5 Life Lessons I Learned in Mindanao

Trying to figure out who I am and why it matters is a big deal, and is a big driver to the decisions I make. When I decided to visit Mindanao after 10 years of living away from the Philippines - driven by a desire to walk amongst coffee trees, leafy acres of cacao trees and fields of pineapples in their native land - I learned a number of lessons that continue to prove their value every day.

1) The only way to get there is to take things one step at a time

I enjoy cycling 24 km to work every day for the same reason I enjoyed scaling the majestic Mt. Apo - because I’m just a little crazy, and crazy enough to know that placing one foot in front of the other is the only way to get to where you truly want to go. At nearly 10,000 feet above sea level, there were certainly times when I doubted, as I have before, the decisions that led me to stand above a slippery, steep boulder face, with no other way home than by climbing down an incredible height. Needless to say, most other challenges I face now stand up to this measure; with sore muscles, a battered spirit and absolute tiredness, I made it back to base and onto other things. One step at a time!

2) Banish every stereotype you have of people to learn true respect for everyone

Every person who I met in Mindanao exuded nothing but the same kindness, warmth and familiarity I expected of Filipinos as a whole. I felt as if I’d walked into a brick wall as soon as I realized that the fear many people have of Mindanao was a fear compounded by news reports and generational tension - if my parents had Facebook and could become friends with a bunch of wildlife photographers in Bukidnon, for example, perhaps the perception of Mindanaoans as a dangerous, untrustworthy people could have been broken sooner.

Learning to accept and truly respect someone for who they are is a lesson I’m glad moving to Canada provided. Bringing that openness to my travels in the Philippines resulted in experiences I could never replicate, like hiking through a Philippine eagle reserve with a leading conservationist. And back in Toronto, the lessons come full circle - there is no place for a negative stereotype, I believe, of people you have never met.

3) Pinoy pride is real

In Cagayan de Oro, Lloyd dropped his errands to tell me about his mom’s humba (pork stew) and how it put his entire family through school; in Bukidnon, Minnie took me around her family’s ranch to visit herds of cattle grazing under a cloudless sky, flanked by towering mountain ranges; in Davao, Mel of the awesome Mel’s Food Tour spent an entire morning with me as I ate my way through the city famous for durian, inihaw na panga (grilled tuna collar), pakfry (twice-fried tuna tail) and kinilaw (ceviche-style local fish), in what she calls “the way forward by looking up roots”.

You feel it in the hearts of everyone you meet. Filipinos are proud of their culture, their resources, their environment, their food. We just have to begin a dialogue and start talking about how pride in our heritage shapes our identity.

4) Community is everything

With the isolation I sometimes feel living in a constantly moving world, being truly welcomed into someone’s home, kitchen, workplace or town hall reminded me that people are at the heart of it all.

My trip would not have been anywhere near as awesome without the generosity of Chef Chino Mempin, who invited me to family meals (Noma-style) at Restaurant Damaso; Neil Binayao, who works with the Hineleban Foundation to address food security within IP (indigenous people) communities through a “transformational partnership” model with local coffee farmers; Waway Saway, who invited me to a kinship ceremony between Moro elders, IP and modern “settlers” that culminated in a lunch of chicken tinola, pancit guisado and tons of fresh fruit with over 200 people.

5) You have to take risks to reap the rewards

I’ve been hooked on reading as much as I can about the history of food in the Philippines, and consuming every form of media I can find about regional Filipino food. In my research I found out these topics were essential to describing what’s known as “foodways” in the field of social science, or the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history.

I hope to build a collective of individuals keen on exploring Philippine foodways - to share stories about Filipino food, their way, told from multiple perspectives and across new mediums. By collaborating with people whose expertise spans non-traditional food disciplines, I think a collective could present a new approach to understanding Filipino food.

I believe so much in the power of open data and educational resources accessible through the Internet. I’d love to connect with agriculturists, to learn about the future of crops and farming in the Philippines; with social entrepreneurs to talk about food businesses they’ve started in rural areas; with chefs and gastronomes to uncover how local Philippine ingredients drive their cooking; with historians and researchers to present their findings on food in the Philippines.

I’ve hesitated to talk about the potential of these collaborations for awhile, but the risk of these stories remaining unheard is something I can’t live with - and the reward of a community that rallies to preserve and celebrate these foodways too great!

On 2016 Travel Plans

I keep circling back to the question of why all this ruminating on Filipino food matters. I'm coming around to the realization that the best way to tell the story I want to tell is to tell it!

Why am I so obsessed with learning about food in the Philippines? Does learning about its history really help me understand my own place in world, internally and externally?

What I do feel is that I can better understand myself as the person I am and want to be, when I'm sated with knowledge about something I really care about - and I care a great deal about peoples' relationships with Filipino food.

You can examine it by class (people with barely pennies eating packaged instant noodles every single day, versus North Americans who travel to the Philippines specifically to learn about its food) or examine it by era (with research into the ingredients and cooking techniques of pre-colonial, Spanish, American and today's Filipino kitchens).

