As aptly told by Ms. Meitats in Demystifying Sagada!, the e-Learning Office coordinators’ first get-together earlier this year was in the highlands of the Cordilleras. The activity reviewed the barely two-year old e-Learning program’s considerable successes and necessarily some lessons learned, and thus properly plan for the trajectory of its future activities.
This August, the ELO Coordinators from all over the country met for the second time this year, this time in Dumaguete City, to explore another program that harnesses the vast powers of information and communication technology. With discussions greatly enriched by the operational savvy of seasoned agriculturists from the training centers, the workshop participants discussed the nitty-gritty and preliminaries that had to be done for the upcoming launch of the Farmers Contact Center this September.
Topographically, Negros Oriental, whose capital is Dumaguete City, is a place quite unlike cool, mountainous Benguet or Mountain Province. The Negros provinces are in an island that sits apart from the rest of Western Visayas. Barely literate in geography, I should perhaps stop right there in describing this tranquil Visayan island and its beautiful seascapes and gently sloping terrain. Before embarking on our trip to Dumaguete, however, I eagerly “googled it, just a little bit.”
A fellow traveler we met on the airport informed us quite emphatically that Dumaguete is the “eighteenth best place to settle in the world, in the world, according to surveys.” It’s plain to see why. Dumagueteños live up to their name, which means gentle people. Walking through the city streets and asking for directions from helpful bystanders and storekeepers, we found the description fits very well indeed. We saw the Dumaguete drivers’ road courtesy. On one occasion I was surprised and sheepish in turn when tricycles skirted to a stop so they would not block my view and I could take a picture of a horse-drawn wagon across the street. We enjoyed the novel exercise of being able to make our way across the city and along the seaside boulevard entirely on foot. We felt we understood why foreigners abound in the area.
Incidentally, we learned that the famed, more-than-a-century-old Silliman University in Dumaguete is ATI Director Asterio Saliot’s alma mater. His colorful account of his days as a working student in the University, about various concerns the ATI directorate had to deal with in the course of ATI’s reengineering or makeover, as well as the riotously enjoyable fellowship night shared with him and the equally inspiring Assistant Director Alberto Maningding: these brought the workshop participants in closer kinship with our Directors. During the long trip in one of three utility cars that took the workshop participants to one of Negros’s renowned tourist destinations, the Antulang beach resort, the multitalented Mr. Mar Lapitan of ATI-RTC 4A dispelled travel time doldrums by playing on his mobile phone the Faithful Love mp3. The sound brings to mind old-fashioned wedding receptions and idyllic public dances during town fiestas. Before you could say Bluetooth everyone was asking for a file transfer.
The incongruity of the age-old instrumental playing heartily in very mod communications devices... I wracked my brain for the word that best depicts the experience (which we all enjoyed BTW).
Watching a horse-drawn carriage plod alongside a shiny black top-of-the-line car in Dumaguete City, the word came to mind so faintly I almost failed to catch it, from memories of college class lectures buried underneath years of bureaucratic limbo.
“Anachronism” probably partly describes Dumaguete too, and I mean it as a compliment – age-old culture coexisting with modern-day people and way of life. It is charming, it works, and it brings desired results.
ATI prepares for the Farmers Contact Center, another ICT-based Agriculture and Fisheries service delivery system. It hopes to address the age-old problems of technology gap and inaccessible information. The problem has become an anachronism too, you might say.
Always moving forward – this has become the hallmark of ATI, particularly the team built by Ma’am Niet, Ms. Pam, Sir Rey, and the rest of the very able AKMD team. The special kind of magic that worked in Dumaguete that brought the participants together from all across the country… may it continue serving us all in good stead, and help us make age-old problems in farming a thing of the past.