Pining For Home

Like many netizens all over the world, I am not particularly trustful of or comfortable with Google, that global internet presence which, whether we like it or not, insidiously intrudes into and then profits from almost everything we do in the online world. Its multinational hugeness and its pervasive dominance in all things related to cyberspace worries a lot of concerned individuals even those who regularly use its many services and who benefit from them in the personal or economic sense or both.

Yet occasionally, this internet colossus comes out with something that manages to surprise us all. Something that in this selfish, money-centered and cynical world (of which Google is, whether deservedly or undeservedly, in the eyes of many, a personification of) somehow pulls and tugs at that emotional core that hides in all of us, something that whispers and resonates to that softer side of our human nature, something that affirms that universally held hope that even in this selfish and cynical world, there is a premium still for love, friendship, generosity, loyalty and all those other pure, virtuous and noble sentiments of the human heart.

Last Dec. 14, Google Philippines published a video on You Tube that has been viewed and shared by more than a million people to date. Titled "Miss Nothing", it is basically a tribute to the more than two million Filipino overseas workers abroad who have left their families and homeland behind in order to work for a living all over the world. In less than two minutes it emotionally paints through images and music their loneliness and sense of isolation and how through the magic of modern wireless digital communication they desperately struggle to keep their tenuous links to their loved ones back home alive and meaningful.

The Pindang Revisited

I was among the more fortunate to have had the opportunity to sample a sinfully diverse selection from the cornucopia of festive culinary delights traditionally offered by most Filipinos to family members, relatives and friends for copious, if not gluttonous, consumption during the recent Christmas and New Year celebrations. That meant mouthfuls of the ever ubiquitous ham (of several kinds), repeated generous servings of pasta thick with sauces of both the red and white varieties including one or two others of an indeterminate shade in between these two extremes, countless portions of chicken thighs and wings both roasted or fried in batter and slices of fish either grilled, steamed or stewed with fresh veggies in the traditional way.

I have not even included in the first list list the obligatory chocolate and cheese cakes, whole wheat bread loaves with raisins, chocolate doughnuts, bibingkang kanin (rice cakes topped with caramelized coconut cream), empanadas (pastry stuffed with meat, vegetables and egg slices) and a multitude of other desserts and side dishes. The often excessive enthusiasm and unusual profligacy even normally frugal Filipino families put into preparing for the orgies of feasting during the Yuletide and year-ender festivities never ceases to amaze me.

Christmas Magic

One of the saddest things about growing up as a child is coming to the age when one suddenly and disconcertingly realizes that much of what one has believed as wonderfully magical and enchantingly special about Christmas is actually mostly hype and largely sheer nonsense.

It is not only just about losing faith in Santa Claus, his elves, his reindeer and his flying sleigh and his squeezing of his corpulent bulk into tight chimneys on Christmas Eve.  It is not just about learning the hard way that Christmas is not really about pine trees with icicles, snow covered landscapes, white-capped mountains and Frosty the Snowman with his black top hat and all the other rubbish that seeks to implant in our Filipino culture and consciousness the ridiculous traditions and belief systems of cultures from far distant climes and locations.

It is not just even about having one's eyes being suddenly opened to the crass commercialization of the whole Christmas idea, the insidious propagation of the delusion that holiday happiness and festive cheer can be purchasable like most instant goodies prepackaged in a box and ready to be unleashed and used at one's choosing anytime and anywhere.

Haunted

One of our family's worst kept secrets is the fact that our family home in Lianga is haunted.  When I use the term "haunted" I refer, of course, to the "infestation" of human dwellings by non-human and obviously otherworldly beings or those aptly termed tongue-in-cheek in local parlance as the "not like ours". Whatever is specifically haunting the house we in the immediate family circle, however, have never been able to determine with some degree of certainty.  Yet we are convinced that the hauntings themselves are real.

Those among our close relatives who do know about this (ehem!) skeleton in the family closet have ventured varying opinions as to what is causing what can be best described as inexplicable phenomena that have occurred at various times during the recent history of our fifty-year old home in this town.  Some have pinned their blame on dwarves or the little people who are so much part of the myths and legends of many peoples all over the world.

