Payat

His name was Payat. During a 2 month stay with an Aeta tribe in the mountains surrounding Subic Bay, this teenager (he was 17 at the time) was my guide and my friend.

He was what the tribe referred to as a mestizo. 1 part Aeta and the other half Tagalog. It's funny how they are seen the same way we in Metro Manila would conventionally see our "mestizo's". With a bit of admiration for their distinct physical features brought by the intermarriage of their parents who are from two different races. Payat loved hip-hop music or anything involving African American artists. The youth of the tribe were able to relate to these foreign artists so well primarily because of their dark skin. Little do they know how similar they really are in terms of the plight for true freedom and being treated as second class citizens just as African Americans were treated for most part of the 20th century and earlier. Mass media had been so effective in the infiltration of the culture of the Aeta youth that common vices we in the Metro see as unfit for children have become common practice for them. Smoking, drinking, and even drugs and casual sex have become a "teenager's thing". You will find the same scenario with the youth in urban slums with the only difference being that the Aetas had a glint of innocence in their eyes while they took long drags on their joints.

It was a hot summer in 2007 when a forest fire suddenly broke out in the hills around the main village. For the most part, SBMA (Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority) Forest Rangers were responsible for safe keeping the ancestral domains of the Pastulan Tribe. A number of these Rangers were Aetas as well.

Payat shouted, "nasusunog ang bundok, tulungan natin and mga ranger, atin to!". Together with a couple other kids, we ran as fast as we could up rocky hillsides for more than 30 minutes to get to the nearest hill that caught fire. Payat led the other boys and as they gathered large tree branches with green leaves to put out the flames with.