The Distant Glow

By Terry I. Sarigumba

This book tells a story about extreme poverty and how the shackles of poverty were shattered by faith in God, dreaming the impossible dream, streaks of luck that the author attributes to the work of the Holy Spirit, government benefits, help from many people and opportunities that abound in a democratic society and free enterprise system. Hardsh

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Sep 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949502961

Terry I. Sarigumba

Terry Sarigumba descended from very poor parents who inherited their poverty from poor and illiterate ancestors. With scholarships and assistantship grants, he finished high school, college and graduate school. Terry found a job in private industrial forestry in the US in which he used scientific innovations to help the companies he worked for to cost effectively and environmentally meet their corporate goals. Terry and his wife, Nattie (nee Del Mundo), has resided in Brunswick, Georgia since 1975 and they are just six years away from celebrating their golden wedding anniversary in 2019. Terry and Nattie are blessed with three sons, Edzel, Glenn and Dean, who are all hard-working, talented and academically and professionally successful, with two lovely and loving daughters-in-law, Valerie (Nee Dippery), Edzel’s wife and Robin (nee Wedekind), Dean’s wife and five beautiful grandchildren: Dominic (8), Mitchell (6), Noelle (4), Abigail (4) and Madeline (2). With the grandchildren (APOs), Terry and Nattie enjoy doing APOstolic work.

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Distant Glow

Terry I Sarigumba

Copyright © 2018 by Terry I Sarigumba.

Paperback: 978-1-949502-95-4

eBook: 978-1-949502-96-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Ordering Information:

For orders and inquiries, please contact:

1-888-375-9818

www.toplinkpublishing.com

[e-mail]

Printed in the United States of America

To my family, relatives and friends.

Thanks.

- Terry

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1 Roots and Rigors of Poverty

The Rugged Paths

Passage to Manhood

Primary and Elementary Schools

Work and Play

Skills and Guts

Courtship

Escapades in Mindanao

Adieu Mindanao

Chapter 2 Getting to High School

Knock, Knock – Opportunity

High School with a Late Start

Foundations of Learning

Student Politics

Extra-curricular Activities

Vocational Skills

Rewards for Academic Excellence

The Door to College

Chapter 3 Higher Curves of Learning

Heading to a New Horizon

Scaling the Slopes of Makiling

College Life Began

Summer Interlude

The College Grind Gritting Harder

Extra-curricular Activities

Year Four and Relentless Rigors

Student Politics and Activism

On Track to the Dream

Chapter 4 Career and Status Change

Two for the Road

Interlude Again?

De Colores

Going to Graduate School

I Kissed the Rose and the Rose Kissed Me

The Wedding

Farewell - Not Good-bye

Chapter 5 Adventures in the Land of Dreams

Going to America

Coming to America

Footprints in the Ivy League

Working for Food

Falling Leaves

Falling Snow

The Filipino Connection

Winter Blues – Springtime Hues

New England Summer

Naty and Making Decisions

Autumn Again

On Track to the Goal

An End and a Beginning

Getting a New Title: DAD

Moving South

Chapter 6 Doctorate in the Sunshine State

Trip to the South

Lights and Shadows in the Sunshine State

Acts in Academics

Making Ends Meet

Kokoy

The Scientific Method

Upon This Rack

Go Gators

Surprised By Politics

Family Growth

Driving Lessons

Janitorial Service

Christmas in the Sunshine State

Expanding Database

Winding Up and Down and Up

Dr. Sarigumba

Chapter 7 The Possible Dream

Blue Christmas

Introduction to Private Industrial Forestry

Faces and Places in the Golden Isles

Turning Red to Green

Footprints in the Flatwoods

Family Growth

Home Number One

Building the Expertise

Wheels and Deals

Seeing Places Old and New

Green Card Almost Discarded

Publicity and Change

Pledging Allegiance to the American Flag

Home Number Two

Homecoming Philippines

Back to the Flatwoods

Chapter 8 A Reachable Dream

A Hostile Take Over

GO GP

Technology Transfer

Changes

The Technical Group

The Forest Alternative to Residuals Management

GP GO

Surinam

Fertigation – A New Tech

Mixed Signals

New Tech Diversification

The Timber Company – World Class

202 and 911

The Clouded Sunset

Chapter 9 We Are Family

Two for the Road and Company

Grade School, Elementary and High School

Sports

Speech

College Education

Wheels and Words

Corporate Careers – New Family Members

APOstolic Succession

The Afterglow

The Latest Glow

Chapter 10 Begin Again

Money Matters

BS from the US

Social Spheres

Foreword

The Distant Glow is a touching and true-life story of our Dad. For the three of us and our families, the story is a source of pride and inspiration. It is a compelling story of a man’s struggles to unshackle himself from the fetters of poverty and raise himself to the glory of freedom and comfort. It is an embodiment of Dad’s goals, hopes, dreams, curiosity, imagination, patience, perseverance, victories, defeats and dogged pursuit for answers (truths) and a statement of his contribution to overcoming poverty (poverty alleviation and elimination) in his own small way.

While poverty alleviation remains a challenging issue for many developing countries (and policy makers could get a little more context about effecting change in this regard by reading this book), the true power of this story revolves around the character and indomitable spirit of a child growing to be a man, overcoming obstacles to try and take the best path in life and embracing all of the ups and downs that come with it. The Distant Glow glaringly reveals that in his case, there were no short cuts. And we can all learn from this story by applying its lessons to our own unique journeys to overcome whatever challenges we have in our lives. The mentality things do not come easy should not ever be a reason to lose hope – most all of our journeys will be difficult in their own right. But Dad’s story teaches that things can be moved in the right direction with effort, persistence, faith in divine guidance, and taking advantage of the help from others as well as the lucky bounces that happen from time to time. But underneath it all is always a determined spirit of the individual. As a cliché, the following phrase is nonetheless apropos: A winner never quits, a quitter never wins.

