Nearing the end of my contract in the Philippines, I
realized that I may never get another chance to see the country beyond Angeles
City, so I determined to adventure into the northern mountains, to the place
where my wife Patty was born and raised.
It was late December of 1990, and Patty wasn't too keen on the idea due
to the weather prevalent at that time of year.
I eventually overrode her objections, although she secretly harbored
doubts that I was capable of making the trip.
Although I was naive about the scope of the work that was to be
required, I was under no illusions that it would be easy, and I have never been
one to flinch in the face of adversity.
Our
destination was a tiny barrio in the Mountain province of Northern Luzon by the
name of Maducayan (accent on the third syllable). It's nestled deep in a canyon on the eastside of the large central mountain range of northern Luzon. There was a road to Saliok, the nearest
neighbor, but the road is impassable except in the months of February to June,
when the rains stop. I was told that the
trail was impassable to any transportation except foot, that even animals could
not negotiate the way. I still think
that a goat could do it, but no one has ever tried.
The people
there are called Igorots, and I believe they were the second wave of settlers
to come to the Philippines. They lack
the heavy Malay features of the low country people. My guess is the Igorot people originated
further west, from what is now India or Burma.
The third wave of settlers came from Malaysia between two to four
thousand years ago, and probably drove the Igorots from the rich low countries
into the mountains, much as the Igorots did to the Negritos before them.
I began to
prepare for the trip about a week earlier.
I had come into a $600 windfall due to a cancelled airline ticket, so
finances were not a problem. My first
purchase was a good set of hiking boots.
I opted for military issue jungle boots in recognition of the sort of
terrain I was apt to encounter. Looking
back, I doubt I could have made a better choice.
I tried to
find detailed maps of the area I was going to go to, but the lowest scale I
could find was a 1:500,000 scale which was given to me by one of my fighter
pilot friends. He had 1:250,000 which
were excellent, but they fell about ten miles shy of the area I wanted. Even with the maps, I could only make a best
guess as to my final destination, because the natives here cannot relate a map
to reality.
From years of
constant travel, I have developed the habit of not packing until the last
possible minute, which often confounds any companions I might have who begin to
pack sometimes days ahead. So the night
before we were due to set out, I began packing my bags. I had many things I wanted to carry, but I
was constrained to about forty pounds, which was the maximum that I decided I
could carry on a long hike. Beside
clothes and toiletries, I wanted to take as much as possible to Patty's parents
and relatives to improve their personal or collective lives, keeping in mind
that nothing can reach Maducayan except on the back of a person. I carried two plastic rain ponchos, 12 quarts
of dried milk, two plastic foam thermos containers, one for food and one for
liquid, a hurricane lamp, some batteries, Bic lighters and a 3 pound ham for
Christmas dinner. Other items we would
pick up in Santiago, the last city we would be in before heading into the
boondocks. I found out later that Patty
also slid in enough spaghetti and sauce to feed a small army, which in fact it
ended up doing. For my own use I carried
two maps, soap, a first aid kit, moleskin for the feet, knife, toilet paper,
camera with two extra rolls of film and batteries, a straw sun hat and lots of
sunblock and insect repellant. All of
this was sealed into quart size Ziploc bags and went into my 75liter adjustable
backpack.
We set off at
about eight in the morning Saturday, 22 December. Patty wanted to start earlier, but we had
decided to spend the night in Santiago, and I didn't see an advantage to
getting there at noon instead of four o'clock.
Patty said the jeep from Santiago to Paracelis would have left in the
morning, so we didn't have a chance to catch it no matter how early we
left. I wanted to avoid a grueling
twenty hour journey, so I chose to break up the trip into several days. We got a tricycle to take us to the bus
depot, where we stood by while busload after full busload of people went by on
their way from Manila to points north for the holidays. We finally crammed onto an air-conditioned
luxury bus headed to Baguio, and ended up standing for two hours until we got
off.
I should take
time here to explain about Philippine bus drivers. This is my first impression, and it's been
reinforced every time I get on a bus or shared the road with one. Filipino bus drivers are recruited from the
self-destructive wards of mental hospitals.
They have often lost both their family and fortune and don't care about living
any more. Whether they go today or next
year, it's all the same to them, and they aren't shy about taking large numbers
of people with them when they go. It
wouldn't surprise me if they go to church to receive last rights every Sunday
instead of communion. I shan't belabor
this point repeatedly in this narrative, but keep in mind when you see the
words "We rode the bus . . ." that the act entails a constant degree
of apprehension similar to that experienced by soldiers involved in continuous
combat.
We got off the
northbound bus at Carmen, which is interesting, in that it serves as a primary
transportation hub for the central part of the island, but cannot be found on a
map by that name. We got straight onto a
bus bound for Santiago via San Jose, and once again were unable to find a
seat. This trip was supposed to take
about seven hours, so I threw my pack on the floor and sat down, and to hell
with anyone who got in my way. There was
a little old lady beside me whose bare feet kept getting under my combat
boots. Everyone had a load of luggage
which covered the floor, and lots of bags of rice. The bus had no glass in the windows, but the
weather was mercifully cool. I couldn't
see out, so I read my book on and off, and once I managed to achieve a fair
approximation of sleep.
We traveled
like this to San Jose across the flat rice fields of the Luzon lowlands. At San Jose the bus turned north and began to
climb. Santiago was on the other side of
a low range of mountains that link the central and eastern ranges
together. Halfway over the mountains we
blew a rear tire on the bus. It didn't
cripple us, as the tires were double mounted.
Soon we stopped at a roadside store and cafe and ate while the bus crew
repaired the tire. I was surprised to
see some American turkeys wandering around as we sat and sipped our sodas.
 |
| Santiago |
We arrived in
Santiago at about five in the evening.
My first priority was to get a room so we could deposit our
baggage. Patty had been directed to a
nice hotel uptown by one of the women on the bus. We got a trike to head that way. Patty was unsure of where the hotel was, and
as we passed by a place called Mary's Lodge she recognized it as the place she
always stayed when they were in Santiago.
We stopped there and got a room for about five dollars. It wasn't much, a bed and a fan with an
attached bathroom. There was no shower
stall in the bathroom, the shower head just came out of the wall, and the
bathroom itself was the shower stall. I
doubted the water was potable, and advised Patty not to drink it.
Having rid
ourselves of the baggage we went out on the town. I had in mind to finish purchasing our
supplies, but Patty seemed to have other ideas.
We walked to what appeared to be the town square, and headed north. She seemed to recognize the Tops theater for
some reason and we headed towards it. On
the street in front of the theater, she turned right, muttering "I don't
know where is that" under her breath (she often mixes up her prepositional
tense). We went up a side street, then
she stopped and started to backtrack.
That's when I put on the skids.
"Do you
know where you're going?"
"I'm not
sure where is that." She sometimes has problems with where the preposition
goes.
"Where is
what?"
"The
place."
"What
place?" Trying to get good solid information out of this girl is like
pulling teeth.
"The
place where we catch the jeep."
"You
don't know where to catch the jeep? I
thought you made this trip before!"
"I
know. I'm just not sure." At this she started heading back down the
street. I caught her sleeve.
"Just
hold on there, I'm not going to spend all night wandering around looking for
something and you don't know where it is."
Keep in mind
that Patty had been up early and it was a very tiring day. Patty tends to become abrupt when she gets
tired. "Okay. Let's go back to the hotel." She turned to go.
I caught her
again. "I am not going back to the
hotel without having accomplished anything.
Let's find the jeep."
"No, no
let's go."
"Look,"
I said softly, "why don't you ask someone for directions?"
"No, I
don't like."
Okay, that was
unacceptable. What would an acceptable
alternative be? "Okay, get a trike and tell him to take us to the jeep to
Paracelis." That seemed acceptable,
so we waved down a trike. I guess he
didn't understand what Patty wanted, because we went a ways, then she stopped
him abruptly and made him turn around.
They chattered at each other for a few seconds, then he seemed to
understand. We went back to the theater
and up a different street. There was a
huge vehicle there, it looked like a dump truck chassis with a flat bed and a
cover. There was a huge cargo of bags
and people aboard. We got out and
established that this was indeed the jeep to Paracelis. Patty disappeared into the cantina the jeep
was parked in front of, apparently looking for the driver. She came out with some surprising news.
"This is
the jeep to Paracelis. My brother is
here."
The driver
went to the back and called "Mr. Alinao!
Mr. Alinao!" A small man extracted himself from the humanity packed
into the rear and jumped down.
"This is
my brother," Patty said as we shook hands.
He smiled but seemed shy to talk. I said hi, and then there was an
uncomfortable moment before we both looked at Patty. She asked me "Will we take this
jeep?"
"Well, we
wanted to get some canned goods, and I wanted to get those foam pads. I don't think we have time to get our bags
before the jeep leaves."
