Leapin' Lizards Livonia! What's goin' on here?!

It's been raining off and on, all day today. The sea is restless, slamming against the seawall and exploding into a salt spray. Stephanie's brother, Clyde, and I, spent a long hour silently watching the wave action from the shelter of the porch on the guard shack of the fish sanctuary. The shack sits on stilts over the beach that forms the land boundary of the ocean sanctuary.

Once in a while I would say a few words and Clyde would smile or nod, conserving energy for the more-important business of being hypnotized by the moving ocean. We simply watched the powerful waves churn themselves into foam, while tumbling rocks, shells and sand in the deep rumble of the surf.

Earlier this morning, Clyde helped me shovel rocks and shells into an empty feed sack and carry loads of it across the street to the house, where they were dumped in the grassy space between the corn field and the fence around the yard, creating a parking space for the tricycle. In the hour and half we worked at it, I wore my sweaty self out and my lungs and ticker were calling for a reprieve.

As we stood at the railing of the guard shack, looking out to sea and at the beach below us, I noticed that each wave, in its second or two of washing over the shore, moved more rocks than we moved in the hour and half of toting the heavy sacks across the street. The waves quickly changed the arrangement of rocks back to the way it was before we meddled in nature's affairs with our shovel.

I am sitting at the kitchen table, writing with a ball pen, on a school tablet. No spacebar. No Enter key. Man, this old-fashion! I love it! I can hear the steady rain on the roof and street and the waves pounding out a beat on the shore. The light is subdued. A quiet light. A hint of twilight and the coming darkness. A glance at the watch tells me it's 4:30PM. The sun is retiring early because of rain.

Wow! What in tarnation?! A 2 1/2 foot-long lizard - black and with a mile-long, pink tongue that darted in and out, tasting the air - just slithered under the space between the bottom of the back door and the floor. He jumped and clawed and wiggled here and there, around the house, trying to get back out. (I can sympathize. I get into things all the time without an exit plan.) Knocking bottles down, moving boxes, his commotion stirred us into a lethargy bordering on sleep.

Not hardly! Clyde grabbed a club. I grabbed a broom. Stephanie grabbed the baby - a useless tool against a giant lizard, but there was no time for argument. After we helped Mr. Lizard find the front door and our adrenaline rush was given vent in the form of chatter, Emelie told me that that kind of lizard is harmless unless it bites you. Hmmmm.....

Tykes and Trikes

Shane posing as a sleeping child

Shane was released from the hospital nine days ago. She left with a wheelbarrow load of medicines – double her measly 5 kilograms of body weight - and a regimen that included vitamins three times a day, antibiotics four times daily starting at 6AM, and an aerosolized medication for opening the airways, thrice daily.

Tricyle - The Philippine taxi.

Shane and her mom, Stephanie, moved in with us. It was our idea. They are both very thin. Maybe we can help put some meat on their bones.

 It’s nice having them there. Shane is cute and loveable, stumbling her little self around the rooms; practicing her version of walking: a wide-stance, sumo-like, diaper-straddling forward ambulation, with the staggering gate of an over-indulged inebriant. Her mom  is easy-going and pleasant, singing her way through the hours of the day. She laughs easily and is a great help around the house.

 The little tyke is still getting used to Uncle Mark. I have three strikes against me, from her point of view. I'm a foreigner. "Alien" is a better word. A human being, to a one year-old Filipino, has black hair, brown skin, a short nose and Asian eyes.  A bald, blue-eyed white dude is too far outside the bell curve of what constitutes homo sapiens. I also use a strange language - more proof of my alien status. And my glasses are just plain strange. People she knows don't wear 'em.

Family size

We had our motor scooter converted to a tricycle. Making it big enough for the four of us, the sidecar is attached to the bike with bolts and welds. The third wheel is a 13" car wheel. I had the headlights installed but they aren't hooked up yet. I thought about a sound system, but most of our travel is by the sea, and the sound of the ocean is the best background music for vistas of white-capped, aquamarine waves and swaying palm trees. 

A trip to the hospital

January 12,  2010

Yesterday, I went for an early bike ride. When I came home, Emelie and I got ready to scooter down to Besa’s carenderia for breakfast. Before we left, Emelie’s sister Jane, Jane’s daughter Stephanie, and grand daughter Shane pulled up in front of the house in a tricycle-taxi.

Shane had been sick for the past few days, with vomiting and diarrhea. The three of them were on their way to the hospital in Malabuyoc, 8 kilometers north of us. After they left, Emelie and I went to the shop to take care of some business. Then we headed for the hospital but stopped in a carenderia in Malabuyoc for breakfast first.

Our three relatives were sitting on a cot in the hallway, in front of the nurses’ station, when we entered the hospital. Shane already had an I.V. port in her hand. A bottle of sugar water, hanging from a pole, fed the vein where the needle entered her hand. The three of them were waiting for the doctor and an empty hospital bed so Shane could be admitted.

The human body is a living skin-sack of watery fluids. When the water leaks out faster than it is being replaced – as with the double-whammy of diarrhea and vomiting – all sorts of things go awry, and in short order, the person who is dehydrating can be on the dividing line between life and death. And Shane was especially vulnerable, having lost two and a half pounds of her meager body weight of 13.5 pounds, in the last two days. At 11 pounds, she was less than half the normal weight of a girl her age.

The hospital was full of children. Every one of them had an I.V. going. There were a dozen boxes of liquid Ampicillin, for injection, sitting on the counter at the nurses’ station. After the doctor examined Shane, I asked him why the hospital was full of children and why they all had I.V.s. He said they were all suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi and contracted through contamination with human feces. It was Typhoid fever! In Alegria, the next town north, the public water supply was contaminated and the hospital was overflowing with infected children. The contamination came on the heels of flooding from very heavy rains a week ago. The flooding waters must have come in contact with human feces and then entered the public water supply.

In our town, Ginatilan, the water was heavily chlorinated after the rains. But it wasn’t enough. Over the course of the next couple of days, we would discover that Emelie’s God-son, another niece and a nephew were all at the Malabuyoc hospital being treated for the same symptoms. All came from Ginatilan. A compounding factor, in the spread of contagious disease, is the eating habits of many Filipinos. Fingers were made before forks, and many families use them, in lieu of forks, knives and spoons, to eat their meals. In combination with inadequate or non-existent hand-washing and sharing food from a common bowl, infectious agents are also shared and disease is spread throughout the family.

