57
Summer road trip
Other migrants
brought with them
not just their own ways
of life but also their own
languages
from a place as spacious as Mindanao,
where driving in any direction can
be an endless pursuit, the question of
belonging fills your mind and colors
your speech. I’m fromMindanao but I
moved away a long time ago and I don’t
have a tribe to call my own. When I
finally had to tell him, “I don’t belong
to one,” it was grudgingly and with
sudden, inexplicable regret.
The
Smile
team is in South Central
Mindanao, administratively known as
Region 12, for a road trip, the best way
to explore the swaths of land extending
from the heart of the island all the way
to the southern coast. Like the rest of
the mainland, the provinces that make
up this region — Sarangani, South
Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Cotabato —
along with the city of General Santos,
are linked by a network of roads that
run one after another and ultimately
lead to the Maharlika Highway, also
known as the Pan-Philippine Highway.
If you check out a detailed driving map
of the Philippines, you’ll see that the
highway traverses the entire country,
snaking fromZamboanga City in the
south-west all the way to Laoag City
towards the northern end of Luzon. It
covers a total of 3,517km.
Our plan is to drive fromGeneral
Santos City to the hillsides and
lakeshores of South Cotabato, on
to the plains of Sultan Kudarat and
then all the way back to the coast in
the province of Sarangani. In such a
culturally and geographically diverse
landscape, the Maharlika Highway
might seem to be the only thing
holding the region together. After all,
the area lumps together a population
of ethnic tribes, coastal dwellers and
highlanders, Muslim and Christian
settlers, plus other migrants who
brought with them not just their own
ways of life but their own languages,
as well. In Sultan Kudarat and parts of
South Cotabato, for example, many of
the people that we meet are Ilonggo-
speaking and trace their family roots
back to Iloilo.
The marked cultural differences
have long been acknowledged as one
of the reasons that the geographic
parameters of the local provinces are
From top: young T’boli girls in full regalia;
Justin Ali, a young musician who studies
at the School of Living Traditions; model
Catherine tries on the colorful and heavily
beaded T’boli comb
ON CATHERINE (PREVIOUS SPREAD): NECKLACE AND BRACELETS BY LALA GARCIA MANILA;
TOP BY FOREVER 21; PANTS BY COTTON ON; SANDALS BY SANDALIST. FOR LISTINGS GO TOWWW.CEBUSMILE.COM
