Category: Nonfiction

Some Assorted Maniacs I Know

Nonfiction by | December 6, 2009

It seems to me that the whole village is just crawling with them—neighbors, professionals, government employees, even my own kin—lilintian! I don’t know how I’ve managed to live this old and managed to escape from these assorted maniacs and a fate worse than death, although I’ve seen many who have enjoyed that fate worse than …. But I caught myself from being repetitious. Yes, once a teacher always a teacher, and although I’ve been an English supervisor these five years now I still teach the rules of composition better than any of them—better than these new tissle-tassle methods that lead to nowhere! But back to these assorted maniacs. Why, even in our school there’s that Mr. Jover. Don’t ever make the mistake of letting him take you home. Oh, not even with a group—unless you make sure you don’t sit beside him because, Blessed Arkangel! he has a way of maneuvering-maneuvering and before you know it he’ll have his paws right on your blossoms quite by improbable accident. Or you’ll feel an arm pass by through your hip. His maneuvering is quite famous and he makes no discrimination between young and old, plain or pretty, so that you can’t even feel complimented by it. Why, even Mrs. Olarte the very staid Super from Manila was a victim of this maneuvering, and if it were not such an awkward thing to put on paper, she would have recommended his demotion. What would happen to poor Mrs. Jover who is such a pretty but nervous little wife who is hardly seen at all, what with her nine children—and some more coming, you can be sure. You’d think he would be satisfied with that? But no, some men are never, never satisfied—nor some women, for that matter.

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Kung Paano Maging Kaaya-aya Ang Pangingibangbayan

Nonfiction by | November 29, 2009

Magdadalawang dekada na ang inilagi ko sa labas ng bansa. Madalas kapag narinig ito ng mga di pa lubusang nakakakilala sa akin ay kaagad silang maghihinuha na mayaman na ako. Kumbaga, sinusukat nila ang naipon kong Swissfrancs sa tagal ng paninirahan ko sa Switzerland.

Sa simula, naaasiwa ako sa pahayag na ito. Subalit sa pagtakbo ng panahon ay sinasakyan ko na lamang ito’t inaamin na totoong mayaman ako. Iyon nga lang di sa pera kundi sa mga naipon kong karanasan bilang isang migrante. At ito ang nais kong ibahagi sa aking mga kababayan. Di lamang sa mga naglalayon na mangibangbayan kundi gayundin sa mga nananatili sa bansa sa kabila ng karalitaan. Bukod pa, ilang beses na rin akong tinanong at tiyak patuloy na tatanungin ng mga bagong saltang Pilipino sa Switzerland, tungkol sa kung paano maging magaa’t kaaya-aya ang pangingibangbayan. Kaya minabuti kong isatitik na rin ito.

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One small step to a giant goal

Nonfiction by | November 22, 2009

Comota is a barangay in La Paz, Agusan del Sur. Located 30 kilometers from the poblacion of La Paz, it can only be reached by walking or riding a banca or a motorcycle. When I was assigned there as a classroom teacher at Comota Elementary School in August 1999, what immediately struck me was the poverty of its inhabitants, composed of some 700 Manobo villagers and a handful of Cebuano families.

Poverty was due to inadequate family incomes that were worsened by the peace and order problem. The area was also frequently visited by floods that destroyed many of the crops during the La Niña phenomenon. For a teacher to be assigned in that place was, indeed, a challenge!

I taught 14 students from the Grade Five level and 36 from Grade Six. After a month of teaching, I got fairly acquainted with them, their parents and the barangay officials. One time, I was invited to attend the session of the barangay council and had a talk with the barangay captain and some councilors. From them I learned that each household owned several hectares of land, each of which was not fully cultivated. Almost 90% was still timberland from where they got logs as their source of living. This supplemented whatever they got from fishing and hunting.

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The Pilgrim

Nonfiction by | November 8, 2009

beggars circle tables
dogs circle carrion
the lover circles
his own heart
-Rumi

1.

One occasion in my childhood changed my life forever. It was the arrival of a Sony Trinitron television in our home. Being the latest technology of that period, it was a departure from the electronic appliances that resembled pieces of furniture.

It was the last years of the Marcos era. In those days, television broadcasts in the province started at four o’clock in the afternoon with Batibot, followed by a back-to-back Christian cartoons, Super Book and Flying House. Music videos aired just before the evening news.