Shane was admitted. She would sleep a while, wake up, nurse or drink water, then lay and stare, wide-eyed. Her heart was beating fast. She cried sometimes, but it was a weak and tearless cry. I was afraid for her. She was so small and skinny and very, very sick. The doctor started her on Ampicillin, vitamins and something for her fever and cough.

We were sitting in the pediatric ward of the hospital. Jane, Stephanie and Shane were on the bed. In the hall outside the doorway to the ward, there was a group of people sitting before a candle-lit altar, singing religious songs - slow and sad, but beautiful - in Cebuano. A big man with a guitar accompanied them.

I looked around the room we were in. A sleepy ceiling fan twirled. Light coming through the jalousie windows filtered through green curtains, giving a sickly caste to life in the ward and accentuating the cold loneliness of the melancholy music.

Emelie, Jane and Stephanie were all singing. The baby slept peacefully on Grandma Jane’s lap. The other four families in the ward – women and their young daughters – were quiet. Maybe they were listening. Maybe they were keeping company with their private thoughts. Everyone looked far away, but intense in their self-absorption, as if performing a silent soliloquy. It was like a Tennessee Williams play: subtly surreal.

 The music was everything. In contrast to the wistful tune, there was a palpable message of hope, or maybe a longing for hope, in the strong and clear voices of the believers. It filled the silent crevices of unspoken fears - about sickness, about poverty, hunger and the future.

Another Year to Breathe

January 05, 2011

It has rained since December 31. We are in our fifth day of no sun, only downpours, interspersed with light rain or mist. According to Filipino belief, if it rains on January second, the rainy season will continue through February. If it rains on the third of January, the rainy season will extend through March. If it continues to rain throughout the month, I suppose we can expect the rainy season to last well into July of 2012.

Very difficult to comprehend that ten years of this century and millennium are already water under the bridge. In another ten years, Emelie will be 43 and I will be heading toward 71, if I continue to wake up every morning, which, by the way, is my New Year’s resolution. What’s that you say? You think that’s a silly resolution? Not at all! ‘Silly’ is setting goals you either can’t achieve or you achieve at such a price that it tires you out and leaves you wishing for the comfort of a few bad habits.

Give me life! That’s all I ask! Another day to wake up and breathe! In, out, through the nose. And if life stinks I can appreciate that too. I often awake to the smell of pig shit. It’s all around. Everybody raises pigs. No one comments on the smell. The same way they don’t comment on bad luck, lack of money – a serious lack for most – aches and pains, long, hard working hours or even the death of a loved one.

A young woman and her husband lost their only child a few months ago. They came to Emelie’s mountain home a couple of weeks ago, to help us celebrate the Combalbag Fiesta. I asked about her and her husband and started to ask about the child. It was a blunder, automatic, without forethought. I cut myself short but it only served to accentuate the sad situation. With tears in her eyes, she told me how hard it was. She said it matter-of-fact, and in a way that left a vast emptiness in the moments after her statement: a black hole of sadness that clouded, for that moment, my own vision.

She broke the silence on a note of genuine hope: they had each other. I looked at her red-eyed husband. He smiled. I was grateful for their bravery. I felt a connection to both of them, through this shared sadness and hope. Maybe it wasn’t a blunder, after all.

So, let me wake up tomorrow, and continue to do so for many tomorrows to come. I can handle the rest of the day, once I’m conscious and recapture that sincere appreciation for the ability to breathe and move, one more time. I can handle any kind of day when I keep that broader perspective of appreciation for just being alive.

That’s my prayer. So be it.

Dancin' Fool

 December 19, 2010

At 2AM the moon was high, spilling blue-silver light between the coconut palms. The few clouds were edged in it; the ground, the participants, including the dancers, tinted with it. It was the annual fiesta of Combalbag, the mountain citio that Emelie calls home. It started Saturday evening, with prayers and singing in the chapel. Titi Ali played his guitar. When the service was over, there were pastries and soft drinks in the rear, and beer on a table just before the chapel’s altar. This marked the beginning of seven days of chapel services, ending on Christmas.

A hundred yards away, giant speakers came to life, pounding out a disco beat that would continue for the next 6 hours. Beer and rum – 36 pisos per bottle – lubricated tongues and limbs as the dancing began. We smiled, talked, laughed, joked and danced. And we drank: fighter wine and beer mixed together; Tanduay Rhum and Sprite.

Mixed couples, groups of men, groups of women, individuals, kids, even Boboy’s 77 year-old father, cut the rug on the rocky dirt floor under the canopy of the tropical forest.

My wife, Emelie, is Secretary of the group that sponsors the event every year. She was busy all night, supervising the collection of ballots for the three young women contesting for queen of Combalbag. At the end of the night, she took the ballot money and the donations from those who paid to dance with the contestants, back to the chapel to be counted.

My job was to drink, dance and have fun, and keep an eye on our two nephews, Frederick and Gabriel. It never occurred to me that these objectives might be mutually exclusive. But the boys made it easy for me. They stuck to me like glue until they passed out in the early morning hours, sleeping on a wooden platform just outside the circle of revelers.

I drank a bit more than Emelie had in mind for me to drink and considerably less than I intended. I suppose it was a good compromise. We were staying the night at her mountain home. It was just a short walk, or roll if your legs are a bit wobbly, along a down-hill path from where the disco was being held. Gravity would pull a man there, no matter his condition. Mighty convenient, I was thinking.

What consternated my drinking muscle was the dancing. My ass never had a chance to find a comfortable niche on the bench behind Emelie and my feet and legs never stopped moving as I was dragged from the end of one song into the beginning of the next. My ticker pounded away like a jackhammer, but apparently didn’t bring enough oxygen to the part of my brain that accounts for sensibility. I was dead on my feet.

When the chance to sit down finally came, it was with a flush and in a pool of sweat. I didn’t mind. I was thinking I must be pretty cool to be so popular on the dance floor. I reminisced about dance moves from 40 years ago, when swooning was just one of the imagined affects my coolness had on the girls of that time.

