KILLER RIVER

The Upper Disakan River, a river common to the towns of Manukan and Jose Dalman in Zamboanga del Norte in Mindanao, Philippines must have killed more people than any other rivers in the world.

It is a short river of only nearly 15 kilometers from the main water source to the estuary.

It snakes between mountains not a portion of its stream is rapids or cascades or falls.

It runs all through level lands like a canal with either mountains or hills on both sides.

Full time smaller tributary rivers and creeks with waters of their own and waterless brooks collect the rainwater into Upper Disakan River in the rainy months between July and August of each year, making the river a killer.

The highway that links the coastal municipalities of Zamboanga del Norte crosses this river.

Over the years community grew to the size of a little town beside the highway near the river and the bridge that crosses to the other side of the river.

The July, 1991 flood wiped out this community sending belongings such as refrigerators, washing machines and corpse to the sea. A few escaped or weren't home during the flood but hundreds were missing and when some of the bodies drifted ashore, they were beyond recognition. Some bodies of the victims were drifted to neighboring towns. Victims were buried in a mass grave beside the Upper Disakan public cemetery.

Not learning a lesson, the community slowly grew again, this time even bigger. And the local authorities doesn't seem to care. Little businesses were established, a little flea market for fishermen's wives to sell their husband's catch and for farmers to sell their farm products, billiard halls and a few stores.

In August, 2002, at around 7:00 o'clock in the afternoon it started to rain strong and up 4:00 o'clock the rain was still as strong. Before everybody was awake in the neighboring communities, words were passed around that the Upper Disakan River flooded again. By 7:00 o'clock in the morning when onlookers arrived in Upper Disakan, the flood beginning to subside. Looking at the river's main stream, Upper Disakan River was so fearsome the way it carried debris with its current.

The entire community was wiped out by the flood, save for the store that used concrete materials. But a giant red flower dap-dap tree uprooted and carried by the flood slammed into the window of the store, root first. One of the billiard tables was deposited by the flood into a carabao wallow with its 3 pieces of granite surface broken into 7 pieces. The other tables were nowhere to be found. A light truck owned by a businessman in the community was among a mixture of flood debris: an entire bamboo plant, a number of banana plants, a few coconut trunks all complete with its roots, and some logs stalled as debris accumulated. And, hundreds of lives were lost mostly missing never to be found.

Within a few years of that August, 2002 flood, houses are sneaking back into the place although not anymore as many.

And in July 23, 2010, Upper Disakan River flooded again. The rains were only in the mountains and wasn't strong and long enough and the floodwater barely reaching the surface of Upper Disakan Bridge.

But it's only a matter time before the Upper Disakan River will kill people again.

MY BLIND FRIEND

My Subano friend Custodio Dalaay is blind in the right eye. He lost the eye firing a shotgun he himself made. His shotgun is made of nearly three feet, three fourth inch diameter GI plumbing pipe for the barrel, the butt he himself crafted, the metal works that included the firing pin and trigger was made by a blacksmith in another town. He pushes a bullet into the pipe and his shotgun is ready. It's illegal to make, to own, to possess, a home made shotgun. Factory made shotguns are available at gun stores and can be legally purchased, but Dalaay cannot afford it and so he made his own. His purpose is to guard his corn of monkeys in the day and wild boar in the night. One evening shortly after midnight he heard noises in his corn field, he reach for his shotgun at the head of his bamboo bunk. Like a ghost he went out of the house, his shotgun at fort arm. He edged closer to where the noise came from. There was the pig, dully lighted by the crescent moon eating his corn. He aimed his shotgun, one eye closed, the other open, looking at the sight. He held his breath and fired. The cartridge exploded into his right eye knocking him unconscious. The next morning he was in a government hospital at the provincial capital, right eye on bandage. When the bandage was removed some months later, his right eye was no longer in its socket.