Patty
chattered with her brother for a second and he turned to me and said, "I
will arrange for my cargo to be delivered" and headed back for the
jeep. I pulled Patty aside.
"What's
your brother's name?"
"Julian."
Pronounced in the Spanish fashion, the J is an H. "Where I come from, when you introduce someone you tell
their name, 'this is my brother, Julian.'"
"That is
not our way. Here one person gives his
name, and then you give yours when you greet."
Okay, so why
then didn't he say his name when we shook hands? This may be the way they normally do things
here, but Patty wasn't taking into account that I'm something of an oddity
here, being an American. Many people
here have never directly encountered a person with white skin and gold hair. Not to mention the fact that I'm physically
imposing to most Filipinos, being of much larger stock. In short, anyone I come in contact with is
likely to be overwhelmed to the point of forgetting any English they may
know. "Okay, do me a favor. When you introduce someone to me, please tell
me their name." I got her to agree
with a little cajoling.
Julian came
back. "The driver will deliver my
cargo."
"What are
you carrying?"
"Goods." Uninformative communication appears to run in
the family. Do they read minds? Okay, we'll play guessing games.
"You have
a sari-sari store?"
He
smiled. "Yes." See?
You just have to think ahead of them.
They were both
looking at me as if I was supposed to make a decision. No problem.
"Let's go eat, I'm starved.
Julian, you know a good restaurant?"
It turned out that
he didn't, and as we followed him, we wandered aimlessly again, and seemed to
be headed out of the food service area.
I took control and we headed back to a buffet restaurant. We ate in virtual silence. I tried to toss out a few hooks with open questions
about his sari-sari store, but they were fielded abruptly and without
elaboration. Patty wasn't much help at
getting a conversation going, so I thought to hell with it, and we ate in
silence. All I learned was that he came
to Santiago about once a month for supplies, and that shipping costs had gone
up 50% since the Iraqi gulf crisis began.
After I paid
for the meal, we offered to get Julian another room at our hotel, but he said
no, he will stay with his companions.
Aha! The truth surfaces. He's just using us as a convenient excuse to
stay one more night and party with the boys instead of going home to mom and
kids.
So we went
back to the hotel and turned in early.
It was cool, and the blankets were too short for me. Halfway through the night the mosquitoes
discovered me and I had to turn on the fan to ward them off, which made me
uncomfortably cold the rest of the night.
From dawn
until I decided to pull myself erect at eight or nine o'clock was spent in an
uncomfortable half slumber that does no good as far as useful sleep is
concerned. Once again we left our bags
at the hotel and headed downtown to procure some goods.
The prospects
of finding a decent white man's breakfast looked pretty dismal, and I wasn't
incredibly hungry, so I shelved that problem for the time being. My first goal was to find a place that sold
foam pads and buy a few. You see, Patty
told me that the standard bed in Maducayan was a woven straw mat thrown on the
floor. So I thought it would be nice if
I was to bring some foam pads for her elderly parents to sleep on in their
declining years. There was of course the
ulterior motive that if I took these pads then I would probably avoid sleeping
on a hard floor myself. I don't sleep
well on hard surfaces.
We entered the
open market that is common to any large Filipino town. Goods are sold from rented booths. There is no such thing as a fixed price.
Anything can be found, if you look hard enough, from all sorts of foods, to
records, clothing, hardware and anything else you care to mention. Near the entrance to the market there were a
number of pigs, chickens and goats being prepared for transportation. There were also a number of small dogs, their
feet were hobbled under them, and each one had a tin can tied over its snout as
a muzzle. Dog is a delicacy here, and I
surmised that I was looking at Christmas dinner.
The first
place we went they took one look at me and doubled their prices. They wouldn't come down, so we moved on. We eventually found a place that sold four by
six cloth covered foam pads for about $12 each.
Patty wasn't satisfied with this, but I wasn't going to spend two more
hours trying to save two dollars. We
bought two pads. While we were waiting
for them to be fetched from the warehouse, I noticed an axe hanging from the
wall. I picked it up, "Would your
father like this?"
"Maybe." Well, I had a fair idea of what this old man
was like from the way Patty talked. I
doubted that axes were something people routinely carried to Maducayan, and I
guessed he would like it. I added it to
the foam pads.
Outside we
hailed a trike to take us and our cargo back to the hotel, where we picked up
our bags and went to meet the jeep.
Julian was there waiting for us.
Patty pointed us at a cafe across the street and said "You go
eat. I'll be back." Then she disappeared before I could form a
question as to her destination.
I turned to
Julian and asked "Where's she off to?" If he knew, he wasn't telling. We headed for the cafe. I ordered just plain rice for breakfast, as
their buffet didn't look too appetizing.
I tried conversation again, "Patty tells me you were in the
army."
I'm not going
to try to reconstruct all of the conversations I had along my trip. I will simply paint the composite picture
that I was able to build from each person as I talked to them.
Julian is
thirty-eight years old by the best guess.
He did not go to college right out of high school. His next older brother was in college and
having a rough time financially. Julian
volunteered for the army to help him out.
After six months of training he was posted to an island in Visayas (The
Philippines is divided into three general areas: Luzon in the north, Mindanao
in the south, and all the small islands between them are collectively called
Visayas). After an indeterminate length
of time he was reassigned to Mindanao in the south, where the army was actively
engaged fighting Moro Muslim separatists and communists. He said that he and two other Igorots were
normally on point during foot patrols, because the Igorots were very brave, and
felt at home in the jungle. He saw
action in the south, because he told me of a time when their Moro guide advised
them to steer clear of an area and the lieutenant ignored him. They walked right into a fire trap, and he
said the gunfire was so heavy that you couldn't discern individual shots among
the din.
Patty had told
me that he had been wounded in Mindanao, but he didn't speak of this. After his tour in the army, he got a job at a
gold mine in the north. I guess he
worked there for about a year, but didn't find any gold as he puts it. In 1981 he began college in Baguio
(Bag-ee-o). He met his wife during his
first year. He was studying teaching,
she engineering. They were married and
soon had a daughter. It was difficult to
support a family and go to school, but they persevered and both graduated their
respective programs.
Family ties
are strong here, and the people are also tied to the land. Julian wasn't so tied as to settle in
Maducayan, but he came close by buying land in Paracelis, 16 miles away. He was offered a job teaching high school at
about $90.00 a month, I think. For the
first year he held the job, he would go to Maducayan every Friday night after
work. He says he could make the trip in
five hours (I'll believe that when I see it).
He supplements this income with a sari-sari store he runs from the front
room of his house, which is just a small family run general store that's very
common here. He built a house on the
land he bought, and has recently purchased another parcel of cleared land near
Paracelis, where he hopes to build a better house. His wife and he now have four children. He is the director of the water cooperative
in Paracelis, and sits on the city council.
Patty
rejoined us as we were finishing our meal.
She had been buying canned goods and large tins of crackers for her
family in Maducayan. We talked for a
bit, then Julian got up, and said "They are preparing. We must go if we're to get a seat."
The truck was
a four wheel drive deuce and a half with slatboard sides and tailgate. There was a bench arranged on the sides and
in the rear facing forward. There were
already numerous bags of rice and a couple of fifty gallon drums cramping
things. We were some the first to board,
but as more and more people climbed in with their baggage, our leg room was
slowly squeezed to nothing. Most of the
men were up high, sitting astride the sides of the truck, and I decided to do
the same for the sake of freedom. I
suspect that we had about thirty people on there by the time it pulled out an
hour later, at about eleven o'clock.
We headed
north, and the pavement gave out about a half an hour later. The terrain was very rough and hilly, but
clear of dense vegetation. It actually
reminded me very much of the rolling countryside of Wales. The road was dirt, and very steep in
spots. The terrain wasn't conducive to
rice fields, but many farmers had taken to growing corn. If this country ever pulls itself out of its
poverty, the process will begin here.
For our
entertainment on the journey, there were four college students heading home for
the holidays sitting near the back of the bus. They were drinking sugar cane
whiskey and singing Christmas carols.
They offered me some of the booze, and I drank a shot to be sociable,
but declined after that on the excuse that if I drank further I would fall over
backwards off the jeep. To add color to
their songs they would occasionally toss a firecracker over the side. They sang with considerable gusto as the
whiskey took effect, and with a noticeable lack of any accent. An older man sitting on the edge of the side
next to me said "American soldiers taught these songs to our fathers when
they came here, and our fathers taught them to us. But we have to go to college and learn
English before we understand what the words mean." Julian was sacked out on a couple of bags of
rice, sleeping off a hangover.
