Notes from the North

by Estanislao Albano, Jr.

It’s such a pity that it never occurred to me to note down the stories my father told about himself much less made a conscious effort to extract details of his life before I was born while he was alive. I am not saying this because he was my father but because it is true: the output would have made interesting reading.

Let me begin with the information that his name – Estanislao B. Albano –  appears in the website Ancestry.com.  The information which was taken  from census records of the United States states that he was born about 1906 (which is off by two years as he was born in 1904) and that in 1930, he was residing in San Bernardino, California.

According to the stories I heard from him, along with many other Filipino young men, he sailed for Hawaii sometime in the 1920s. Needless to say, just like those of the other young men, and those of millions of  Filipinos  who had left  Philippine shores before them and after them until these days, the purpose was to find a better life. I now surmise that to the young Estanislao, Hawaii was just a temporary destination because after a year or so of working in the cane fields there, he proceeded to California where he immediately found work in a lemon plantation.

One night not long after his arrival in California, Cornelio Bulayog, a fellow Filipino who was earlier converted to an evangelical sect, invited him to a religious service in a tent. That proved to be the turning point in Estanislao’s life.  According to his own account, nothing happened the first night but  in the second night, “the Holy Spirit spoke to me about my sinful condition.”  He then confessed his sins “and received Jesus Christ as my personal savior.”

Not that he was such a bad person. He was not addicted to any vice and had not wronged anyone. The only experience he had with vices was when he lost 20 centavos in a gambling game and never gambled again and when he got drunk with some friends and they walked right through  newly planted paddies. But that night, my father saw that in the eyes of God, goodness did not suffice. 

Not long after his religious experience, he strongly felt that he was being called by God to return to his country to preach his new religion. By the way, just like most Filipinos then and now, he was  born a Catholic. He said yes but asked God how he could effectively preach when he was uneducated. He haggled with God for the opportunity to study before returning to the Philippines. He related that “God opened the way” so that by working and saving, he was able to attend school full time in some stretches but at other times he was a working student. He went to high school  in Upland, California, for his AB, in Cincinnati, Ohio and for his MA in Pasadena, California. Last, he took up Bachelor of Divinity at the Bible Holiness Seminary in Owosso, Michigan. The 1947 yearbook of the seminary described him as “a perfect gentleman, unselfish, thoughtful, courteous, kind and possesses the spirit of a scholar.”  After earning the degree in 1947, he felt he was ready to come home.  

His first assignment when he got back in the country was as a teacher in the newly established Pilgrim Holiness Church Seminary in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. 

In 1955, the sect’s new church in Tabuk, Mt. Province was about to be left without a pastor. Church authorities felt that someone should take over the work. When Estanislao and his wife Eufrosina, one of his former students in the seminary, learned of the need, they gladly packed their bags and thus, began their service to the people of the locality.

The couple’s early years in  Tabuk were spent with the Guilayon people in the western part of the town. Up to now, some people there still remember the family hiking across hills and streams of the Guilayon territory to minister to the people there. They say that my father carried my younger sister Phoebe on his back while the eldest Flora Belle and I walked behind him and my mother.

We lived just like the other people in Guilayon. My father worked a kaingin, went hunting with the men and fished on his own. The only thing different with him from the other men about which the older Guilayons still laugh about when they remember  was that the scabbard  of  his bolo was a bomboo cut because he did not know how to make a wooden one. They say that even without seeing him, they just know he was coming because of the sound his bolo made against the walls of the bamboo.  

The labors of my parents among the Guilayons paid off because there are now third generation believers among them. They retired from active service in 1970 but they continued ministering even after retirement  –  for my father, until shortly before he died in 1990 at the age of 86 and for my mother, until now that she is 83.  

Why do I say my father was different?  He was already in America, the so-called greener pasture,  the land flowing with milk and honey, and with his education, he could have  made a decent living not only for himself but for his dirt poor family back home. In fact, during his last year in the US, he already worked as a pastor. But on the conviction that he has found the right way to heaven, he chose to discard his original plan for going to the US and come home to share his new religion. Money was not the end all for him; love for the souls of his countrymen was.

My father did not talk about it but according to my mother, my father’s decision to come home instead of continuing to work in America devastated his family. But by 1965, the first and last time we visited his family in Cabaruan, Pinili, Ilocos Norte, there no longer was any sign of the hurt and the disappointment. My grandmother and her other children must have already forgiven him  because despite the fact that their wood-bamboo-cogon house badly leaked, they butchered a goat for us.

by Estanislao Albano, Jr.

These days, all roads in the public elementary school network in the Kalinga Schools Division lead to the Bulo East Elementary School (BEES), one of the two elementary schools in the progressive barangay of Bulo, Tabuk City. Since August, groups composed of teachers,  barangay officials and Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) officers and members have been trooping to Bulo to satisfy their curiosity about the school that has since emerged as the model school in the division.

According to Schools Division Superintendent Norma Brillantes, the teachers, PTA and barangay officials want to know why BEES is always topping the National Achievement Test (NAT) and is doing well in the  Metrobank  Teachers Association of the Philippines Math Challenge (MTAP), press conferences and science fairs. The school is also one of only three schools in the province proposed for accreditation. She added that teachers from other schools also want know how the school was able to  make use  practically of every inch of the campus for instructional purposes with  the completion of the  parks for the five major subjects namely English, Science, Math, Pilipino and Makabayan.

