Hilot Pinoy Outreach Dingalan, Aurora

I am helping a Non-Profit Organization called Hilot Pinoy. What we do is teach indigenous and marginalized people skills that will help bring additional income to their families and help their community in healing sickly people.
We teach these people how to do the traditional Filipino way of healing by the use of herbal products and the traditional filipino massage therapy of Hilot.
As the official photographer of the group I was in charge of documenting the graduation rites of the batch that we taught in Dingalan, Aurora
Dingalan
Dingalan Aurora is a small town situated about 2 hours away of the famous surfing beach town of Baler, Aurora. Dingalan is also a coastal town just like Baler and the main livelihood of the people living there is fishing.
Dingalan is just a small town be it with population and land area as it is much smaller than my home town of Valenzuela.
The Trip
Our group met up at the McDonalds Quezon avenue at about midnight. We left for Aurora at around 1AM. The trip to the site was for about 4-5 hours approximately.The roads were steep and zig zagged. It was such a bumpy ride I didn't even had a chance to sleep at all.
In the pitch dark roads to Aurora every one suddenly got awaken. Our van skidded the narrow turn of the zig zag road. Our van was almost thrown off the cliff. Thank God we had a really good driver that saved our lives.We arrived around 4-5 AM in Dingalan and it was still dark so we decided to rest.
When sunlight broke and shed some light to the beauty of the Mill house that we were staying in I decided to explore the property. It mill wasn't operating anymore and around the property were rusting.
The more that I explored the place I soon discovered the treasures hidden in the rubble. There were flowers and surprises in the nooks and cranny of the old tractors parked within the vicinity.
The Graduation
This was the first batch of formally trained manghihilots (massage therapists) to graduate in the town and they were trained to train other people on how to massage.
The massage technique that was taught to these people were not of those to relax but to heal. During the pre-hispanic time, filipinos used massage to heal the ill with the help of herbal medicine.

We had a little program where the graduates received their diploma and the sponsors spoke about why they are doing this for the people of Dingalan.
The atmosphere was very spiritual as the founder of the NGO believes that to be able to heal you should be spiritually in touched with your self as well.
Egress
So our mission is done already and we have time to spare still.I decided to explore the perimeter of the municipal complex and found the local kids playing in the well manicured grass. The good thing about living in the province for children is that they get to kids, play with other children and get dirty in the mud unlike here in manila that the memories that children have are the solitary moments that they have playing games with their gadgets. well it may be my old fashioned beliefs but it makes sense right?
After a while the group inside the hall finished cleaning the venue and they decided to go around the town see the port where most of the sea food are brought for trade.
After seeing the port we went to the market and looked for something to eat. The market was full of extraordinary sea food. Fishes that I have never seen in my are there. The prices were almost like how it is in Manila but with the right bargaining skills we were able to get them cheaper.
We were all tired already from the day's activities so we went right back to the mill house where we rested and ate dinner.
By midnight we left Dingalan Aurora back to Manila. I must say that it is a very fulfilling activity to do to help people less fortunate than you.
I want to go back to Aurora may be drop by Dingalan but my ultimate destination would be Baler. So I must plan now.
Right at the end of this entry is a video of the graduation that I made for the NGO.
Also, special thanks to the Philippine Army Marines for taking care of our security while in Dingalan, Aurora.
For more pictures click Here