For five hours
we wound further north. The road became
progressively worse, and the mountains to the west that paralleled our course
drew steadily nearer. The ruts became
deeper on the hills where the mud seemed the deepest. We were going down a hill at one point and
heard an ominous grinding sound underneath the jeep. The jeep was stopped to examine for damage,
and I saw an oily looking clear liquid dribbling along the mud from underneath
the jeep. I think I would have stopped
there to ascertain the full extent of the damage. But the decision was made to press on. Filipinos are like that. They don't understand the concept of
preventative maintenance, and never fix anything until it's virtually
destroyed. The jeep still moved, so they
drove it.
About two
miles further on my reservations were vindicated. I'm not sure if the ruts were too deep to
negotiate the road, or the transmission dropped out from lack of lubrication,
but in any case, the jeep was stuck and wouldn't move. So we bailed out, collected our goods, paid
the driver, and began to walk. Julian
reassured me that we were only three or four kilometers from our
destination. I carried my pack, Patty
her two bags. Julian grabbed the foam
pads and took off like a deer. I set a
pace to keep up with him, but I guess Patty had dealt with this before, because
she didn't even try.
We crossed a
shallow river, and I thought I was going to die after practically running up a
long steep hill after Julian. We waited
for Patty at the top of it, then Julian left the road and took of down a
trail. It was getting dark, and all I could
make out was the bright shape of the foam pads on his back as he virtually
sprinted down the trail. He kept this
pace up right into a house that had a bright light shining from the door. Stumbling up, I was greeted by the familiar
face of Patty's sister Rose at the door.
The house was
lit with a coleman lantern. Paracelis has
no electricity except the hospital which has its own generator, but that's
hellishly expensive to operate. There
were a number of people about, and three cute kids. The little girls were obviously interested in
me, but every time I would look at them they would burst into smiles and turn
away.
I drank a
prodigious amount of water, and we ate.
After dinner, Julian opened bottle of San Miguel sugar cane
whiskey. I got a little buzzed off of
that, but it helped me forget my sore legs.
I remember bringing out the pictures that I had brought of the Emerson
family and the house in LaCenter that I had taken from the air. We talked of Maducayan and the United States
until about nine o'clock, when we put to bed.
My original
intention was to continue on to Maducayan on Christmas eve, and spend Christmas
there. Patty said that we had been
invited to a party in Paracelis by her other brother that evening, so we
postponed our plans. She wasn't exactly
clear as to what was planned, so I was playing things more or less by ear.
Julian's house
in Paracelis was not yet finished. It
was made of hardwood with a tin roof.
The three main rooms on the ground floor had a concrete floor. There was to be an additional room added to
each floor, but the walls hadn't been constructed yet due to lack of
funds. The final room was to be the
kitchen. The house construction was
primarily cinder block on the ground floor, and wood above that. A temporary tin structure had been erected
through the back door to serve as a temporary kitchen, this had a loose packed
floor that wasn't even close to being level, and no outlet for the smoke
produced by the cooking fire. Normally a
gentle breeze blew the smoke through the kitchen and the front room and out the
front door. I was underwhelmed.
The sari-sari
store took up the front room that didn't have a door. The window was barred, and the goods were on
display on shelves all around the wall.
He had canned foods, cigarettes, sugar, San Miguel, cokes and candy for
the children. It was funny, the kids in
the family weren't even old enough to do basic math, but they had all the
prices memorized in the store. Rose
sometimes helped by running the store, and when she asked the price of
something, three young voices would simultaneously sing out the answer.
Although
running water was available courtesy of a water cistern atop a nearby hill,
this hadn't been connected into the house, nor did it appear as if any plans
were being made to that effect. Outside
there were two pigs tied to trees near the house. A small pigpen contained two more younger
pigs. Chickens ran free all over the
yard area, and the soupy mud was tainted green from chicken shit. If you had to piss, you found a convenient
banana tree, or if it was night, you just went off the front porch. I never had the pleasure of perusing further
sanitary arrangements.
The rule in
the house was no shoes inside. There
were flip-flop slippers provided for casual walking outside and in the kitchen,
but these were left at the door and bare feet were used in the house. One of the funniest things I have ever seen
is Julian's oldest girl, Layla, running through the front door full tilt. I watched this closely several times, and I
never saw any hint of her breaking stride as she blew off her flip-flops in
perfect formation at the threshold.
Most of the
meals I ate on the trip consisted of unseasoned rice and some sort of meat,
poorly cut and usually unidentifiable.
The food is normally boiled, no matter what it is. Tableware is rare, most people preferring to
eat directly with their hands ( I have met some cousins that proudly confess
not to know how to use a spoon). Patty
did a pretty good job of running interference for me, so I was never placed in
the position of rejecting food that I found completely inedible, such as the
fish they eat. There is no variation of
menu between breakfast, lunch and dinner.
So I won't attempt to detail each and every meal. It's easy to see why these people are thin
and small.
At one point
during my stay, Julian was showing me his garden and sadly admitted that in
spite of his efforts, his children were still malnourished. As a teacher, he had the education to
appreciate this fact. I looked around
and nearly bit my tongue to keep from saying, "Dude, you're in one of the
richest agricultural areas I have ever seen.
Anything will grow here. Just
look around you at this lush vegetation.
If you're starving in the midst of all this, it's just because you're
being stupid." I kept my tongue,
though. If you try to teach a pig to
sing, you'll only irritate the pig.
After
breakfast I managed to secrete myself in the front room with a book for some
peace and quiet. Rose and Patty were in
the back yard washing clothes. After a
while Julian invited me to go with him to
as I understood track down the
shipment that he had sent ahead from Santiago.
We set off on foot in the direction we had come from the previous night,
towards Mabaclao (accent on the third syllable), with three other cousins of
his.
We walked for
maybe two miles, and then left the road and followed a footpath that lead
through the elephant grass. About a mile
further on we went down a steep hill, at the base of which was a house. Julian talked with the man living there for a
bit, and I figure they were striking a deal, for the man climbed into his pig
pen, which was a small pen elevated about two feet off of the ground and had a
bamboo slat floor. Someone produced a
rope, and soon we were towing a sixty pound pig back up the hill.
The pig had
other ideas, however, and didn't seem to be going our way. They had a rope tied halter fashion to the
pig, and when he pulled too hard, it tended to slip forward, and I believe it
effectively paralyzed the pigs front legs.
The pig would fall on its side, and they would drag it this way for a
time. To me, this was extremely
inhumane, not to mention a lot of work.
I would stop the procession to readjust the rope so the pig could walk
again. Had it been just me, I would have
persuaded the pig to go peacefully, but the others didn't seem to have the
patience for negotiation. I firmly
believe they would have kicked and dragged that poor animal all the way back to
Paracelis, but I suggested that it would be faster to tie it to a pole and
carry it back. A sturdy piece of bamboo
was procured, and we took turns carrying the pig (I found out later that they
didn't like to be on the other end of the pole with me because I was too tall
and my stride was too long it unbalanced
them).
One of our
companions was a firmly built lad named Danny.
He was a quiet sort, and Patty told me later that he was retarded. She said that he was too retarded to know
when he was in a bad way, and would therefore carry any size load any distance
without complaint, if you offered him a T-shirt or something in payment.
Upon reaching
the same small river that we had crossed the night before, Julian suggested
that we take a bath. I thought this was
a good idea, as I was just starting to get rank. Someone produced some soap, and everyone
started to strip. There was a woman
washing clothes about twenty yards upstream, and the main road was as far
downstream, so I carefully lagged while undressing in order to determine what
was considered appropriate. Modesty
doesn't appear to be a problem out this far, so when in Rome . . . (Upon closer scrutiny, I determined that the
lady washing clothes wasn't wearing anything but a skirt anyway).
At the top of
the hill above the stream, we met one of the men from the town coming the other
direction, and paused for a break. One
of the boys disappeared into the forest and came back moments later with a
bunch of bananas. The bananas here are
shorter and fatter than the South American variety. The man we had met pulled a betel nut out of
a pouch around his neck. He wrapped it
in a mint leaf, and sprinkled it with a powder from a small plastic bottle,
which I found out later was lime made from crushed baked shells. He stuck this whole arrangement into his
cheek and grinned, "This is our native bubble gum." His teeth were all stained red from the juice
of the nut. I figured out later that the
betel nut does something to retard tooth decay, as I noticed that the old
people who chew it have a disproportionate number of their teeth left. It's also mildly narcotic and probably
addictive.
Back at the
house, the pig was released and tied with the others. A few minutes later Julian came out of the
house with a nasty looking little weapon, about fourteen inches in length, and
a clip almost as big. The stock and
handle were hand carved, and the barrel and mechanism were fastened by way of a
worm clamp. It was an automatic .22. As I sighted down the barrel I could easily
see that the sights were way off to the right, which Julian said was indeed the
case. As it turned out, you would be
lucky to hit the side of a house with the thing. One of the cousins took it and fired a shot
at one of the numerous chickens at point blank range, but only winged it, and
he took off through the foliage in pursuit.
