MASBATE: This is supposed to be the geographic center of the Philippines, but it’s also one of the wildest and poorest places in this poor and unruly nation. Here I met widows of murder victims, with fish-less fisherfolk and destitute gold miners. I also met a governor who is nice enough, but may need to get more acquainted with her own province.

“I’m not even from Masbate,” said Governor Elisa Kho. “I’m from Marikina!”

Sad, rugged, dusty place, Masbate. But a handful of individuals there gave me hope for the province, the country. They inspired me. All were working journalists. Scribes and broadcasters who challenge powerbrokers here end up dead or jailed, but still the journalists carry on.

For the last few months, I’ve been going around the country helping PCIJ develop a network of journalists in the country’s five poorest provinces. Masbate is near the top of the list. The trip was mostly a scouting mission: to get a sense of the place and to recruit participants to join our project.

From Manila, it took 45 minutes by plane to Legazpi and another two hours by boat to reach Masbate, an island shaped like an arrowhead pointed north. The island’s only airport has been closed for renovation for six months. Nobody knows when it will reopen, and no one seemed distressed that an already-isolated island of 800,000 people had no working airport.

Except Governor Kho; it did rankle her. She mentioned that the closed air strip was a bit of an impediment to tourism. Governor Kho has been pushing the tourism agenda, and a quick look-about reveals why: once you get past the dusty roads and ragged crowds, you might notice that Masbate’s geology is quite beautiful.

Mounds of rolling green hills give way to lush mountains, all encircled by sandy beaches with hardly a soul on them. Waterfalls stream off limestone cliffs. Rice paddies turn fields into vast checkerboards. Cattle ranches sprawl and crawl through the interior, and once in a while you’ll even run into a true-blue cowboy. Masbate calls itself the Rodeo Capital of the Philippines. In towns and villages, there are bustling markets and stone churches old enough to have beheld the glory of Spain when Spain was still glorious.

Still, the tourists don’t come in droves here. The other impediment to tourism, besides not having a place for planes to land, is Masbate’s reputation as a lawless island. A place where violence can and does strike from out of the blue.

Particularly dangerous are the periods before major elections. Politicians hire private goon armies to do their dirty work, and no one disputes that dirty work is part of the fabric of life here. This year alone, as many 32 people have been killed in suspected political murders, according to various sources. The governor herself was hurt in an assassination attempt in January along the island’s main highway. Two roadside bombs shattered her vehicle’s windshield, and the governor and a security guard were injured by shards of glass.

THERE IS indeed a longstanding culture of .45-caliber justice in Masbate, an ethos primed by widespread frustration and a plethora of guns. Almost anyone can get their hands on a black-market weapon. “It’s like walking into a store: you give them money, you get a gun,” said Ramesis Sison, an associate editor of the Masbate Weekly Post.

Much of the frustration stems from an entrenched poverty that seems only to be deepening. In 2007, the Peace and Equity Foundation, a Filipino non-profit that monitors societal indicators, named North Samar, Sulu, and Masbate as having “the most pronounced conditions of poverty among the Philippines’ 81 provinces.”

Everywhere on the island I met people who lived on the edge of their lives, not knowing whether they would have food and shelter for another week, another day.

In Masbate City, Josephine Ovilla, a fisher with a husband and four children, sat in an empty stall with no fish to sell. “Nothing yet,” she said. “Maybe nothing today.” She was waiting for her husband to come with the day’s catch. Sometimes he brings fish, sometimes not. Very often he brings home just enough for gas money. The family is being evicted from the house, and Ovilla says she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to them.

In Arroroy, farmer Yolanda Meralles said a collapsed dike along the Panique River prevented water from reaching her rice fields. This year she will have no harvest. And the family doesn’t have any money to fix the dike themselves.

Meralles is one of thousands of residents in the Arroroy area – near the tip of the arrowhead – whose livelihoods have been devastated by a new gold mine.

The mine reportedly processes an average of 30 kilos of gold each day, but locals said that so far, none of the money has benefited them. Instead, they said, the mine has displaced an estimated 15,000 small-scale miners whose families had been mining the area for generations. The mine has also wreaked havoc on the region’s hydrology, added residents, in one instance diverting a long section of the Panique River and effectively destroying the livelihoods of more than 500 families who used the river for fish- and rice-farming.

“They play with the people as if they were toys,” said Rino Velasco, an Arroroy town leader who has helped organize opposition to the mine.