Later, as we walked the path home, I was telling Emelie how all the dancing left me exhausted. “That’s because you jump around like a cow that’s just broke free of its chains” she said. Then she laughed. I laughed so damn hard, I thought I was going to roll down that hill. Leave it to my wife’s descriptive honesty to keep me grounded! English is her second language. Sometimes she hesitates and stammers to find the right the words. Sometimes they burst out in a flurry of staggering genius! It’s sure nice to have her around, even when it prickles just a little.

It was 3:30AM when we crawled into our makeshift bed on the bamboo floor of her house. The foam we slept on was just wide enough for one person, and occupied by three of us: Emelie on one side; me on the other, and Frederick between us.

At 4:30AM our pig, Cecelia, started bawling for water. She woke up all the roosters around, who set up a crowing in a chain reaction, starting with Big Red who was tied up directly under our floor. Fortunately, the cows, goats and carabaw slept through it, and didn’t add their voices to the cacophony (or melody, depending upon your ears). The dogs and cats had the good sense to keep quiet.

I must have fallen back to sleep and I woke up a second time around 6:30. I was grateful for Frederick’s stillness in the night. He sleeps very seriously, as if death has a temporary grip on him.

After rousing, we lounged around for a little while. Then the three of us hopped on the scooter and headed down the mountain road to town and south along the highway that borders the ocean, stopping at Besa’s Café on the water, in Suba, where Emelie and I ate a breakfast of fish soup and corn grits and Derick had a fried fish cake with rice.

Life is good.

Smells Like Life

December 09, 2010

It rained most of the day today. Some of the laundry we did yesterday is still wet. My towel, for instance. It hung on the line that we have strung between the post and the window bars, on the front the porch, since yesterday morning and it’s still about half way between sopping and damp. So am I.

Cecilia

This morning, we left our rental house by the sea and headed 2 kilometers up the mountain road to Emelie's house. The sky was gray, turning to black, when we started out on our scooter. We were at the house about 45 minutes when the rain started. It began just when we finished feeding Cecelia, our pig. The pig’s food dish is a half tire, cut the way you would cut a bagel for toasting. As I was cleaning it out, the raindrops wet the back of my shirt. My crocs and feet were wet and muddy for the rest of the day.

Cooking Grits (maize)

While the grits were cooking, I washed some dishes and went to her uncle’s house to buy two cans of sardines. Her aunt and uncle, Placido and Chris, have a small bamboo hut Placido built to use as a store. Placido, or Tiocidi as Emelie affectionately calls him, is a few years younger than me. He’s short and on the chubby side. Like many of the mountain farmers in the Philippines, he tills the soil with a pick and a knife, by hand. He gets up very early each morning and starts working, and he continues throughout the day. In addition to his farm work, he always has projects. He built a small house along the road near his corn so he could watch it and protect it from thieves. His little bamboo house was erected in days, with only a few tools. (Tiocidi can do amazing things with a bolo, a short, thick machete, and a sickle.) Then he put a bamboo fence around it in short order. Everything was made from the bamboo and trees that grow right there near his hut. He works constantly, never complains, and always has a smile and pleasant word. He and Chris have 10 children, some married and some still in grade school.

 I bought my sardines and walked back to the house. Emelie has never owned a can opener. She is proficient at opening cans with a knife. I am not. I had my Swiss army knife with the handy-dandy can opener on it. It worked great.

The grits were made from the corn that Jane, Emelie’s sister, and her husband Floriano grew. They took sacks of the shelled corn to the mill and had it ground. Two years ago, I watched Jane grind the corn herself, between two large wheels of stone made for the purpose. They were the stones that Emelie’s grandparents used many years ago. The top stone has a hole in it, near the center, and a handle for turning. The bottom stone is immobile. Corn kernels are dropped in the hole; the top stone is turned and ground corn grits spill out from between the stones, in all directions. The floor under the stones, and around it, is covered with feed sacks to catch the corn grits. Maize is the staple of Jane’s family and many times the only food they have to eat, along with the vegetables they grow.

When the grits were ready, we each ate a bowl of them, topped with the sardines in tomato sauce. After doing the dishes, I went to visit Emelie’s aunt, Hemen, at her house next to Emelie’s. Hemen’s house is built up high, on stilts. It was originally the family home of Emelie’s grandparents. It’s a large bamboo house with a wood frame. The framework of the bamboo houses is made from coconut wood, Philippine mahogany, or germolina. Coconut wood is soft and is a favorite food of termites. Mahogany and Germolina are hardwoods and fairly resistant to termites. But most of the mountain farmers can’t afford the expensive, termite-resistant woods. And coconut wood is free, as everyone has trees on their property.

Jane Grinding Corn

As I am writing this, I smelled something that is not quite right. I put my nose closer to my watch. The band smells like a mixture of sour sweat and pig poop. I took a bath just before coming here to the internet café, but I didn’t think about my watch band. Need to wash it, soon.

Since I swerved into the topic of stinky stuff, I’ll just expand on that a little. It’s a thing worth mentioning. Mountain people live with stink all around, every day, all day and night. It’s an integral part of living. With goats, pigs, chickens, cows and carabaw all living within close proximity to the house, sounds and smell abound. In the rainy season, the droppings are mixed in with the mud, which is everywhere. You walk on mud; you walk on shit. Doesn’t matter. They’re the same color and texture.

What I noticed, since my first visit to the area, is that my nose adjusted to the stink. I love the mountain areas and especially the area around Emelie’s house. The people and places are familiar to me. So is the stink. Now, it’s a special stink and when I smell it: I think of happy homes, wonderful family, funny pigs, romping kid goats and the experiences I’ve had with them all. 

Superstition, Snakes, A Pig and Religion

December 05, 2010

Another very good day. I hesitate to say great. Don’t want to muck up what’s left of it with a last-minute jinx, knock on wood. Just a taste of American superstition, as a reminder that we Americans are not without ours, before I relate the following story.

Next door to our internet café, and a part of the same building, is the former residence of CEPEDECO, one of the many small cooperatives that substitute for real banks, here in the province. They closed their doors and ripped off their customers by keeping their customers’ savings, while still collecting on debts and not telling the debtors that they were closed.

Never mind!

