Mindanao’s Miracle School

 “Just rest and be ready by 7:30,” was all Gel told us upon arriving.  It was almost a whole day drive from Cotabato City to Bukidnon’s best kept academic secret.  Raj cannot take a leave from hospital duty; and Ram was waiting to be called anytime for his flight to sandy dunes.  Isn't it coincidental that there were also just the three of us when Gel finished the grades...?

It is graduation weekend for thirty-seven (37) high school seniors, and parents who live afar had to plan as early as six months ahead to be able to fit everything on schedule.

We came from 235 kilometers away; other parents came from Ozamis, Iligan, Agusan, Surigao, Davao, Cagayan, GenSan, Visayas, Luzon, US, China, Thailand and Indonesia.  While we had to save for this trip, there were parents who could not come because they just had enough for every day expenses. 

The stage had minimal decorations. It had a clean, dignified feel to it.  Friday vespers started on time and teenagers who in their everyday life looked mischievous and playful, were now transformed into respectable young people in their graduation gowns.  They marched in on two long gray lines, and presented themselves to their parents and school administration for a candle-lit consecration.

Such a solemn ceremony did not fail to sting my eyes.  Images of a frail preemie born inside a family jeep 16 years ago run like a movie in my mind.  Only praises to a wonderful Giver of Life and Learning filled my heart.  I realized it was not easy letting a daughter through four years of secondary training in this miracle school.          

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Management Marvel

Nestled deep in the heart of the province just at the foot of Mt Kitanglad is 1000-hectare Mountain View College.  Founded in 1953, this place that I call a Management Marvel actually started as a vision of Seventh-Day Adventist Missionary Andrew Nelson: fertile land, quiet, no typhoons, forested, with swift streams[1].    

Sixty years later, the fertile land continuously provided this self-contained community their food: organically grown vegetables and rice, cash crops like corn, sugar cane, rubber.  On the same land are school buildings, a small ranch for cows, goats and chickens; a church, an auditorium, cafeteria, store, clinic, radio station, dorms for national and international students, alumni guest house, houses for faculty and staff, tennis & basketball courts, soccer field, and until recently, an airstrip.  Far from cities and its social struggles, the quiet atmosphere in 16-20 degree weather provided for meditation and study.  The forest provided for communion with nature and building needs; and the swift streams for hydroelectric power.

Catholic Girl Gets Adventist Education

Protestant family friends convinced my parents to send me to MVC for high school in 1976.  I was excited with being by myself I could not remember feeling any separation anxiety.  As a 13-year old I loved the thought of having my own bed even if it was on the second deck; meeting new classmates and going to church on Saturdays.

Having to eat all vegetables for breakfast, lunch and dinner did not faze me; and I found it amusing that some schoolmates literally dropped out because of cafeteria food.  (I think it pays a lot to grow up in a strict Catholic home where the main staple was a good sermon on how other children did not have anything to eat).  Most Seventh-Day Adventists are vegetarians; they are taught that the body is the temple of God.  And since it is the temple of God, one has to take good care of it.  No pork; no junk; no alcohol; no colas.

Prayer was part and parcel of everything: before class, after class, before meals, before play, before travel, before programs.  Inseparable to prayer was music. There were lessons on piano, violin, classical guitar, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, etc. many students could blend a tune in four voices at a click of a finger.  I learned how to pray the Adventist way; joined the choir, played the piano in school and in church services.  Bible study was as exciting as any field of study.  There was just so much to learn I think I wanted to sleep early so that the next day would also come early.    

I wanted to be a working student; but only college students were allowed to work.  The school has a work-study program and it literally runs on student force.  Working students are paid by the hour and are present in all departments: as assistant dorm deans, cafeteria workers, janitorial staff, vegetable gardeners, landscape gardeners, librarians, radio technicians, etc.  What they earn pays for board, lodging and tuition; and depending on work and study loads, earn their diplomas in 5-10 years.  Many of them then fill in the work force of many Adventist missions around the world, mostly schools and hospitals.

Building Resilience

Our dorm was a long, wooden structure with GI roofing.  Cold wind sometimes whistled through spaces from the wooden floor.  Morning bell was at 5 and if you’re a minute late, you’d have to wait for any vacant shower or comfort room.  530 is worship time; and by 6 everybody starts a beeline to the cafeteria some 200 meters away.  Flag ceremony is 715.  Classes are followed by one-hour lunch and supper breaks which is mostly consumed by lining up in the cafeteria and making sure your tray is emptied of leftovers and stacked right after for student workers to wash.  Evening worship is at 730 and if you do not make use of the next two hours for reviewing your notes there’d be no chance to study after lights out at 930.

I did not like being rushed, and I didn’t like to wait either.  Such a schedule taught me how to be ahead of everybody.  I had the bathroom and toilet all to myself before the bell rang; and while everybody was short of complaining for their turns, I was dressed and ready for the next big thing. 

The school hydro provided for 24-hour electricity; but we did not have hot showers.  We took daily baths in ice-cold water gushing from overhead faucets that did not have perforated shower heads.   Looking back, I did not even make full use of my one and only red woolen sweater even in the constant fog.  It was either that my body temperature has reached a balance with the outside temperature after the cold baths or I was just plain hyperactive.  Light bulbs and appliances used 110 volts; if our clothes did not dry in the cold weather, we just ironed the damp ones until it was dry.  We just left the lights on; as both dorm and school had central switches.   Even the auditorium and street lights were on during the day.

