I’ve lived in Mayne’s house since mid-January; she and her husband rent it out as an investment property. They also own a small bakery in town that makes the best brownies in town—she was able to save up money for both when she worked abroad in Italy for a few years.

I often pick up sweet treats at the bakery to take to the family for desert. The other day I decided to go by and visit her since I’m moving out at the end of the month. We sat on her pink flowered couch with the t.v. on and a bible open on a stool near my legs. She and her family are Jehovah’s witnesses—there are pictures and needle points that mention Jehovah all over my house.

I told her I was going to stay on a bee farm for eleven days. She liked the idea. “Do you think beekeeping is something they could do here?” she asked.

“Yeah, especially with the vegetable farming that’s done around here. Rice doesn’t need it—it self pollinates, but vegetables mostly need bees for pollination.”

She considered it. “But aren’t bees dangerous?”

I don’t know how bees got such a bad reputation—yes, they can sting if provoked, and if someone’s allergic it can be a certain problem. But the fact is, breathing in leaded gasoline and diesel is far more dangerous and no one complains about that.

“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a local beekeeper?” I asked, “They could sell authentic honey here—it could be Eighth Wonder honey or something like that.” We both laughed at the overused name, but then again, why not?

I bought honey here in town once. I was so excited to find it that I put it in everything—on breakfast cereal, in my tea. I used up about three quarters of the honey and then for some reason, it got extremely thick and I couldn’t scrape it out of its fluted glass jar. I was kind of frustrated and thought maybe the honey had hardened because it was so cold. For a month I tried to melt it in hot water, tried to scrape it out with a knife, but I couldn’t reach it. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Finally, one day I decided to buy some more honey at a local store.

I asked the shopkeeper how much the honey was on the back shelf. She pursed her lips together. “One hundred fifty,” she said, about three dollars. “But you shouldn’t buy it.”

“Why?”

“Because it is not pure,” she said. “Some of it is honey, but then they add sugar to make more.” It dawned on me why my honey had hardened. It was pretty much pure sugar at the bottom. No wonder it wouldn’t melt. I asked where to get the pure honey and she said it was only available in the lowlands or in Manila, though sometimes people would come to the Saturday market and sell it here, but that was rare.
Mayne asked me to share what I found out about beekeeping at the Bee Farm. She was really interested. We started talking about other business ideas I’d had. I mentioned a yogurt shop up in Sagada, a place Matt and I visited together. People always talked about the amazing yogurt in Sagada—it is rare to find any yogurt in the provinces. The exciting thing about it is that it’s a much tastier and local alternative to the lactobacilli drink served everywhere in the Philippines: Yakult.

“I have Yakult sometimes,” Mayne laughed, “but I like yogurt much better. It’s just hard to find it here. I wonder how we could get the locals interested in it.”

I told her that it started as a tourist investment in Sagada but that now the locals liked to buy it too.

“Yeah, the tourists like wheat bread too,” she said. “They always ask if I have whole wheat bread, but I don’t have any whole wheat flour—it’s so hard to get it here. I don’t know where to find it. And the locals don’t like wheat bread either,” she said.

I told her that maybe if they saw how the tourists liked it, and if they could educate people about the health benefits, people might switch over. I have started to see whole wheat bread take off in Manila, so perhaps it won’t be long before the interest spreads.

“It would be so great if different restaurants could specialize in different foods, you know? Like maybe one restaurant could have the best banana pancakes in town, or another one could have smoothies, or something.”

Mayne laughed. “Yeah, but you know the problem? Once one place makes something unique, all the other shops in town copy them. That’s why you go into the souvenir shops and all the items look the same.”

“And why the restaurants have all the same items on the menu, huh? Why is that, no one wants to compete or something?”

She shrugged. We talked about how capitalism is a new thing to Banaue—people are used to looking out for each other, not competing. If someone is hungry, someone else feeds him. Suddenly their culture has become stratified and individualistic. And while there are benefits to it—the opportunity for individual expression and specialization as well as profit—those benefits might be hard to get to with societal barriers like they have here.

We talked about Banaue in the past too—how the streets used to be lined with pitcher plants; she and her friends would tip the flowers back and drink the water out of them. She said there used to be a big children’s park downtown and she and her sisters would swing on the playground. There were hardly any streets and the town was so quiet her friends could clap their hands from the school far down the hill to get her attention. She painted a picture of a Banaue that was quiet, beautiful, green—peaceful. Much different from now.
I mentioned that Sagada had a meeting to decide how they would develop. The locals and business leaders attended and helped shape the community growth. Was something like that possible in Banaue?

“The problem is that people are used to doing their own thing,” she said. “They come up with rules for awhile, but then no one follows them. It would take someone really strict to make it last.”

I wondered about this—it sort of seemed hopeless, like herding a bunch of cats. Banaue’s development is spinning out of control—buildings are put up haphazardly, the heart of the town and the streets that lead away from it are getting increasingly overrun, unattractive, noisy and somewhat unsafe. I don’t like being in the town all that much, and most tourists I meet don’t want to stay for long either. There isn’t much to do after one day except go visit other towns like Batad, and there aren’t any great restaurants or notable lodges that offer something special or unique. The town is noisy and somewhat uncomfortable—people spit betel nut in the streets, litter everywhere, and men constantly hang about the side streets and stare at you. Most tourists I meet are eager to get onto the next place. But it’s tragic to me because I know the people here and they are so kind. And there are many wonderful places to visit if you know where to go.

It made me really think about development—how can you beautify a place if the people don’t know how to make it happen themselves? I have all these ideas, but who am I to say anything since I’m not from this place and I’m not sticking around? Do I have a right to get involved, or should I just hint at ideas and see if any take root and grow? I feel so useless on some levels here because I offer so little except some observations. But it makes me think about what I can give, what my interests are. It’s also a real wake up call—the most effective change happens when people can commit to a place or region for an extended period of time.

I’m not sure what it will take to help Banaue develop more thoughtfully, but I hope they figure it out somehow. In some ways it breaks my heart to just walk away, but I’m not sure I have another answer right now.