strangenchanted travels itio San Martin is a remote village in the highlands of Bamban, Tarlac, Philippines. It is home to around 100 families of the indigenous people known as the Aetas. They are a displaced people, who lost their homeland in 1991 with the eruption of Mount Pin

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Philippines | Monday, January 14, 2013 | flickr photos

I love travel, and I love photography. These have been the two threads that have run through the fabric of my life, and the times when I stopped doing these things have been the times of my greatest malaise. My name is Oz Mendoza (actually, it is John Oscar Emmanuel Rivera, but never mind that). My ambition in life is to become a travel photographer and writer. Sometimes I despair of reaching that goal, as I see myself as an unknown living in a Third World country, and I have no idea how to break into the big leagues. But I want to dream. And I want to learn.

I want to win the scholarship, because I am a writer as well as a photographer, and I love telling stories. Stories that convey my wonder and joy, or my heartache and dismay, that I feel in my travel experiences. Stories that shed a light on underappreciated places and overshadowed people. I will take risks and leap into the unknown for the chance to become a person who does this for a living. All I ask is that you take a risk on me.