A magic potion from the South Pacific

[Rendt Gorter, Barrier Bulletin, November 2015]

The very first time I took some jars of Sven Stellin's Kanuka Balm along on a journey to the Philippines, I was surprised at how enthusiastically this gift was received by my friends there. It was only later that I learned that in the Ifugao mountains of Northern Luzon there is a long-standing esteem for traditional healing products.

The Ifugao district, and really whole of the Mountain Province in the North of the Philippine's largest island, are the home of distinct tribes that to this day can trace their roots to the different boats they respectively arrived on, perhaps a thousand years ago. If that sounds familiar, then think briefly about what history tells us about the distant origins of the Polynesians as boat people coming out of South-East Asia. That dates from an era when your ancestors defined your identity and where your boat was named after who you were.

The people that over many generations settled deep in the steep valleys of the high mountains became part of those mountains. Today the spectacular rice terraces built laboriously over centuries to create level surfaces that could be irrigated, attract many foreign travellers who take the overnight bus ride for the 10 hour journey from Manila. UNESCO has designated five different valleys across a region larger than Coromandel as world heritage sites.

The rice terraces of the Cordilleras are the only monuments in the Philippines that show no evidence of having been influenced by colonial cultures in a history that goes back 494 years to the arrival of the Spanish. Owing to the difficult terrain, the Cordillera tribes are among the few peoples of the Philippines who have successfully resisted any foreign domination and have preserved their languages and authentic tribal culture. The history of the terraces is intertwined with that of its people, their culture, and their traditional practices.

Igorot, or Cordillerans, is the collective name of several Austronesian ethnic groups in the Philippines, who inhabit the mountains of Luzon. The Ifugao are the people inhabiting Ifugao Province. The term "Ifugao" is derived from "ipugo" which means "earth people", "mortals" or "humans", as distinguished from spirits and deities. It also means "from the hill", as pugo means hill. In other words, these are people deeply bound to their land and history.

The healing properties of the Kanuka Balm were confirmed to me on following trips by the people who had received the Barrier Gold products and I was asked to bring more supplies, for instance by Kay Davidson. Kay is a cheerful American missionary that has taken a number of orphans into her large house. After her husband died, she stayed on and has after several decades become a well-known community member in the town of Solano, the gateway into the Ifugao.

Further up in the mountains, another person that gained relief and better sleep is Connie Lacadin who is a trustee and treasurer of the Ifugao Community Support Trust that I sponsor with the financial help of friends. Like the other trustees whom I presented with jars, she has been passing it on to friends and relatives as 'a magic potion from the South Pacific.'

The ICS Trust was formed after the death of my father with a group of his friends and was endowed with the property he left behind after spending the last decade of his life in the Ifugao. I was easily talked into supporting this project by Connie and the others as a legacy from my father, as I myself have for twenty years been leading and designing development aid projects in other countries. And as our trustees are made up of respected locals, with a former bank manager and now advisor to the provincial governor, a former deputy mayor, a retired Filipino business man returned from the US, the manager of a farmers cooperative bank, along with Connie who is a senior manager at the municipality, I felt the trust would have integrity and the local support needed.

What we have done is to convert part of my father's property into a small farm with pigs and chicken. We also prepared the 5 bedroom house that my father built as a guesthouse for visitors and supporters. It sits on a site with a stunning view overlooking the rice terraces of Burnay.

With money donated so far we have been able to sustain a cooperative piggery with a group of local women as a livelihood project, and a sponsor form Great Barrier Island has made it possible for at least one young woman to enter college so she will be able to fulfil her dream and become a teacher. We hope, having by now shown that we can do this, to attract more sponsors who want to become involved and visit our guesthouse.

'Why don’t you bring more of this cream and we will sell it as fundraiser for our charity?' Connie suggested to me on my visit last Christmas. I already regularly take back organic Ifugao coffee to sell on Great Barrier so I thought that was a great idea. When I told Sven he was pleased to hear that and last Easter provided me with a whole box at cost, as a donation to our work in the Philippines. Thank you Sven.

Rendt Gorter