We are fascinated by his streaks of luck, streaks that our Dad attributes to the work of the Holy Spirit. One example is when he worked in a furniture store in which his supervising manager robbed him of the opportunity to make his first sale and commission. This led him to leave the store, enter a Church to momentarily pray and go home. There, the mayor of his town happened to see him and gave him an application to take an exam, the passing of which was a pathway to winning a government scholarship for a degree at the U. P. College of Forestry, a premiere institution of learning in the Philippines. This validated the expression "blessing in disguise." The scholarship was a much bigger blessing than the missed sales commission. For him, this small event changed the course of his life – it was a big break that led him in his journey out of poverty. Streaks of luck indeed occurred many times in Dad’s life and he continues to thank the Holy Spirit that those streaks of luck went his way.

Dad’s story demonstrates that education is an effective way to alleviate poverty. Education is a protracted process, often overlooked, but a solution that greatly increases one’s chances for personal and professional success. Here is a simple model that works based on an individual experience. Can’t it be replicated and multiplied? There is always a huge need for an educated workforce.

Indeed, education can be a big facilitator of personal growth and foundation for professional accomplishments. During his youth, Dad did kaingin farming (shifting cultivation) as a way to grow agricultural crops, not knowing of the environmentally harmful consequences of cutting trees and burning them. It was then that he did not think, mistakenly, that cutting trees would require a college degree. When he had the opportunity to study and learn forestry in undergraduate and graduate schools, he realized that forestry is certainly a lot more than just cutting trees; and he came to appreciate the value of the forestry even more during his 27 years of professional work in private industrial forestry in America. At first, he thought his kaingin practices were sins against the environment but as a professional forester, he realized that farming can be practiced productively and without harming the environment by applying the principles in forestry. Through Dad’s research work, he used science, technology and sustainable environmental management to help the companies he worked for to cost effectively reach the upper limits of forest productivity in an environmentally sustainable manner. The companies that Dad worked for became known for their profitable and world class forestry operations. Because of his education, Dad was able to add value and establish a sense of accomplishment and contribution as part of his life’s journey. We think that applying what you learn, adding value, and contributing to life (personally and/or professionally) are important parts of anyone’s journey.

We learned many lessons from Dad. He taught us the value of education, and the importance of the dedication and hard work it required. He taught us the value of work by serving as an example and that’s one reason we ourselves were working during our time in high school and college. We know that education and hard work are factors that helped us in our academic and professional endeavors. Furthermore, Dad taught us the value of being well-rounded individuals. We were encouraged to participate in many extra-curricular activities. We picked up his love for sports, particularly basketball which Dad taught us to play – and through that we scored memorable events, winning championship games on the courts in high school and in the driveway at home. Dad also helped us in other activities such as oratorical competitions and science fair presentations. With sports, we lavished the ecstasy of victory, appreciated the value of sportsmanship, and welcomed the joys of camaraderie (even among us siblings!). With speech, we learned the art of communication which can be achieved by being heard and understood by the audience. These are just some of the lessons we learned from a few of the activities we were encouraged to participate in. We are going to pass on what we learned from Dad to our children.

Dad is a successful father mainly because of our Mom with whom they are Two for the Road traveling in a journey that features their love for each other, their love for us and their teachings of faith in God and family unity, the ingredients for safe, prosperous and successful living.

The republication of The Distant Glow by Top Link is a highly welcomed development, an opportunity for book revision, updates and improvements. We are optimistic that the book in its revised edition will continue to infuse the readers with inspiration and offer lessons for their own journeys.

Edzel Sarigumba

Glenn Sarigumba

Dean Sarigumba

Preface

Edzel, Glenn and Dean in their early youth started hearing my stories about poverty in the Philippines, my youth mostly spent in poverty and my poor parents who inherited poverty from their illiterate ancestors. At first, the word poverty drew blank in their eyes. Regardless of some details I told them of my youthful experiences, they still could not grasp the meaning of the word.

That changed during and after our family trip to the Philippines when they were in their teens. The boys started seeing the images of poverty at the Manila International Airport (MIA) where upon exit from the gates and into the streets men, women and children milled with the arriving passengers, offering taxi rides, begging to carry their luggage, or just begging for money. Along the streets to our destination, they saw children, many in rags, hawking things and begging.

We spent the first night in Marikina, a suburb of Manila, in the small house occupied by one of Nattie’s sisters, her husband and two young sons. The house was barely sufficient for a family of four, but that night it had to accommodate my family of five and my mother-in-law and sister-n-law who were with us in the trip. In the absence of beds, we had to sleep on the concrete floor cushioned with blankets. With our stomachs set free by travel stress and unfamiliar foods, we lined up with grimacing faces for the turn to use just one toilet. Remarkably, I did not hear the boys complain about the discomfort. We could have stayed in a hotel but not doing so enabled us to more closely interact with relatives and the experience was more memorable for the boys.

We then headed to Bohol where the sleeping accommodation remained hard on the back: on the wooden floor or wooden cots without mattresses. The boys seemed to enjoy using the outhouse for their comfort needs. There were abundant traces of the things I used to do in my youth: a newly burned hillside farm, the rugged paths I used to thread on going to different farming activities, the rice fields I used to plow, a water buffalo on which the boys took turns riding, my father’s wooden plow and the coconut tree sanggutans I used to climb three times a day. They clicked well with their cousins and made friends with the other kids in the neighborhood. There was a basketball court, unpaved but quite level probably because of constant threading. When they played a game, they asserted superior skills probably because of their experience in the US or also probably because while they were wearing their Nike shoes, the other kids were playing barefooted. Playing and interacting with the kids in the neighborhood enabled the boys to see images of hunger, want and poverty, the same images that I used to wear when I was a boy. When we were there, my hometown was suffering from a long drought. Water was scarce. The boys went with the group to bathe beside a well, about 2 miles away, in the company of many people of both sexes in the community. On their way back, they helped carry cans of water for cooking and drinking purposes.