LOCAL JOURNALISTS, like Ramesis and Post columnist Norman Laurio and radio reporter Angelo Labastida, are working to get the word out about the mine and the plight of Arroroy residents. But media practitioners here face, at best, an uphill struggle and, at worst, the prospect of a bullet in the back on some lonely stretch of road.

That’s what happened last June 12 to one of their compatriots, Antonio Castillo, 45, a columnist for the weekly tabloid Bigwas. While riding his motorcycle home that morning, gunmen shot Castillo from behind. The columnist died three hours later. During a visit with his family, Castillo’s daughter Krisha showed me her father’s jacket and the bullet hole in the lower back. Her father was the third Masbate journalist killed. No arrests have been in any of the cases.

In my two decades as a reporter – at the Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Times – I have never written about journalists or their plight, but the journalists on Masbate deserve mention. When they write a column or speak out on the radio, they risk life and livelihood. One of their colleagues, whom I met, journalist Joaquin Briones Jr., spent five years in prison on a libel charge brought by one of Masbate’s powerbrokers.

Five years!

Yet every week these journalists do their work. Though under constant threat, they continue to be the only critical, if somewhat muffled, voice on a remote island where dynastic families do whatever they like with impunity.

Which brings us to Governor Elisa Kho. The last stop on my trip was a brief but highly enlightening interview with this chief executive in her office. She was polite and friendly. She offered cookies and coffee. And then she proceeded to show herself as quite out of touch. (The interview was recorded.)

The governor is the wife of Antonio Kho, a former governor himself, current congressman and two-time murder suspect. He was also implicated in a third killing, but the cowboy hat-wearing congressman has eluded conviction. All three victims were his political rivals.

On this island, the general perception is that Antonio Kho will do whatever is necessary to get his way. But perception, however popular, obviously has no weight in court.

Regarding the spate of recent murders on Masbate, Governor Elisa Kho dismissed them merely as “petty killings” that had nothing to do with politics. They were personal conflicts, she said, “but it’s easy to say they were political.” As far as she knew, she said, there had been only one political killing – that of columnist Castillo – but even that was still under investigation. (Locals say that “under investigation” in Masbate generally means the case is destined to go nowhere.)

Regarding the island’s backwardness and malaise, Kho said she didn’t know a lot about the history of Masbate. She emphasized that she’s not native to the island and she didn’t know the intricate ins and outs of the province’s workings.

“I don’t know anything about mines,” Kho said regarding the situation in Arroroy. “I don’t know the difference between an open-pit mine and closed-pit mine.”

She had nothing to say about the 15,000 dislocated miners and the 500 families devastated by the Panique River diversion. Kho said decisions regarding large-scale mines are made in Manila and that she had no power to stop them.

Regarding dynastic families, the governor said, “Yes, now they say there is a Kho dynasty. Whether dynasties are good or bad, it depends on the dynasty. Past dynasties suppressed development. We are trying to improve the image of Masbate. I think we are not a bad dynasty. I think we’re positive. What do you think?”  - PCIJ, September 2009

DIPOLOG, ZAMBOANGA DEL NORTE: I was expecting a city of shanties. A sprawling ghetto. A legion of beggars stumbling around a sagging town square. But I found none of these things in Dipolog City, the capital of Zamboanga del Norte, said to be the poorest province in the Philippines.

What I found instead during a recent visit to this city of 120,000 in western Mindanao was a prim, progressive place, full of bustle and ambition, and a fair number of residents mystified by their province’s number-one ranking on the poverty list.

“Yes we are poor but not that poor,” I heard over and over again. I heard it from business owners and town leaders and even a few journalists. I heard it from Zamboanga del Norte’s chief executive, Governor Rolando Yebes. The governor, in an interview, observed: “You have to wonder how the agencies come up with their rankings.”

The truth is you sometimes have to dig a little deeper – or in this case, drive a little farther – to glimpse at the not-so-pretty parts. The poor of Zamboanga del Norte, it turns out, live beyond Dipolog’s boundaries.

I’m a Filipino American journalist in the Philippines on a one-year fellowship. I went to Zamboanga del Norte as part of a project by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism called Suriin Ang Kahirapan or Audit of Poverty. Zamboanga del Norte was chosen to be on the PCIJ”s target list of five poorest provinces in the country because in 2006, the state-run National Statistical Coordination Board announced (based on 2003 figures) that it had a chart-topping 64.6-percent poverty rate. That meant two out of every three residents were poor. The agency’s report further stated that Zamboanga del Norte had the highest increase in poverty, a 17-percent jump from 1997.

