A LOOK BACK...

I grew up in the villages of Nansiakan and Mapayao Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines at a time when everyone treated each other like Family; everyone's mom was called auntie even if they were no relation. 👫 We were never carried in strollers but we had a better ride in the form of our mother's or grandmother's "kayabang" (basket carried on the back with an "oyon"). Our playground was the rice field, following along behind the water buffalo as our dad plough the field. As early as 7 years old, we were responsible little persons that our parents trusted us to take care of our baby brothers and sisters when they were gone for a whole day working in the farm a considerable distance away, and they knew we would make fire, boil rice and feed the baby with the rice-water or cooked porridge if our sibling is a toddler or take our baby sibling to the neighbour for breastmilk if the baby gets hungry before our mom gets home. At 10 years old, we were expected to wake up very early in the morning, pound rice grains and cook it for breakfast, sweep the backyard and prepare to walk to school. 

 

During planting or harvest seasons, a time when the community comes together to work in one farm to finish the work more speedily, we knew that we children are responsible for two things: 1) watch the babies (not necessarily your sibling or your cousin or any relative but any baby whose parent is working with your parent in your field), and 2) to get 'liting' (water for cooking and drinking) from a few kilometers away and to bring some to the adults working in the fields so they could get a drink. We ate what is on the floor (no dining table or whatever) be it rice or boiled camote without complaining or looking for something else. We never heard of hotdogs or bacons, salami, or cheese or even longganisa or tocino. Eggs were only for hatching and we did eat some boiled eggs once in a blue moon after the hen decided it was not mature enough to hatch. We had no electricity, let alone tv, or fridge, ice candies, or ice cream, bikes, or such stuff. Our pets were our chickens and we wept for them when our parents say it is time for them to become food. Special family dinners were when one of these chickens is butchered and boiled with ginger and salt. We know firsthand what famine means because in 1981, the drought stayed too long until there was nothing left to eat but the tongpop (bamboo shoot) and the ama-ton-bila (the trunk of the taro plant). 

 

We built our own tree houses with banana leaves as roofing and walling materials. We made our own fun with the resources that we find in the farm and the forest; we made our own toy guns out of bamboo branches with paper we chewed as bullets. We made spinning tops (mostly my brother did that) out of balanti wood and 'bibingey' (spinning wheels) out of leblebeng fruits. We went with our grandparents at night as they wait silently under the stars with their halikep (nets) spread out to catch the elusive fruit bats so we would have meat for breakfast the next day. We dug out edible beetles from the earth because we know where to find them, burrowed deep in the soil under the roots of little bushes.  We loved intabak and indamdam and illo-mog sweet potatoes. We swung on withered banana leaves still hanging on the tree and if it breaks and get us hurt when we are thrown down a hill, we would laugh at our own foolishness with our friends mocking us, then we get up and do it all over again. We played hide and seek with our friends in the early evening 🌳, with the darkness as our cover. We gave the classic chasing game (a-awwot) a new spin by playing it up the spreading branches of a mango or balete tree or a grove of bamboos.  When we get bored, we'd run down the ricefields and take turns riding on the back of water buffaloes.

 

 Our celebrity idols were not actors or actresses in Manila but the beautiful sons and daughters of the foreign and local missionaries in our villages. Their names were Kimberly, Debbie, Danny, Bobby, Johanna, Gay and Ruthie. Our movies were slide shows of pictures of their lives in their home country/home city, and we did not know that it was not actually a movie. The highlights of our days were running down the little airstrip to see the small airplane that just landed and see who comes or goes. I should probably mention that the most impossible thing that a village girl like me had experience during that period in my life was boarding a cessna airplane a few times and a helicopter at another time to go to town. Those probably were the most exciting experiences of my childhood. Sleep overs were with our cousins whose house was on the other side of a mountain. Our bedtime stories were the tragic tales of our people told by our grandmothers about how they fled to the mountains to escape the Japanese soldiers during WW2, and when it gets to a point in the story where our grandmother did not want to bring to her mind anymore because it was too personal or graphic, we would ask her to switch to a fable (a-abbig) that we heard a thousand times. We wait impatiently for the time when our uncle who's going to school in the lowlands comes home with new stories. 