I don't know if they ever caught it, but we didn't eat chicken that day,
so I suppose they didn't.
One of the
entrees at lunch was a bone with dried meat on it. I took a small piece, and as it bit into it,
I detected that it had gone rancid. I
asked Julian how he dried the meat, and he said that they just hung it above
the cook fire. I explained how Americans
build a smokehouse, and that smoked meat will last longer, but he didn't seem
interested, so I shut up.
That afternoon
the pig was butchered for Christmas.
They laid the animal on a block with his head hanging over, slit the
throat, and drained the blood into a bowl.
I didn't ask what was done with the blood (if you're not sure you'll
like the answer, don't ask the question).
Then the animal was washed with soap and water and a fire was kindled in
the back yard. They charred the flesh of
the pig, and then scraped the ash away.
A piece of plywood was washed, and two banana leaves were laid on it to
provide a butcher table. I should
mention here that Filipinos don't believe in using upright tables. Everything; eating, washing, and work; is
done on the floor from a flatfooted squat that I find impossible to imitate.
Nothing is
thrown away when an animal is butchered.
But unlike the Indian practice, the Filipinos simply eat
everything. The skin is left attached to
the meat, which makes those pieces hard to chew. The intestines are also cleaned and
saved once again I didn't ask questions,
but they cut them lengthwise, so it wasn't for any sort of sausage or
pemmican. I was appalled at the
carelessness employed as the meat was cut.
The rule seemed to be always cut across the grain of the meat, and if a
bone is encountered, smash it with the butt of your bolo and press on. This is how they take an animal with six
hundred odd bones and produce meat littered with thousands of bones. After cutting the meat this way, I find it
hard to pick around all the bones, and it effectively wastes a lot of meat.
Once the manly
task of butchering was accomplished and the women took over, the men adjourned
to the front room and Julian broke open a bottle of San Miguel. Soon we were served a snack consisting of
small fragments of pig flesh, including the chopped up ears, soaked in a marinade
of vinegar and tiny fiery peppers. It
was pretty good once all my taste buds indignantly went on strike.
Julian asked
me "Do they drink San Miguel in America?"
"I never
heard of San Miguel until I came to the Philippines."
"Here in
the evening the men get together and sit around and drink San Miguel and
talk. On holidays we sometimes drink all
day."
"Well, we
do the same thing, but the men drink beer or whiskey make from corn or
grain. And we watch football games on
TV."
That San
Miguel is pretty powerful stuff. It says
80 proof on the bottle, but I think that's only for tax purposes. I had to be careful to maintain my ability to
navigate. We put to bed at about nine,
but there was no talk of Santa to the kids.
I refrained from describing Christmas customs in the States, because
Christmas speaks of gold and richness and fullness of life in the west. I didn't want to rub the poverty of this
country in their faces.
"We will
leave early in the morning for Maducayan."
Well, early to a Filipina is generally sometime before noon. I was ready to go before seven, but had to
hold while everyone else collected their goods and figured out who was going to
carry what. Besides myself and Patty,
there was Danny, another sister of Patty's with only one tooth named Mary, her
oldest daughter named Vivian, a truculent looking young boy about fourteen
years old, and Rose, Patty's younger sister.
As the only other one who had spent any significant time with me in
Angeles, Rose wasn't missing my introduction to Maducayan for anything (Rose
lost her home in Baguio from the July 16 quake, and spent some time as a guest
in my spare room). Besides, there was a
good bet that I would need a second interpreter.
I pulled out
my contour map and consulted Julian. I
had a good idea of where we were going from Patty's description, but there was
still an error factor about three miles wide on my map. The towns shown often didn't have names on
the map, and I wasn't quite sure where were starting from or what the route would
be. Julian took one look and said
"I don't know how to read a map."
Great. Oh well, I'll figure it
out.
As I was
lacing my boots, Julian lifted my pack.
"You will carry this to Maducayan?"
I said
"Sure. It only weighs forty pounds,
which is a quarter of my weight. I can
carry that all day." Actually, it
probably was closer to forty-five, I was guessing. He still looked doubtful, so I had him put it
on. As the straps cut into his
shoulders, I said, "It's not how much you carry, but how you carry
it. The idea is to maintain your balance
and not have a dead weight on your back.
Most of the energy burned while carrying a load is used to maintain
balance." I fastened the chest
strap and the belt, then arranged the frame straps to bring the weight up and
forward. "When you go up a hill,
pull on these straps, here and here.
This will bring the pack up high on your back. When you go down a hill, loosen this and drop
this away. Now the weight rides low and
not on your shoulders, allowing you to pick your way with more
confidence." He still looked
unconvinced, but I think that was because he's a lot smaller than me, and that
pack looked awfully big and heavy on him.
I found out
later that he had told Patty in their language not to let me carry that pack
all the way to Maducayan. She didn't
think I could carry it either, but I had already told her that the problem was
not going to be me carrying my load, it would be her trying to keep up with me.
I prepared my
feet by sticking a piece of moleskin on a blister that had formed behind my
left heel. I had already popped the
blister, so I didn't expect a problem.
The moleskin was a mistake, the way I put it on, however, as I was to
find out the next day. I wore a thick
set of wool socks. Rose had warned me
that the mud was knee-deep in spots, which was an exaggeration but not much of
one, so I bloused my pants into my boots.
We hiked for a
mile and a half, down the steep hill that Paracelis was perched on. At the bottom we forded a shallow stream. There was a stall here while the girls sorted
out their footwear, which they didn't want to get wet. It was then that I found out that they
weren't wearing sensible shoes for a hike of this magnitude. Patty's older sister wasn't even wearing
shoes. All she had was a set of
flip-flop sandals. Danny was
barefoot. The truculent looking boy was
wearing a beautiful brand-new set of Nikes.
Well, they won't be new for long.
By this time I
was pouring sweat, although the temperature was in the cool eighties. I was wearing a straw hat to protect me from
the sun, and it worked admirably as a shower when you filled it with
water. No one else had even started to
perspire. I was thankful that I had the
foresight to get a crew cut before the journey.
The trail
started up from there. We left the rough
terrain around Paracelis and entered the mountains. We were working our way along the north slope
of a wide cut in the mountains. Danny
and the other boy fell behind for some reason, which surprised me because I
figured they would get ahead of us.
It was shortly
after the stream that a section of the road had been washed into a deep gully
about two feet across. This wouldn't be
repaired until the rains stopped. As we
went up and down the steep countryside, I was adjusting my pack to meet the
trail, and Patty was jeering at me, because she thought I was squirming in
discomfort.
I set a pretty
good pace, and the others often lagged as much as a hundred yards behind
me. We stopped and rested about once an
hour. The road had deep ruts in it from
the last vehicles that had passed by, but the mud was firm, and there was
normally a well beaten footpath along the ruts.
There were spots that didn't drain well, and the thin mud got deeper in
these areas the higher we went. We met
few travelers on the way. The young
people basically ignored me, but the older men and women always smiled when
they saw my skin and gave me a big "Good Morning!" as they
passed. They seemed very proud of their
English. As we approached small groups
of huts near the road, I could hear the children alerting the people of my
coming, shouting "Americano! Americano!"
 |
| On the Road to Saliok |
I took every
opportunity to drink at streams tumbling off the mountain above us. The water was cool but not cold. My biggest enemy now would be dehydration, as
I sweated by the quart. After four hours
of hiking, three of it constantly up, we broke for lunch. There was a concrete cistern beside the road
with a pipe spilling water out of it. I
took off my shirt and showered in the flow.
We ate rice and some crackers. I
pulled out my map and examined it. A
long saddleback ridge across from us, and we're headed a little south of
west. Judging by the angle on the two
points of the saddle, we must be here.
Must have started farther north than I thought. I announced that we
would soon be headed downhill as we traversed to a different watershed. Patty looked mildly surprised that I could
get this information from a map.
I asked how
far to Saliok, and she said maybe three hours.
Now if there are two things a Filipino is completely lacking, one is a
sense of time, and the other is a sense of location. So I discounted her three hours to be
anywhere from thirty minutes to five hours.
As it turned out we marched into Saliok about an hour and a half later,
after some of the worst mud bogs yet.
I was thankful that the mud was slippery enough
not to cling to my boots. My feet felt
fine, but I could feel my little toe on my left foot rubbing wetly on the one
next to it, and I knew a blister was forming.
My feet had long been soaked, but they weren't sitting in water, because
jungle boots have drain holes in the sides to allow the water to leave. The boots were the best kind of footwear I
could have chosen. They had a very wide
deep tread that wouldn't hold the mud, yet I had a firm grip on the ground when
everyone else was slipping and sliding.
I had long since given up picking my way through the mud, and just
plowed through when everyone else stopped and searched for the best way.