Others say that it can be any of the variety of spirits or invisible supernatural beings that inhabit this earth and this plane of existence and who, because of unknown or unfathomable reasons, have decided to co-inhabit this house with us. The beings, they say, can be benign or harmless although occasionally mischievous while others can be malignant and malevolent.

Natural High

There is something basic and primeval to mountains that appeal to the spiritual in man.  Mystics, seekers of inner wisdom and pilgrims searching for enlightenment have throughout human history made their way up the high places of the world where in the rarified air and the splendid isolation of mountain summits they sought the often elusive answers to the most vexing questions of life.

Of course, my family's brief Holy Week sojourn in the foothills of Mt. Kitanglad in Bukidnon province was more of a weekend vacation rather than a pilgrimage or spiritual journey.  But in between the thrills and squeals of the vaunted zip-lines and the zorbit rides, the high adrenaline rush of the buggy and ATV trails and the muscle aching challenges of the nature trails of Dahilayan in Manolo Fortich town, one does have plenty of down time to ponder, reflect upon and essentially "soak in" the unique ambiance of this mountainous hideaway.

Dahilayan is actually the home of a group of tourist resorts capitalizing on the cool climate, unique flora and fauna plus the spectacular scenery that can be found some 4,700 feet above sea level.  These resorts also promote eco-tourism and facilities geared towards the more extreme recreational activities like the already aforementioned zip-lines, ATV and zorbit rides.

Epitaph

He was a great lumbering hulk of a man, blessed or cursed (depending on how you would look at it) with the great physical bulk genetically common to my mother's side of the extended Murillo clan. But he carried his not inconsiderable stoutness with grace, aplomb and good humor convincing many that it was a manifestation of good health and good living rather than the result of a privileged and dissolute lifestyle.

He also had that rogue gene not uncommon within my mother's clan that gifted him with the fine Caucasian features, the hazel-brown eyes and the brown-black hair that many would ascribed to the supposed influence of distant Spanish forbears. That plus his physique gave him the air of a plump, good-natured and mischievous child with the carefree, roguish twinkle in the eyes despite the fact that he was already past middle age and approaching 60 years of age.

That he was liked by the many who he came into contact with was a fact for he was essentially a likable man. He cultivated friends like a game fowl breeder raised champion cocks and had an affable, extroverted nature which enabled him to enjoy a wide circle of friends, all of whom held him in great esteem and who remember him with fondness.

He was not perfect and had his faults though like the rest of us. He could be pushy, domineering and even occasionally guileful but it was easy to forgive him for his excesses because deep inside his heart was as big as his body and his imperfections were trivial compared to his virtues particularly his capacity to empathize and sympathize with others.

Wind Struck

If there is one ailment that always gets the goat of anyone minding my mother's small drugstore in Lianga, the dreaded "panuhot" is definitely at the top of the list.

"Can you please recommend to me a medicine for panuhot?," asks one elderly woman just the other day. She had one of those tattered, wide-brimmed buli hats that marked her as coming from one of the town's more remote, farming villages.

The sales clerk shrugged, suppressed a sigh of exasperation and headed immediately for the section displaying painkillers and muscle relaxants. It's the only thing she can do and has, in fact, been instructed to do. For in the whole of modern Western pharmacopoeia, there is no specific drug cure for a disorder that, as far as modern medicine is concerned, does not officially exist.

The panuhot is considered, in the traditional belief systems of the rural folk, to be the primary cause of a wide variety of symptoms which may include muscular aches and pains, swelling of the affected areas and sometimes fever, general body weakness and malaise. It is explained by practitioners of folk medicine as the negative effects of the entrance of hangin or wind and cold temperatures or bugnaw into specific body tissues or nerves where it accumulates and causes pain and discomfort.

The concept of the panuhot is intrinsically connected to the idea of the piang which like the latter has been known to bedevil rural doctors who have tried to disabuse the rural folk of such persistent traditional beliefs in favor of modern advances in scientific and medical knowledge. The piang (as differentiated from actual bone and skeletal fractures) refers to a supposed "fracture or dislocation" (whatever that means) in body tissues or nerves particularly in the back and chest area and is often cited by rural mothers as the main cause of coughing and other respiratory ailments in their children.