I KILLED MY WIFE

Because there were times that we won't be able to see each other, within eight months after we lived together as husband and wife, we had to decide that one of us had to leave our jobs. She was a kitchen crew of a restaurant chain in Makati City working on shifts while I was on a 9 to 5 job in a shipping company in Port Area, Manila. Alone in life, she had no problem with her work sched. Married to me, she had to do some cooking although I did not require her to do so. And on her days off from work, she had to wash clothes which now included mine because I was now her husband. And so we decided that she be the one to leave her job, her salary being lower than mine.
This decision which we made mostly out of my insistence was to be the culprit to her death twenty four years later. Having no more works to do after washing the dishes after breakfast I had deprived her of physical activities her body needed to keep away the big C. She didn't have to hurry anymore to the train station; she didn't have to hurry anymore to her work place after getting off the train; she didn't have to work anymore in the kitchen of that restaurant.
Sometime in the later part of the 90s, she began to complain about a growth inside her anus. We did not take it seriously as we thought it was just an ordinary polyp. By the early 2000, she began to feel difficulty defecating. Later her feces had traces of blood. Some months more later, she would sit a long time on the toilet bowl trying to excrete, first with little amount, and then some more months later, nothing will come out.
For nearly two years she was bedridden, and in the late morning of September 24, 2004 I had to rush her on a taxi to a government hospital. Her hemoglobin was so low I couldn't remember the figure. The doctors suggested blood transfusion but without encouragement. At 2:00 o'clock of that day, she said the surrounding was beginning to get dark. Her right hand crept into mine and held it tight. Minutes later her eyes began to slowly close and her hand slowly loosened on mine. And then she began a struggled breathing even when the oxygen was in her nostril. And in the early evening of that day, her bed dripped with her urine perhaps in her effort to hold on to life. And then she breathed her last.
In the course of her ailment, we went to a doctor at the stage when defecating became difficult. The doctor took sample tissues from her anus and recommended operation when he got the result. But the second doctor we consulted for another opinion said "no. Operation is not the solution. Even in the early growth of the polyp, operation was not a solution. Operation will only lower the quality of life" my wife will have to live in the few remaining days of her life as she'll be carrying a colostomy bag in her waist for the few remaining days of her life.
I did some reading after her death. The Encarta says heating the bacon up to nearly 500 degrees C makes it carcinogenic. But I can hardly blame the bacon although there were few occasions that we ate club sandwich in restaurants in Greenhills, San Juan, Metro Manila. The Encarta also says that lack of fruit and vegetable in the diet make the body vulnerable to the big C. We ate enough fruit mostly banana being the only available fruit year round, and she cooked vegetable quite often.
And the Encarta also says that lack of physical activities can also cause the development of the big C. The lack of activities thing of my wife which is my making, I believe is the real culprit to my wife's death.

My Cerebral Palsy Son

My second son Archie was shown to me through the glass windows hours after he was born. After a day at the nursery, the hospital called me at work informing me that Archie had turned yellowish. "He vomited," the hospital added. The only medical word I remember the hospital told me was "jaundice." His skin was like a skinned ginger when I went to see him at the hospital nursery. Archie had to remain in the hospital for 29 days. When he was released he was so thin that we did catch up feeding for him. Within a few months, he was almost like a healthy baby. But the only development we noticed in him was his body. Until he was three years old he had not learned to walk nor had he learned to talk. I devoted more of my time on his walk learning. I was determined not to keep him in a crib or a pen when he had outgrown the crib. On weekends we would go to a nearby park where the grass on the lawn would cushion his every fall. Exactly on June 16, 1988, he was three years and three months then, I leaned him on suntan flowers that bordered the park lawn. I took three short steps backward and began encouraging him to walk toward me. It took nearly an hour of coaxing before he finally stepped his feet toward me. Only three steps the last step was to make sure that he gets to me, and then he hugged me. But that was all that was needed and his courage to learn to walk was built. Now he's 25 years old, a full grown man. Archie can walk although not quite in good control of his body, but he walks. Archie has not learned to talk, but he's not zero at communicating. He types on the computer the words he wants to say to me. the document file is always open in case he wants to say something. Archie has never gone to school in his life, not even a half minute in a formal classroom. He got all his education in the internet. He can be visited in his FaceBook account. He's using his full name Nate Archibald Ferrolino Hisula.