There were
relatives in Saliok, and we turned off the road and visited for a short time
outside the house of Patty's aunt. She
smiled at me, her teeth red with betel juice, "Welcome to our place. It is good you could come here." I paused from the cup of water I was gulping
to thank her. A pretty young woman with
a baby on her hip, one of Patty's childhood friends, greeted us and chatted
with Patty.
Shortly after
we left Saliok, the road veered left towards Natonin, and we went to the right
up a trail. The ground rolled gently
here, and the way was wide and marshy, covered with a grass similar to
iceplant. The trail became narrower and
steeper, and soon we were headed up a steep incline. The trail wound severely in spots, and after
the first long hill it went up and down more or less at random. We climbed above the peaceful rice paddies of
Saliok, and soon the faint roar of a river could be heard in the valley on my
left. Sometimes we would be walking
through wide clearings, and other times we would be on a precipitous forest
trail, clinging to the side of the mountain.
Patty said that some parts of the trail washed away every year during
the rains.
 |
| Sifu river from the trail |
The steep
trails here were taking their toll on my endurance. I could carry that pack all day on the level,
but lifting it straight up a nearly vertical trail was difficult. The Igorots seem to be an impatient people,
because they don't believe in switchbacks at all. Many times the way went straight up the side
of a slope. Patty was in the lead by
this time, and was starting to irritate me.
Once you get a pack as heavy as mine going and set a pace, it's fairly
easy. It's just getting that weight moving
that takes a lot of effort, and Patty was stopping and starting every ten yards
to pick her way through the mud. I
eventually told her that if she stopped again, I was either going to run right
over her or throw her off the mountain.
It was
somewhere along here that Danny and his companion rejoined us, and we let them
blow by. We stopped for a break near an
elevated rice granary where the rice fields of the Maducayan region began. I felt relieved that the journey was almost
over, until Patty told me that we were still a good two hours away. It was nearly three o'clock this time, and I
was starting to wonder if we would be there by dark. At least from here the way should be easier,
because we were in the rice paddies.
Wrong. Off we went again, into the jungle, straight
up the side of a mountain. We went over
two more shoulders, and then descended close to the river. I could see below that Danny and company were
fording the river waist deep. I was
drenched in sweat and looking forward to getting into that water. But it wasn't going to happen that way,
because Rose decided that she didn't want to get her feet wet, and off we went
up the mountain again on a different route.
At the top of one particularly steep climb, I haltingly told Rose that
the next time she had a choice between the river and another damn vertical
trail the she could either take the river or hump my pack up the cliff.
We stopped at
the field of one of their uncles. He
wished me a merry Christmas, and said, "It is good that you can come to
see our place. The way is not long, but
it follows the way of the wild pig!" I agreed with him, but I didn't
mention that I thought this particular pig had gotten into the sour mash.
Maducayan is
not really a village as much as it is an area.
There are four barrios that make up Maducayan, and we were headed for
the second one. As we passed through the
lowest barrio, all the people came out to witness the bizarre sight of a huge
white-skinned man carrying a pack half as big as he was. The little girls all grinned and hid their
faces when I smiled at them, and the boys maintained an air of haughty
indifference, but watched me curiously nonetheless. The young adults all smiled shyly, but all of
the old people came out and surrounded me, fighting to shake my hand. "Good afternoon!" "Merry
Christmas!" "Welcome to our place!" "God bless you!" "Ah, you're bringing a bed for the old
man! That's good!" One old man greeted me enthusiastically, and
after I had passed, I heard him ask Patty, "Americano or Japanese?"
Now we wound
our way through the rice paddies. The
rice here is terraced, to conform to the slope.
The walls of the terraces are made of native rock, and are from one to
ten feet high. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the pattern of the
terraces. We walked along the walls,
which were about a foot wide, and covered with vines. Going from wall to wall meant a vertical lift
or drop of as much as six feet. My mind
had been numbed by this point, and the question of how much further had ceased
to matter. I had the pack slung low, my
footing was sure, and I had long since realized that I wouldn't slip with my
boots. I just mechanically put one foot
in front of the other.
Our
destination was nestled in a stand of trees on the top of the steep slope from
the paddies to the river. When we
arrived, everyone but me discarded their footwear and went up the steps to the
entry platform. I handed up my pack to a
stocky looking man, who strained with surprise when he took the weight. I sat on the bottom step and worked off my
mud encrusted boots. There were greetings
flying all around, and someone shoved a cup of water into my hands. One of the things I noticed was that while
everyone was being greeted enthusiastically, there was no hugging or other
overt displays of affection. I was to
notice this pattern repeatedly during my time there, and it explains why Patty
is very reserved. I was a bit dazed at
this point, and needed some time to orient myself. Twilight was beginning to fade, and Patty
suggested we go take a bath while there was still light.
She got a
towel, soap and fresh clothing, then excused us and led me across the paddies
and up a small stream. Someone had
arranged a piece of split bamboo at the top of a small water fall so that you
could get under the water it carried. I
wrung out the shirt I had been wearing, and it was so wet that Patty thought
that I had already dunked it in the stream.
We went back
to the house much refreshed, and I had my wits gathered more tightly now. As we approached the house, a tremendous
amount of children gathered on the porch to see us. Patty said "I hate those children."
I said,
"That's a pretty strong way of talking.
Why do you say that?"
"They're
undisciplined."
I chuckled,
"And I don't suppose you were ever like that."
She
smiled. "When I come here they
fight to see which one of them will sleep with me."
"Nice to
be popular."
"I don't
like them to sleep with me. They have
lice."
The house we
were to stay at was that of Patty's older sister who had accompanied us on the
way. Her husband was named Fermin. He was a very stout man with a noble looking
face, except that his mouth was permanently skewed to the left side of his
face. His English was halting at first,
but got better as he gained confidence that I could understand him. I was introduced to what seemed to be a
tremendous number of people, and I was overwhelmed with a flood of
information. I soon gave up trying to
remember the genealogy of each person; hell, I was doing good to remember one
name in five.
The Igorot
dialect, I have decided, is constructed around the fact that you can speak it
quite plainly without teeth; most do in
fact. There are few blocking consonants,
and those that do exist are normally made in the throat. Most Igorots have serious trouble with sounds
formed on the front teeth, particularly the 'th' and 'sh' sounds. For this reason my name was virtually
unpronounceable for them. It's also for
this reason that many of those who understand English complained that they
couldn't understand me because I was "talking through my nose."
The house,
like all houses in this area, was raised about four to five feet off the
ground. Underneath was used for storage
and as a shelter for the animals, which were allowed to run free. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a large
sleeping room about 30' x 20'. They were
joined by a narrow porch about six feet wide that was open to the elements on
two ends. The roof was high and made of
tin. There was no furniture to speak of
except some small stools about six inches high in the kitchen. The kitchen fire was raised off the floor,
and I presume the floor of the fire pit was tin or concrete. Above the fire was several layers of racks
upon which firewood would be laid to dry.
The roof architecture was similar to a dutch hip style, only the gables
were open to allow the smoke to escape.
The houses
were crowded together in a tight little group.
The earth was flat between them and this time of year very muddy. There were stepping stones along the more
heavily traveled routes. In the front of
Fermin's house there was a squat concrete bunker, about six feet on a
side. This, I learned, was the crypt for
Patty's father. He has defied the odds
by living as long as he has, and they built this crypt last April so they would
be ready in the event he died during the rainy season.
Large projects
such as the building of a house or a tomb, or clearing land and building a rice
terrace are an all-hands affair in the community. The beneficiary provides food for all the
participants, which usually means butchering at least an animal a day for the
duration of the project. Harvest the
rice is also done en masse, and whoever's field is being harvested that day
will again provide food for the workers.
I seated
myself in the kitchen. The doorway was
blocked with curious children. Patty's
mother came in. She is a little woman
about four feet ten, and as near as we can figure, about sixty-five years old. She was wearing a faded dress and a red
sweater. Her hair was drawn back granny
style, and she perpetually had a black purse at her side from which she
periodically extracted betel nuts. She
spoke no English and had a certain air of control about her. There was another woman of her generation
there, and they carried on to each other as if the room was empty but for
them. It was very funny from my point of
view, because all I could tell of their conversation was their facial
expressions. The best way I could
describe the other woman's normal expression is that of open-mouthed
incredulity. I had to keep from
laughing, because Patty's mother would say something and raise her head to look
down her nose at the other woman with an I-told-you-so expression. Two old biddys practicing one-upmanship.
Patty's sister
cleared the area of children by opening a huge tin of sugar crackers and giving
each child a double handful, then telling them to scat.
Fermin opened
conversation, "What is your opinion about the Gulf crisis?"
"I think
there will be a war."
"Maybe it
will be World War III."
I smiled,
"No I don't think it will go that far."
"Saddam
Hussein, he is a very crazy man. I'm
afraid he will use chemical weapons."