A Different Pespective

My nephew, Iam, is about to turn fifteen years old. He suffers from a very mild form of autism which cause him to have some language comprehension and communication problems. Aside from that, however, he is functions almost normally and is personally appealing in his childlike innocence and manner.

But like many of the special children nowadays who share his particular disability, he is also possessed with that precious gift of being able to view the real world from a perspective that is uniquely his own. That gift and unique perspective can be a special blessing to the many of us in this jaded and cynical world who pride ourselves in being supposedly one hundred percent normal and, therefore, "superior" to those "burdened" with such mental handicaps.

Some time ago at the start of summer, I caught Iam surreptitiously putting what looked like a small stone into the pocket of his pants. Since he has the penchant for collecting what many "normal" people would consider the most strange and trivial of knickknacks, I have developed the habit of checking his pockets whenever I can.

"What is that?", I asked him. "Show me."

He opened his fingers and I saw that he was not keeping stone but a small fruit nut from one of the palm trees that grew in the backyard of the house in Lianga. "They are seeds," he said, talking to slowly and patiently me as if I needed the time understand him. "They need to be planted in the earth and watered regularly in order to grow."

Lost Forever

My Uncle Diony passed away recently after a prolonged bout with the effects of a devastating stroke that laid him low several years ago. Dionisio Salon was married to my Auntie Feling who happens to be my mother's youngest sister. Both have lived for a long time in Pensacola in Florida in the United States where my auntie works as a nurse.

I only had the chance to meet Uncle Diony two times in the past when he and my auntie visited the Philippines. The last time we saw each other, he was still basically a vigorous man despite the fact that he was already in his eighties and retired from work as a chemical engineer for a well known American chemical company.

We did not have the time to get particularly close but I personally liked him. He was mentally active and intellectually inquisitive for a man of his advanced years. He and I had many productive conversations in the backyard of the house in Lianga about many topics ranging from politics and current events to philosophy and history. And it was during one of such discourses during his last visit to this country many years ago when he finally broached to me his desire to leave a written record, a memoir of some sort, which would chronicle what he felt were the many events of his long, interesting and productive life.

At first, I must confess that I thought it rather presumptuous of him to even contemplate the idea that his written autobiography would have interest, historical or otherwise, for people other than the members of his family, his friends and relations. He even asked me to help him out on on the project, a request that I initially had reservations granting not just because I had doubts about its viability and usefulness but more so because I personally felt I did not have the proper skills and experience to do justice to such an endeavor.

Legacy

In the waning decades of the 19th century, a young man trading his dried and salted fish for rice and other goods made his way to the rice-growing town of Tago in the northern part of what is present day Surigao del Sur. He was also a skilled fisherman, like his father who was said to have come from the Visayan province of Bohol. He was born and raised in Hinatuan, a town on the southern tip of the Surigao provinces where his father had met and married a local girl.

In the course of his trading visits to Tago, he met and fell in love with Ignacia Morse Pacheco of the local Pacheco clan. They eventually got married around 1880. Ignacia prevailed upon Manuel to make Awasan, a small village near Tago, his home and the couple soon became the nucleus of a growing family. They would have a total of 9 children, 5 sons and 4 daughters.

The couple, by dint of hard work and a sound business sense, soon prospered in their new home. Manuel, in recognition of his growing status in his community, was appointed cabeza de barangay or village head and was said to have traveled often farther north to Surigao, the capital of the then undivided Surigao province, to deliver to the provincial governor sums of money collected as tribute to the then Spanish colonial government.

To provide for his expanding family, Manuel together with a few other hardy pioneers moved to the south of Tago to a coastal area then locally known as Punta Langbay and founded a new village which became known as Sitio Bayabas. The term "bayabas" is the local name for the guava tree, a large and stout specimen of which was said to have stood near the Murillo house.