When we returned to the US, the boys told me in chorus: Dad, we now know what you meant by poverty. Seeing many children hungry and in worn out clothing taught us a lesson: we are grateful for what we have and we should not be wasteful. Then Edzel continued: Dad, it is remarkable how you were able to break away from the shackles of poverty, go through college and graduate school and have a good job with a private company in America. You should write your life story, Dad, so we can use it to tell our children about what you have done.

Edzel’s request was easy to comply with because actually I had been writing articles recounting parts and parcels of my journey. When I started putting together the story, I did not have yet a title. The title materialized while I was writing the episode of my story during which I was sitting on top of a tall coconut tree (sanggutan) about 50 feet high in the air one cool evening, seeing a glow in the distant horizon and pledging to find out what caused that glow. I called it "The Distant Glow" and it became the metaphor for dreaming dreams and reaching goals and the title of this memoir. I did find out that the glow that I saw from atop the coconut tree came from the lights in the city of Cebu and this epitomizes my success in getting seemingly impossible dreams possible and reaching many of my goals.

The Distant Glow reflects almost all aspects of my journey: social, educational, professional, technical, political, economic and spiritual. Episodes are recounted in chronological sequence, with occasional flash-backs when appropriate. For every aspect, I try to convey my message in a layman’s language: even the technical stuffs are written non-technically. I want my readers, foresters and non-foresters, to understand what I did in forestry. So, going through my professional work, the readers can learn lessons on the principles and the mechanics of site specific management and the economic and environmental rationales behind pursuing the upper limits of forest productivity. I look back with pride that in a small way I had helped Georgia-Pacific Corporation, the last company I worked for, become a world class forestry practitioner by implementing many of my management recommendations. There were instances that indicate that I had been a victim of racial discrimination but I considered those instances as inevitable expressions of being human and I did not allow them to diminish the quality of my personal story.

I drew heavily from on-line materials and based my discussions and opinions on what I know and believe and on the books I have read. Because this is not a technical book, I did not include a reference section but I identify within the text sources of materials that need to be cited. Most of the pictures I use I took myself but those that I did not are cited for their sources within the text.

Because of my efforts to begin again after retirement, the writing of this memoir took a long time. Distractions, many willfully welcomed on my part, were considerable. Encounters with a writer’s block also contributed to the slowdown. There had been occasions when I almost ran out of resolve to finish the writing project. But, while Edzel motivated me to start writing the memoir, Glenn and Dean would not let me quit. Every time we talk, Glenn would never fail to ask: Where are you in the book, Dad? Dean gave me a push with no escape route. He said: "Dad, someday, one of your grandchildren will be president and when that happens, he or she will be waving a book saying ‘The title of this book is The Distant Glow written by my great Lolo.’" I hope I will still be around when that happens but whether I will be or not, I have made the resolve that there will be a book to wave.

Nattie at first had a hard time understanding the severity of hardships I endured during my childhood. Her own family was not well-to-do and she endured some levels of hardship as well. And she endured other levels of hardships with me, especially during the early years of our marriage and what we had endured in our youth inspired us to endure the hardships together and we are grateful that through all thick and thin, we found solutions for many problems that confronted us. Her love and support are great sources of inspiration for the writing of this book.

My threes sons, while they strongly pushed for the writing and publication of this book, are great sources of pride and inspiration. They are great blessings of fatherhood. I delight in the observation that they themselves are great fathers, leading, with the help of my lovely and loving daughters-in-law, their families in pursuing education, getting involved in sports and several extra curricular activities and having faith in God.

Several people who had read the draft of this memoir had made encouraging comments that contributed to the push to write this book. The late Carol Child, who made her living editing materials for publication, offered to read my manuscript and made the necessary corrections. Carol, the mother of my daughter-in-law, Robin, tightened up many of my passages and told me what I was writing was inspirational to read. What a great push! Her soul rests in eternal peace.

The first edition of The Distant Glow, published in 2014 and listed with Amazon, has tallied a few sales which have been very sporadic. This hopefully will change. The in-house professional book scouts of Top Link reviewed The Distant Glow and saw a big potential with the book and with such evaluation, the company offered to re-publish The Distant Glow at their cost with the goal of taking the book to its highest potential. I accepted Top Link’s offer with great interest, especially with the opportunity to do revisions, updates and improvements. During the revision process, I did discover several areas of improvement, in addition to the updates on my dynamic family and social circles around me. In this revised edition, I took out several topics, which resulted in the book’s reduced length and justifies a cheaper pricing than the first edition. I am optimistic that, with Top Link’s professional services, The Distant Glow" will reach its highest potential in readership and sales.

Chapter One

Roots and Rigors of Poverty

The Rugged Paths

"Mga Hapon!" my mother screamed. Alone in my grandmother’s house with my infant cousin and me, my mother turned pale and quaked in terror as Japanese soldiers, accompanied by Filipino civilians, came to the front yard of the house. But she did not cower in helplessness. Instead, she picked up my cousin from the cradle and led me by the hand as we went outside the house. I saw three Japanese soldiers with guns and bayonets and two Filipino civilians milling around the yard.

