists who had lived and hawked outside the Cathedral Church in Cagayan de Oro City. Nevertheless, I single-mindedly pursued it after a series of personal interviews with them and submitted my piece to the editor. Few hours later it was returned to me with a rejection note: “Please improve. You may want to interview an anthropologist.”

Constructively taken and not so long after that, I found myself at the third floor of Xavier University’s Museum inside your then “topsy-turvy” office (pun, unintended but I saw papers in piles everywhere that I assumed were research data, giant shelves the contained old books, VHS tapes, old bond papers blemished by their age and filled with notes in handwriting similar to a doctor writing prescriptions, etc...) to conduct a personal interview and the rest was history.

You were too generous to offer your time and expertise to a health professional like me writing about culture and practices, which were scarce in literatures of my field. I was so engrossed with how you enlivened my ideas especially when you explained in full length the functions that cultural practices played in our society and how it maintained stability and balance in the face of constant adaptation as time changes.

Reminiscing, the first anthropology term you introduced me was “syncretism” to refer to the union of different religious beliefs or principles that might be irreconcilably at variance with each other when I asked you to describe how most Catholics tended to blend religious practices of non-Christian faith origins. That interview went so well that it ended with you convincing me to enroll at the M.A. Sociology program, which I did the semester following summer.

Looking back, I was enrolled in the course you offered “General Anthropology” in the semester. I learned so much and my mind was fed with fresh ideas and alternative explanations in such concepts as genetics, mutations, language, archaeology and so much more.

Challenging to begin with, I found myself reading literature written scholarly in forms of undigested books from the checklist of reading assignments you had prepared for the class. Also, who could ever forget the term exams you always administered that required us students to write in full essays drying our pens out as if we were writing ethnographic reports?

And lastly, the final requirements of writing a small-scale ethnographic research on a topic relevant to the course enrolled.

I loved attending your class so much that in the coming semesters I enrolled most to subject offerings you taught: Qualitative/Anthropologic Research; Ecological Anthropology; Medical Anthropology; and Psychological Anthropology (Anthropology of Filipino Values).

And although I never really finished the program as I left Cagayan de Oro city in 2015 to become a medical faculty in one of the med schools in Cebu, all the teachings you had imparted placed me ahead among other health professionals in medical and social research.

I know many can testify how you have touched their lives across generations to become the best medical or social scientists they could be while maintaining the highest possible ethical standards.

But I believe most would agree that their best memory of you is neither just your expertise in ethnographic research nor your educational qualifications (M.A. in Archeology at Brigham Young University- Utah and PhD in Medical Anthropology at University of Pittsburg- Pennsylvania) but rather your dedication to cultural heritage preservation together with your heart for the voiceless and vulnerable indigenous peoples of Mindanao.

Recollecting our last few conversations in your newly renovated office in summer of 2015, you shared how disappointed you were that our health department had issued orders to stop the practice of normal home deliveries nationwide due to the alleged alarming statistics of maternal and child deaths it had caused.

I could still remember how you pointed out that there was no sufficient evidence or research done to substantiate this hypothesis and rather saw it as an attempt to “westernize” the healthcare delivery system in our country in general and “medicalized” (a sociological term that refers to making a natural phenomenon pathologic in medical terms therefore needing medical interventions) normal deliveries in particular.

Ma’am Lida, you were a genuine heroine. I am thankful to be one of the many people who have been touched by your motherly ways in imparting your gifts. But I feel luckier to be among your generations of students in this lifetime. We mourn your loss. But your scholarly contributions to our society and the teachings you have shared to us live on. We will never forget you. We embrace you in prayers.

Your former student,

Paul

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