"Many
people are afraid of that."
"We are
very afraid here. We have no way to
protect ourselves from chemicals."
I smiled
again, "Don't worry. Iraq's
chemicals can't reach the Philippines."
I don't think
he caught that, because he went on, "Yes, it will be very bad if they use
chemicals. Do you think he will pull out
of Kuwait?"
"No. He's bet too much to fold now. We'll have to drive him out."
"It is
good that the U.S. can get so many other countries to support them to drive
Iraq out."
"Well,
everyone is afraid that if they don't stop him now he'll keep going."
"Yes, he
may attack Saudi Arabia or Germany or maybe even the U.S."
Whoa. I was just reminded that I'm conversing with
a Filipino, who's geography is probably restricted to a twenty mile radius from
his birthplace. Not to worry. I came prepared for just such an
eventuality. "Hold on, I'll be
right back."
I had brought
an inflatable globe with me that I got in a novelty store in California for
traveling. I fetched it out of my pack
and blew it up. I showed Fermin where
the Philippines was on the globe, and then Iraq and the gulf region. He was genuinely interested, and asked many
questions. "Where is
Belgium?" Their Catholic
missionaries had been from Belgium.
"Oh! I thought it was part
of the United States! But it is here, in
Europe! We hear of many places on the
radio news, but we don't know where they are.
Now I see where they are."
We continued
for some time like that, as he quizzed me about various places, and asked me
where I had been. Where did I grow up?
Where are my parents? Grandparents? My mother's family, are they still in Ireland? Somewhere there I produced some pictures I
had brought of the Emerson family. Your
father is a very handsome man. And your
Grandfather, is he still alive? He looks
like a very strong man. Who takes care
of your mother if you have no brothers and sisters?
I showed them
pictures of the house where I grew up in LaCenter, Washington taken from the
air. My father and I built that
house. What do you grow here? Is it very wet? The houses are very far apart.
Patty sat
beside me "What will you eat? You
like barbecue?"
"Yeah,
that sounds fine. . . Wait! Get that ham
out of my pack. I brought that for
Christmas dinner." We opened the
ham and cooked it in the tin over the fire.
There was enough for all the adults to have a generous portion. They served it with rice and boiled
rattan. It was quite a novelty for them,
having pork with no bones that you didn't have to gnaw on before
swallowing. I got little or no feedback,
except that Patty's mother didn't like it and gave hers to a kid. Oh well, I enjoyed my meal, anyway.
During the
meal, Patty's mother and the other old woman were drilling Fermin, and pointing
at the globe all the while. He turned to
me and said that they didn't believe how the world could be round like that. He discussed with them at some length, and I
caught the words "Neil Armstrong," so I guess he was using the
example of the astronauts to punctuate his proof. He finally convinced them, I suppose, but
said they still wouldn't believe that the earth went around the sun. The other old woman was looking skeptically
at the globe for the rest of the night.
Fermin then
asked me why the length of the day varied during the year, and I showed him
about the tilt of the earth, which he then explained to the non-English
speakers. I then told them about how my
dad had seen the midnight sun in Iceland, and I wondered just how big a liar
they thought I was.
For sleeping,
they laid down woven mats on the floor, and everyone lined up along the long
wall of the big room to sleep. Patty and
I shared one of the foam pads we had brought, and there was a big row among the
kids as they decided who would get the other one.
The room was
completely dark with the shutters closed.
I don't know why the mosquitoes didn't eat me alive. I briefly worried at the moleskin on my
heel. It was firmly attached to the
blister I had drained the day before, and I was loathe to tear the skin off the
blister, because I was deathly afraid of contracting an infection in the muddy
chickenshit of the ground outside the house.
I slept fitfully, unable to find a position to ease my sore muscles from
the days hike.
Everyone else
was up with the sun, but I wasn't ready and tried to hide for a while
longer. Finally I decided it was futile,
and got up. After breakfast I finally
managed to get the moleskin off of my heel without tearing any skin off with
it. I was dismayed to see that the
blister had swollen again and was bloody red.
I wasn't sure whether it had bled as a result of my walking or my
efforts to free the adhesive cover. What
I should have done was to cut a hole in the moleskin and place it all around,
but not on, the blister. I got my knife
and first aid kit and cut the blister away, then dressed the area. If I did get infected, all was not lost,
because I had a supply of antibiotics with me, there being no such thing as a
prescription medicine that can't be had over the counter here.
Later, Fermin
excused himself. One of the women from
the village had died the day before in Saliok in childbirth, and they were
going to console the widower. It was
unclear to me whether the poor man even knew as yet that his wife was dead.
Patty and Rose
grabbed the dirty laundry, and I followed them to the river, where I washed my
combat boots clean. The water was full
of naked children laughing and playing.
Shortly after that a helicopter flew over and landed above the barrio,
and all the children disappeared to go see it.
I learned later that a group of American linguists (I'm not sure they
were in fact American. Any white man is
automatically American to these people) was planning to come live her for a
time and learn the dialect. What they
were to do after they did this was unknown.
The helicopter left after about a half an hour.
After getting
my boots clean, I went behind a rock and took a real bath and brushed my teeth,
then I headed back up to the barrio with what laundry had already been
finished. I got turned around in the barrio, but a group of kids seemed to
realize my plight and pointed me in the right direction. They thought I had come in the helicopter,
and I didn't have enough of the language to tell them otherwise. Patty told me what the word for
"no" is, but it was a four syllable tongue twister that makes it easy
to see why these people seem so naturally agreeable.
The house was
virtually deserted when I got there except for Patty's sister, and I took
advantage of the opportunity to relax and read my book for awhile. Things were going fine for awhile, until
Patty's father came home. He was a small,
crooked little old man with his front four teeth missing. That didn't detract from his smile a
bit. He was about four feet ten, and
looks about eighty years old. No one has
any idea how old he really is. Patty's
sister introduced us, then disappeared back to the kitchen, saying she couldn't
translate because she couldn't understand me.
He could speak a little English, but wasn't confident enough to carry on
a conversation. So we just sat there
staring at each other, with nothing to say.
I figured it would be rude to go back to my book, although that would
have been merciful to both of us.
Finally we
were rescued by one of the men I had met the night before coming for lunch from
the rice fields. "Ah! you have met
the famous Japanese hunter!"
Patty's
father's love was animals. He was an
expert at tracking them, and often kept watch over the carabao as they ran free
through the mountains. Julian told me
that there were times when their mother would get very angry at him, because
when it was time to go play with his animals, he would go, even if it meant
leaving rice rotting in the fields.
Patty said that she never ever saw her father angry.
When the
Japanese came several Americans barricaded themselves in the school for awhile,
then slipped away under cover of darkness through the Japanese. The people of Maducayan relocated to the next
valley north for a short while, but Patty's father, Antonio, took to the
mountains with some other men, and they conducted guerrilla raids on the
Japanese. "The Japanese didn't know
how to hide, so they were easy to kill.
We would hit them and hide in the forest." He said he doesn't know how many he killed,
but he shot at a whole bunch of them.
The normal
flow of a translated discussion like this would be for me to ask a question,
which would be put to the person I was asking.
There would ensue several minutes of discussion as they clarified my
meaning and decided what the response would be, and then I would be given a
brief answer. Likewise one would ask me
a question, which I would answer, and again a lively debate would ensue as they
turned my words over and examined them from all points of the compass for any
hidden meaning. I didn't mind this so
much, as it took the heat off of me for the most part. I could basically ignore the world until
someone spoke English, and then I knew they were talking to me. I wasn't totally alone, for the family dog,
Bambi, seemed to sense that I wasn't interested in eating her, and spent a good
deal of time at my side getting her ears scratched.
Patty returned
and began showing her father all the things we had brought for him. He showed perfunctory interest in the thermos
jugs, and matter of factly stuck the powdered milk into his shoulder bag. He truthfully didn't seem too interested in
any of the things. Then I mentioned the
axe to Patty, and she went to get it from the place they had put it out of
reach of the children. She said something
about an axe, and he responded tiredly that he already had an axe, and it was
too heavy for him.
Well, I wasn't
about to carry a heavy splitting maul up that hill. He took one look at that axe and his eyes
came alive. He jumped up and took it,
and made a few practice swings.
"Ooh! I like that! It's very light! Ooh! It's very sharp, too! I like this very much! I can cut much firewood now!"
The room had filled up with visitors by this
time, and Antonio was becoming uncomfortable.
I gather that he doesn't like crowds.
So he saddled up his new belongings and headed back to the rice
fields. Patty told me that after the
last children had left home, he and her mother built a small cabin in the rice
fields, and they stay there now. It
saved them a lot of effort going up and down that hill, although I was ready to
believe that these two old people could do some things that would kill an
American their age. He saddled up his
new belongings and disappeared back across the rice paddies.