My Last First

Papa is a full blood Visayan. His parents came to Mindanao at the time when lands in Mindanao were all owned. Mama Enalay was a full blood Subana. Her parents own all the lands the eyes can see from where one stands, documented to prove ownership.

The description Subana not only is intended to carry gender but also to tinge the name of something like uneducated, uncivilized. Uneducated could be true to Mama Enalay. She quit school before she could be grade three; school was too far she had to walk four kilometers and cross one and the same river three times. Uncivilized, I don’t think she was although I never knew my Mama Enalay in person. I only knew her as Mama Enalay. That her Mama was one of the wives of a Subano datu in a harem of eight wives, that her Mama was a lesser wife, reason why the land she got from the datu is smaller and not the choicest, that her father datu, my grandfather, was once invited to Malacanang Palace by President Magsaysay and that he was wearing what legends tell the attire datus wear. Mama Enalay, Papa has always told me, that she was beautiful no matter who’s the beholder. The other thing I know about Mama Enalay is that she was the youngest among seven; (Papa, middle born, the third among five.) I never saw her but only her grave marked with her name in badly written words and dates by an inadequately educated writer which was my Papa. Enalay Dalaay Buhawan, star Jul 18, 1940, cross Sep 24, 1982. He grave is among the unarranged graves in a public cemetery. It was as long ago as my age since Mama Enalay’s death but her death didn’t lose newness to Papa. Whenever he is free he goes to her bringing her wild goat flowers of orange and crimson and elephant violets, whose secret fragrance, as the Subanos claimed, being close to nature, are known only to their dead. This is why these wildflowers freely grow in our land. Papa neither scythe nor uproot them although he never cared for them.

One morning Papa selected among the dried lomboy leaves he kept in a small basket. He chose the biggest and carefully halved it to avoid a tear where the smoke might leak. And then he pulled his work bolo from the wooden sheath he was already wearing in his waist like a belt. He rubbed the leaf against the blunt side of the bolo to de-brittle the leaf. From his pocket, he pulled out his tobacco wrapped in a banana leaf to keep the flavor from evaporating. He tore two strips of equal length estimating without measuring. Sometimes he would tamp the extra length with a stick into the rolled leaf; sometimes he would chew the extra length like betel when he trims it with his nicotined teeth; and sometimes he would just spit it out like unneeded saliva. Two things are predictable when he does this early morning ritual: either he’s going to Mama Enalay’s grave or he’ll be working the endless chores at the coconut farm. He stopped inviting or requiring me to work with him or to Mama Enalay’s grave after I delivered the memorized valedictory address when I graduated high school. I don’t know his reason but he had the two copies of my picture behind a lectern on our sawali wall. He paid twenty five pesos for the two copies. He wanted only one so he could save twelve fifty, but the photographer wouldn’t agree. Beside my picture hangs his Subano ukulele made of coconut shell and g-melina in a canvass case like it is an expensive musical instrument. As I have said Papa have stopped requiring me to work with him, perhaps to him, a high school grad could be too high an education for works like he does. Or it could be that he wants to get used working alone without me helping and keeping him company. In a matter of days, I’ll be leaving for college. But I know, had he somebody to talk to other than me or if Mama Enalay still alive, he would be talking loud to her. I know the noises he makes as he works the morning meal, were meant to waken me in case I want to go with him. I was still lying on our romblon mat, the katsa blanket of eight pieces of flour bags sewn together, still wraps me from my hips to the toes. I was already awake but still hypnagogic.

