BONGABONG, Oriental Mindoro – Here in Mindoro, I finally met someone who is 100 years old, a real live centenarian. Slightly hunched over but still proudly walking without assistance of any kind, Way-agan Inyom has never wandered far from his village nestled in the lush and gorgeous foothills of his tribe’s ancestral domain.

I have met several people in their 90s, including members of my own family. But none ever made it to 100, an age that is not just rarely attained but now given a monetary value. The government has passed a law that rewards centenarians with P100,000, not bad considering a long life, especially a relatively healthy one like Way-agan’s, is already its own reward.

Way-agan’s problem was he couldn’t provide proof of his age. Like many others in the Bangon tribe – one of seven groups of indigenous people on Mindoro island collectively called Mangyans – Way-agan never had a birth certificate. It’s a basic document most of us take for granted that enables us to participate in society as a student, voter, driver, employee, and if you reach his age, a beneficiary of a tidy sum of money.

That’s what brought us to his village in Bongabong, where he lives alone in a hut too small to stand up in, but next door to his daughter’s family. Everywhere you turn here you can look far into the distance. Kids play in the river and not on phones, because they don’t have any.

My I-Witness documentary team and I were accompanying a younger member of Way-agan’s tribe, Jayson Linong, 32, who has been helping his community acquire birth certificates, their tickets to the modern world. Other recent recipients have been elementary school students who needed birth certificates to graduate. It’s called “late registration” as opposed to the birth registration that occurs in the hospital upon birth.

Many people in the Philippines, especially in remote mountains like these, are still born at home, delivered by midwives or traditional hilots with the hope there are no complications. I thought of my own son’s struggle at birth, with the umbilical cord around his neck. Being in a hospital with expert care probably saved his life. And he left the hospital with a birth certificate.

Many babies around here aren’t so fortunate. But seeing little ones frolic safely in the meadows and streams, not glued to devices, made me wonder who the lucky ones really are. Yet without that proof of birth, one isn’t counted as a member of society, and is deprived of opportunities, including the chance to climb up the stage at commencement.

• Late birth certificates can be acquired through the local civil registrar’s office, no matter how old. 
• Indigent senior citizen pensions have been raised to P1000/month.
• Centenarians are entitled to P100,000 lump sum through local DSWD offices upon presentation of a birth certificate.

Jayson would visit typical late birth registrants in schools where he would hand over the precious piece of paper like it was a hard-earned diploma. But the one who really worked for it was Jayson. There are several dozen katutubo volunteers in Mindoro helping their municipal civil registrars find non-registrants and bridging indigenous communities with the government bureaucracy.

In most cases, it’s easy to prove one’s age when there are parents and other family members who can attest to the details of the birth.

In the case of the 100-year-old Way-agan, there are no witnesses left who can vouch for his age. His parents, siblings, and childhood friends are all long gone. But people in the village remember Way-agan’s best friend around his age, a Tagalog who did have a birth certificate and died more than 15 years ago at the age of 85.

Jayson gathered testimonies about that and submitted them to the local government. That evidence was acceptable to the civil registrar. Jayson would walk for hours just to relay messages between the municipal hall and mountain villages where many don’t have modern communications. And on this final trip to Way-agan’s community, Jayson came bearing the birth certificate of a century-old man.

Under a new law benefiting indigent senior citizens, Way-agan is entitled to receive a pension of 1000 pesos monthly. And then there’s the one-time sum of P100,000 awarded to every centenarian through the DSWD.

Way-agan acknowledged all this with a gruff gratitude, as if he was still processing what it was all about. After all, on their tribal land, with abundant family around him and robust health for a very old man, he seemed to have everything he needed. Asked how he felt about this sudden windfall, he simply said in his language, “I hope they don’t expect me to go down to the town to collect my pension.” He was assured by a son that it would be picked up for him.

In these communities insulated by rugged landscapes, it’s easy to feel that you belong only to your tribe. A piece of paper issued by the government is suddenly something you have in common with people living far away. Perhaps, in the time he has left, Way-agan can imagine being part of a larger community.  

After Jayson’s simple handover of his birth certificate, we left Way-agan something less essential but, at least in our view, emblematic of what the document could mean. It was a t-shirt with the word, “Pilipinas.”

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(Veteran Kapuso journalist H. Severino will be writing occasional reflections for this website under a column entitled, “Essay.” In 2023, he was given the Gawad Balagtas, a lifetime literary achievement award given to Filipino writers by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), the country's largest organization of Filipino writers.)