This story is about the family of the current renters. The building sat empty for the past couple of years until the folks who are there now decided to start a gift shop - a needed store here in Ginatilan. (When Emelie and I got married, we received six sets of water glasses as presents because they were one of the very few items which can be used as gifts, sold in any of the local stores.)

This afternoon, I was talking to the lady who is renting the space, while a group of people, who I discovered were a gathering of her brothers and sisters, were repairing and remodeling the store. She comes from a family of 12 kids. After we finished our conversation, Emelie and I went next door, to our shop. As we sat at the table we have for money and the laptop, Emelie leaned over closer to me and in a hushed voice said, “One of her sisters has a twin that is a snake.”

I let that soak in for just a few seconds before I said anything. The Philippines is a very different country. I’m reminded of it all the time. Sometimes I am jarred so far out of my own reality that the best thing for me to do is just collect myself and prepare for an open-minded approach to God-knows-what.

“What?” I asked, knowing full well what she said but hoping the second time around might bring a different answer. She repeated it in the same soft voice “…a snake!” There was a pause. I knew what was coming next. “You don’t believe me ba?” she asked. (Ba is a Cebuano word to indicate that the sentence is a question.) This is one of those tough questions that crop up from time to time in a marriage. Luckily, I know how to handle the situation. At 60, and with two other marriages behind me, experience has taught me – like a hammer ‘teaches’ a nail – that diplomacy is a virtue whose value far exceeds that of any old “facts”, any day of the week, during the lifetime of a marriage.

“I don’t know if I believe it or not” I lied. Another pause, and then “Well, do you know about the Robinson’s? The ones that own Robinson’s mall ba?” I didn’t. “I will show you the video” she said. She was sitting at the laptop and looked up Youtube and then typed in ‘Robinson snake’. What came up was a video of a large, dead snake coiled around itself. The head was sort of human-looking although it really looked more like something from Dawn of the Dead. It had long blonde hair and eyes that went in different directions and a wrinkled, charcoal colored face. Two other women were standing near us, also looking at the video. They both confirmed the ‘truth’ of the Robinson’s snake-daughter, born as a twin to a normal girl about twenty years ago.

So be it. New subject.

We hung out with our newly acquired pig twice today. You might think its kind of silly to enjoy the company of a pig, but I think pigs are just a step or two above cool. I like their pink bodies, their floppy, long ears, curly tails, round rumps, long snouts, permanent smiles… I like pigs, grunts and snuffles included. The fact that they roll in their own stinky poop doesn’t bother me. A good hosing, which they love, and they are back to well-groomed. You can even wax them if you want. (Well, I don’t know that for sure but they look like something that would take to a waxing rather well.)

                                                                                                                     

Jonluz, Emelie’s sister, feeds Cecelia in the morning before walking to town, to work. Jonluz lives at the family’s mountain house, where the pig is kept in a pen out back. Emelie and I feed Cecelia her panny udto and panny hapon - lunch and dinner.

Hogging it. Being a hog about it. Eating like a pig. These saying have their basis in truth. Pigs are piggy. Cecelia is true to form, grunting and jumping around her pen when she sees us coming, as if she hadn’t eaten in a day.  A real drama queen. Then, when she’s gotten her food, she sucks it down as quickly as possible, making loud grunts and slurping sounds. When she’s done, she continues to look everywhere for the tiniest bit of remaining food. Sniff, lick, slurp. Sniff, lick, slurp, at a frenzied pace as if starvation was only seconds away.

The life span of any pig in the Philippines is relatively short. Those lucky enough to be chosen as sires and piglet-bearing sows live a while longer, but all pigs are raised to satisfy the human appetite.

Another thought about superstition and religion: Although I am skeptical of things that seem to go beyond the natural, I admit to having experiences that, prior to living here, I would never have believed possible. In fact, I would have rolled my eyes and immediately pigeon-holed them as preposterous superstition by people whose ignorance keeps them rooted in a pre-scientific past. But then I think about today’s many and varied religions which all claim to have an exclusive corner on truth and reality, contradicting each other in ways which make it impossible for any but one to be correct. If that. And having rituals and traditions - and a requirement of blind faith as a substitute for reason - that are not only born from ignorance but designed to perpetuate it, is neither superior nor more advanced than the crudest and most ancient of superstitions.

I once saw a cartoon strip in the newspaper that expressed my opinion about religion, and the self-righteous certainty of its adherents, perfectly. Two men in animal skins are standing behind two piles of rocks. A third man, in the same cave-man attire, is on his knees bowing to one of the piles. One of the two men behind him says to the other standing with him “Doesn’t Thog look silly praying to that pile of rocks? Doesn’t he know that our pile, over there, is the real God?”

My wife is Catholic. I love my wife. I see how her religion both forms and supports some of the qualities I appreciate most in her. On the surface, this appears to be a contradiction to my own lack of faith in religion. Not really. I can’t explain it. I only know that religion is a tool that can be used to exploit others, or to enrich the life of the believer. It’s a choice. Amen.

Gerald and the Pig

December 04, 2010

A couple of years ago, when we bought our first pigs together, I mentioned to Emelie that it would be nice to have a pig for a pet. She said nothing. Hmmmm…. A while later, I mentioned it again. After a few moments of silence, she said, “In the Philippines, pigs are not pets. Pigs are food.” But I named our three pigs, anyhow: Jocelyn, Maria and Julio. She was right. They became food.

Emelie raised pigs from the time she was young. Sometimes she cried when they were sold, knowing their fate. Her soft spot for “food” is not limited to pigs. Recently I found out that she was still feeding chickens that should have gone the way of the pot a long time ago. They were no longer being raised for financial gain or to save money on food. They were pets.

For the past two days, we’ve been working at her house in the mountains getting the pig pen ready for a new occupant: we cleaned out poop, mud, weeds and worms, repaired the termite-ravaged bamboo fence and put a new roof up for shade. The pig has to be cool.

I named her Cecelia. We bought her from Emelie’s cousin, Roy. She’s just a young ‘un. We’ll fatten her up for a few weeks and she will transform from a living, breathing animal to a cooked pig for the fiesta celebration of Cambalbag, the Citio of Emelie’s home.

