How Teacher Diday shares the gift of education with fellow Dumagats

During the recent long weekend holiday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lodema dela Cruz Doroteo — more popularly known as “Teacher Diday” — in Tanay, Rizal, for a special episode of the NET25 morning show ASPN (Monday to Friday 8 to 10 a.m.). Teacher Diday is a member of the Dumagat tribe, an indigenous community found in the Sierra Madre mountain range of Rizal province, and she is the first member of her tribe to graduate from college. This is the inspiring and remarkable story of how Teacher Diday “paid it forward” and shared the gift of education with her fellow Dumagats.

This columnist interviews Teacher Diday for the NET25 morning show ASPN.

Growing up, Diday had to walk at least an hour every day to go to school in the lowlands, and another  hour to trek back home. Because of the absence of alarm clocks, she would wake up for school when the roosters crowed. Since there was often no time to prepare breakfast, she and her village mates usually just boiled kamote and ate it while walking barefoot, crossing and wading through 13 rivers to get to school.

Luckily for Diday, her parents sent her to school when she was about six years old, unlike the others who were 11 or 12 when they started school. Sadly, though, she and other Dumagat children were bullied by school mates because girls like her went to class wearing a traditional tapis (skirt) while the boys wore the bahag. And because Diday did not even have a notebook or pencils, she had to improvise and use banana leaves for paper, and stones or charcoal as writing implements. Eventually, the teachers supplied Diday and other Dumagat students with school supplies in exchange for their harvested vegetables.

When she graduated from Grade 6, the tribe elders did not want her to attend high school anymore. In their culture, when a child becomes a teenager, the elders begin looking for a partner for him or her to marry. Diday objected to the planned “fixed marriage” and persuaded the elders to allow her to continue her studies instead. They agreed on the condition that she support herself and not rely on the community for her education. Because she really wanted to go to school, she took on odd jobs as a dishwasher in the school canteen and sold the vegetables harvested from their land to be self-sufficient.

Her perseverance, hard work and determination paid off because when she graduated high school, all 300 Dumagat elders — even those from neighboring villages — attended her graduation! This was in sharp contrast to the day she graduated from grade school, when not a single person from her family or tribe was present at the ceremony to congratulate her.

The heartening show of support she received upon her high school graduation motivated her to pursue a college degree. Fortunately, a scholarship was available from the General Board of Global Ministry USA through the United Methodist Women at Harris College for a Bachelor of Elementary Education applicant, and Diday was its lucky and grateful recipient. Perhaps it was providential that this was the course Teacher Diday took because it paved the way for her to go back to her roots and teach Dumagat children aged three to six years old.

When she returned, conditions in their village had not improved: the school was still a bahay kubo, and the kids still used charcoal, banana leaves and rocks to write.

Because she didn’t want the children to experience the challenging conditions she faced growing up, and because she wanted to make learning fun for them, she set to work.

Thanks to Diday’s perseverance and the generosity and magnanimity of sponsors and donors, the Dumagats now have four concrete school buildings that serve 30 to 50 pupils each, all of which make free education more accessible and more convenient for Dumagat children.

She also just launched her “Project 4-in-1,” which has four purposes. First, it is a dorm where male and female Dumagats who are college students in Sampaloc, Rizal are housed in separate areas. Second, it is a “bagsakan” store where the Dumagats can unload their harvest and immediately sell to customers right there, without having to sell the items by the roadside somewhere. The proceeds from sales are then used to pay for the students’ electricity bills and allowances. Third and fourth, it is a tutorial and training center whose program was also established by Diday for Dumagats who have moved to the city and have forgotten their culture and dialect.

The center is currently working on a book written in the Dumagat tribe’s native language to reacquaint or remind younger Dumagats about their rich cultural heritage.

Thanks to Teacher Diday’s pioneering example, other Dumagats have been inspired to obtain their college degrees as well. A couple of them are pursuing degrees in Elementary Education and Secondary Education because like Diday, they too have an intrinsic desire to return to the tribe and teach emerging batches of Dumagat kids.

May your tribe continue to increase abundantly, Teacher Diday!