Category: Nonfiction

Urban Legends

Nonfiction by | December 7, 2008

Ang Babaye sa Salamin
Giasoy ni Elmer Oncada, Ateneo de Davao University

Gikan ni sa akong kaubanan sa una, kadtong wala pa ninghawa dinhi. Gikan siya og CR. Karon pagpanamin niya sa Del Rosario Building sa panlalaki na CR sa ground, nanudlay siya. Mga 9:30. Pagpanamin niya, atol pod to og kalag-kalag hinuon. Tingala siya naa may babaye na puti og buhok ug puti pod ang sanina. Kuyawan siya. Nanindog iyang mga balahibo. Paglingi niya sa likod, nawala man og kalit.

So unsay gibuhat niya? Dali-dali siyag suot sa iyang uniporme. Dagan siya, dagan. Tingala mi pag-abot dinhi. “Ngano naghangos-hangos man ka?”

“Buanga, bay. Nag-CR ko sa Del Rosario, naay babayeng nagpakita sa akoa, puti tanan.”

White lady ba to or unsa to siya. Taas daw kaayo og buhok. Gitan-aw siya sa samin.

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A Child's Intuition

Nonfiction by | November 23, 2008

It was a cold December morning when the undoubtedly strange silence woke me up from my peaceful slumber. I was four years old and it was the first time that I had actually woken up on my own. Everything turned out rather strange. I couldn’t hear the chirping birds from the outside when in fact, it was six in the morning. I couldn’t hear my mother blabbering, or the black and white TV set tuned up for the usual morning news. Not even the radio was on, nor the usual gossiping of our neighbors. The strange silence gave me the chills. I found myself silently wondering in my own room until I heard a familiar sound from the garage. It was the earsplitting sound of Papa’s old motorcycle engine. Somehow, it enlivened me so I rushed to the front door to hug him. Continue reading A Child's Intuition

Losing Mary

Nonfiction by | November 23, 2008

I was seated in an airplane going to Manila and the clouds looked so heavy that it seemed to reflect how I felt about my grandmother’s death. It was three days before that trip when my aunt had called us up to give the devastating news. My Lola Maria, as we used to call her, passed away due to complications of her diabetes. As we arrived at the NAIA, I started to feel really weird, like I did not even bother to look around me. I was simply going with the flow until we arrived at my aunt’s house. Still outside their house, I started to feel fear inside me. Fear for myself that maybe I could not bear the pain of being at her wake. I was so confused that at one point I struggled with feeling numb.

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When Dad's not around

Nonfiction by | November 16, 2008

Here we go again, Mom’s not in the house because she has work to do, and my brother going with her. What’s left is me, sitting on the sofa watching animations on T.V. Being a son of a seaman is quite difficult because your life is like a big slice of pizza without cheese on it. Sometimes, you just wish he was here! It’s really bad how questions float in my mind without any answers, like boy-things that sometimes my mother can’t answer. Seeing my friends having a complete family makes me feel OP (out of place), and somehow, jealous. I can see one of my classmates inside a car ready to go home after school laughing and talking to his dad; his mother is there too, smiling like my mother does when Dad is here.

I remember when daddy used to carry me on his shoulders and sending me to my classroom when I was in Grade 2. My classmates often laughed seeing me atop my father’s shoulders but I was very proud he was there, with my classmates finally knowing how my Dad looked. They thought he was a foreigner, and they also thought I was an American because of my prominent western features.

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Pangapog: Thanksgiving for a Bountiful Harvest

Nonfiction by , , | November 9, 2008

The Pangapog festival is celebrated by the Samas of Samal Island located in Davao Gulf to thank the spirits of their ancestors for a bountiful harvest. A ritual is performed and then a feast follows it. This feast is celebrated annually, around the month of August.

The Pangapog festival that we witnessed began with a huge preparation both for the ritual and for the feast. After the materials for the ritual were arranged around an altar called the bunga, the balyan, the datus, and other selected members of the Sama tribe gathered around the bunga.

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Mission Possible

Nonfiction by | November 9, 2008

I settled at the back of the Toyota pickup, crouching on the floor. I reached inside the bag and wore my shades and sahal, ready for the long trip ahead. Definitely, this was not one of the top ten things I wanted to do before growing old. But I was going anyway. And I came quite prepared. I had plenty of water, and an umbrella besides. I was joining a medical mission hosted by the Southern Mindanao District of the United Church of Christ of the Philippines (UCCP.)

The mission consisted of around twenty volunteers, including five doctors. I was one of three from the youth sector of the church. It was 8am, and cold, the sun hidden behind the rain clouds. We were going to a far-flung barangay at the foothills of Mt. Apo in Matan-ao, Davao del Sur.

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The Impulse to Bakwit

Nonfiction by | October 12, 2008

At a certain time when everything seemed to be happening everywhere, except, perhaps the spot where I was—where I gazed, wide-eyed, caught up with the vastness of stagnation and void – there was a particular kind of impulse. It could be moral fiber; but really, it was just a matter of chance.

By chance I became a part of the Disaster Response Team of the Philippine National Red Cross in Davao City in 2006. My high school classmate called on one of those boring days during the semestral break, which I spent over-feeding fishes and coiling in the couch to watch Shrek for the nth time. He invited me for training on Disaster Management. Because I was hungry for something to happen, I was glad to be part of anything that could break my monotonous days. Besides, if there were a gang war in our ghettoized neighborhood in Santo Niño, Matina, I thought I might be able to help. Yet I had never thought I could respond to a disaster with a sense of planning and order. I was one of the most panicky people I knew. Then again, I attended the training despite my father’s displeasure, saying in his coarse voice that I am too frail and small, “basi ikaw pa’y tabangunon.”

The five-day training was attended by undergraduates from different colleges and universities in Davao City. Some of them came in batches of three and five. Almost half of the class were nursing students from Davao Doctors College. There were eighteen trainees and I was the only one who came from the University of the Philippines Mindanao.

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The Book, the True, and the Beautiful

Nonfiction by | October 5, 2008

(Excerpt from Keynote Speech delivered during the Gintong Aklat Awards 2008, SMEX Convention Center, Bay Area, Pasay City)

Recent events in our history, specifically in the past twenty years or so, have more than less convinced me that ours is a culture not of ideas and intellection but of emotions, hints, and suspicions. Our predilection is for the unsaid or the merely implied, the shadowy and adumbrated, the peripheral and the underground as appropriate instruments to counter what has been perceived as the given brutality of power and force exercised by the few oligarchs and pseudo-monarchs in appropriate political positions. The dynamics in our culture is such that there seems to be always an agon between the outer and the inner, between the overt and the secret, the official and the unofficial, mainstream and underground—with the outer and overt and official conceived of as tyrannically powerful and repressive, and the inner and secret and unofficial wielded as a submissive and abiding force whose time will eventually come. Continue reading The Book, the True, and the Beautiful