The year was 1943 when I was four years old. The Japanese occupation of the Philippines was at the darkest hour of its atrocities as stories were heard about Japanese soldiers grabbing little children from their mothers’ arms, tossing them in the air and catching them by bayonets on their way down. My cousin, who was sleeping peacefully on my mother’s shoulder, and I were in a vulnerable set up for whatever the soldiers would want to do with their guns and bayonets.

But the soldiers had something else in mind. One of them talked to the two Filipino men who in turned talked to my mother. The soldiers wanted to have one of my grandmother’s pigs which were grunting restlessly inside the pigpen. I was leaning against a banana trunk and one of the soldiers just laid his rifle against me. My mother turned paler and told me to move away from the banana trunk. The two Filipino men tied up one of my grandmother’s pigs and the group left with their loot. Squealing and hanging from the bamboo pole by which it was carried, the pig was just minutes away from becoming grilled pork. One could only wonder what might have happened if my grandmother did not have any pigs. Would there have been a slaughter of humans instead?

Despite my youth when it happened, the incident remains vivid in my memory and the story, told and re-told by my mother in the course of time, unfailingly bothers my mind whenever I remember it, as that indeed was a very close brush with death at so early a time in life.

The episode of danger with the Japanese soldiers actually was my second brush with death. The first one occurred before I was born. According to one of my aunts, my mother considered aborting me during early pregnancy, not because she did not want me, but because of how she was treated by her mother. My grandmother had opposed my father’s courtship of my mother because she did not like my father’s parents. Despite the objection though, the courtship bloomed into love and later produced a baby before marriage. That drove my mother’s mother crazy and she verbally castigated my mother unmercifully. Hurt by the stigma that she had given up her chastity before marriage, by lack of support or sympathy from her mother, and hurt much more when she learned that my father had left town, my mother ran down a steep hill and tumbled down. That was interpreted as an attempt to abort me.

When I was born, my father was in Mindanao doing some kind of business. I was already two years old when he came back to our hometown, Corella, Bohol. Shortly after his return, his love affair with my mother resumed. And they finally got married. My mother’s mother probably could no longer do anything to be in the way. Otherwise, another baby would have come out of wedlock.

After their marriage, we stayed at my father’s parents’ house where my first brother was born on January 6. He was named Melchor in honor of one of the Three Kings and my mother nicknamed him Ondoy, roughly meaning sweet little boy. Ondoy Melchor was a beautiful baby boy, robust, happy and always smiling. But at the tender age of nine months, he suddenly became sick and died shortly afterwards. My mother was inconsolable. During the funeral, several men had to pull her away because she would not allow Melchor’s coffin to be nailed closed.

During the war, many families, running away from the rampaging Japanese soldiers that had occupied the lowland areas of Bohol, fled to the mountains and opened up settlements there. We were among these evacuating families. My father built a little hut with bamboo slat walls and flooring and cogon grass roof at the foothill of a virgin forest. I was the only child then and I remember my mixed reactions of fear and fascination to the sights and sounds of the creatures in the wilderness. I had endless questions about what I saw and/or heard:

What is this? What are those? What made that sound?

Those are monkeys chirping and swinging through the vines, my mother would tell me.

"The resounding yell you heard came from the kalaws (hornbills) from the high treetops," explained my father.

They would point out to me the antilihawon, (the graceful black and yellow orioles in flight across the forest openings) and the kagwang (flying lemurs) gliding through the air from tree trunk to tree trunk. And I would get nervous watching my mother responding hysterically to the shrieking hawks circling in the sky and swooping down to pick their preys, mostly the hapless little chicks among the flock of chickens raised by my parents.

Hawks were not the only predators of my parents’ chickens. One of them was the hawo, a type of lizard which was more efficient than the hawks. My father decided to do something about it. One morning, he fed the chickens with corn grains and hid behind a tree. Pretty soon the huge hawo, about three feet long and four inches thick, slithered from behind the bushes and attempted to grab one of the feeding chickens. My father immediately jumped out from his hiding place and pursued the predator which was attempting to hide in a hole of a tree. But the hole was not big enough to accommodate its whole body. My father grabbed its tail, pulled out its body half way, stabbed it several times with his sundang (a long and tapered machete with very sharp point) and then pulled the lifeless and bloody body out of the tree hole. My father triumphed against the hawo but he could do nothing against the marauding hawks.

Our bamboo and cogon grass house was built at the edge of a mountain top basin, a slightly depressed area that was shaped like a big vat. My father called the depression "lupa", tilled it and planted it to corn and sweet potato. Around the basin were my father’s hillside farms, also planted with corn, sweet potato and yam. The corn, responding to the fertile soil, produced big ears some of which my mother would pick and cook directly on wooden charcoal (inanag) or boil in a pot (tilaob). Or she would shred the fresh corn and stuff the shredded grains into a pouch (called puso’) made of coconut leaves that were weaved into heart-like shape and cooked the preparation in boiling water. When the corn ears matured, my mother would deftly loose the dried kernels from the cobs with her bare hands (lusok), grind the loosed grains in a heavy stone mill (ligsanan). And the process would yield three types of grits: bugas (for ordinary cooking), binlud (for porridge or lugaw) and tik-tik (the powder-like portion that my mother would cook like a cake).

At the edge of the basin was a cave where bats slept during the day and from where they emerged during the night to feed on flies and other flying insects. At the middle of the lupa was a well, about 20 feet deep, from which my parents drew our drinking water. During dry days, the water level would recede to the bottom, beyond the reach of the pitching bamboo dipper. My father told me that at the bottom of the well was an eel that bore a small channel to connect the well to the spring and prevent the well from drying up. But the well did dry up many times. It looked like the eel did not do its job.