I am in the midst of planning for a 3 week trip to the Philippines in early March to gather research for my Filipino food blog. That's approximately 8 weeks from now. Alarm bells are ringing, as I've still got so much to do! I need to hammer out an itinerary, start getting in touch with people I'd like to speak with and visit, figure out how much to allocate for expenses, figure out how to get around - on top of dealing with my battered schedule at work and keeping myself in good physical and mental shape.

I am crazy excited for this trip. I look forward to setting foot in Mindanao - to visit Cagayan de Oro, Bukidnon and Davao.

Kyle from Becoming Filipino recently wrote on his Facebook page, "Next year... just take a few days. Open yourself up to the Philippines. Talk to to strangers on the street. Head out on that adventure you were debating over. Go somewhere you have never been in the country. Try something risky! Throw a SMILE on your face, bring some positive enthusiasm with you and...Let inspiration find you."

Thanks, Kulas. I hope to do just that!

Kasaysayan (History)

As I mused about an appropriate title for the subject matter I wanted to write about - surrounding new chapters in life, my fledgling career and growing into the person I would like to be - the word kasaysayan, a Tagalog word for 'history,' popped into my head. With the snap of a gnat sucked into an electric insect killer, I wondered, how have I not thought about this word before? We all write our own histories, day to day, with the things we put conscious effort into doing. We learn to accept the decisions we make, because really, how are we supposed to know any better until we try something new? (And either fail miserably with our goals, succeed with determination, or just get plain lucky.)

I've just started reading Dianne Jacob's Will Write for Food, which I also can't believe I just picked up - it's such an incredible resource. In the first chapter she asks, "What's your reason to write about food?" and I found the following points spot-on:

• You're fascinated by the history of a certain food and want to research it.
• You want to capture the cuisine of a country and people you love.

This is why I've treated myself to ordering topically-relevant books every other paycheque, and why I spend the precious quiet hours of 3 to 5 a.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday nights reading entries from Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking about things like budbud kabug, a sweet, steamed millet cake made with coconut milk traditionally wrapped in banana leaves.

I also finished reading Michaela Fenix's Country Cooking this week; paired with watching Kyle Jennerman's adventures in Mindanao, it's making me want to set an alert for seat sales from YYZ to DVO!

Setting foot in the places I would love to visit, to explore the culinary histories and everyday foods of locals in incredibly diverse regions of the Philippines, would be fantastic and beyond exciting. It will involve a lot of work, and require a lot of help from anyone willing to lend a hand. But as Katherine Viner argues in this home-hitting piece on journalism in the age of the open web, this a ripe, wonderful age for storytelling - in whatever form best suits the story, for readers who care and want to be involved with how history plays out - in my corner of the Internet, for a better understanding (and documentation) of the history of regional foods in the Philippines.

Filipino Country Cooking

Filipinos are nothing short of astounding at utilizing local resources to meet their daily needs. Shelter, clothing and food translate to nipa hut (palm tree) houses built with lumber from fallen trees, garments woven with textiles produced by local craftsmen, breakfast, lunch and dinner prepared using ingredients local to each community. It's an idyllic, ideal description of what life in the Philippine countryside portrays, reported through essays in newspapers and magazines, and told through stories from people who recall what their hometown, or their parents' hometown, was like.

I think about why these stories have taken such a hold on me, someone who spent the first 19 years of her life living in the cloisters of Manila. I think about why, amongst everyone I grew up with as a middle-class kid who dreamt like many others of travelling, I envied people from Europe and North America for having a passport that could take them anywhere they wished. I imagined whisking off to ancient walled cities with towering Grecian architecture and sitting in a piazza in northern Italy, sipping a robust espresso, pages open to a favourite book.

I never really dreamed about visiting other places in the Philippines, my home country - and I feel strongly about wanting to change that. I long to travel the Philippine islands and share my enthusiasm with what I learn about - products and foods I come across that reflect an intense understanding of regionalism, and with the people and communities I look forward to meeting, more than anything.

Last week, my shipment of books from Anvil Publishing arrived (they are fantastic with international orders!). I was ecstatic at finally getting my hands on a book called "Country Cooking: Philippine Regional Cuisines" by Michaela Fenix, noted food writer and journalist. The book is a collection of essays from her weekly column with the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

In the span of 62 pages, I have travelled to Aklan, Angono, Baler, Bataan, Batanes, Batangas, Bicol, Binondo, Bohol, Bulacan, Cagayan de Oro and Cagayan Valley - learning about the culinary specialities of each region, a little bit about the history of each town, living through Fenix's words to plop myself right in the middle of a lechon-fueled fiesta, or by the sea netting crabs with rich talangka (crab fat) that melds beautifully with coconut cream - think of deep, intensely orange roe melting right into a milky white sauce spiked with chilies and shallots, redolent of floral notes from the coconut's first press.

It makes me shiver just thinking about it. Somehow, these foods will make their way from a printed page into my mouth, and back out onto a screen to convince at least five other people that embracing your Filipino-ness a little more can start with appreciating the diversity of regional Philippine cuisine.