Roy lives high up in the mountains where it is cooler and drier; where houses are not within shouting distance and electricity is still a dream for the future. The trees thin out at that altitude and give way to fields of grass, as you climb out of tropical jungle, into a more alpine environment. The road is mud or dirt, depending on precipitation or lack thereof. In either case, the ruts are permanent, just shiftier in the mud. Roy took us to his house on his motorcycle yesterday to view the pig and discuss price.

He and his wife Edna love their high-mountain home. They met in Manila, a teeming city of millions, and moved to Roy’s home area here in the mountains of Ginatilan. So different, it’s hard to imagine the two areas are on the same planet. Emelie told them my dream of building a native house of bamboo and wood with a thatch roof. Typical of Philippine hospitality and generosity, he offered us some of his land on which to build a house, and the bamboo to build it. It still amazes me, the open-hearted generosity of people here.

Today was a great day. After finishing the pen, I went home, ate a can of sardines over rice, with vinegar; took a 2 ½ hour nap, then  went back to Emelie’s house for the evening pig duties: bathing, cleaning the pen, and feeding. And I played with Gerald, our 2 year-old nephew. From his grandmother’s second-story porch, we surveyed the world around us, with Gerald pointing to everything and commenting in his little-boy vernacular. He was fascinated by our new pig. He could see part of the pen and the pig from his vantage point as he stood on the porch’s bench. He called the pig “boboy” which is his uncle’s name. The word for pig in Cebuano is baboy – very close in sound.

I carried Gerald down the steps and over to the pig pen. As I got closer, his little hands, holding my shirt, gripped tighter and included some of the skin on my chest. He squirmed and looked away from the pen. His fascination from the safety of the porch turned to gripping fear when we approached the pen.

From there we went on a tour of Titi Ali’s yard, visiting the kid goats, the chickens and the bull. It was the native rooster that excited him most. I had to agree. The bright oranges and reds, and the rich brown, contrasted by the deep greens and purples of its tail feathers, made it quite a spectacle as it danced in front of us, flipping its floppy red comb from side to side as it moved its head

When we returned to the porch, we played hard for about an hour. Our play mostly consisted of me tossing him around like a segmented bean bag, his head going one way, his legs another and the rest of him compromising by twisting in two directions at once. He loved it. He was all giggles. Whenever I stopped for a rest, he urged me on.

Emelie finished her bucket bath at the communal spigot in the common place between the houses. Then she joined us on the porch. The sun was saying its farewells. It was time for us to do the same. When I handed Gerald over to his lola (grandmother), she told him to say goodbye to uncle Mark. He cried and kicked and flailed is little arms, yelling “Uncoy! Uncoy!” He had put the two words “uncle” and “baboy” together, an unconscious combining of what he loved and what he feared. 

Mass for the Masses, and Then Some

December 03, 2010

There are two, large, imposing signs made of sheets of plywood and posted at the rear entrance of St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church. The one on the left has illustrations of appropriate church attire for men and women. The one on the right depicts a man and a woman in unacceptable attire. Proper dress, attitude and behavior are very important in the Catholic Church.

Father Gerry’s dog showed up again today. It's the fourth time since I started coming to church with Emelie. He's an unkempt and soiled, wiry-haired mess of a mongrel, of questionable parentage and beliefs. He was late for mass. Came waltzing right in, in the middle of his master’s sermon, from the door behind and to the right of the altar. With his head held high; wagging his tail like nobody’s business, he pranced right up to the statue of Mary, at the very front of the church and in full view of the entire congregation. He paused and looked up at the statue, in what could have been a moment of religious contemplation. It wasn't. Mary was standing on a makeshift dais: a cloth-covered table. Pooch was next to one of its legs. When he moved in closer and sniffed the leg, I became very interested in the subject of nature versus nurture; sin versus virtue. (Is that Catholic redundancy?)

My eyes were riveted to his foot, closest to the table. That foot started to rise. My muscles tensed just a little and I felt a sense of impending adventure, like the moment I remember just prior to peeing in the swimming pool (as a child), despite all the admonitions to the contrary. 

He must have thought better of it. His foot settled back to the marble floor and he trotted away, down the steps and into the congregation, heading right for a pew about halfway back. He went to sleep on the floor, his head hidden from view under the seat of the pew, beside a prayerful congregant who made a point of demonstrating his pious and dutiful nature by paying no apparent notice to the dog.

In fact, not one person in the church showed any sign of having noticed the presence of a dog. I elbowed my wife. “Did you see the dog?” I asked, my voice coming out a bit louder than I intended.

I don’t know how my mom does it, or how women do it, for that matter. Communicate with each other, I mean. I’ve listened to every conversation that my mom and wife have had on the telephone or via computer. (They’ve never met in person.)  Not one time has my mother ever said, “… and if he acts up in church, give him one of those sidelong glances that indicate disapproval with a threat of consequences.”

With my head down and my tail between my legs I sat back quietly, envious of that 4-legged, free-roaming, Johnny-come-late, sleeping church-goer.

Kids: At the Beach, On the Bed, In the Hair

November 29, 2010

Yesterday morning, Emelie and I woke up at 5:45AM. It wasn’t intentional. At least, it wasn’t our intention. When I left the bedroom, I saw Frederick standing at the front window that faces the sea. By that time he was quietly writing something in a notebook, using the window’s light so he wouldn’t have to turn on the overheads and disturb Emelie and Mark – that consideration, an afterthought, on the heels of enough noise to rouse the neighbors.  

There were a pile of sticks on the floor. About a hundred of them. When I got closer and looked at his book, I could see that he was doing math problems. “5 x 7 = ?” was written on the page. He got down on the floor and made 5 piles of 7 sticks each. Then he scooped up the piles and counted them all and wrote “35” next to the equal sign. I can’t think of a better use for those bamboo barbecue skewers.

Frederick loves doing school work. He also loves being ornery. And when the two loves are at odds with each other, orneriness wins out. That’s why he sometimes cuts classes or refuses to do his work. Obstinacy is more fun. The actual psychology of it might be a bit more complex than that. Who cares?

I’ve been sick for the past couple of days. Drank some of the local water. I usually drink only water that I filter at home or I drink bottled water. Emelie was telling me that when Filipinos move away for a while and then come back for a visit, they can’t drink the local water either. Gives them the Tijuana scoots, just like it does to us foreigners.