From the dying fire that boiled his coffee of the Subano variety that grows among other low growing trees, he pulled an ember and put over the strips of tobacco to keep it burning when lighted. His fingers were as careful when he put the tobacco in the lomboy leaf and rolled it into a gasper. He blew the ash to reveal the orange fire and then lighted his cigarette sniffing and puffing. The other leaf was rolled next but only to be a reserve. Lomboy trees abound in our mountain for the twin purpose of providing food to the birds and other animals diurnal and nocturnal, and Papa’s smoke. He bit his lomboy cigarette between his incisors as he clipped the other one in his right ear. The scent of the burning lomboy leaf scented what could have been the heavy smell of tobacco. Although I like the mixtures of the two smells, I never tried it, but only once. It seemed like my lungs were out of oxygen and like I was going to collapse.

Papa poured coffee into his tin cup and immediately the aroma added to what was already a pleasant smell. He ladled three chunks of last night’s pone and dipped it into the steaming coffee and then put it into his mouth looking up like a fledgling regurgitated of food. But it was really to avoid one drop of the coffee or grit of the corm from escaping. He consumed the coffee to the dregs hooking his finger to carry the bits of pounded coffee and stone-ground corn to his mouth. That was all his breakfast but enough to last him until the noontime meal. Without saying a word to me or looking at me on the mat, he left, a hammer and a saw were in his hand and I knew where he was going.

I waited until I could no longer hear the sound of his bolo sheath clashing against his thigh. I stood up leaving the blankets and mat and pillows like a lazy man. I had to get to Papa fast. He may have done plenty of things before I get to him and so lessen the importance of my presence. Nobody comes to our house anyway. I scooped corn with my fingers holding the food in my hand without putting it in a plate. Being young, my taste is different. I pinched my other hand twice on the salt stored in an antique china bowl, which is the only thing of value Papa have, and sprinkled it on my pone. I ate as I hurriedly walked to where Papa could be working. With the tools he had in his hand when he left, I know he will be repairing his kangga. He will probably be delivering to stores in town his charcoal and firewood any day. A few minute walk and I could hear a tap-tapping but with a rhythm different from that of a woodpecker. I walked to the direction of the sound, and there I saw him knocking a nail on a wood with his hammer. He was singing the endless Subano love song he said he leaned Mama Enalay.

maralak n’g bton

maralak n’g bulan

ya’a pat’l nga

inig gestigos

Nga gad dabu

Sensing my presence, his singing turned into soft hum and then probably to conceal the feeling of embarrassment at my interruption, he began again, but this time now softer and then back to humming again. I slowly edged to him not wanting him to stop humming. I love to find indications that he is happy. And then his humming went to a total stop as his aloneness ended.

“Sumino-nora ma lagi?” he said.

I dropped to my knees beside him to join him trying to find a way to help. The grass tickled my skin but cushioned my knees

“Salaura d’g balay,” I answered. I never learned to speak Mama Enalay’s language. If only Mama Enalay is still alive, Papa would have somebody to talk to in Subano and I would have learned the language listening to them.

“Gabas mo wi ni.” He pushed to me a newly cut round wood and passed to me the saw.

Papa doesn’t need to do this work. And we could have better food than the breakfast we’ve just had. I never complained. I’m used to it even though food I ate while attending school was far different. The money from the coconut land Mama Enalay inherited from her parents is sufficient enough for whatever food I liked. Sixteen hectares of coconuts, intercropped with ipil-ipil my papa planted which he harvested every month to sell as firewood. Papa planted the ipil-ipil without fully understanding, as he once told me, at the time when Imelda Marcos wanted to introduce the “gassifier” on jeepneys. And the charcoal from the coconuts was an additional load to Papa’s work. Too little money comes from it but he works on it nevertheless not wanting it to go to waste. A week ago when the rain stopped he worked on the nuts extracted of kernel separating the coir from the shell. It took him several days of slow work to finish it.

The land could have been taken by Mama Enalay’s three brothers and four sisters had I died with Mamay Enalay when she gave birth to me. I knew how difficult it could have been for Papa assimilating with my aunts and uncles without me. We even rarely went to them. Although he didn’t forbid me from going to them, I know he doesn’t like the idea of going to them. He was the one different from them, not them different from him.