Holding On To Hope

It's the graduation season in Lianga nowadays and, in the case of this town which is host to a public elementary school, two public high schools and the Lianga campus of the Surigao del Sur Polytechnic State College, the excitement can be exceedingly contagious especially if someone in the immediate family or neighborhood is actually graduating from any of the above mentioned educational institutions.

Local folks like most Filipinos, place a high value on education for their children and diplomas, particularly those conferring college degrees, are often viewed as tickets to social advancement and financial success in life for their offspring. Thus graduation ceremonies are important milestones in the yearly calendar of activities for the whole community and occasions for conspicuous celebration for those families with graduates of their own from whatever level in the academic ladder.

In the family house in Lianga in particular, two of my mother's house helpers are getting ready to receive college degrees of their own and all of us there have been feeling more than some of the heat from the graduation fever that has most of the town within its insidious grip.

Christmas Greetings

All week long I have been getting Christmas greetings from readers of this blog based outside the country and sent through this blog's comments section and via e-mail. Well, in truth, the greetings are not just for me but also for their family, relatives and friends in Lianga they have left behind and who they so dearly miss during this Yuletide season.

I know, because I belong to a family with some of its members now living abroad, how difficult it is to properly and meaningfully celebrate Christmas when your own home echoes with the memories of loved ones forced by circumstance and the vagaries of fate to live and work so far away from the family hearth. For us, as for many millions of other Filipino families, Christmas, nowadays, is never complete, the festivities never emotionally or sentimentally gratifying as it once was because of those whose accustomed places at the Noche Buena table must remain sadly and poignantly vacant.

If it is hard for us here who have been left behind, it must be harder still for those who have to celebrate this Christmas in cold, distant and faraway lands bereft of the emotional comfort and support of their families and friends. Theirs is the harsh and unforgiving loneliness, the crushing homesickness and desperate longing for the soothing familiarity of the familiar sights, sounds and smells of their own land, borne with extraordinary fortitude and perseverance by the victims of the Filipino diaspora that is the sad reality of our times.

In many ways, this blog was written for them and their kind.

So, in behalf of the people of Lianga, I wish all of her children scattered all over this country and elsewhere all over the world, a very Merry Christmas and the blessings of a more bountiful, prosperous New Year to come. I wish all of you good health, financial success and the fulfillment of all of those dreams for which you all have sacrificed so much for by going so far away.

I would also like to wish the best of this merry season to the many kindred souls who continue to blog and make noise about Lianga and its part of the world on the blogosphere and the Internet. You know who you are and you have done a wonderful job so far. Keep up the good work.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Reality Check

My niece, three nephews and I had a healthy and spirited discussion a week or so ago about.... well .... Santa Claus. Not that anyone among us had anything against that red suited, white-bearded, rolly-poly, globetrotting and sleigh-riding icon of the Yuletide season afflicted with the insatiable obsession with gift giving. It is just that, we could not agree among ourselves, God help us, whether he really exists or not.

To my niece and one nephew, both just about ready to enter into their teens, Santa remains an unquestionably real albeit unseen presence in their young lives every Christmas. They regularly write every November to the guy at the North Pole to tell him exactly what they want to receive as a present on Christmas Eve and, so far, they have not been really disappointed. Either both of them have been really well behaved the past few years or Santa has been extra generous with them for one reason or another.

The two older boys, both already growing wispy tufts of downy hair on their upper lips and thus already thinking of themselves as wiser in the ways of the world, have vehemently declared, to the tearful consternation of their younger companions, that Santa Claus is a myth. The gifts come from their own parents, they say, giggling all the while at the folly of all the deluded children who were still too young and foolishly naive to believe in the illusion and the lie.

As they all squabbled and bickered among themselves, I tried to remember when I exactly started not to believe in Santa and the Santa Claus myth myself. After a few minutes of pondering, I realized that, for the life of me, I never actually believed in the man and the myth even as a child.

An Altogether Different Kind Of Fun

If I ever have the nerve to ask any one of my teenaged nephews or niece if they know how to make balls or whistles out of coconut leaflets, they would all probably impatiently thumb on the pause button on their PSP's or Nintendo DS's and then turn to me with that quizzical look in their eyes and the same unspoken question on their lips. "Why should we have to? Why bother?"

