MAGSAYSAY ON OUR MINDS

"Can you see that curve in the road down the mountain?" she asked. "That's where we'll have to wait for the jeep that will take us to the junction." Which was about an hour's walk away. Sweet penalty for having started off late and for not eschewing breakfast.

We were headed for the town of Magsaysay in Davao del Sur, a place we could scarcely remember, having seen countless others wrought in the same small-town layout and architecture. What we could recall were the endless rice paddies and its old, quaint name, Kialeg, referring to a B'laan chieftain noted for his bravery.

The B'laan and other indigenous peoples like the Bagobo had long since retreated to the remote hinterlands from where they make contact with the rest of the townsfolk through tribal councils that they helped set up with Magsaysay's local government.

Late afternoon found us in Barangay Kasuga where residents were rushing to have their teeth fixed, pay their residence tax, get their children's birth certificates, request for seedlings, or have their animals vaccinated. Tomorrow the government was moving to another barangay, bringing with it essential basic services that people in remote areas find difficult to access. The mayor, Arthur Davin, called it Paglilingkod Abot Kamay (PAK, or Service Within Reach), a simple, no-frills approach to service delivery.

Town officials were obviously proud not only of PAK, but also of their other programs that they said were developed with the help of civil-society groups and other sectors that made up Magsaysay society. PAK and other programs like the Integrated Pest Management (IPM)-Diversified Organic Farming System (DOFS) were later incorporated by Mayor Davin in his Executive Agenda (EA). The EA spells out the local chief executive's governance blueprint.

An elderly woman, lips red with betel chew, gave us a toothless smile when we asked her what she thought of the local government's programs and services. She then pointed to a sari-sari store where a teenage boy was arranging on shelves newly milled upland rice in one-kilo plastic bags. We took a closer look and lifted one of the bags with "MagRice" printed on the stick-on label.

"Our very own Magsaysay rice," said the woman, who was fondly called by neighbors Onor or Yonor — we couldn't be sure, given the noisy exchanges going on among the women around the store.

What we did gather was that MagRice was not only developed to address poverty issues in the municipality by eliminating middlemen and providing farmers direct trading conduits, but also was an important result of the organic farming system introduced by the local government.

We also found out that despite initial difficulties like identifying markets outside the municipality, MagRice is now being exported to cities like Davao and Cebu with the help of the Magsaysay Self-Help Cooperative, which was put up by a local NGO and supported by the local government.

Over dinner that night, we couldn't help talking about Magsaysay and its will to make things work without much external assistance. Its secret, we agreed, was getting people to understand that governance is all about sharing a common dream or vision for the community and of seeing that this is realized in the end with everyone's participation.

"Are there others like Magsaysay?" We left the question hanging as we packed our bags for Bohol in the Central Visayas.

Charmed by Catigbian

UNUSUALLY HUGE waves slapped the hull of the fast watercraft from Cebu. We could feel their jarring impact down to our feet. It wasn't always like this during our travels to Bohol, when calm waters swiftly carried us in less time than it takes to finish a VCD movie to the port of Tagbilaran.

We peeked through the fogged up windows, trying to make out the outlines of Tubigon where we were supposed to disembark. Rain began to lash the boat. But just as suddenly it stopped and we were mooring at the small pier lined with food stalls. We had never taken this route before and we felt a sense of adventure as we stepped off the gangplank.

We'd traipsed much of Bohol years ago and were proud to have, at one point in our peripatetic lives, participated in the province's crafting of its environment code, the first in the country in the late 1990s. It was a time of much hope for what the Local Government Code, the decentralization law of 1991, could offer by way of opportunities for popular participation. Bohol was at the forefront of reinventing governance then. Now we hoped to see its impact on local communities.

A friend, journalist Diosa Labiste, had written an interesting piece about health and governance in Catigbian, a little-known place in Bohol. Here's her introductory note: "While easily reached from Tagbilaran and Tubigon, the two major trade and transit points, Catigbian seems remote because of the sorry state of its roads, its poverty, and reputation as rebel-infested. It is said that only a Catigbianon loves the town that was bypassed by progress, if, among others it means potable water and the absence of malnutrition and other preventable diseases."

True enough, we were soon replicating our bumpy boat ride on a van that had seen better days for the place we hoped we could love as well as one of its natives.

In Barangay Triple Union, we ran into Virgilia Sequina, a community leader who manages a Botika sa Barangay. A very busy woman, she also heads the Health Leaders Association and is active in the Department of Health-LGU's Leaders for Health Program that brings together the mayor, town doctor, and community leaders to reinvent healthcare delivery. Through the program, the mayor and the community leaders attend a Certificate Course in Community Health Management at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, while the doctor takes up a Masters in Community Health Management, also at the same school.

With many barangay folk suffering from preventable diseases and more than 850 children out of 3,331 in 2003-2004 weighing below normal, health was a governance priority in Catigbian. With the program's introduction finally came a doctor who wanted to stay.