Reason why Mama Enalay had difficulty giving birth to me was because it took them nearly twenty years before she got pregnant of me. She was already past forty then, that’s why. Papa never remarried for if he had, Subano tradition dictates that he would have to leave me to Mama Enalay’s brother or sister and leave the land. There is no such thing as step children or step parent as far as Mama Enalay’s family is concerned. I know it would be difficult for him had he left the land and I knew difficulty is not the thing he feared. He is used to it. I knew he wants to care the land and the money from it for me.

The money from copra and from charcoal and firewood is in a rural bank and in a Manila-based bank in the other town twice bigger than ours. The last time he showed me the bankbooks there was more than seven hundred thousand pesos, accumulated since I was born as indicated in the first deposit. Hardly were there withdrawals but two times which he told me was to test if he really has the money available anytime. His only expenditures were the basic ones and one luxury: his tobacco. He was determined not to feel the pain of hunger anymore. But he did not unreasonably and excessively scrimp. Each time he delivers his firewood he goes to the fish or meat section of the public market He spends only very little amount of the copra money buying the workers that intoxicating drinks and be customers of a billionaire fellow that owes the government billions in unpaid taxes. But the government, as my high school teachers say, cannot wring his arm to pay as he might declare bankruptcy and close his businesses and his workers will have no more works. This is only time Papa’s copra workers vacation their tongues from the tuba they drink daily in mountain stores. And then Papa goes straight to the bank to deposit the money. Before Mama Enalay’s parents died and before the land was divided among them, there was almost no money, sometimes no food on the table. The rustic table, on which they ate, was eaten by termites as Papa told me. Termites had the table as food while they had no food on the table. And he was determined not to feel hunger anymore which to him is a kind of pain.

Papa is almost illiterate, writes words or numbers with great effort. Numbers were only for money and recognition of it is aided by the colors of each bill or size of each coin. Having that amount of money, clerks at the banks knew him by face and would know him by name the moment he presents his bankbook. By the amount of money in his passbook, he’s an important client and their assistance available almost exclusively for well dressed lowland folks was accorded to him.

And then his kangga was restored ready for use again. Our land is bared completely to the sun now. We went to Aguspar, his female kalabaw to send her to the wallows. As soon as she felt from her rope that she was freed, she pranced the way she did when she was a calf before she broke into a playful run to where she understands where we want her to go. Papa has three other kalabaws naming each of them for nomenclature. We recognize each of them by their horns but their names were still necessary to know where each of them is teetered. I went to Saling the other female but oldest kalabaw; Papa to Mars and Sabar. Mars and Sabar were ahead in the wallow, as soon as Saling get to the wallow, she slipped her front feet between Sabar and Aguspar like the space had been bookmarked for her. The mud was topped with shallow dirty water and water walkers. She tried to drink but she was reprimanded by Papa pulling her rope tight and beating it on the water. Papa never used his kalabaws for plowing although they were trained to. Neither Papa plows anymore although he used to in his younger years. Not only that he’s now old to plow, “agricultural technicians” are teaching farming techniques that benefit fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers more than the farmers – which Papa doesn’t agree.

His kalabaws’ only jobs were to pull the one and the same kangga we repaired with loads of fire wood, charcoal or copra to town. Papa let them do the job alternately; Saling being the oldest did the least work; Aguspar being young did the lightest work. As soon as they were settled and as the gnats land on the mud instead of their faces, we left.

There was still time to gather in one place near the kangga the firewood before we go home for the noontime meal. Three hundred bundles of six pieces of wood per bundle almost a yard long, Papa told me it will take the whole day to gather them all near where the kangga is parked. Papa will be selling it five pesos per bundle and all in all he’ll get P1500.00 from it.

It took us the whole afternoon to ready all the firewood for delivery. It took us the whole day the next day to deliver them to five stores in town. We placed stanchions of bamboo slats by the side of the kangga so we can load more than the kangga is capable of carrying. It was Mars and Sabar’s turn to dray. And then it was the charcoal that we worked on. We filled six giant rattan baskets heaped high above the brims we got from one, big, deep coaling pit Papa had been using time and again. The charcoal took us only three trips of Papa’s kangga to the same stores we delivered the firewood.

