A trip to town. I walk out of my house and around the corner, passing two sari-sari stores selling snacks loaded with MSG, soap, and other small household items. I pass the stalls selling burned CDs and movies, the Pussycat Dolls blasting from the speakers. Around the next corner, and there is the fish vendor, fish in baskets and a fan above blowing the flies away. To the left is the covered court, where the boys play basketball at all hours of the day. “Trike, ma’am!” the trike drivers harass from the motorcycles with attached side cars (called tricycles, or trikes). I smile and shake my head, “Lalakad lang,” I will just walk. “Oh, marunong ka magtagalog!” they shout. You know how to speak Tagalog. They are easily impressed by the few Tagalog phrases I throw at them, but little do they know how little Tagalog I can speak!
I walk on up the road, past another trike station at the top of the hill. A co-teacher told me recently that one of the trike drivers calls me “diwata,” or Fairy. Probably because I am so... well, white. Angelic? Me?? Anyway, it is noon, time for the school kids to go home for lunch. I pass a group of high school boys on the opposite side of the road, and one yells something I cannot hear. I try to smile and keep walking, but he is persistent. “Where are you going?” Saan ka pupunta? I reply briefly, but he keeps questioning, so I cross the road and hesitantly join the four boys. They ask curious, simple questions, which I ask them to repeat because they speak so fast. The dialogue lags, and I walk uncomfortably at their side, aware that they are staring at me as we walk. After a few minutes, they resume their side conversations and I can go back to not feeling like a circus act. Temporarily.
Trikes pass by on the road, with their noisy buzzing engines, groaning from the strain of the hills. I pass a pile of trash being burnt—the common method of trash disposal. The trash is mostly plastic wrappers, and I am used to the smell but still hold my breath for fear of getting cancer by inhaling even a little. A local or private jeepney passes us, with Filipino hip-hop music playing from the newly installed speakers. The driver smiles at me as they pass, two front teeth missing and bottom teeth black from all the sugary foods and poor oral hygiene. His pahinante, or the jeepney helper who collects the bayad (payment), looks at me with apprehension. I cannot take his look seriously, what with the mullet he supports and all. Indeed the mullet is back and louder than ever here in the Pilipinas. Many young men and often the “tough” jeepney drivers have similar haircuts. Emo style swooped bangs, plastic headbands (on guys, yes), a long rat tail, or a “fashion mullet” are all the rage. Even little kids have emo haircuts and sport pink headbands. So after 20 minutes I finally reach the corner, “kanto,” where there are a dozen trikes and two or three jeepneys. “Marikina Marikina Marikina!” the pahinante calls as I board the jeep. I am the first passenger there, and we must wait for the jeepney to be moderately full. We wait 35 minutes before there are enough passengers, but I am the only one keeping track.
On we go, the dozen passengers clutching the metal bar on the ceiling to avoid being tossed about by the jolting ride. I pass my payment forward to the pahinante, and position myself bent slightly so I may see out the low windows. The air is cool and clean finally, and there are beautiful views of the lowlands and the surrounding mountains. We halt to a stop to let on more passengers. We will keep accepting passengers until there is not even an inch of space left for seating, and after that brave men will still stand on the back and hold on to the side bars. At least they can smoke there. After another 20 minutes or so (finally I have stopped counting, distracted by the breeze and the view when I can see it) we arrive at Gate 2, the town plaza of Cogeo. And that was only the journey.
But sometimes journeys are the most interesting part. Take for example my activities last week. My province, Rizal, is in the Sierra Madre Mountain range, home to one of the country’s cultural minorities, the Dumagat people. A number of the kids at my center originate from the mountains, and are part of the Dumagats themselves. The first trip was to Santa Inis with a number of community members for a “medical mission,” or to distribute medicine and conduct brief medical check-ups on the people of the barangay. Indeed, the journey was the really fun part. The expression “packed like sardines” takes on a new meaning in this country. 15 or 16 people fit into a van intended to hold 10 comfortably, and set off on a 3-hour drive into the mountains. After the first hour, passing by local communities and breathtaking mountain views, we left the main road and moved onto a dirt road. It just so happened that it was the first rainy day in months, and the old van with its little tires could only take so much. The road was bumpy and muddy and we had to get out and push. Then we came to the first river. To be fair, the river was only a few inches deep, and would probably be better labeled as a stream, but nonetheless we crossed it, in our old van, across a riverbed of rocks and the few inches of water, slipping and sliding on the “bank,” and tires gripping for traction. That was the first river. I lost track of how many we crossed, but it was close to a dozen. Three hours later, after pushing the van again and then again, with sore bodies and butts we arrived at our destination.
The second trip into the mountains was just a few days later, but this time it was in a trike. I went with the two social workers at my center to Santo Nino, only two hours away this time, for family visits. But every bump in that dirt road was magnified in the poor little vehicle, and I held on for my life. Only 5 or 6 rivers this time, but it is much more difficult to cross a foot of water in a trike than in a van....
The third trip was the most adventurous, and by far the most intense. We traveled four hours away with a 20-vehicle convoy of 4x4 jeeps and trucks, “off-roading” as it is called. The purpose was again a mission (medical, gift-giving, and feeding program) to a remote Dumagat community, so the 20 vehicles carried bags and boxes of clothes, toys, medicine, and food. We took the same route as before, in our enormous monster-truck style vehicle, wheels half as big as my body, passing Santo Nino and Santa Inis and then continuing past the barangays on the dirt road. After a ways the road, if it could even be called a road to begin with, ended and we were climbing the actual mountain in those jeeps, holding on for dear life on a road that was certainly not meant to be driven on, driving nearly sideways at times. We passed some Dumagat men trekking up the mountain on their way to the central meeting point where our Mission would take place. They helped push and pull when one of the trucks got stuck in a ditch, and when on smoother road they walked beside our convoy carrying their machetes in pouches on their sides from working in the mountains. Occasionally we passed men carrying large lumpy sacks on their backs, filled with charcoal from cutting and burning trees on the mountains. The practice is prohibited by the government because it is destroying the mountains, but for a poor farming community it is one of the few means of making a living.
And then there I was, in the mountains, surrounded by Dumagat families, 30-40 middle-aged Filipino men and their trucks, and a whole lot of fish and rice for lunch. Talk about a strange site! Some of the girls played games with a thin rope, one of which was called Chinese Garter. Video attached, thought it was interesting!
Meanwhile, I must pause my recapping of these events because as I look out through the gate of my house I see a little boy no older than 5 holding a lit cigarette in his hand. Can’t be, who would give a five year old a cigarette? And then I see he is only playing with it, trying to spit on the end to put it out. A minute later, two more kids come running down the road pushing spare tires. Working? No, just another game.
And that is all for me today.
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