This weekend, the boys and I have been collecting shells at the beach across the street. When we get them back home, we make little piles of them on the cement railing of the porch. Frederick’s pile slowly gets bigger and the piles of shells that belong to Gab and me get correspondingly smaller. Derick doesn’t bother stealing them on the sly, he does it in the open, with us watching. When I mention it to Frederick, he acts as if he has a right to take them. He comes across with this attitude like they all belong to him anyway and they are just on loan to Gab and me.

Most kids are too complex to be described by one set of behaviors. Frederick loves to do things to help us. He sweeps the floor and does the dishes without being asked. The other day he scrubbed the toilet seat with a toothbrush. I checked my brush when he was done. It was dry.

After we came back from the beach, I took some time off from consciousness and snored my way through a two hour nap. When I woke up, the boys knew it. They’ve got a sixth sense about that. I can be lying there still as death but if I’m awake, one of two heads pops through the curtain in the doorway. They came into the bedroom and hopped into bed with me, fighting for the position closest to Uncle Mark. It was like lying in bed with two writhing snakes. They never did settle down. It’s not in their nature.

I have often heard it said that a person change when they have children. Well, they don’t have to be your own. My life is profoundly different, from the inside of me, out, since the boys came into it. I love them dearly. And the best part? They are only with us for two days. Two long, marathon days. When we drop them off at school on Monday morning, it’s with a sense of relief. Emelie and I go home. We get our peace back. We talk to each other again. I take a luxurious nap, knowing I will wake up without a small, smiling face just inches away from my own mug.

The week wears on, about the same. Then Friday comes and when I wake up from my nap, I feel kind of lonely. I miss those little faces. I look forward to seeing them again. I miss the racket, the jokes, the shared times, the delight of little boys. Ahhhh…. Thank God for Saturday and Sunday! It works for me.  

Raising the Bird

November 25, 2010 

All of our neighbors have chickens and those fowl make regular trips through our yard to get the rice and other food scraps that wash down our kitchen sink’s drain. The drain, like many things about our house, is unique, in a Jed Clampett kind of way. The water goes from the sink and dumps into a 4-inch PVC pipe that travels at a shallow decline, through the wall and outside. The PVC then deposits the sink’s waste water into an open channel made of bamboo, split lengthwise and supported by a stick with a “y” in it, like a large slingshot. The bamboo aqueduct goes about 5 feet. The water shoots off the end and into a shallow pool, a depression in the dirt scarcely two feet across and an inch deep – perfect for chickens that scratch and peck the bottom for rice.

I’ve named all of our neighbor’s chickens, Tinola. There’s Tinola 1 through about 12. Tinola is the Cebuano word for soup. The native chickens are a bit scrawny and their meat is dark and tough. But they are delicious! And they make excellent soup when spiced with some onions, garlic, and peppers and then flavored with Magic Sarap and don’t forget to throw in some other local vegetables.

One of the young roosters was our first and most frequent visitor. Over the last six months, I’ve watched his feathers change from a dull brown and black to a multicolored array from his head to his tail. At 4 months, he was holding his head up high and letting out an occasional warble – a young cock’s attempted crow - standing tall and flapping his wings with all the gusto he could muster in his sinewy muscles.

From the time he first appeared, it was his primary objective to get in the house and check things out, maybe peck at the rock-hard floor, pick up a few loose grains, harden his beak and take a crap. I don’t know what he had in mind, really. Three fifths of that little rooster’s pea-size brain was devoted to tenacity. Four fifths of what remained was for instinct. That leaves a volume of about half a drop of water for making intelligent decisions.

In the summer, which is year-round, we leave both the back and front doors open to take advantage of any breezes off the ocean or coming from the mountains, in the opposite direction, behind the house. First, the young rooster would try to get in the back doorway, then, if that failed, he would walk around the house and try the front entrance. He did this over and over, on a daily basis.

Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve been using the past tense in describing this particular chicken. It’s neither accident nor error. He’s dead. How he died remains a mystery… to the neighbors. I didn’t tell them he was hit by a truck, but I mentioned the frequency of their passing. I also didn’t say how nicely he fit in my pressure cooker or how that instrument can turn a tough bird into tenderness clear through to the bone.

Happy Thanksgiving from Ginatilan, Cebu!

Cutting Classes and a Finger

November 20, 2010

  

Gab and I went swimming for about an hour yesterday, while Frederick walked the beach. We wouldn’t allow Derick to swim.  He cut half a day of classes…again. He didn’t return to the classroom after lunch. When I asked each of the boys if they did well in school that week, they each, in turn, shook their heads yes and smiled. Then Emelie filled in the difference between Fredick’s version and the truth. So, Derick kept up a good front of pretending not to care about swimming while Gab and I enjoyed the refreshing water.

Gabriel, 5, kept smiling and telling me “Derick no swimming”, his crude but effective version of English for “Frederick screwed up again and now he can’t go swimming and I’m glad!” Then Gab would call to his brother, 50 yards down the beach, “Me swimming, Derick!” Frederick pretended not to hear, so Gab kept it up until his interest in teasing waned and he shifted his attention to crabs on the rocks. He and Frederick spend many hours throwing rocks at crabs in the fish sanctuary, which is highly illegal but its okay with me if they spend a night in jail.

When it was time to go home, the two boys raced across the road and to the house, picking up their ongoing and never-ending feud about who will unlock the front door. When they got inside, the battle turned to giggles and racing around the house. By the time I got there, Gab was crying and holding his little finger. He’d caught it in the fan that was sitting on the floor. He had used the fan as a pivot point for a fast turn, placing his hand on the screen, and his pinky slipped through and touched the metal blade. The tiny little slice was a near-death experience for him.

He cried for a few minutes then squatted down in front of the fan and commenced studying it with all the seriousness of a man of science. He poked his finger through the grates at various places, then went back to studying. After a minute or two, Gab got up and walked to where the cord was laying on the ground. He plugged in the fan for only a second, pulled it out of the socket, and raced back to watch it spin and wind down, taking mental notes the whole time. He repeated this procedure over and over. Between spins, he studied and poked and studied and poked, trying to determine just where the blade can touch a finger.