If I were these visitors to the BEES, I would also  be curious about and would ask questions how come there is no litter on campus, no unwanted graffiti on the murals on the fence and the painted visual aids in the parks, and how come the trunks of the trees in the school of which there are a lot do not have hack wounds and scars like trees in other schools do.

I have been to the school twice myself and I have come up with the conclusion that indeed, the BEES experience could provide all the lessons other schools in the province need to learn to make themselves the learning institutions they ought to be. These of course starts from what the BEES  teachers are doing to produce pupils who shine in the division to the obvious  good relations among all the sectors involved in making the school what it is today namely the faculty, the PTA, the barangay officials and the community in general and many things in between. To me, there is no need for elementary school delegations from Kalinga to leave the province spending a lot of money in the process to learn lessons on how to improve their respective schools. If they are really serious, all they need to do is go to school in the BEES which by the way is sort of a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to schools in the city.  

Take the case of their domination of the NAT in the division – in the last five years, BEES topped the examinations thrice and placed third and sixth in the two other years –, the secrets are really simple: their Grade VI teachers Maribel Ticnang and Gemma Andres  are willing to spend weekends starting in the second semester reviewing their pupils and to spend some money of their own to reproduce copies of questionnaires to be distributed to the pupils. Ticnang and Andres  say that  this is the same formula used in other competed activities. If the visiting teachers are unwilling to take such extra mile, then they better forget about competing with BEES.

Talking about the willingness of  BEES teachers to part with their personal money for the good of the school, that’s where it all begun for BEES.   Bulo Barangay Captain Camilo Maling does not tire telling visitors that seeing the teachers sacrifice their own money to  have the walls of their classrooms painted with visual aids and also to procure other things to enhance  the looks and utility of their classrooms left the barangay council and the PTA with no choice but to give their full support to the faculty in their endeavor to improve things in the school.

Regarding the leadership of the school, Head Teacher Napoleon Mukay could give a clinic to  elementary school principals in the province in the art and mission of leading schools. To begin with, he is well loved and respected by the  BEES teachers, the barangay officials and the community. Brillantes   relates  that one time, she incurred the displeasure of the whole BEES community. That was when she wanted to transfer Mukay to another assignment. She recalls that Maling expressed his vehement objection to the plan and there was even this threat from parents that they will barricade the school just in case another administrator will be brought in. Mukay is such a stark contrast to many principals in the province who are being spewed out by their schools. BEES PTA President Manuel Sano sums it all up thus: “No matter what we do if the school head does not know how to go about it, then nothing happens.” 

When asked about how he gained the respect and support of the teachers and the community, Mukay talked about leading by example. Just like the other teachers, he is also willing to spend not only personal money but extra time for the school. And he is transparent in financial matters, something that is hard to say about a lot of principals who do not even report about how the MOOE has been spent. 

The visitors could also learn a lot from the BEES community. To begin with, they give their all out support to the school. Maling informed that in the construction of the five area parks in 2009 all of which I noticed are not of the for compliance kind, all the school spent  for was  the painting work because nobody among the faculty members and in the PTA knows how to paint. The materials and the labor were all gratis courtesy of the faculty, the barangay council, the PTA and alumni. In the case of the community, it cannot be denied that BEES has a distinct advantage: 80 percent of its constituents belong to the Sumadel tribe.  The Sumadel people are known for their cooperative attitude. When there is work to be done, you don’t need to ask them twice. Also, as a rule, no Sumadel in Bulo steals that’s  why the property of the school are safe even if the school does not employ a guard.  There is one more significant thing about  Sumadel people everywhere: generally speaking, Sumadels value the education of their children because with most of them  not graduating from high school and even elementary, they do not want their children to go through the same difficulties they have gone through due to their lack of education.  

Now about the cleanliness of the campus. Unlike in other schools and most other public places in this country, at the BEES the garbage bins perform their intended functions.  There is no clutter in the school. The whole ground is clean. When I asked Mukay how they were able to inculcate cleanliness in the pupils, he said that teachers, barangay officials and members of the PTA used to remind them about it regularly during flag ceremony but of late, the frequency has been reduced as most of the pupils have internalized the lesson. Regarding the few  remaining litterbugs, Mukay handles them as follows: their litter will be picked by other pupils but they will be reported to their teachers who would then sternly warn them.

A probing visitor would also learn that one extra motivation of the BEES is its intent to become the first accredited elementary school in the province, if not the region. According to Mukay,  the La Trinidad Central School became the first accredited school but because it failed to move on to the next level in two years, it lost its status. With all the sectors in the school exerting their best, there is no reason BEES could not  attain the coveted status. Suffice it to say that so far, the efforts of the administration and faculty, the PTA and the barangay council to improve the school have already borne fruit with the school being now the acknowledged model school in the division.

My conclusion is that all the positive factors for a school to succeed are present in the BEES. Most other schools could only dream of the emergence of most of these factors in their cases.  That makes the BEES a very tough act to follow in Kalinga.