#PencilTrek Cambulo

Photo by Mon Corpuz

We left Manila at 10:00 p.m. on June 9, 2015 on board Ohayami bus bound for Banaue, Ifugao. Mon Corpuz, founder of Black Pencil Project, organized this “Pencil Trek”. I was with a group of 23 volunteers from Manila for Black Pencil Project’s 7th anniversary “Pencil Trek”. It was in Cambulo in the town of Banaue in Ifugao where the advocacy of Black Pencil Project all started. BPP’s first visit to Cambulo was in June 2008.

According to Mon, on their first visit to Cambulo, the tour guides discouraged them from giving money or candies to children they will meet in the community, so as not to develop the habit of asking for money or candies from visitors. So instead of money or candies, they brought along with them pencils. They gave away black pencils, the ones used by grade one pupils. Upon returning to Manila, Mon and his friends started a blog “Black Pencil Project”, named after the pencils they brought instead of candies or chocolates for the children.

We arrived in Banaue on June 10, 2015, at around 7:30 a.m. and proceeded to Halfway Lodge. There we took our breakfast and afterwards started to prepare for the trip to Cambulo. While a group prepared and sorted the boxes of school supplies to be brought to Cambulo Elementary School, another group went to market to buy our food supply for two days.

It was a two-hour jeepney ride from Banaue town proper to Cambulo, on rough and sometimes muddy and slippery one lane mountainside road. Most of the volunteers took the ride on top of the jeepney, as the boxes of school supplies occupied most of the space inside. It allowed the volunteers a one-of-a-kind “top load” experience. I would admit that I prayed much harder during the 14 kilometers and 2 hours jeepney ride from Banaue to Cambulo than I ever did while crossing the rough open sea of Babuyan Channel for 4 to 5 hours. One wrong turn of the driver’s steering wheel on the edge of the road would send the vehicle hundreds of feet down the steep ravines of the mountains.

We arrived safely in Cambulo about midday and were welcomed by school children who helped us carry the boxes of school supplies about 100 meters down the trail that leads to their school and the community. We had lunch at Cambulo Guest House where we were billeted for the night. After lunch, a short “getting to know you” among the volunteers followed and an orientation of the day’s activity was given by Mon Corpuz. Some of the volunteers took a short nap while others prepared the school supplies and cooked porridge to be distributed to the school children.

At 3:00 p.m. the program started with Mon introducing the volunteers to the community. Each class of students performed song numbers. And then a group of selected students in their traditional Ifugao dress presented a dance to the tune of ganzas or gongs played by some elders. They invited us, the visitors, to join in the dance by imitating their movements. The teachers and community leaders also did the same dance as a way of welcoming us. Some games were played and then the school supplies were distributed to all the students and teachers and all the students were fed with porridge and orange juice.

After dinner, some children and members of the community, gathered around a bonfire for singing and dancing. This time a member of the community asked me to join in their dance wearing their traditional loincloth dress. Mon Corpuz, who has become an adopted member of the community, with Charimon as his Ifugao name, also joined in the dance wearing his own personal loincloth. We spent the fellowship night with marshmallows for the children and “basi” or sugarcane wine with the elders for an unforgettable experience of an Ifugao community called Cambulo.