After we’ve transacted our wares and got all the money, we walked to a house at the outskirt of the town where the paved street changed into a graveled barangay road where grasses were in the middle not growing tall. We stopped at a house at the edge of a mango plantation fenced with cyclone wires. Pigeons were feeding in his front yard and the nest is up on a santol tree by the side of the house. Goats in herds of almost fifteen and a fewer one, were grazing on the grasses that were not shadowed by the mango trees. The owner knew Papa by name and already knew what Papa wants. Maybe they’ve talked about it before we came. He told Papa to come back in the evening or next morning. I did not ask what‘s going to be the transaction but Papa reached to him a fifty peso bill from the charcoal money.

We walked back to the market place. We proceeded to the fish section. He chose the best fish – yellow fin tuna. He bought two kilos at one hundred and twenty per kilo. Because I was with him, I know he could have chosen the less expensive fishes probably the caballas or the tamarong. Papa went to another stall for his only luxury in life; and me to the vegetable section where he instructed me to buy ten pesos worth of sibuyas dahonan, luya, green tomato, and one big biyasong. I knew by then what we are going to do with fish: Papa’s favorite kinilaw.

“Magalat to deg tabako-an,” he said in Subano. The more we are among Visayans like him, the more he speaks Mama Enalay’s language.

“Tinuod” I softly answered with a nod.

We walked to where we left Sabar and the kangga. It was late in the afternoon now and the sun has begun to lose its heat. Papa rode Sabar; I climbed the kangga and we were immediately what city folks usually see in the rural areas. Sabar did all the walking for us all the way back to our home. He‘s strong as a bull as he is indeed a bull anyway.

In the afternoon of the day that followed yesterday when our shadows were long beside us when we walked, we were again back to the town. We went back to the house by the mango farm. Only then did I realize that the fifty pesos Papa paid to the man was for a pigeon. The bird was in a cage when we arrived. The man handed Papa a strip of cloth to tie the red legs of the bird; but Papa just accepted the bird in his hand. That was all we went to the town for. We went straight home from there.

Dusk had turned into early evening when we reached the top of a hill that looks over the sea that separates Mindanao from the other islands. No clouds were up in the sky that impedes our vision of stars. It was like inside a giant planetarium muted of narrator. We stopped to look at the glow of the provincial capital a little northeast in the evening horizon. All over were fishermen’s lights strewn like heavenly bodies at sea just a few millions of perlicues away. Beyond the faintest light, Papa’s hand that holds the pigeon pointed a distant and unseen city where a university he wanted me to attend is. I knew the city and the university he was thinking. His inadequate education could be the thing that prevented him from keeping in his mind the name of the school. Without his knowledge, without asking first his permission, I took the university’s entrance examination given in a public high school in the provincial capital. I passed the exam.

“Gusto wa ngo digto ka magosaila,” he said still looking at the distant lights.

“Mahal a’g biyaran dig gusailan,” I pretended hesitation to provoke his insistence.

“Ta’ana ,” he calmly answered.

“Sige, ya’a.” I said, satisfied with his assurance.

Papa made a little cage of all-bamboo materials for the pigeon. I haven’t stopped wondering what he was going to do with the pigeon until the morning that I had to leave home for the city and the university. He dug with his bolo a little hole where rainwater from the thatch drops. He cut a slit in the pigeon’s skin near ear. Blood came out and he drained it into the hole he dug. And then he dressed the pigeon without scalding and he butchered the bird and then he stewed it including the head without adding anything to the water that will be the soup to improve the taste. After feeding woods three times to the fire, cooking was done. He fished the head from the boiling soup and carefully broke it on a chopping stump not hitting the brain. He shook the brain off the pigeon’s cranium into a spoon.

“Arol mo,” he said.

“Para prita’an me’n,” I pretended hesitation and to provoke his insistence as I always did.

“Arol mo ra gud, patu’d m’u,” he answered with the insistence that I wanted.