It truly was like watching a scientist at work. His patience alone amazed me. He’s only five. Five year-olds don’t have the patience to study a thing for five minutes at a time. They just don’t have the attention span. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

That was yesterday. A day has passed but the incident is still fresh in my mind.  I wonder about his future. His parents are poorer than the dirt they till for the day-to-day existence that never quite meets their needs. The only things they have enough of are air and water and a place to shit…and the compassion of their relatives and neighbors. It’s the life of the mountain people: a meager freedom where hunger, nutritional deficiency and a lack of medical care are so commonplace as to be accepted without comment; without expectation.

Thoughts from the Porch

November 18, 2010

There’s a cool breeze out here on the front porch. The wind makes a relaxing sound as it passes through the fronds of the coconut palms and banana trees. The sea has a slight chop. Emelie is sitting on the sea wall combing her long, dark hair. I like to watch. There is a grace to the way she moves her head and arm in unison while the comb slides smoothly from scalp to the tips of her hair, like a ritual dance performed thousands of times since she was a little girl. It’s revealing in some way. There is self-contentment in it. I feel like I am watching a private moment, being performed right there on the sea wall, for all passersby to see.

Emelie is gone now. A man and his wife walk past, holding the ropes that restrain their 3 cows: a momma Brahma and her two calves. Every morning the three bovines chew their way along the grass strip between the road and the seawall. Eat and walk. Eat and walk. It’s a pastoral scene with a watery background. In the evening they go the other way, homeward bound. They walk slow and eat slow, as if time is of no concern and the grass will always be there. I am envious of such certainty; such trust in the nature of things. We might think of it as naiveté, but I prefer to think of it as wisdom beyond naiveté. Isn’t it a wiser choice to relax and let the future unfold than to worry over what we cannot control?

A Fondness for Forgetting

November 17, 2010  

I don’t remember anything about yesterday. Could be forgetfulness. Could be wisdom. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t remember. It wasn’t the drinking. At the most, I had one beer or one shot of Tanduay rum in a full glass of water. That’s my usual, if you can call it that, since I have one or the other only a couple of times a week.

Nope, wasn’t the drinking. Most likely, it was a day without incident. I’m sure I slept well the previous night – almost always do – then kissed my wife and made a b-line for the bathroom, first thing upon waking. That’s my morning habit: kiss, pee, then open the front door, still half-somnambulistic, and look toward the sea.

I’m not sure why I do that. The sea is always in its place, just there, across the road. (I appreciate its constancy.) The surface is pretty benign, hiding the goings-on beneath. If the sound of water bathing the shoreline reaches my ears, it massages my nerves, soothing, quieting, in a way that reaches out to my conscious mind and exacts a small price, in the form of gratefulness. No better way to set the attitude for a course of contentment. 

Okay, so, I do know why I gaze across the road in the morning. There's also this: the smell of brine, rich and fetid with the constant dying and renewal of life that takes place in the world’s largest flora and fauna habitat. Smells damn good in the morning, especially just before a breakfast of fish soup or grilled squid at Besa’s Carenderia, which sits right at the edge of the clear blue water, in Suba.

Now I remember something about yesterday: going to the Mercado in the morning. It was Tuesday, market day, when vendors from all over the province come and set up bamboo tables to display their wares under makeshift canopies.

I was looking for the lady who sells herbal oils and concoctions, age-old native Filipino remedies used by traditional healers and sold to the public. I wanted to ask her how Hemag oil is made. I know the main ingredient is something from the Hemag  tree. I think it is the wood itself. And I know that coconut oil is used, also, to make an elixir that heals. (It works! Hemag helped heal a sore I had on my leg, that had been hanging around for a month or so. And it healed a surgical wound that Emelie’s sister, Diores, had on her arm. It refused to heal for months after her operation. But the Hemag did the job in short order.)

The lady who sells the remedies wasn’t there. Emelie said that maybe the woman is from Negros Island or Siquijor Island, and didn’t take the boat to Cebu because the sea was too rough. Siquijor is the country’s seat of witchcraft, curses and their cures, native medicines and healers. I have been wanting to go there - curiosity mostly – for some time now. Emelie says I will go alone, if I do. She won’t set foot on that island.

Okay! Whew! The memory's workin' like a well-oiled rust-bucket of dismembered parts spitting out cob-webbed notions of yesterday. Thank the Lord for near-perfection!

Yesterday worked itself out best it could and gathered enough strength to carry on over to...

Today. I just stayed home. Woke up feeling kind of crappy from a cold that’s been hitching a ride in my sinuses for a couple of days. It felt great to do the better part of nothing: lazing around; getting some extra sleep. I did help Emelie with the wash just prior to a 2-hour nap. I used the bucket - filled it up in the bathroom with soap and water then took it out to the porch so I could watch the morning traffic and gaze at the sea while tussling with the clothes.

T’was a good day, overall!

Kites and Crap on a Windy Day

November 14, 2010

Today the wind blew strong, and the waves in Tanon Straight were restless and powerful. We watched from the shore. Frederick wanted to swim. “No way” I told him, borrowing one of his favorite expressions in English.

Picking up a discarded plastic bag on the beach, I noticed that it filled instantly with air and wanted to fly from my hand, begging to be a kite. There was no string so I tied the end of a discarded VCR tape to the bag. The other end was still on the reel, buried at the end of the movie, lying at the bottom of the shallows in the fish sanctuary. The sea is a trash depository and the beach is always full of junk. Negros Island, 10 miles east of us, and our island of Cebu, trade the trash that travels back and forth on the tides and storms. Each day, the waves carry a fresh supply of it to shore. The neighbors add to it, throwing bucketsful of their pig shit over the sea wall in the early morning hours.

I tied the flying plastic bag to a corner post of a small shelter on the nearby jetty. It twirled in circles like a playful windsock, standing out away from the post about 20 feet, rigid and full of air. Several of my fishermen neighbors were standing around watching and laughing heartily. They made some joke about my American invention, comparing its manufacture to any number of Filipino inventions which use whatever is on hand. Usually, it’s discarded scraps of steel, an old inner tube, a handful of mud, some chicken feathers and bamboo.

I laughed with them. Filipinos are well aware of America’s abundance vs. their own poverty. It felt good to joke about a thing that, at times, is somewhat uncomfortable to me: my relative wealth in this land of poverty.