My father planted near the edge of the well a special species of banana called saging tindok. According to local folklore, the tindok banana possessed a magical power. It was said that in the bosom of the plant’s heart-shaped inflorescence (puso, pronounced pu’-so)) there was a gem that would drop right at the very moment when the puso first opened up. This was known as "Ang Mutya Sa Saging Tindok" (The Gem of The Tindok Banana). The gem had to be caught on its flight downward and swallowed right away for the magical power to take its effect. It required timing and luck.

My grandmother told my cousins and me a story of a man who made a concerted effort to get that power. First, he waited until the tindok banana started to bear fruit with the emergence of its puso. Many days he waited because the tindok banana was a very slow-growing plant. When the inflorescence finally started to emerge, he camped at the base of the banana plant, waiting for that magical moment for the puso to open up. He camped there for several nights. Finally, at the break of dawn, he heard a sound from the top of the banana plant and saw the inflorescence gradually bending downward. When it stopped moving, the maroon petals started opening up and let go a small round object that started to fall. The man stretched his arm to catch the falling treasure, but as he was about to snatch it, another hand materialized, trying to snatch the gem away from him. As the hands collided, the gem dropped to the ground. The man looked at the gem that gleamed under the nascent sunlight, looked up and realized that his competitor was a formidable one: the devil himself. Because it had dropped to the ground, the gem may already have lost its power, but the man and the devil continued on with their competition. They pushed and grabbed and wrestled. Minutes passed and the combat raged on. Then as the sun rose and beamed its full light, the devil relented and vanished. The man looked around, then down to the ground. The gem was gone. The moral of the story, my grandmother told us, was that we could always go for things that enhance as long as we were careful about interacting with the devil, an interaction in which no humans could win.

One day, I heard my father tell my mother that the tindok banana was having its inflorescence. I did not know if he was planning to camp overnight to watch for the puso to open up. It would not have mattered anyway. That night, a soaking rain fell, lasting until the following morning.

When I woke up in the morning, I saw the basin flooded and my father wading knee deep in the water and looking up at the tindok inflorescence that had already opened up. I never had seen so much water before. Delighted by the spectacle, I started wading into the flood, heading toward my father by the tindok plant. As I approached the middle of the basin, I was already chest deep in the water. Then I heard my mother screaming hysterically. When my father saw me, he shouted, Stop! He then led me out of the water and back to the house where he told me that had I moved a couple of steps further in the water, I would have fallen into the well. And nobody would have known about my fate because the flood did not subside for several days. That really was a very disturbing brush with death.

Most of the lofty trees that gave perch to the hornbills had been felled and burned by the settlers to provide space for growing crops to feed their hungry families. The war evacuees practiced the slash-N-burn farming method regardless of the terrain or size of the trees they cut down. In the first plantings, the crops grew productively. But the bounty would not last long. I heard my father and his visiting friends complaining about the declining yields from their farms. What used to be dark colored and thick topsoil following slash and burn had gradually disappeared and given way to rocky and pebbly subsoil.

In the subsequent years, as more of the trees were felled and burned, monkeys could be seen no more, the hornbill cries were rarely heard and the orioles were gone. Maybe they had evacuated to the higher and inaccessible slopes of the mountains. But the hawks remained, occasionally raiding the chickens of my parents. And then the crops could no longer grow on the eroded mountain slopes.

When the war was over we moved back to the lowland. My father built a small new house where my first sister, Rosita, was born. My mother nicknamed her Inday, a common Visayan term of endearment which roughly means dear little girl. As the first daughter, Inday was kind of spoiled by my parents. Whenever she and I quarreled, it was usually my fault and I usually got the whipping. But Inday was a lovable girl most parents would like to spoil. The only problem was that at first she did not want to go to school. Every morning during school days, she would pretend to have a stomach ache and my mother had to whip her with a coconut midrib to force her to go to school. But once she broke that initial distaste for school, she ended up liking it, excelling in her classes and graduating with honors.

Cecilia came when Rosita was over a year old. She was a delightful baby, beautiful like an angel. My mother also nicknamed her "Inday Cecilia". But at the age of four months, she became sick and died. No one ever knew what she died of (no doctor, no medicine available) but I vividly remember the few hours before she died. My mother was holding Cecilia in her arms, she was groaning and groaning but not crying. I was beside my mother holding on to her arms and my father was outside the room, helplessly watching his daughter in acute suffering. Sensing that the end was near, my mother asked my father to come near and hold the suffering baby girl. As he approached and attempted to take Cecilia from my mother’s arms, the baby stopped groaning, flashed a very sweet smile, and her tender chest heaved with her last gasp. My father cried like a baby to see his lovely baby girl depart for eternity.

Felisa came over a year later. This time, my mother or maybe my father or both gave her an Americanized nickname: Baby. Baby was a good baby, never making any trouble. My parents considered Baby a bearer of luck to the family because after she was born, some financial prosperity came to the family. My mother put up a store in the front porch of our little house and the store was doing pretty good. The store sold cookies, canned milk, sodas, and a few other things.

That little prosperity benefited my second brother, Eleno. My parents nicknamed him "Dodoy." I do not know what the nickname means but I guess anybody born in our family had to have a nickname. Instead of breastfeeding him, my mother fed Dodoy with sweetened condensed milk taken off the store inventory. Dodoy really liked his diet because he was the healthiest and most robust baby in the neighborhood. I did not share much of Dodoy’s growing years because I had left home to study and work. But I remember Dodoy as a very happy boy who loved to sing. One of his favorite songs had these lyrics Around, the world, I search for you, I travel on ….

