Martti Vallila

Bannana's Return to Mindanao Martti Vallila

I discovered Mindanao in 1971, sent as a volunteer teacher by Stanford's Volunteers in Asia program to Mindanao State University in Marawi City. The story of my eighteen months there is told in "Bannana's Near Death Experiences". Circumstances prompted my returned to Mindanao in 2017 with martial law in operation after the siege of Marawi by terrorists that grabbed the world's headlines. I decided to try to apply lessons I had learned in the "school of hard knocks" to the reconstruction of Marawi and the modernization of the telecommunications infrastructure of what I consider Asia's sleeping giant, an English-speaking nation of over 7,100 islands lacking effective connectivity to the rest of the world, a situation about to change because of technologies that are available, but have not yet been implemented. The book includes many photographs and is filled with practical advice for anyone considering travel or retirement in a place currently considered dangerous but offering some of the world's most beautiful geography and welcoming hospitality. This book has text identical to "Bannana Returns to Mindanao" but the numerous photographs are in color.