The Flying Dog Interview

The Flying Dog resort is made up of a dozen or so cottages on the main beach of San Antonio (Dalupiri) and was where I stayed during my visits to the Island.
The resort is owned and managed by a Filipino/Anglo-Italian consortium and
only after considerable effort  was I able to interview Capt. Anthony Cummins, an Englishman and Miss Cristina Gremio a Filipina from Samar who are two of the owners of the resort.

Have you read the article in the Enquirer newspaper? I asked.
Cummins/Gremio; Yes we have.
Do you have any comments?
Cummins; I'ts a fairly accurate article but only scratches the surface. Firstly the name of the Italian Tourist was Mr Mario Sartirani from Bergamo in Italy. The incident did not take place here but happened about 4 kilometers north of here at a place called Lagbangan. Mr Sartirani was with a group of 13 Tourists most of whom were divers and represented a lot of diving clubs in Europe. We escorted them to all the dive sites we had found including wrecks and coral islands and they were very enthusiastic, then the dynamite incident happened on the last day. Mr Sartirani died in front of me on arrival at the hospital it was a bad day.
Gremio; A Very bad day, everybody here cried.
That must have damaged your business.
Cummins; Yes.
Were all of the divers involved in the accident?
Cummins; No, they were the only two, on the last day they took off alone to find some shells.
Was the other diver hurt?
Cummins; He suffered from shock and went deaf and had a big problem on the aircraft going home.
Since I've been here I've heard about a dozen or so explosions is that normal?
Cummins; No. They are usually farther away so you wouldn't normally hear them.
Gremio; A long way away from here, between Pilar and the mainland at Sohoton.

At that point both Cummins and Gremio said they didn't want to talk about dynamite and prefered not to comment on the village of Burabod or questions regarding the Mayor of the Island Mr Bagioso who had been slated as being one of the dynamite suppliers or the Congressman Harlin Abayon.
Miss Gremio said we should talk about tourism, not because they had a resort on the island but because it was the only solution for the future of Samar and the local community.

But do you honestly feel that tourists will come to a place where they kill divers with dynamite? I asked.
Gremio; Yes. Since that happened whenever we have guests there is no dynamite.
Sounds like you have an agreement?
Gremio; No not really and in anycase the dynamite is a long long way from here.
Cummins; Please Mr Arabone you must understand that we are in a very delicate situation here and it's better for us to keep our mouths shut or we will have bigger problems. The only part of the article which I would like to comment on is the part about the comments of  Miss Norma Morante the regional director for tourism.
Please do go on.
Gremio; She doesn't understand anything about tourism. In fact she tries to stop tourists coming here.
Cummins, Exactly, she says in the article that tourists should be aware of the poverty here, what a load of bullshit! She thinks tourists are going to get on a plane and travel thousands of miles to see poor people! When the whole world knows tourists will only travel this far for a holiday! They want to enjoy themselves and be happy, not be asked to fund some heartbreak story she wants to give them about poverty! Shes nuts!
Gremio;They (tourists) want to lay on the beach, play, swim and rest and this is a nice place to do that.
Cummins; And we can gaurantee they won't die from any dynamite explosions.
Gremio; Miss Morante has tried by anyway to close us down, so that the dynamite problem will go away with us! We refuse to move because this is a unique and nice place. Anyway its the only resort in whole of Samar.
Cummins; And the only place from where you can explore the Samar interior, you know, rivers,jungles,caves.
Very true in fact I've not found such a nice place as this in a long time. But do you have many guests?
Gremio; Not really, we just have enough to keep the place going and pay the salary's.
But those who do come here don't know about the dynamite problem right?
Cummins; Our customers are Writers, Actors, Lawyers and Ambassadors, people who in most places are very well known, they come here put on a tee shirt and shorts and walk down the road enjoying to be "normal" people because no one here knows who they are. Or just to get away, this Island is like a hideaway. Anyway Miss Morante and the Department of tourism in Manila just pretend that we don't exist, just ask any travel agent,
they will say they know nothing about us, and we've been here 11 years!
What can you tell me about the Turtles and Dolphins?............

part two.