For 15 years now, we have heard about the Taw’t Deram (the People of Many), how they live over on the “other side,” and if people stray into their territory, they pick them off with poison-tipped blowgun darts. They are rumored to be cannibals. We have heard stories of them offering to serve as trail guides to scientists and anthropologists, only to kill and eat them and take all their goods. Several years ago, when Kent and some of our teenage children and a number of Palawanos trekked up Kebetangan (Mount Mantalingahan), the group passed briefly through Taw’t Deram territory. The Palawanos wouldn’t talk on the trail and proceeded with extreme caution. Not until they were well out of Taw’t Deram territory did they explain to Kent why they had been fearful.

For months last year, the Kamantian Adventist Church pastoral committee developed plans to visit the Taw’t Deram to see if a ministry could be established among them. A man named Mulus, who once was married to a Taw’t Deram woman but is now remarried, lives in our area. He was determined to take us in and introduce us to the people there, insisting that they had invited us and desired us to come treat their illnesses and teach them.

Mulus told us there used to be one large group of the Taw’t Deram, but disease had taken the lives of many, including their powerful leader. After the death of their leader, the group splintered. Due to internal frictions, some subgroups stopped interacting much with each other. Mulus assured us the group that had invited us was no longer warlike and cannibalistic.

We conferred with Mulus for more than a year, asking lots of questions and trying to determine a good time of year to go. The trail into Taw’t Deram territory is steep and treacherous no matter what route you choose, though some routes are considerably more dangerous than others due to waterfalls, cliffs and landslides, so going in the rainy season was not an option. We knew from our previous experience climbing Kebetangan that finding water can be very difficult late in the dry season. To further complicate matters, there is the rice-planting schedule of our pastors and our furlough schedule to work around.

We finally settled on a target date of March 2010 and began deciding who would go. Desiring to instill an appreciation for mission work in our high school students and give them hands-on experience with the things they are learning in school, we determined that they should accompany our two-man pastoral team and Kent and me. Also, Niksun had a keen desire to start a school for the Taw’t Deram, so he would come, too. We finalized on a group of 12. Pushing back our fears, we made final preparations.

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