Dipolog’s secrets

“Dipolog, the capital of Zamboanga del Norte, has a busy town center just off the waterfront. Dapitan, a relatively clean city on the edge of a wide bay, is more appealing.”

I had been invited to speak at a conference in Dipolog, organized by the Reading Association of the Philippines, and to prepare for the trip, I checked the travel guide Lonely Planet.  That was all it had to say about Dipolog.

So unknown is Dipolog that two of the delegates to that conference were mistakenly booked by their office to fly from Manila to Zamboanga City, because of some vague idea that Dipolog was somewhere close by. The hapless delegates had to take an 8-hour bus trip from Zamboanga City to Dipolog.

I traveled through most of Mindanao when I was just out of college because of a job with the Catholic Church’s social action arm. I knew Zamboanga, of course, and have been to Ipil, Oroquieta and Ozamis, and yet I never made it to Dipolog or Dapitan.

It didn’t help that after I landed and asked people what Dipolog was famous for, their answer was always sardines. Okay, I figured, I would make my pilgrimage to Dapitan to honor Rizal, buy the sardines, and that would be it.

I did make it to Dapitan, and should talk a bit about the Rizal shrine. This was where Rizal was exiled, and where he became a community physician of sorts. The jack-of-all-trades Rizal emerged in Dapitan. Besides taking patients, he established the Colegio Moderno, teaching the arts and humanities, languages and science, to young students.  He helped residents to develop their agriculture, and to build a waterworks system, parts of which are still working.  He lived with Josephine Bracken; he had wanted to marry her but was not allowed a church wedding.  And they had a son, who was stillborn.

The shrine is really more of a park, large but not immense.  Remember Rizal won the lottery and bought the land. You’ll find a reconstructed residence, “dorm” and clinic. Being there comes close to a religious experience, a time for contemplation and reflection.

Some of the teachers who were with me said that they had been there the previous day, brought in by a bus for a quick trip. After they listened to the keynote speech of Ambeth Ocampo, Dapitan took new meaning for them and some of them chose to go back, this time able to appreciate the place.

My point is that you need to read up before visiting. The Internet has dozens of sites about Rizal, including a description of what he did in Dapitan, the letters he wrote while he was there, an illustrated children’s book, an article about treating the bewitched (victims of the mangkukulam) and a touching poem, “Mi Retiro.”

The Jesuits were apparently fond of this subversive alumnus and had found ways to get Rizal exiled in Dapitan, which was Jesuit “territory.” Rizal attended Mass regularly at a church there, and even helped to design the altar.

As we drove back to Dipolog, we passed by P’gsalabuk Circle, which has a fountain showing three men holding up a chalice. Our tour guide explained the three figures were supposed to represent Christians, Muslims and the Lumad, the indigenous people of Mindanao. I was impressed with the way the city is emphasizing the need for different communities, different ethnicities, to respect each other.  Mindanao’s conflicts are really much more issues of land rather than of religion.

After P’gsalabuk Circle, we went to Holy Rosary Cathedral, where close to the entrance was a room which I first thought to be a chapel. But I noticed slippers and shoes at the entrance and when I asked, I was told it was a prayer room for Muslims, a mushalla.  Now that’s walking the talk.

Good Times

The tour guide asked if we wanted to visit an art gallery.  Some of us groaned, thinking we were going to be brought to some tourist trap with repros and souvenirs.  Instead we were brought to Good Times Café. The name rang a bell in my close-to-senior-citizen brain, but I couldn’t figure out why.

We got to the café, and it was like walking into Alice’s Wonderland, with flooring and chairs made from chipped plates and mirrors. There were religious figures, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and some from local folklore (I think). The owner came out to greet us and introduced himself as Ed Tabangcura.  (I will never forget that surname, which means Fat Priest.) I soon learned that he once lived in Manila and a Good Times Café was located in the Ermita area, near Las Palmas Hotel. Maybe that’s why the name had a familiar ring to it.

Twenty years ago, he decided to return to Dipolog, back to his childhood home, and to build this gallery, bit by bit, with bits and pieces of dinnerware. Its real name now is Café Indelico, after Ed’s father, but the tricycle drivers in Dipolog know it better as Good Times.

That night we had still another surprise: dinner at Ur Café, owned by an Italian who clearly loves to cook and running a restaurant. No sweet spaghetti here. What we had was good pasta and pizzas, and Italian wine to wash it all down. Again, who would have known you’d find an Italian sit-down restaurant in Dipolog? Daniel Churchill, a professor from Hong Kong who was attending the conference and is an information technology gizmo, had his iPad running and brought up pretty good reviews of the restaurant.

There were paintings around the restaurant that caught people’s attention, and I learned they were all done by one painter, Didi Romano. You guessed it, he lives in Dipolog, or rather he is a balik-Dipolog man, who with his wife used to live in big cities but decided to return home. The next day we went to see him at his house turned into a gallery of sorts—and music conservatory. His son Mishael had a concert last week at UP Diliman, a product of home schooling and piano tutoring from his mother.

The surprises never seemed to end. I finally got to meet the mayor, Evelyn Tang-Uy. A Chinese-Filipina (emphasis on Filipina) mayor? Her husband had been the mayor before her, and she stepped into his shoes. We didn’t have too much time to talk because she was headed for Manila, but I asked around and people described her as having a good blend of the maternal, while being firm.

Some time after I got back to Manila, I happened to talk with Ateneo de Manila’s dean Fabian Dayrit about Dipolog (his wife is from a nearby town) and mentioned Mayor Uy.  He smiled: “She’s one of our graduates—chemistry.”

Which got me thinking, and hopeful. Sure, Manila is polluted and crowded, so hometowns like Dipolog are probably enticing, but it takes a lot to go back to a small town (or city).  For a “Manila girl” like Uy to decide to stay in Dipolog must have been even more drastic. And yet it’s happening, and with people strengthening values around respect for people, and the environment (Dipolog has an eco-tourism reserve, but I only had about half an hour there), and a faith in people to move forward.

Rizal would be pleased, indeed.