Why bother indeed?

When I was about twelve or so and on summer vacation from school in the city, I was playing with friends one hot afternoon in the backyard of the family house here in Lianga when we saw one of my mother's young house helpers sitting underneath one of the coconut trees in the yard with a bunch of coconut leaflets on her lap she had stripped off a whole frond which lay nearby. She was a fresh faced girl of about eighteen who had grown up in my grandfather's small village not far from town.

We watched her, mesmerized by the dexterity of her fingers as she meshed the leaf strips together, twisting one over and underneath one another until in what seemed like just a few seconds she had magically fashioned a small ball, actually a cube with rounded corners, which she then tossed over to us to play with. Entranced, I sat down beside her as she started coiling one long leaf strip like a snake into a cone, stuck small leaf cuttings into the narrow end, tied up the cone with string to prevent it from unraveling and, in a jiffy, presented me with a whistle horn which gave off a vibrating, high pitched squeal when I blew on it.

Backyard Angling

When I tell visitors coming to the family house in Lianga that my siblings and I used to throw fishing lines from the backyard of the house into the sea and actually catch small fish, they would glance at me with an air of incredulity and disbelief thinking that I must be either exaggerating the facts a bit or deliberately pulling their legs. The truth is, I am merely telling the absolute truth.

When we were home for summer vacation from school in the city in the 1970's and early 1980's, my brothers and I would spend hours in the backyard my father had fashioned from some land he had reclaimed from the sea at the back of his house. From behind a concrete seawall he had constructed to keep the sea out, we would throw makeshift fishing lines into the sea and try to bring in the small, multicolored tropical fish that roamed the rock strewn, sea grass covered bottom of the shallow waters at high tide.

An afternoon of fishing always started with a frenzied hunt for hermit crabs which could be found clustered underneath large rocks within the backyard itself or hiding in the grassy corners of the flower gardens my mother doted upon just behind the house. Using round, smooth rocks like hammers, we would pound the crabs (children can be mercilessly cruel), crack their shells and pinch off their soft, fleshy abdomens which, despite their awful, stinky odor, the fish seem to relish and, therefore, were our favorite choice for fish bait.

Pindang

During each of the many sojourns I had in many places outside of Mindanao, I am always caught by surprise not so much by the many obvious differences but more so often by the subtle similarities between the lifestyles and culinary tastes of the people elsewhere in this country and those of Lianga where I have lived most of my life.

In one recent instance, one resident of Antipolo City in Rizal province just outside of Metro Manila dragged me to his kitchen and and made me watch as he started tossing what looked like large chunks of dark, dried meat into a pan of hot oil. As the oil hissed, popped and splattered unto the sides of his gas range, he told me that he was treating me to a dinner of Kapampangan-style pindang damulag or cured carabao meat. "A new taste treat for you," he promised me.

I did not have the heart to tell him that I was not only familiar with pindang in Lianga but also the fact that pork or carabao meat prepared pindang or tapa style happens to be one of my perennial, favorite food treats.

Prayers On Beads

My parents tried their very best to raise me to be a devout Catholic especially my mother who inherited much of her staunch Catholicism from her own parents. My Lola Dingding, my mother's mother, was a diminutive woman, seemingly frail and delicate yet had a personality as strong and as dominant as the insurmountable religious faith that was the bedrock of her very existence.

When I was a young boy, my siblings and I treasured her visits to Lianga where, after dispensing generous rations of hugs and kisses, she would quickly make sure that all of us young ones where up to date on our religious obligations while at the same time dispensing timely and homey nuggets of spiritual advice to those she felt was lagging behind in their religious and spiritual growth. That was a task she took very seriously and something we all accepted with alacrity because we loved her dearly.

To think of even arguing or debating with her was not only absurd but simply out of the question. One simply does not quibble in the face of a personal faith that seemed capable of not only moving mountains but, more worriedly, seemingly able to bring down the wrath of the Almighty upon those who would dare disbelieve or worse, mock such a faith.