Fermin was
back by this time, and I had pulled out the maps we had brought. Soon we had them spread out all over the
floor and were examining different areas of the Philippines. I showed him where Paracelis was, and the
path the road takes to Saliok. I pointed
at the mountain peak out a window, and showed him where it was on the map. I guess this made more of an impression on
him than I had intended. Patty told me
the next day that he was introducing me to people as "This is Patty's
boyfriend, and he's smart! He knows
where he is, because he has a map, and he even knows how high the mountains
are!"
I guess he
also told several people about why the days are longer in the summer and
shorter in the winter, because I ended up explaining that again a couple of
times.
We drifted
into the kitchen, and I managed to sidestep out of the limelight by getting
Patty to tell about her experience scuba diving. They all thought it was pretty incredible
that she went fifty feet under water for forty-five minutes. Her mother looked pretty worried about this,
and they found it hard to believe that anyone would do that just for fun. Then I got her talking about learning to
drive, and that kept them amused for awhile, too. I had been talking with people virtually all
afternoon, and it seemed I was answering the same questions over and over. I was glad of the break.
Later that
night I gave Fermin some produce seeds I had brought. I had two different types of corn, snap peas,
squash and carrots. Fermin and I
discussed how to best plant and grow these, and he said he would experiment to
try to get the optimum time. I impressed
on him that this was not rice and that well-drained soil would be essential,
especially for the carrots.
I slept more
soundly that night, because my legs had stopped hurting so much. It was still pretty hard to get up, though.
The next
morning after breakfast, Fermin excused himself to go harvest rice. They carry a wicked looking bolo knife here,
and the scabbard is a single wooden board at their side which the blade lies
flush against.
I waited
impatiently as the girls got themselves together, and Patty and Rose wanted to
make ponchos out of some garbage bags that I had brought. Finally we headed out to the fields to see
her father again.
We crossed the
fields and headed up the side of the mountain.
It wasn't long before we came to a flat area where the Maducayan
elementary school was. The original
schoolhouse is abandoned, and they have four teachers in the new building. We continued up along a torturous trail. I was wearing my sneakers, and was having a
hard time and wishing I had my combat boots.
I was carrying one of the mattresses I had brought for Patty's
father.
 |
| Tat-Arangan from the front porch |
The little
cabin in the rice fields was once again on stilts, on the west side of the
fields, just before the drop-off to the stream.
There was a pig and a bunch of chickens running around under the cabin,
fenced in by a makeshift bamboo fence.
Patty said that one of the reasons her father likes it here better is
that he's close to the water. He had an
operation for colonic cancer about six years ago, and he has a bag in his side
in place of his last two feet of intestine which has to be washed out daily.
Patty's father
was splitting firewood when we got there.
Apparently he had seen the mattresses the previous day, but thought we
had brought them for our own use and were taking them back with us. When Patty explained that they were for him,
he said, "Oh! I like that! I will
sleep well tonight!"
I explored the
area, poking around. I checked out the
rice granaries and the animal pen. There
was a citrus tree near the stream that had what looked like grapefruit, only
about eight inches across. Rose pointed
out some papaya on a tree near the granary.
The tree was too flimsy to climb, but it swayed satisfactorily when
shaken, and soon it was raining papaya, and I was ducking to keep from being
brained. I nearly got skewered
retrieving the fallen fruit among the pineapple bushes, but it was worth it for
the fresh papaya. Mmmmm good!
While we were
checking out the granary, a young woman came to buy some rice from Patty's
mother. Eight of the shocks they make
when harvesting and drying make a bundle, and the woman wanted ten bundles for
a hundred pesos. There was some arguing
over price, and then there was an additional disagreement when the woman wanted
to work in the field for a day in lieu of payment.
 |
| Drying the Panay (unshucked rice) |
I was relaxing
on a rock when there was a flurry of activity as Patty's mother cornered lunch
underneath the cabin. From the sound of
it, it was questionable whether she or the chickens were getting the worst end
of it.
Shortly after that, Patty came and got me and made me
go into the cabin. They had just
finished bleeding the chicken, though it hadn't realized it was dead yet.
I was made to
take off my left shoe, and place my foot alongside those of Patty and
Rose. Their mother began chanting, and
rhythmically wiped the blood from the chicken on our feet. It was later explained to me that if others
harbor bad thoughts for you, that it will cause a curse to fall on you. Her chanting was a blessing to protect us
from such curses, and to keep us safe as we traveled. When she was satisfied that we were safe, we
left to wash our feet in the fields.
Later I
climbed up a huge rock overlooking the fields.
I was sitting there with my feet hanging over the side, when Patty told
me that her mother was worried and told her to tell me that there were no
hospitals out here, and I wouldn't get patched up if I got hurt. Nice to have so many mothers. Of course, like my real mother, I ignored
them all.
While Rose and
their mother were busy with lunch, Patty and I went up the stream a ways to a
nice little pool and a waterfall and took a bath. The water was a little too cool to qualify as
refreshing, although I have felt colder.
By the time
lunch was served, one of Patty's aunts had shown up. She had come to visit me in Maducayan, but we
weren't there. I was quiet through most
of lunch, besides the now standard, "How do you like our place? It is very poor." They never lost an opportunity to emphasize
how poor the barrio was and how hard life is.
Her aunt mentioned that she could speak English because she had gone to
school. She said that she had been
learning Japanese for two months, but then the Americans came back and drove
the Japanese away.
This lead the
conversation to Patty's father's exploits during the war. As we sat and drank coffee drowned in milk
powder and sugar and the old women spat their betel juice, I tried to use this
historical benchmark to pinpoint their ages.
I managed to figure out that Patty's oldest brother was born in
1939. From this I figured out that Her
mother is 66. They said she was twelve
when they were married, but they didn't sleep together for two years. So if she was fifteen when Enrique was born,
she was born in 1924.
Marriages were
prearranged by the parents of the couple here until just a few decades
ago. Patty's father was funny when
describing his marriage. "My mother
went away one day and came home with this girl.
I didn't know why. Then she said,
'you're going to marry her.' She was
really too young to be properly married, but we were all boys, and my mother
needed someone to pound the rice. So for
two years this girl would come to our house to work, and then go home to sleep
with her parents."
I would have
loved to continue this line of discussion, but the language barrier was very
difficult. Patty isn't the best
translator, feeling like it was necessary to editorialize before passing it
on. When one of her parents would gobble
at her at length, with her interjecting and discussing, and then she tells me
what they said in one brief sentence; well, I feel like I missed something.
 |
| Rice terraces near Tat-arangan |
One thing that
was driven home during this discussion was that these people completely lack
any sort of oral tradition. Even the
American Indians kept track of time through seasons and phases of the
moon. But these people didn't even know
how many harvests had passed since their own children were born. The women all wear fancy jewelry, but there
is no meaning to the patterns. They have
no legends besides the occasional ghost story.
Perhaps the twentieth century has had a deleterious effect, but it
seemed to me that the Igorots, and in fact most Filipino subcultures, are
culturally impoverished. This may
explain the difficulty they experience when confronted with centuries of
cumulative knowledge from the west. (2005:
After returning many times to Maducayan, and becoming steeped in their
culture, I grew to understand that the culture that I failed to see in my first
visit was in fact dying. The young
people are attracted to the glitter and bright lights of the 21st
century, and don’t care to learn or hold onto the ways of their elders. It’s interesting that the traditions are
observed more rigorously in America than they are in the Philippines. I have seen this phenomenon in the Irish as
well. It’s as if the immigrant is
preserving his homeland’s ways, in spite of the fact that the homeland no
longer observes those ways. The young
people do not understand the dialect of the Ulalim, and while they know their
cousins, they cannot tell you the specific details of the family relationship)
Word had
gotten around that I was not going to be in the Philippines much longer. They asked me where to next, and I said
Okinawa for six months, and then possibly Alaska. They asked me what Alaska was like, but I
have given up on trying to describe subzero cold to people who have no basis
for comparison. I do believe I mentioned
the huge mosquitoes they have there.
Seeing the incredulous look on the face of Patty's mother, I lost myself
and began to embellish a bit. It wasn't
until later that evening over dinner, when she had more allies to support her,
that she dared to question my tales of Alaskan mosquitoes carrying off dogs and
small deer.
It was getting
late when we left the fields, and it was nearly dark when we reached Maducayan
again. The workers were home from the
fields. As the women prepared the
dinner, Fermin and I talked.
"What do
you think of the way we work in the fields?" Life is very hard here, we are so poor, etc.,
etc. They didn't understand that I
wasn't here to judge, but to experience. I
took a chance. Fermin seemed to be
receptive to suggestions, and was willing to fill to gaps in my knowledge as to
why some things don't work here. "I
notice that some fields don't seem to be producing very much."
"Yes. The fields used to produce a lot of rice, but
the soil is becoming very poor."