 

But in case you mistakenly think what a bunch of nice kids we were, do not be fooled. We were kids after all and kids love getting in trouble. When our mothers tell us to go fetch water, we would be so enthusiastic about it because it meant we could sneak out and go skinny-dipping in the river. After an hour or two, we'd fetch the water and bring home little stone crabs from the river to our mothers, hoping she won't give us the third degree or the 'oyon.' When we fight with other kids, we reenact one of our favourite fables about the monkey and the turtle who cut an uprooted banana tree in half with the root end going to the turtle, and when it grew and bear fruit, the turtle was unable to climb and harvest it, so the monkey who planted the end with the leaves that eventually withered and died, offered to climb, the turtle happily agreed but when the monkey won't throw down even a single banana to the turtle, the turtle took thorns from the nearby pomelo tree, shouted that rain is coming and the monkey climbed down too quickly hurting himself on the thorns planted by the turtle sharp-end up on the banana trunk and on the ground. Yes, we 'lodok' our 'enemies' with pomelo thorns but then the next day we'd make up and laugh and play together again, even piercing each other's ears with pomelo thorns as our reconciliation pacts. We have stolen bananas that people buried under some leaves in their farm for ripening. I personally got beaten up by my mother when the owner of a bunch of banana I stole and ate with my friend reported me to my mother. Sometimes, I imagine that I still can feel the crack of the dry stick of reed (paol) with which my mom used to beat me on my behind. I am not proud of that but I have done it and was and am sorry. 

 

We do not say sorry, because we do not have that word in the language. We just smile and when they smile back then we are good. We find thank-you offensive so we do not say it when someone gives us something or do us a favor because we know that when we also have something or can do a favor for someone, then we would do it freely and readily. We understood that the community is our extended family and you can expect them to help you in times of need. We have learned this by example; because when there were emergencies, like when someone needed to be brought to town for hospitalization, our dads would help carry the sick person lying in a hammock part of the way, because that is what a community does. Houses were usually left unlocked, so when we travel far distances, it was by foot, and when hunger strikes along the way, it was normal and okay to enter someone else's house (even though the house owners are not around) to borrow their plates and spoons and eat the food we brought along for the journey. We may also drink their 'liting' or eat some of their cooked camote, then wash everything we used, put them back as we found them, and resume our journey. 

 

There were no such things as mobile phones or any gadgets like tablets. We find our entertainment outside the house with our friends. It seemed that there was nothing we were afraid of, and if there was, it would be getting sick. When we came down with something, we pretended we were okay as much as we can so we do not have to take the unbelievably bitter and nasty Aralen tablet, pulverized and diluted on a spoon when Malaria became prevalent during those days and we and some of our classmates start shivering at 4 in the afternoon everyday for weeks like clockwork. We jumped out of our classroom windows for fear of the needle as health professionals came to give us our BCG boosters. But other than that, 📵 we weren't AFRAID OF ANYTHING. 

Our curfew was the setting sun or until our mom yelled out our names. School ✏️📒 was mandatory, but you'd still wag a couple of lessons every now and then. We went to school by foot taking off our flip-flops to give it a longer life because we feared the knee-deep mud would ruin it. Never heard of shoes 👞👠 let alone wore one until graduation day from Grade 6. Taro leaves were our umbrella during rainy season. We watched our mouths around our elders👴🏼👵🏼 because we knew we'd get a crack, a belt from dad or oyon from mom if we start talking trash. All of that and some was my childhood and there was never a thought in my mind that I missed out on anything. (Okay, I might be lying a little in that last sentence! Hehehehe!) 

Definition of Terms: 

1.) Oyon - n. the head strap worn for supporting heavy loads on one's back, esp, the kayabang. 

2.) Intabak - a way of cooking sweet potato by boiling it with its skin in a boiling copper cauldron of pig food. The result is one with an interesting flavour. 🙂 

3.) Indamdam - Another way of cooking sweet potato by burying it under the ashes in the fireplace while something else is cooking over the fire. 

4. Illo-mog - yet another way of cooking by boiling unpeeled sweet potatoes. Traditionally, the proper way that Kalanguyas cook camote is by peeling it first and boiling it. 

5. Liting - a water taken from a spring which is good for cooking human food and drinking. It is the opposite of he-leb which is any water taken from any source such as the rice fields or the river, good only for washing muddy clothes or rubber boots and cooking pig food. #awesomechildhood

mY Synapses...