Provincial leaders were initially so rattled by the report that they held an anti-poverty summit soon after, gathering representatives from all sectors to address the issue. But that urgency seems to have faded, and now there are local officials saying: “Look around. Does this look like the poorest place in the Philippines?”

Indeed, Dipolog’s town center is well-kept and orderly. A manicured central park, during the week, buzzes with the laughter of school children. Prosperous-looking shops line the park’s boundaries, and overlooking the square is a soaring, meticulously maintained church, said to have been designed by Jose Rizal himself. (The national hero spent the last years of his life in the province)

Where were the shanties and beggars? I expected squalor but found instead a handsome city full of forward-looking people. It would take several days for me to realize much of the show-me-the-poverty pose among Dipolog residents stemmed from equal parts pride and public relations.

FIRST THE pride: Dipolog residents had good reason to be proud of their city, a place that prospered despite its location. The city lies on the northernmost tip of Zamboanga del Norte, one of three provinces that make up the Zamboanga peninsula.

The province snakes along the peninsula’s western shore, a long squiggle of land bordered on the west by Misamis Occidental, on the east by the Sulu Sea, on the south by Zamboanga City. The squiggle is home to 800,000 people, to verdant hills and rich fishing grounds, to rice paddies and coconut plantations stretching to the horizon.

But outside of the capital city, the province hasn’t prospered as much as it could have, in large part because of its proximity to the violence-ridden areas to the south, namely Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi – home bases for Abu Sayyaf bandits and Muslim insurgents.

When violence breaks out, the dateline used in news stories is almost always Zamboanga City. Now, to many people throughout the Philippines and the world, the name Zamboanga conjures up images of bomb attacks, kidnap victims, and high-caliber firefights. What tourist would want to go there? What investor would invest in a combat zone?

Here’s the public relations part: The people of northern Zamboanga del Norte, of which Dipolog is not only the political but also the financial capital, want us all to know that they are far removed from the fighting and killing, that their home is an altogether different Zamboanga than the Zamboanga in the news.

Toward this end, provincial leaders have pushed hard to informally rename their province ZaNorte. It is the name used in travel brochures, tourist handbooks, billboards, and investor guides. In promotional descriptions of ZaNorte, the operative word is “peace-loving.”

Governor Yebes, in the introduction to an investor’s handbook says, “Come and explore the potentials of our bountiful resources and friendly and peace-loving people.” Vice Governor Francis Olvis describes ZaNorte as a place “where peace-loving people live decently and harmoniously.” In one glossy pamphlet handed out to tourists, the welcome note used the word “peaceful” or “peace-loving” four times in two paragraphs.

Who can blame provincial leaders for trying to distance themselves from the violence and poverty, and for putting on their best face for visitors? That’s what Dipolog represents: the province’s best face, its happy gateway.

DURING THE second day of my visit, poverty found me. While riding in the passenger seat of a large truck through the neighboring community of Dapitan, a young man crashed his motorcycle into the side of the vehicle, injuring his head and spilling blood in the street. It was quite a scene, with police and crowds full of stunned faces.

The next day, I and a local journalist, Michael Daniel, a stringer for GMA7, visited the young man in the hospital. His head and arms were grotesquely swollen. His name was Rogelo Bulaybulay, 31, a resident of a neighboring barangay. His parents were there, too. They were rice farmers who looked like they had just come from the rice field. They wore soiled, ragged clothes and looked haggard and devastated.

The parents said their son needed a CAT scan but they did not have the money to pay for it. They didn’t know what to do.

I looked around the room. Three other battered and bloodied male patients shared the small space. They lay in dirty, sheet-less, lopsided beds. A couple of the men with open wounds groaned in pain. I spoke with family members. These patients, too, were getting the only medical care they could afford, which was very little. Here was the poverty I had come to see.

I would learn later that all four of the patients in that tiny room were residents from barangays outside of Dipolog. And driving around the area over the next few days, I caught glimpses of the province’s ragged edges – shanties along the river, beggars in the street, young children with dirty faces selling God-knows-what to passers-by – just a little ways beyond the neatly manicured lawns of Dipolog.

Two hours south of Dipolog is the municipality of Siayan, where the poverty rate is 97.5 percent – the highest in the nation. That means that nearly every one of the 35,000 residents in the municipality live at or below poverty levels. The NSCB reports that only three out of every 100 Siayan residents eat one decent meal a day. Three out of a one hundred! The central and southern regions of the province are home to other municipalities similar to Siayan.