“Para prita’an mo lagi, tulo-an mo ra gud,” I took my turn to be insistent.

“din na pia tuntol di ni ah. Nandaw wo ra tinuntol di ni ah. Now, I’m not supposed to tell you this. I did not tell you this the first time I did this to you in your first day in school. But this is your last first I hope I’m not wrong in telling you the reason. You saw where I drained the blood? Next to that little pit that I dug were the blood and the wing feathers and the entrails and the red legs of the pigeon when I first did this to you. Mini ta na a’g pigbalmo.”

“Andun mi’g minita?” I pretended not to know.

“Rol mo langi, palangasay mo.” His insistence turned to begging.

I obeyed. I swallowed the pigeon brain perhaps the way I did the first time Papa did this to me I couldn’t remember exactly now. It’s tasteless. My tongue hurried to carry the brain to my throat followed with all the saliva I had in my mouth for I might vomit it out. Papa handed me a glass of water to sink it further down to my stomach. And then I swung my back bag bursting with clothes to my back. It was heavy but the excitement of going to a city I’ve never been before were all the things I had in my mind in those moments. And I would even want to live in those moments forever.

“Pagindog mo puso dig lupa, di a maglingay. Mbusa na paglingay bo di mo na mita mag wara-wara bingkon.”

I obeyed, but I wasn’t able to resist the temptation of looking back. He was sitting on the top rung of the step as he watched me go. I could see the faint smoke of his lomboy cigarette. He shooed me with his right hand to keep going.

After I turned a curve in the path and descended the first hill, we were out of sight of each other. I was far now. The only marker to locate home now was the two buli palms growing as tall as five story building. They were always of the same silhouette shape.

I was two hours early; the slow, diesel-smelling, old boat was more than an hour delayed in its departure, caused by undisciplined domestic shipping procedure. No closing time is imposed. Cargoes mostly farm products were still coming at the time the vessel is scheduled to depart.

Nearly half an hour after the ship sailed, I was watching a phenomenon that takes place everyday: sunset, the sun slipping out of sight in the horizon. I looked back at the Mindanao that I was leaving behind. As the ship eaten up distance, only the lights of homes getting obscure can be seen. And with the fishermen’s lights between us beginning to brighten as the night deepens, most likely, Papa is watching from the top of the hill the two of us used to stop.

---- e n d ----

bantol

He lifted the kettle cover with a stick and the steam rose to the sooty grass thatch of his shack. It was a good sign for absence of evaporation. It means no rain.

The same place where he cooks his food is the same place where he sleeps although a little over here away a little from the fire pit. Simple and yet it was enough to be beautiful.

He held the kettle cover with a dead twig while his other hand pierced the yam to see if cooking is done. It was still a little bit hard in the middle but he calculated the remaining fire was enough to finish the cooking. He put the cover back softly clanging on contact.

He went out of his bamboo shack to tether his pig under a guava to grub for whatever bits of food in the soil. His goat had left ahead with only a short rope in the neck like they have the understanding that he doesn't wander far and come home on its own.

After a few minutes he was back inside his house with a banana leaf in his hand. He removed the kettle from the stone trivet and heated the banana leaf on the dying fire to debrittle it. He speared few pieces of the cooked yam and wrapped it with the leaf and put it in his basket. He reached for his harpoon and his working knife. He tied the scabbard cord round his waist like a belt.

He stepped out of his house and by habit looked up the sky for weather signs. And then he tried to locate his goat from the step of his door to worry whether he comes back after being away the whole day. He could not see his goat but nevertheless proceeded to head for his sea.

His sea is more than four kilometers from his home -- mountain home. After some few minutes of walk as he emerged from the banana trees that isn't his, lining beside the foot trail, his sea, still as water in a bucket, could already be seen. His sea is encouraging. It isn't foaming with waves that cannot wait to hit the shore. Sea streams of all sizes local people call anaw flow to all directions.