But it was when she took out her rosary beads and novena booklets when she was at her most formidable. I, like all of her grandchildren, always dreaded the moments when she would call all of us out to join her in praying the rosary. It did not matter whether it was early morning, late afternoon or before bedtime. Praying the rosary with Lola Dingding was more than an act or test of faith, it was, in our rather limited view then, refined torture of the most subtle, insidious kind.

House Of Dreams

In the 1950's, Jose, an up and coming landowner in Barangay Salvacion near the town of San Agustin just 20 or so kilometers north of Lianga began plans to build his dream house. It was not just going to be any other house. It was going to be a flamboyant statement, a visible declaration of his growing wealth and status in the small community. It was going to be, by local standards, a feudal castle, a monumental structure although crafted not of stone and mortar but of fine wood and concrete yet imposingly grand and immensely pretentious just the same.

The structure that emerged can be described as eclectic at best, a hodgepodge of styles and designs. Hemmed in and squeezed into a small lot, the landowner had decided to build upwards, aiming to create an illusion of space and bulk. The house was to tower over all over not only all the surrounding dwellings but will be the tallest in the whole barrio. To ensure this, a third story tower-like structure was constructed and from its windows one could survey much of the whole village as a lord would from his manor.

There were those who said that Jose was merely giving form and substance to an ego that was as ruthless, ambitious and monumental as the house he was building. But the landowner was not fazed by such negative comments which he dismissed as merely motivated by envy and jealousy at man who was already making his mark in their small society.

Walking Away

He would have been 78 years old last August 14 and few ever doubted that he would live that long. After all he came from hardy, peasant stock, men and women hardened and toughened by the rich soil that they tilled all their lives. His father lived to be 93 and his mother to the ripe age of 84, so who would have thought that he would die at the relatively young age of 66?

If there was one thing my father feared, and he was essentially a man of few fears and doubts, it was the possibility of being struck down by any illness that would lay him low and helpless, a veritable vegetable who would have to be taken cared of - a financial, emotional and physical burden for his his family to carry and endure. He would recoil at the very thought and time and time again he would aver that he would die a quick, peaceful death and that everyone he loved would be spared the agony of seeing him leave this world.

He was also a man capable of quick decisions. He believed in doing what he believed to be right quickly, wholeheartedly and with the minimum of fuss. As such, he was always on the go, a man seemingly always in a hurry and moving as if the normal pace of life was too slow for him.

As a physician he worked quickly and briskly, his diagnoses as intuitive as they are based on common sense and a keen, observant eye. As a surgeon, he wielded the scalpel with speed and precision, often pulling off surgical miracles where lesser doctors have given up all hope.

In Memoriam

When I first met him in the 1980's I did not know what to expect. At that time my contact with Americans was largely limited to either gruff, academic types such as exchange students and professors in Cebu City's universities or the occasional rowdy, ebullient serviceman going around that city's tourist destinations. He turned out, to my eternal surprise and delight, to be, well, more Pinoy than most Filipinos I know.

My Auntie Meming, who was my father's favorite first cousin, was part of the wave of Filipino nurses who left this country for the United States in the early 1960's. There she met and married Richard Sowney. They settled down in Philadelphia and eventually had two daughters. Auntie Meming is a vivacious, fast-talking, outspoken, spirited lady while Uncle Dick was, as I knew him, more restrained and deliberate yet a thoroughly affable, mild mannered and likable guy. How they meshed together and managed to keep their marriage solid inspite of the differences in their personalities through the decades has always intrigued me.

Perhaps it was Uncle Dick's deep Irish roots that made the difference. Like most Filipinos, he was a devout Catholic with a deep and abiding respect and devotion for the family. He did not have any difficulty understanding the strong, sentimental ties that bind extended families and their relatives in the Philippines together. It was, in many ways, also an integral part of his own similar cultural milieu.

So after he came here in the 1980's for the first of several visits, I gradually got to know and like him. How can one not develop affection and deep respect for someone who although of a different race and nationality, was so thoroughly comfortable and at ease with a culture not his own; one who accepted new experiences with grace and humility, and who genuinely like people and liked people to like him.