We started the morning off with a beautiful countryside tour with a few stops at the most famous areas in Bohol starting with the location of the Blood Compact. We then continued to the Baclayon Church, which was built in the 1600's of corals. It is the oldest church in Bohol and is still a running church today featuring multiple services for Holy Week and during Christmas. The church, beautiful in itself, houses an organ from 1824 that is still in working order.
Next stop, the infamous tarsier, the worlds smallest monkey. The little ones measure to be smaller than the size of your fist. The mothers time of gestation is six months and the babies measure the size of your thumb when born.
The Chocolate Hills were the next tourist attraction where volcanic activity caused the limestone in the ground to rise up in many areas creating smooth mounds of grassy hills. During summer the grass dries to a brown color creating the look of "Chocolate Hills".
Our non-tourist site visit today was St. Nino High school, a RC Tagbilaran project school, where we met with principal Domingo Cajes.
Senor Cajes told us the school was started 3 years ago and is one of 10 public schools in Talibon. In now, in its third year it had 75 students and currently has 286. Students range in age from 12-20 (it is only 4 years, but children who are behind in their learning may be older when they start and finish). The school serves children as far as 6K away, and because of the distance, many parents would not previously send their children to secondary school (in the Philippines, although both primary and secondary school is open and free to all children, only primary education is compulsory). Some parents also cannot afford to purchase uniforms, shoes, notebooks, etc. that children need to attend school (public school, while tuition-free, does have an inherent cost, which is often too steep for families). I learn that children who do not go to school either stay at home working for the family (on the farm, etc), they marry very early, or they might get work as house help, often in Manila. However, since St. Nino opened, more parents have been deciding to enroll their children, thereby giving children more opportunities for the future (as high school graduates have more job and training options available). While this is to be celebrated, in our tour and talk with Senor Cajes and the RC of Tagbilaran, it is clear there is still much to be done. The school has no books for their children- although the government dictates what is to be taught, and pays teacher salaries from taxes, they do not supply books for the children. That is left to the school. And for a poor, rural school, books are a luxury. Instead, teachers teach from their one book and either photocopy or write out the lessons for children to copy by hand.
There is no school nurse (parents pay 20 pesos a year to fund basic meds should kids need them), but there is PE class (with equipment donated from Australian Rotary). Also, prior to the RG Tagbilaran’s involvement, the school had no walls (just a roof and floor) and no CR (bathroom) – children would just answer nature’s call in nature during the school day. The new CR built by the Rotary is one of the prides of St. Nino.
As the school has grown, so have the structures and there are many separate classrooms now, most donated by NGOs. Teachers earn 15,000 pesos a month in public school (less in private – which we had to ask twice to confirm we heard correctly) and at an exchange rate of about 44 pesos to the dollar, you can do the math. The school is also a training practicum for student teachers from the local college. What struck as much as the facts that I have just presented to you, was the look/feel of the students and teachers themselves. Instead of looking tired or downtrodden by what they were lacking (things we consider basics for education), or the 3+ miles they walked to get there (and face on the walk back) they looked truly happy and eager to be there, learning. Would American students/teachers seem the same under similar conditions, I wondered?
While I learned so much from this brief visit, it left me saddened that I was not doing more there than just learning.
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