Here is the Zamboanga del Norte that you will not read about in the brochures. – PCIJ, September 2009

I AM an American journalist here in the Philippines to work on a ground-breaking media project involving the poorest of the poor. I’d like to tell you about it. But I’d be lying if I said I was here only as an altruist. I’m also here for selfish reasons: to experience life in the country where I was born.

My mother, a Tarlaqueno, gave birth to me right here in Manila. When I was still a toddler, she and my father, a Kapampangan, whisked the family off to the United States where I spent most of the next 45 years. During that time, I became an American in speech, manner and worldview, but the Philippines always called to me.

I longed for a way to return.

This year, I got my wish in the best possible package: as a one-year journalism fellowship to work with the best investigative reporters in the Philippines. My mission was to help implement a new project called Suriin Ang Kahirapan. “Suriin ang kahirapan” is Tagalog for “Audit of Poverty.”

The project is the brainchild of the Philippine Center For Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), a non-profit media organization that specializes in investigative reporting. PCIJ would be my hosts during the fellowship.

The center is known throughout Asia and investigative-reporting circles in the West as a journalistic powerhouse willing to take on the biggest and baddest players (just ask President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and former President Joseph Estrada) and the toughest issues.

No national issue is tougher, more relevant and more perplexing than chronic poverty – especially in the country’s most remote provinces. These are places to which even the most resourceful journalists seldom travel. We’re talking about places deep in the mountains or in the middle of jungles or on isolated islands with no airports.

Last year, PCIJ came up with a novel idea: how about creating a way to let the people of these provinces tell their own stories? Let them tell us why poverty programs aren’t working. Let them tell us what their lives are like. Most importantly, let them give us clues to what might bring about real change.

“Suriin Ang Kahirapan” was born. The project turns the conventional journalism method on its head. In traditional journalism, reporters come up with story ideas and then gather information from various sources, including persons with first-hand knowledge.

The core idea behind “Suriin” is to encourage persons with first-hand knowledge – in this case, residents of the country’s five poorest provinces – to come up with story ideas themselves. PCIJ would train them how to gather information and present their findings in a cohesive way.

This practice of encouraging stories to originate from the people, or the masses, is known in journalism circles as “crowd sourcing.” As far as I can tell, “Suriin” would be the first large-scale crowd-sourcing project in the Philippines.

The project will make full use of the Internet and high-tech communications to create and sustain a partnership between PCIJ and the local residents who want to participate. The residents will act as the eyes and ears of PCIJ. Who better to tell us what is really going on in these remote places than the people who live there?  And PCIJ will make sure that the most relevant information will be shared with the larger public.

With this new conduit, ordinary people can share their perspectives. And beyond that, new stories can be told, government programs can be monitored, and public officials and powerful businessmen can be held accountable.

A resident in a small seaside town in Masbate can tell us why Road A was not finished, why Program B did not work, why Congressman C should be investigated and Citizen D commended. The possibilities are almost limitless.

The resulting stories and reports will be posted on a new “Suriin Ang Kahirapan” website, which will act as the primary forum. After a set of face-to-face introductory meetings in the provinces, communication with our partners will be maintained through email and quarterly online chats. It’s all so 21^st century.

The PCIJ staffer in charge of  “Suriin” is a veteran journalist and researcher, Rowena ‘Weng’ Paraan. Weng and I have made preliminary trips to three of the Suriin provinces: Zamboanga del Norte, Masbate and Agusan del Sur. The project’s reception has been enthusiastic. The people of the provinces seem raring to go.

These trips into the country’s wild and remote edges have been eye-opening for me. And intense. Everywhere we have traveled we met people on the verge of losing everything, including livelihood and life. For too many people in the Philippines, every single day is a struggle to survive.

I plan on writing about some of these people in regular written dispatches. It will be a kind of traveler’s column, where I will share stories and observations. It’ll also be a pocket version of Notes From a Native Son, because that is what I am – a native son who has come to learn about his homeland.

These dispatches will also include encounters with some extraordinary people, individuals with passion and drive and courage – courage against long odds. The journalists who make up PCIJ belong in this category. Their work inspires me.

And they are exposing me to a whole other dimension of the Filipino experience. I’m here to observe and to take it all in. I spent 45 years learning to be an American. I have 12 months to remember what it means to be Filipino. – PCIJ, September 2009