My youngest sister, Olympia, came about two years after Dodoy. My parents nicknamed her Lym and gave her the same baby diet Dodoy had, sweetened condensed milk taken from the store inventory. What a healthy, happy and pretty baby I heard some people say about Lym. One early memorable thing about Lym was her Christening. My mother invited her business partners from another town as Lym’s Godparents. For the event my parents threw a lavish party, serving lots of food, featuring roasted chickens. But more memorable were the festivities that followed after the meal: singing, dancing and balitaw (a play in which the contestants engage in a verbal joust with sung poetry lines) that were carried on into the wee hours of the night. One of my father’s uncles, Iyo Tinong, known for his sharp wits and ability to engage in balitaw, jousted against the sister of Lym’s Godmother. The contest was very entertaining as each protagonist ably matched each other’s wits expressed in poetry. But as the contest wore on, Iyo Tinong ran out of words to say as his opponent kept on stronger and stronger with more and more rhymed lines to which Iyo Tinong had no answers.

My mother called me Loloy. I believe the term means my darling boy. People in our place, as is the case for most Filipinos, would not call their elders directly by first name. A term of respect always precedes the first name. For example younger people would call my father, whose first name is Andres, Manong Andes and they would address my mother, whose name is Flora, as Anding Porang. My sisters and brother should have called me Manong Terencio but they call me Loloy instead. And later on, almost everybody in our place called me Loloy also.

My father used to brag about winning my mother’s heart. She was one of the prettiest girls in town, he said. My mother had lovely eyes that kept on smiling even if she was sad. She had a good sense of humor, a nice singing voice and a magnetic ability to get along with people. My parents both descended from generations of illiterate and very poor families. Although they only had third grade education, both of them could read and write very well. My father was good in public speaking while my mother was more effective in business. They seldom quarreled and when they did, only one would be mad while the other would just say nothing. My father had a bad temper; when he was in his foul mode, the best way to get out of trouble was just get out of his way. My mother would vent her foul mood through nagging. I know they loved each other very much.

image_01.jpg

Flora Andoy Inting and Andres Varquez Sarigumba built a strong family through love, strict discipline, hard work and getting along well with people.

My mother spoiled us children with her love and affection. We felt so precious in her arms. When we were sick, she would not leave us alone; she would stay by our side, comforting us with her loving arms and her songs. One song I remember very well. I know how to sing it but every time I do, I cry. The song, in Cebuano, goes as follows:

My mother strongly adhered to family traditions. Every year she decorated a Christmas tree using a dried-up maguey flower, Japanese crepe paper and other materials. I learned to make a lantern and this added color of our Christmas celebrations. Every year she gave each of us children a birthday party, mine being the most elaborate. I did not hear my brother and sisters complain, probably because they accepted it as my privilege for being the eldest in the family.

A devout Catholic, my mother required that a birthday celebration must include attending the Mass in the morning. According to her, a birthday was both a celebration and a thanksgiving for the blessings of life. On my birthday (April 10), I would always go, after the Mass, up the altar tabernacle to pay homage to the patron saint of our town, the Virgin Mary of the Village (Santa Maria Del Villar). The devotion always strengthened my faith and instilled optimism in my hopes and dreams. From Church, the celebration would continue with a Rosary or a novena at the house where eating and tuba drinking were usually part of the program. Occasionally, a small rondalla would be available to sustain music for a nightlong program and dancing.

image_02.jpg

The house my father built where we all grew up in Cancatac, Corella, Bohol

We were a happy family but the images of poverty dominate the memories of my youth. I seldom had new clothing to wear, no pair of shoes. Food was very limited and I remember always being hungry. I also remember always waiting for something, something to happen, something to arrive. The road route connecting the capital town of Tagbilaran and the towns of Corella and Sikatuna was served by buses that plied the route every daytime hour. Our house was by the roadside and there was a bus stop where passengers got on and off the buses. Whenever I heard a passenger bus coming, I would rush to the roadside to see if those who were coming off had some good tidings for me to cheer about. But the passengers would just get off and proceed on their way, unmindful of the look of hunger and longing in my face.

One time, while I was playing with the neighborhood kids, we heard the sound of a vehicle coming. This time, however, the sound was different. It was a horrifying sound that made us think it was from a monster that was going to devour us. Instead of rushing to the roadside, we fled to the hillside and hid under the bushes, scared to death. From where we were hiding we saw passing by a weird-looking vehicle making a lot of reverberating sound. When the monster was gone, we emerged from our hiding places as a passenger bus was stopping. We heard passengers who were getting off saying that the thing we thought was a monster was actually a Caterpillar road grader which left surface scrapings along the roadside.

Early on, life in poverty appeared to be an inevitable fate with no way out. Looking at those blessed with better economic conditions than our family would make me wonder if things would ever change, if the future was going to be better, for me and our family. But I did not stop longing for an abundant life with lots of things to eat, new clothing to wear. It could just have been an impossible dream, but I kept on wishing that someday I would go somewhere and become somebody different from my poor parents and relatives. In the meantime, I had to deal with the reality of life that was nothing but just a journey on rugged paths full of hardships and constant struggles.

image_03.jpg

Through this rugged trail I passed many times to plow the rice fields, work on hillside farms, climb to harvest coconut trees or do the sanggutan, graze the carabaos, and several other tasks

On Mondays, the market day, people in Corella, Bohol, would head to town to buy and sell things. On one of those Mondays, I went with my mother to go shopping in the town. I walked behind her as she moved from one market stall to another looking for a good bargain of dried and salted fish. After making her last purchase of the day, a ganta of bugas mais (milled corn grits) we headed home, squeezing inside an overloaded passenger bus.