He leisurely shouldered his harpoon the way a soldier would to his rifle when leaving battle. His basket hangs by his back in the other end of his harpoon. As he got farther and farther he became more and more stranger to the people along the way.

He concealed his basket among the leaves of lambayong vines that grow on the sand. Nobody steals food like the kind that he have, not even the hungriest dog. Except pigs. Over his basket was his only shirt that tasted more perspiration than soap.

He walked to the sand where the waves kiss with breaking bubbles to end their long journey. He allowed one wave to have a taste of his ginger feet before he stepped on the water. His body hesitated immediate immersion but was not enough to deter the necessity of wasting no time. He began to wade. As soon as the water was waist-deep, he dipped his body down to his shoulder and slowly down to his nostril so as not to cut his body between the cold seawater and the chilling wind.

He began to swim now. A few more kicks of his feet deeper forward, he began to dive for fish.

Viewed from where he left his food, his head was just a flood debris, the silhouette of a freak kernel-less coconut aimlessly floating and drifting. Like an otter, he disappears for long seconds and back to being a flood debris again. He was at the right place, where the bottom rocks are and where the fishes shelter. But his dives had been unsuccessful. One fish got away when his harpoon hit a little below its dorsal fin. But most of the fishes were simply elusive.

His obstinacy was wearing and he suddenly became conscious of his hunger. He swam ashore. After a few kicks of his feet, his toes could touch the bottom sand. And then swim was not necessary anymore. He was wading. His sole stepped something hard he knew it wasn't a stone. He stopped wading. He lowered his body to squat position and his hand touched the object under one of his feet. It was a sardines can. He lifted the can to find out. Inside was an ugly baby stone fish with as ugly local name: bantol. He continued his walk, his hand holding the can opening to block the fish from wriggling out. His interest on the fish was limited to the fact that he has not caught any. It was more of a consolation to his failed stint among the bottom rocks than needing it as food.

He put it there. A rock weighted the can substituting the hand that is now busy with the yam. He walked to the water to flavor his yam with salt. Looking at the place in the sea where he dived, he took a bite of his yam. He dipped his yam again and took another bite as he walked back to his basket.

The longer his body was inactive the more he felt tiredness. At last he put on his shirt. He picked his harpoon and stood. He shouldered it hanging his basket by the other end in his back.

He picked up the sardines can, walked to the waves and threw the sardines can back in the water. Inside his mind he wanted a little torture, a little revenge. He's going home with his basket with the same content. The ugly stone fish got thrown out of the sardines can as it flew in the air landing separately back into the water. He looked long at the twin ripples created by the two objects as it overlapped each other until the ripples were gone. He wanted to linger a little bit more, to wonder if the ugly fish found its way back to the sardines can. But the sun is only a perlicue above the horizon now. He waded out of the water and began to walk for home

dream dec2508

was on a jeepney curve going downhill overtake many cars almost caused smash up among 10-wheel trucks and cars bumped a stopped jeepney it feel into a tennis court under shades of talisay trees i was carrying a sack of copra got torn tried to sew with a white cord asked the driver his liability in the accident took another ride on a tricycle a beautiful girl -- a student was with me white chinese looking kissed her in the cheek when she got off her necktie navy blue in color embroidered with initials of her school, i was supposed to be going to university of san carlos walked from where the girl got off men that dont look golf players were playing golf on the street hitting their balls on windows of vans suspecting them their intention was to break the windows to steal the vans they played their golf like they are playing tennis hitting and returning i fear i might get hit in the head by the golf balls as big as tennis balls dimpled and dark in color climbed wall middle of street soldiers were there in their trucks didnt mind i climbed. got inside an old man's walled yard he was playing with a gecko and a baby rat on pool of shallow unclean water, got angry that i was not interested in his animals my purpose getting inside his yard was my fear of getting hit in the head by golf balls, got out of his yard proceeded walking cannot locate anymore where san carlos university is thought of taking a taxi dream changed was among children 2years old, two girls and a boy, one girl her legs parted her big genital cleaved open up the penis threshold, another girl was lying legs together genital bare but no open