Later, I tried to make a kite of bamboo sticks, a bigger plastic bag, tape and some pieces of the VCR tape to tie the sticks together. A piece of dirty cloth found on the beach was cut into strips and attached as a tail. The boys were interested when I started the project and helped me put it together. But they grew bored before it was complete and when it came time to fly, the two of them were already playing in the sea once again.

The kite went about 20 feet higher than the plastic bag, did a few loops and dove into the sea. After retrieving it, and making some adjustments, I tried again... and again, and again, each time dragging it out of the water and tweaking, with hope. When the VCR tape became entangled in itself and the kite, I gave up and watched the boys play. I gave a few seconds thought to trying one more time, but something in the back of my mind said “Give it up, man.” Knowing when to quit has never been a strong point of mine.

While I was fooling with that silly kite, Emelie was making lunch. She bought some fresh fish from Istan as he was pulling into shore with his catch. Lunch was fish soup, rice and bananas. To the soup, she added leaves of the malonggay tree that grows in the yard. The leaves are deep green and very nutritious, with a mild flavor that accents any kind of soup.

After dragging our wet and worn bodies back from the beach and having lunch, the boys took a two-hour nap and all four of us were refreshed by it. When I tried waking them up, Frederick kicked with both feet and pulled the sheet over his head. Gab lay there, unresponsive as a dead fish. I walked away. About 5 minutes later Gab came out of his room and immediately walked outside to watch the sea from the front porch. It’s his way of waking up. He leans over the rail and watches, mesmerized, soundless, staring out across the watery brine – a boy after my own heart. When he’s ready, he starts playing and laughing again.

About ten minutes after Gab got up, Frederick snuck up on me while I sat at the table. He poked my ribs and let out a yell. We both laughed at his joke. Derick loves to tease and joke. His little brother is the butt of most of it, and his taunts sometimes venture into malicious territory where Gab is involved. The poor kid can’t get any rest. And they fight constantly. Drives Emelie crazy. She cut a switch yesterday, from a bush in the front yard. She has it hanging on the wall, in a conspicuous place, where the boys are not apt to forget about. I threatened them with it this afternoon, during kite building, when they both kept playing with my pocket knife after I told them 12 times to leave it alone. The threat came while they both had a hand on it and they were arguing about who should have it. The blade was open and I envisioned a sliced-open hand from thumb to little finger.

I looked at Frederick with the meanest look I could muster. It was a stare-down contest, boring holes in each other with our eyes. When he looked away, I knew he had gotten the message. Derick will test every request, demand or warning. He’s a smart kid. If it comes to a threat of punishment, he knows if there is intent to deliver or if the threat is just hot air. You can’t bluff with Derick, or you’ve got a problem on your hands. 

It always amazes me how kids can be such little devils and then flip a switch in their heads and be sweet enough to warm your heart, a moment later. I wish I could reach that switch, but I guess the best any of us can do is to provide lots of love and attention and a firm, guiding hand. And hope for the best!

Returning to a Questionable Future

November 11, 2010

The young woman with the baby went home. Her husband showed up in a rented tricycle. He’d been looking for her since she left, two days prior. He never explained why and she was just as mute about her decision to return to him. The baby just cried, a sure indication of its wisdom.

Singing to Her Umbrella

November 10, 2010

This morning Emelie and I were doing laundry. It had been nearly a week since the last time, and our clothes, including the ones from Gab and Derick, were piling up. I was using the bucket, filling it in the bathroom and carrying it out to the porch so I could watch the passersby while I pumped my arms up and down in my version of a washing machine agitator. Emelie used the plastic pan at the kitchen sink, rubbing the clothes together in typical Filipino style, which involves grabbing two fists full of cloth and giving them a Dutch rub; stopping just before the cloth wears through.

A young woman approached our gate, with a baby cradled in her left arm. Her right hand held an umbrella to keep out the sun. I was the only one on the porch when she entered the yard. Fortunately, Emelie came out just as she got to the gate. She and the woman exchanged some words in Cebuano. Emelie smiled and went back into the house without saying anything to me. The young woman tilted the umbrella so it hid her face, then she began what sounded like a recitation. I could tell by the intonation and beat that she was not just talking to me, which would be a waste of time anyhow, since I understand very little Cebuano. I wondered what was going on. After about thirty seconds of this, I began to detect something almost melodic about her voice. Hell, she was singing, to her umbrella, in fact! The first thirty seconds were a warm-up, apparently. It never occurred to me that a person would need to warm up to sing that horribly. I can sing off-key right from the starting gate, no warm-up needed. A natural talent, I suppose.

I don’t scare easily, but her noise gave me a fright. It put me in mind of a childhood experience, watching a woman sing to the moon, in her front yard, after midnight, rocking back and forth in her tennis shoes and Sunday dress.

I was still out there on the porch all by myself, since Emelie went back inside. The woman kept on; wasn’t about to let it go, neither. The small lizards that hang out on the porch, chewing up the bugs, had all scurried to their hidy-holes. Sometimes her voice would tremble and crack like she was on the verge of tears. I was wishing she would just go ahead and cry, or scream or something and stop that damn caterwauling. Where was Emelie? And why didn’t she warn me?

I crept into the house, not wanting to disturb the performance, there being such a fine line between artistic genius and insanity and all. Emelie was in the bedroom, digging a twenty-piso note out of her purse. She handed it to me, smiling, and said “Give it to her, will you?” She went on to tell me that the young woman was singing a Christmas carol. (That was caroling?!) According to the woman, her alcoholic, abusive husband had kicked her and the baby out of the house (Maybe she sang to him.) and he took up with a new, ignorant victim.

I gave the girl the money and she went away. Good investment. I smelled drama in this one, the sticky kind that makes you wish, in retrospect, you would have kept your helping hands free of entanglement.

The young woman left our yard and headed toward town but came back later. She and her baby slept the night on the porch of the new fish sanctuary guard house, across the street from us. It wasn’t in use yet so she had the place to herself.

Note: This account seems to lack sensitivity to the woman’s plight. I decided to recreate this event from a humorous perspective. The perspective taken is after-the-fact, and doesn’t affect what really happened. Nor does it reflect my true attitude toward those events and the woman’s predicament. In reality, I was concerned about her welfare and that of her baby.