Coming home from school one afternoon, I switched on the television and saw a blonde girl with a headband and ridiculously large plastic earrings. She toyed with boys under a street sign, mouthing lyrics I barely understood. Soon I memorized the chorus of the song – Borderline — and eagerly anticipated the music video every afternoon. The singer, I learned, was Madonna.

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When Pigs Run Freely On The Streets Of Mintal

Nonfiction by | September 13, 2009

Until a few years ago, the only “living” pigs I ever saw in Manila were the ones that were shown cutely prancing around on TV or on the big screen. Of course, there were also pictures and illustrations of smiling or gamboling boars and piglets on print; but somehow it was not quite the same. Occasionally though, I would get a glimpse of a truck crammed with pigs on some busy thoroughfare. Their squeals would lightly pervade the closed environs of our family car. I would always notice people outside covering their noses and grimacing, as if they were suddenly plunged into an invisible but inescapable miasma.

I would watch in fascination at the packed mass of moving bodies, often saddened by the thought that that was the last time the pigs would ever experience rides again. My parents had blithely told me once that they (the pigs I mean, not my parents) would be headed for slaughter when I asked them about it. My eyes would follow the truck until the vehicle made a sudden turn to a street where our car would not go. Pretty soon the truck and animals were nothing more than another indistinguishable speck on the choked up, traffic-jammed streets of Manila.

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Martial Memories

Nonfiction by | August 16, 2009

Now that the Cory Fever is sweeping the country pandemically, memories of the horrid Martial Law years invade my consciousness.

It was declared soon after my return from a Kyoto Conference on American Literature and my flying over the whole Russian continent without seeing any city or village en route to England, Paris, Greece, Italy, and Thailand. I was Humanities Division Chairman at the Ateneo de Davao University and was Moderator of the ATENEWS, the college paper. The year before, I had discovered a brilliant freshman—Evella Bontia who out-stripped the upperclassmen in my search for ATENEWS editor. A staffmember was a quiet girl with the surname Mahipus. In my literature class, a senior—Tiny de la Paz—was expected to receive summa cum laude honors.

What greater shock it was when the ATENEWS office was raided because of an article entitled “Portrait of the Atenean as Activist.” Ms. Mahipus and Mr. de la Paz were incarcerated at the PC barracks. Evella Bontia escaped to the hills and later was reported killed in an encounter with military forces. What a loss!

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Rising Above Ourselves

Nonfiction by | August 16, 2009

There will come a time in our lives that we have to make a big decision—a decision whose consequences we are uncertain of. It is not easy to make such a decision, so we’ve got to really admire those who have mustered a mammoth of courage and made that decision.

History is strewn with great men and women who bravely made a big decision even if that meant putting their lives and other people’s lives at grave risk. On a wintry day in December 1776, George Washington decided to cross the Delaware River. The supplies and provisions of Washington’s Continental Army were fast running out. The soldiers were hungry and destitute. Some of them were sick; others were dying. And many more would die, including their fight for independence, unless they crossed the Delaware River into the garrison of the Hessians where stores of food, clothing, blankets, and munitions, run aplenty. On Christmas Day, Washington and his men embarked on a bold move that would, historians say, alter the course of the revolution the Americans waged against the British Empire. They successfully crossed the river, swiftly defeated their enemies, and resuscitated the revolution.

Corazon Aquino, “Cory” to many, made hers when her husband, the former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., was killed. The feisty senator was among those who were imprisoned when former president Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law. Ninoy spent many years in prison, but was soon allowed by Marcos to go abroad for a heart operation. There, the Aquinos experienced a glint of peace. But Ninoy was a man who always wanted to be on the battlefields. Though he lived comfortably abroad, away from the claws of the dictatorship, he decided to come home. And he came home, only to be killed.

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Coffee and Friends

Nonfiction by | August 9, 2009

Most of us equate coffee with age and long nights that never end; some of us place it at par with romance and falling rain, or hot sultry nights and youth, or balmy days and long forgotten echoes of old remembered loves and footsteps that ring no more, or cold afternoons and chocolate rice porridge before our old television sets and their endless reruns of movies long archived. Whatever strikes our fancy, goes; coffee on hand, it seems, is here to stay.

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