Excellent. The hardest time
people have when solving a problem is admitting they have a problem.
"The same thing happens in Europe and
America, but the farmers get around it by planting different things in their
fields every year. This year,
wheat. Next year corn, then beans, and
maybe back to wheat. The different crops
renew the soil."
This didn't
seem to make an impression on him. If
rice wasn't on the table every meal, these people feel hungry.
"You
mentioned fertilizer yesterday."
"Yes, but
we can't carry the fertilizer in here.
It's too much work."
"Fermin,
you have some of the best fertilizer in the world, right out here in your back
yard. Collect up that chickenshit and
spread it on your fields. Hell, in Japan
they even use human shit, and they grow the best rice in the world there."
"We don't
like to do that because it pollutes the fields.
We like to eat the shellfish that grow in the water."
"Decomposed
shit is not pollution. Look, the reason
your soil is poor is because every crop of rice leeches some of the nitrates
out of the soil. That's what fertilizer
is for, to replace the nitrates. Well,
there is no better concentration of nitrates than chickenshit."
My mind was
working on the problem now, and solutions began to bud faster than I could
talk. "Another thing, by leaving
your fields flooded twelve months out of the year you're drowning the
soil. Rice doesn't naturally grow in
lakes; it grows on the shore, in soil that's periodically flooded every
year." (I was making this up as I go along, but it sounds reasonable. One of the signs of a good field engineer is
that he can pitch bullshit with supreme confidence on a moments notice). "Try draining the fields after the
harvest, and letting the soil dry out before planting again. You'll lose a month or so of growing time,
but the rice doesn't grow very fast during the dry season anyway. This will let the sunlight and air get
directly to the soil and help replenish the nitrates. This is also when you should lay down the
chicken shit. Then plow it dry and
reflood." (As it happens, the
research I did on the subject later indicated that I was exactly right.)
Fermin thought
this over. "I will try what you
say. I will experiment, and see how it
works." Fair enough. We can't risk the whole rice crop, when
that's all you ever eat. But I was
satisfied. Even if none of my ideas
work, he's started experimenting, and he's sure to find something that does
work if he keeps it up.
"Okay,
I've got another idea. What's the
hardest thing about getting rice from the field to the dinner table?"
"Pounding
the rice is easily the hardest thing."
I knew that. Why else would it be
job for women?
"Okay. Why not get a machine to do it for you?"
"We
cannot move the machines here. There is
no road." He was being polite, but
his thoughts fairly shouted over his words
Because we're not all rich bloody Americans!
But I was
showing my hand slowly, to keep him interested.
"You don't need to.
Look," I said, waving may hand at the mountains, "What do you
have up here?" He wasn't sure of
what I was after, so I went on, "Water!
Millions of gallons of it, conveniently placed at the top of all of
these hills!" I raised my finger in
point, "And water is energy. All
you have to do is harness it. Look
here." I procured a piece of paper
and traced out a simple water wheel for him.
You just let
the water turn this, then connect the axle to a grindstone or a pounder, and
there you go." He was intrigued by
the idea, then soon became enthusiastic.
"We can
build this of wood!" He spoke rapid
fire to the people in the room, gesturing at my drawings. I saw him point at the mountains and then at
the wheel.
One of the
ladies, a schoolteacher, asked me, "But won't the rice get wet?"
Fermin
answered before I could speak, "No! The grinder and pounder doesn't have
to be anywhere near the water wheel, it will be connected in the center, but
will be apart!" He was
enthusiastic, and kept repeating, "I can do this! I can do this!" Later we discussed some details of the
linkage and the construction, but I deliberately was vague, impressing on him
the need to modify and experiment and perfect his own design. I stressed the economic factors, saying that
if he had the only rice mill, people would pay him to grind their rice, and he
would never have to work in the field again.
May God forgive me for ruining these peoples way of life, but I'm a
capitalist at heart.
We were
leaving the next day. I had made the
excuse that I had been invited by many friends to celebrate New Years in
Angeles City, and I had to get back to work soon anyway. The truth was that I didn't want to tarnish
my welcome, and besides, Patty was anxious to get home and "feel like a
human again." She's not too proud
of her background, and constantly exhorted me, "Don't tell anyone what
it's like up there." I said
nonsense, people care about what you are, not where you came from.
Preparing for
the trip the next day, I found that I had a tremendous amount of room available
in my pack, and was able to put Patty's baggage in with room to spare. Everyone eyed this critically, but it was
still less than I had carried on the trip up.
Patty's mother was worried that I would not come back to visit, and kept
repeating to her to "Tell him to come back. Tell him to visit."
I reassured
her that I would make my best effort to come back for another visit (Not if
they don't get that road reopened to Saliok, Lady!). Fermin said, "You must come to visit us,
because it is to far for us to go to America.
I tried to explain to him how expensive it was to come to the
Philippines, but Patty had given them an idea of how much money I made, and my
words fell on deaf ears.
Fermin and
another man told me, "You will do well wherever you go, because you know
how to dance to the music."
 |
| Looking East from Samoke |
I led the way
more confidently as we made our way across the rice fields, because I knew my
way this time. Rose and Vivian were with
us once again. I wasn't too sure about
this Vivian. She had insisted on coming
and seeing Patty's American boyfriend in Paracelis, yet she seemed to refuse to
even acknowledge my existence. All the
people are extremely shy, but this girl was a bit different in showing
that.
We made good
time on the trail, and reached Saliok about two hours after we started. Soon after we had rejoined the road, Patty
was complaining about her feet, and I was forced to stop and administer first
aid. I patched her up as best I could,
but I could see problems ahead, because she was wearing rubber boots and flimsy
socks. I set a grueling pace, and was
soon far ahead. I declined to feel
sorry, for I was still carrying the heaviest load. We lunched at noon, an insubstantial meal of
rice and bananas.
It was shortly
after lunch that my boots really began to bother me. The leather had grown quite stiff above the
heel, and was pressing painfully on my Achilles tendon every time I took a
step. I endured this as far as I could,
but when we stopped at the last stream at about two, I exchanged my boots for
sneakers. The way was quite level and
mud free from this point, and I made even better time in my sneakers. I pulled into Julian's house about three
o'clock, and the others straggled in over the following half hour.
As I showered
in the waning twilight, it began to rain.
I didn't complain, because the weather had cooperated superbly so far
during my whole trip. It rained quite
heavily that night.
Julian's wife
had gone to Santiago for a visit, and Julian was minding the kids alone. He and I discussed the education system of
our two countries, and played a bit of chess.
We were evenly matched, and each won one game.
That night was
uncomfortable, as I had left the mattresses in Maducayan. I would not have slept except for my fatigue.
The following
morning was drizzly and misty. We went
to the hospital to wait for the jeep, which came by minutes later. It was starting to rain, so they put me in
the front seat. There was very little to
see, as the cloud ceiling had descended, so I spent the trip with my nose in a
book. There were a few exciting moments
as the jeep skidded and spun its way up some muddy inclines. This jeep was no larger than a van, and
probably had a very high ground pressure, due to the narrow tires. Then about two miles from Santiago, they ran
out of gas and we sat for a half an hour while someone got a trike and went for
more.
We caught a
trike when the jeep finally let us off.
Our first stop was a store that had liquor, because if I went back to
Angeles without some of this sugar whiskey, I would never be forgiven. Then we went to the bus station.
The bus was
not crowded for a change and we had a very comfortable voyage to San Jose. Patty kept insisting that we had passed San
Jose after a couple of hours, and I kept reassuring her that it was still ahead
of us, that we were still in the mountains.
The bus was
destined for San Quentin, so we parted ways at about seven in the evening at
San Jose, and got directly onto a jeepney headed for Carmen. During the war, the Americans had brought the
venerable jeep to the Philippines, and the people were so taken with its
performance that they copied the design.
Well, they copied the exterior, anyway.
So now the country is filled with lookalikes of the WWII jeep, stretched
to hold as many as twenty people in the back.
The frames are made of wood, and they all have underpowered Toyota
engines and two wheel drive and are covered in chrome.
We packed into
the back with a shoehorn. Due to the
closeness, Patty said she felt like throwing up, and I know from experience
that when she says that, it's probably going to happen. I took stock and decided that This was not
the place for me, so I bailed out and climbed on top of the jeep with the
luggage. There I sat in perfect comfort
for the two hour trip through the moonlit countryside of the lowlands, while
everyone else was smashed into the jeep below me.
In Carmen we
were fortunate to catch a luxury bus directly to Angeles, and we were the only
ones on the bus. I had left one of
Patty's cousins staying at my house to mind things, and when we got home at
eleven o'clock there were already two other cousins there visiting. They had a lot of news to exchange, and there
was no English being spoken, so I wearily showered and put myself to bed and
let Patty lock up.