Every month we were allowed 1 weekend and two Sundays off complete with leave permits.  The full weekend will be for the family if it is in another accessible town; and the Sundays if we want to go on a day trip anywhere.  We had to be back in the dorm not a minute later than the allowed time.  The fourth Sunday is meant to be spent just inside the school for tree planting, soccer, camping and other outdoor activities like biking or trekking.

I looked forward to going back to MVC after every summer; but these stopped by the time I reached Junior year when my mother got sick of cancer.

Fast forward to 2010

We wanted a place for a teenage girl to start exploring the world so we thought of MVC.  Gel can exercise her independence in a well-supervised environment away from hovering parents.  Two look-see trips to the school helped reduce any shock she might experience having to be away alone for the first time. 

Only a remnant of a wooden school building now stood as a memorial of how things had been in our time.  All the buildings are now made of concrete; dormitory rooms in two-storey and three-storey buildings had their own toilet & baths.  Wifi was regulated in the worship hall, and buildings already had 220-volt sockets.  Olympic sized and kiddie pools provided actual education on swimming; and there were more trees now I tried to imagine which ones I planted more than thirty years ago. 

The policies didn’t change much: morning bell, weekend leaves, etc. Gel also has her main staple at home she didn’t have any problem adjusting to vegetarian cafeteria food.  We just braced for the tight schedules ahead.  And because Gel was Daddy’s Girl, Jun might just break down.

Unexpectedly, the separation anxiety that did not hit me as a child hit me hard as a mother.  Saying bye-bye on the phone with my little girl waving her hand from a distance was just too much too bear.  The tears didn’t stop flowing for the next hour on the road.

“I thought I was the one who was supposed to cry?” Jun provided comic relief. 

Adjustments included nightly phone calls; tardiness for worship and class; erratic grades.  While we parents had a choice of just paying the equivalent cost for her tardiness, we chose that she work for the equivalent number of hours to compensate. Thus, she cut the corresponding square meters of grass and wiped the corresponding number of windows until she learned the value of punctuality by the time she became a sophomore.

Teachers and dorm deans do not scold the students for their infractions.  They discussed with parents or guardians every issue concerning their children.  At one time, Gel’s attachment to her laptop seemed to be a problem; we agreed with the principal to confiscate it until she straightened out.  We only found out during her senior year that it was seen as some kind of a legendary disciplinary move.    

Shaping Character and Spirit

We had Youth Development Training (YDT), and Citizen’s Army Training (CAT) during our time.  Plus, we also had Pathfinder Training.  I aimed to be an officer by senior year; but since I only stayed for two years, the highest I could go up from being just an ordinary cadet was a snare drummer. 

Gel was able to undergo Pathfinder initiation and qualified to be a Scribe or Secretary by Senior Year.  Their formation included campings, survival trainings, and emergency preparedness.  They also raised chickens from chickhood up to saleable size.  Their outreach programs included teaching small children in neighboring barangays how to read and write and telling them Bible Stories.   

Viena Veida[2]

This batch calls themselves One Of A Kind.  The class philosophy: Walk God’s Narrow Way.  Indeed, there was nothing else that we parents had to fuss about when we arrived as the whole class prepared everything with supervision from their teachers.  We did not have to spend for a new graduation dress because Sabbath was always an occasion to dress up so it’s a regular thing.  The prom gown that Gel designed herself didn’t cost as much as we expected had it been sewn in Cotabato.  The rent for toga was minimal.  No contributions were collected to hire stage designers and chairs because the students did it themselves.  We were not required to solicit anything for the yearbook.  Graduation lunch was pot luck so that each family basically just spent for themselves and shared everything from one table.

That the school gives Loyalty Awards to parents came as a pleasant surprise.  Parents were awarded if their children completed four years of high school.  The wider, easier way would have been to send one’s child to a school that did not require them to do hard work.  The wider, easier way would have been not to traverse 15 kilometers of unpaved interior roads to be able to reach what is also known as School of the Light.  The wider, easier way would have been to just pay tuition and other fees upfront and demand for entitlements.  It was indeed a hard-earned award.       

* * * * *

Alumni of Mountain View College Academy were requested to stand up and sing the school anthem with the new graduates towards the recessional.  I was not qualified to stand but I sang every word from the bottom of my heart.

If there is a school that instills discipline, concepts of authority, rules, leadership and responsibility without being called military -- I think MVC is it.  If I were to build a school, this would be the perfect model.  But since I cannot build a school, sending my daughter there was the best I could do; and pray that many more are accepted.  There was much that a two-year stay there influenced my life until now.  I believe it will do the same to my daughter and to the hundreds who have passed through its gates.

Remember, the sixty plus years did not just breeze through.  Just like any institution, MVC had its share of crises.  But they always did one and the same narrow strategy: prayer and fasting. 

It always resulted to nothing less than -- yes, you're right: a miracle.

 

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Cotabato City

5 May 2014

Aveen Acuña-Gulo posts herself on Facebook as a Monumental Operations Manager (MOM).  She is a Bukidnon-born Cebuano mother of three (3) Maguindanao-Ilonggo-Cotabateño children; who will always be a child at heart even if she is a hundred years old.

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[1] Tanamal, Job: Mountain View College, The Miracle School (2012). An expanded edition of A Pioneer’s Diary.  The author is selling the books to help build an Astronomical Observatory.

[2] Latvian for One Of A Kind