At home, my mother boiled a portion of the just purchased bugas mais on an earthen stove (dapog), grilled a few pieces of dried fish and soaked ginamos (salted fish) in home made vinegar. My younger brother and three younger sisters enjoyed the meal, taking in their meager shares manually. The family, like most families in our barrio, Cancatac, did not use forks and spoons during meals. Whatever silverware our family had was only to be used on special occasion, like having guests of some important stature. I ate my food reluctantly. My father would chastise me for being finicky. But I was not being finicky. Boiled milled corn was rough and not very appealing to the taste buds. I wished we had rice. But we could only have rice during a few weeks following rice harvest seasons (twice a year). A couple of days later, as we were down to our last handfuls of food, my mother turned to my father and muttered, I don’t know where we will get our next meals.

A devoted father and husband but a very strict disciplinarian, my father was a hard-working man. He toiled on a farm that was owned by an absentee landlord who twice a year would show up in our town to claim his fifty percent share of the farm produce. Farming in Cancatac, growing rice on latiritic rain fed paddies and corn, sweet potato and yam on eroded hillsides (kaingin), was a backbreaking daily grind. With sufficient rain during the growing season, my father’s farming effort would turn in some produce that could feed the family, though not sufficiently, through the next harvest season. On certain years, however, droughts would set in and further reduce an already very low food supply. I remember being hungry most of the time and few occasions when there was good and sufficient food would seem to give me a taste of heaven, if ever one knew how heaven felt like to be in. However, though hungry and malnourished most of the time, nobody in our town, as far as I knew, ever died of starvation.

image_04.jpg

Slash-N-Burn farming practiced by my father and generations before him and many farming families in the Philippines, involves cutting the trees regardless of size or age and terrain. The burned area is planted to corn, sweet potato, yam and other crops. After 3 years, topsoil on the slopes is lost to erosion and the farm becomes infertile and the farmer abandons the farm, moves to another area and perpetuates the slash-N-Burn shifting cultivation practice.

My father diversified his occupation with "tuba" gathering. Tuba, a slightly alcoholic drink, is produced by bleeding the coconut inflorescence and collecting the sap into a specially crafted bamboo tube (called sawod) laced at the bottom with crushed tanbark, a preservative, to slow down the fermentation. A tuba-tapped coconut tree is called sanggutan and a sanggutan operator is called a mananggite. My father inherited the calling from his ancestors who were farmers and mananggite themselves.

To make the sap flow continuously, the inflorescence wound must be kept fresh by thinly slicing it at the tip with a scythe three times a day. Each coconut tree, about 50 to 70 feet in height, had to be climbed three times a day with no ladder involved. Climbing, always barefooted, was made on a series of steps, called hak-hak, that were hacked, using a machete, into the tree trunk. Early in the morning before sunrise, my father would collect the sap from the sawod and empty it into a bigger bamboo tube called kawit. A productive coconut tree would yield about one quart of tuba every day. In his most productive days, my father would collect about two gallons of tuba per day, keeping about two quarts of his daily production for his own drinking pleasure and selling the rest to a dealer who would accumulate a truckload of containers with tuba from other mananggites and distribute it to retailers. The mananggites did the labor to produce the commodity, the distributor and the retailer made the profits.

image_05.jpg

(L) My father, the mananggite, sitting atop the sanggutan, removing the sawod, transferring the tuba to his kawit, thoroughly cleaning the sawod, adding freshly ground tungog (tanbark, a preservative), slicing the end of the bent and unopened inflorescence to freshen the wound and replacing the sawod. (R) Like father, like son, me, the former mananggite, with kawit and sa’d (scythe), attempting in 2004 to climb a sanggutan and, being limber no more and suffering from alto phobia, managing to negotiate only two hak-haks.

Like father, like son, I also diversified to tuba gathering or pananggot. During his most active days, my father maintained about ten trees or sanggutans. In the beginning, Father would let me spell him on the tree-climbing chore: slicing the inflorescence, cleaning the sawod, and collecting the tuba into the kawit. Gradually, I took over the chore and my father, starting to slow down with age, was more than glad to turn over the responsibility to me.

I understood why my father, and as a matter of fact, almost all men in our town, liked tuba. It tasted good, especially when taken fresh from the sawod. As an alcoholic drink, more than three glasses of the thing could make one really drunk. I liked tuba myself, especially the one my father produced. It was the best in town.

Doing the sanggutans was a highly dangerous job. A slip here or there could mean a fatal fall from atop the coconut tree. One time, as I went over the crown top and started to sit on one of the palms, a snake swung in front of me. I did not know what kind of snake that was, sort of dark brown in color. It bent in an apparent attempt to strike. Instinctively, I pulled the scythe from its sheath and cleanly cut its head off. The headless body squirted blood and dropped to the ground. For a while I remained sitting on the palm, unnerved and still shaken with fright. Other than the terrifying experience, I found maintaining the sanggutans very challenging. I tried to make my tuba taste better than my father’s and I increased my number of sanggutans to twenty trees.

To supplement my father’s meager farm production, my mother would go around to other farmers, especially those with better farm production, and bartered some of my father’s tuba for freshly threshed rice. This barter system was called mamagat. I used to tag along with my mother doing the mamagat and watch her business practice, making sure she got the maximum scoops of threshed rice for every cup of tuba. Most of the farmers, especially those who were tired and thirsty and could use a drinking break, were generous. Once a sip or two of the tuba got into their system, they would perk up and get ready to resume the threshing.

In one of our mamagat stops, the farmer teasingly asked me to take over the threshing while he was having a drinking break. Thinking that it was an easy job, I stepped on the sheaf of rice stalks that was laid on the mat and started churning with my lanky legs. But with lack of weight and leg strength I could barely knock off a grain. I had to give up the attempt when the sharp point of a grain of rice pricked into my sole and made it bleed. Having had his drinking break, the farmer told me to move aside so he could demonstrate the process.

You need to know how to do this, he said, you are now seven years old and in a few years you should be helping your father do the threshing.

