In Southern Luzon (Bicol Region) and Mindanao Via The Peace Corps 1961-1963

By: Bob Boyer

 

Jerry Mullins is an adventurer and a lover of the Philippines. And of Filipinos, of course. We have that in common, so when we met for the first time at a talk recently, we ended up spending more time sharing experiences and talking about the Philippines than about the topic of the meeting. We quickly established a friendship. I sent Jerry a copy of Sundays in Manila. In return he sent me a copy of a memoir essay he had written a couple of years ago about his time in the Philippines. I smiled and nodded recognition often as I read.

In 1961, Jerry was in one of the earliest groups of Peace Corps volunteer groups to go to the Philippines, or anywhere else. He had two assignments in his two years and enjoyed them both greatly. The first was as a teacher’s aid in a school in San Fernando near Santo Domingo, Albay Province in the Bicol Region of Southern Luzon.

A somewhat dim black and white picture shows him sitting at a desk, smiling broadly, surrounded by Filipino grade-schoolers, at least a few of whom are smiling with their eyes, as Filipinos are wont to do. Jerry also remembers fondly his almost daily walks to the beach when he would be greeted by “dozens of children who wished to communicate with me as I walked along.” The children repeated the same question every day, which he soon discovered was simply, “where are you going?” in the local dialect. So he learned to reply “sa dagat (the beach).”

Jerry also found adventure in Bicol by climbing a mountain, which not surprisingly for the territory was also an active volcano, Mount Mayon. He had gotten to know some Filipino Boy Scout leaders (he refers to them simply as “scouts”) who worked with the local children.

Having been “an Eagle Scout back home in Wisconsin,” Jerry soon was working with the leaders developing programs “(ocean swimming, trekking, nature study, survival skills, etc.).”

His personal crowning achievement, however, was climbing that volcano. It is noteworthy that while he lived with three other American Peace Corps volunteers, the only person he names as joining him on the climb was “a friend from the scout camp program, Ramon Balquin,” a Filipino. It was a rugged three-day trek. Jerry, “years later,” affirmed that this was “the most challenging outdoor experience” of his life.

Jerry’s second assignment in the Philippines was in Mindanao, including the Sulu Islands. The task was to explore Mindanao to prepare for an incoming group of volunteers there. While he and John, another volunteer friend, were headquartered in Zamboanga City, their assignment included all of Mindanao, an undertaking that Jerry understatedly describes as “huge.” When he was telling me in person about this experience, he started bouncing up and down in his chair, remembering covering the terrain in a jeep.

So, given such an assignment, how do you get to know the neighbors, in this case the local Zamboangans? Jerry and John decided “to put down some roots.” They built themselves a “small, humble beach house there to have a place to call home. It was a great decision. We again became part of a barrio community,” explains Jerry.

They also clearly modeled their “humble beach house” on the local nipa huts. After Jerry had returned to the States, a Zamboanga friend sent him a picture published in the local version of the U.S. Army’s “Stars and Stripes” newspaper of September 6, 1964. The writer describes the house as a “typical Filipino nipa hut,” unaware that it was built, as Jerry boasts, by “two Americanos from the Midwest United States.”

As I finished my initial reading of Jerry’s memoir, I smiled, yet again, and decided that being an adventurer and a lover of the Philippines go together nicely indeed.

Contact Bob Boyer at Robert.boyer@snc.edu or www.anamericaninmanila.com.