MEDIUM RARE 

Former DOT secretary Mina Gabor, who was used to going places as that designation once dictated, is now going to even more places. Besides Bohol – she likes going there, based on how many times the name of the province came up during our conversation – she’s currently chairman and president of her International School of Sustainable Tourism in the Philippines.

A job that she obviously loves, given her experience and expertise, plus now she’s turning out enthusiastic graduates who are expected to follow in her footsteps toward a, quote unquote, sustainable future in tourism. “Sustainable” is a buzzword that the dictionary ascribes to the Latin “sustineo,” meaning keep up. Mina’s school in Silang, nearest to Tagaytay, draws learners from everywhere, including foreigners. It’s a good place to practise farm tourism, too.

Farm tourism or farming and tourism: If I were younger, I would go into one or the other or both as a sustainable profession (a rewarding one!). Like the man says, agriculture is the key to food security while tourism plays a big role in pushing prosperity.

Mina holds a special place in my journalistic memories because it was during those early days when I nagged at anyone who would listen that tourism would end up in the toilet unless tourists, domestic and foreign, had clean and comfortable comfort rooms to go to, especially in towns and cities outside Metro Manila. Luckily for us, a lady like Mina came along. She did not need to ask for government funds to build public or private toilets along the touristic route, she merely used the power of persuasion to convince owners of gasoline stations and restaurants that investing in their own clean bathrooms would bring them healthy returns.

Last Tuesday the 12th of September, on the eve of her birthday, she called us to a reunion of sorts, Mina Gabor being a favorite resource person of those weekly Bulong Pulungan sessions before Covid broke the habit. As soon as she took her seat, I asked her: If you were a tour guide, where would you take your visitors around Manila?

Without batting an eyelash, she replied: National Museum, Museum of Folk Arts, Intramuros. Her turn to ask: “How many of you guys have been to the Museum?”