He stepped on the end of the sheaf and, while leaning against the bamboo bar, folded the stalks back and forth and squeezed them with considerable pressure with his bare feet. The grains were easily knocked off the stalks with his thickly calloused bare feet. His years of walking bare footed assured him of the thick callous. I did learn the threshing process years later but my foot callous was not thick enough and would not last more than two days of threshing. When my foot callous would disappear, the skin of my sole would get rubbed so thin and bleeding would ensue. But there would be no stopping the work unless the job was done. With blood and sweat the threshing must continue from start to finish.

My father did not want me to grow up as a spoiled child so he did not spare the rod. I could remember him whipping me, not with a belt but with a half-inch limb of a guava bush, his favorite rod. I suffered some whipping from my mother too but she rarely physically punished me. When she got mad at me, she would pick three midribs from a broom and chip my behind. Those midribs did not quite hurt as bad as the guava limb but they delivered a lot of sting as well.

While I helped my father on the farm, I also helped my mother do household work: polishing the floor, sweeping the yard, feeding the pigs, hand washing clothes, and, being the eldest in the family, helping take care of my sisters and brother. Hand washing clothes was no big deal but washing baby diapers heavily soiled by baby poop was something else. Diapers were derived from empty flour sacks (called harinahan) that were cut into pieces big enough to prevent the poop and urine from spilling. Freshly soiled diapers were easier to wash but those that had been sitting for days were more difficult to handle because the feces had hardened. To soften the stain, my mother showed me a technique: soak the diapers in a big vat in water and soap. After an hour, the soaked material would be retrieved from the vat and beaten up with a wooden paddle (palo) on top of a flat rock.

One day, while I was washing diapers and other pieces of clothing at the bank of a brook, some men came by and laughed at me, calling me a sissy. Other boys who overheard the taunt joined in the jeering:

Sissy, sissy!

One of the women who were washing clothes and bathing nearby consoled me:

Don’t pay attention to those devils, you are a good boy. I wish I have a son like you.

I was not aware if other boys my age helped their mothers do household chores like I did. Actually, not many boys could label me sissy because in manly activities (doing farm work or in sports) not many boys my age could outdo me. And even with my lanky build, I was tough in occasional fistfights. One time, on my way home from school, a guy provoked me to a fight, confident that he could beat me because of my lanky build. He was surprised that I fought back and beat him punch for punch. Also one time, I got engaged in a gloved boxing match against an older and bigger opponent. He was beating me handily but I did not surrender easily. Then an uppercut landed against my left rib cage. I did not get knocked down but I almost passed out. Realizing that I was hurt, my opponent, named Cosme, shook off his gloves and helped me straighten up. Later, he became one of my closest friends and would help me against bullies who continued to call me a sissy. The impact of Cosme’s uppercut persisted for many years.

Passage to Manhood

The early rites of manhood involved circumcision. There was nothing Biblical about my understanding of the need to do it. In our place each male had to go through the ritual because not being circumcised was sort of pariah. An uncircumcised male would be an object of derision: "Pisot, pisot!!!" It was an embarrassment for a normal male to be derided as pisot.

I was eight years old when I went through the operation. My cousin, who was seven years old, and I agreed to do the ritual at the same time. We walked about two kilometers to the house of a circumciser and requested for his service. After telling us the price of the operation, the circumciser took out his big knife (but smaller than the sundang my father used to kill the hawo) and sharpened it like a razor. He carved out a short pole (half the length of a baseball bat) from a coconut palm and cut a branched limb of a guava tree. He planted the limb on the ground to serve as a tripod on which he placed the knife with its blade up.

My cousin volunteered to have his operation done first. He sat on the bare ground in front of the guava limb tripod. The circumciser opened up the tip of the tiny penis and inserted the tip of the knife. He asked my cousin to look up and, using the coconut palm bat, hit the foreskin. Whack! At the first hit, my cousin jerked his butt forward in response to the pain. Two more whacks were needed to completely sever the foreskin. My cousin was obviously in pain but he did not cry. You’re brave, you’re really a man! the circumciser praised him. The circumciser then scraped some powdery material from the base of a coconut palm and sprinkled it over the slightly bleeding cut. He then wrapped the wounded pecker with banana shoot and told my cousin to put on his bahag (G-string).

I was stricken with fear watching the bloody process but I had to prove that I also was brave and really a man. Only one whack was needed to split my foreskin. My cousin and I each paid the surgeon ten centavos, which at the time was equivalent to a nickel, and walked our way home. Along the way, the women prudishly avoided paying attention to our predicament but the men approvingly acknowledged our passage: two little men limping in their bloody bahags. After three days, the wounds started to heal and we were able to put on our pants again and back to work.

I helped my father with his farming work: hand weeding, plowing, planting and harvesting rice (which included threshing). Plowing the paddies in preparation for planting rice was a very challenging process. It involved steering a heavy wooden plow as it was pulled by a carabao (water buffalo). Being able to operate a plow was another tacit symbol of manhood.

At age 11, I thought I was ready to be a man; I wanted to learn how to operate the wooden plow. One day, without my father’s knowledge, I surreptitiously hitched the plow to the carabao, a big unruly bull. A boy and a bull and a wooden plow between them eased down the rice paddies to plow. Holding up the wooden plow, which was almost twice my height, I tugged the rope, which was tied to the nostrils of the bull, to tell him to start pulling. He pulled hard and fast. My boyish gaits proved to be no match to the bull’s long and strong strides and I almost stumbled into the mud. To gain control, I tilted the plow up and it sank deep into the clayey ground, making it very difficult for the bull to pull. Probably challenged by the difficulty, the bull pulled harder and broke the plow.

I started to cry not knowing what to do. As if nature was sympathizing