Diyyes then was Already Heaven

WHEN I WAS going to school at the Gabaldon (that’s how Dupax Elementary School was called then, which I later learned to mean the type of building that an American architect designed for schools in the Philippines), it was seldom if ever that Mama gave me money.

Well, it was probably because it was not fashionable for parents to pamper their kids with allowances (unlike now). It might have also been because we simply had no money for such luxury as Papa’s salary as a public school teacher then was only enough to buy a week’s supply of grocery that Mama and I went to buy from Ko Peng’s stall in Malasin every Sunday after mass (usually consisting of a kilo of sugar, a can of condensed milk, two or more cans of sardines, a 6-pack bundle of Siga-siga cigarettes, a pack of 6-box matches, a kilo of bihon, two boxes of Purico, two long bars of Perla laudry soap, two bars of Lifebuoy bath soap, a small jar of Fighter or Atomic pomade, Johnson’s baby powder, etc.)

I therefore had to earn a few centavos selling bote and landuk to the Chinese man with assiw from Malasin. No diyaryo then and, if ever, what little paper we had was meant for kindling the pugon or was ripped into pieces and hung on the wall of the toilet for wiping one’s behind.

What did I need money for? Well, to buy candy with rubber bands or delicious mamon bread from Incion “Pawa” Galam’s store at the gate of the Dupax Elementary School. Or during recess when Rosby “Oppi” Ferrer’s sorbetes cart was around and his bell’s incessant kleng-kleng-kleng went irresistible, my mouth went watering to have a lick at the most delicious icecream there was in the whole of Dupax at the time.

My best ally before Nelson grew big enough to join was Elnora. We went scavenging rusty nails on the trail/road between the Ili and Magaway lots and connecting Domang with Dupaj and across Abannatan. We passed there after Sunday mass and put whatever pickings we had on sabsabut/ungut that also abound in the filth. (As a footnote, Elnora has taken up nursing at St. Louis University in Baguio and has been working since the early 1980s as a nurse in a hospital in Maryland, USA. Her brother Nelson has taken up Forestry like me and is now the DENR's Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer or PENRO of Zambales.)

Good finds then because they commanded better price were dilapidated kaserola, broken paryok, punctured kaldero, and spent up plow share. The plow share (sarapa) plus the subsub I would get from Surung but this was if Apong agreed, otherwise I would go home to Domang with resentment as the plow materials were meant to be dalikan for the binugbog (chopped papaya, gabi, or tigi cooked along with rice bran and used as swine feed).

One time I fought with Elias Felix in Surung over a landok that I found and took pains to pry from its place in the banawang. Another time, the bote-landuk man wanted to buy the shotput steel ball that Papa brought home from Gabaldon and which Tata Ikko^ et al. would use for throwing contests. Other times I would find grenade-sized iron blobs and the bote-landuk man rejected them (I didn’t know then they were the heads of World War II bombs). These dangerous (?) items used to abound then under the mango trees or sapang vines in Pitang where I used to go scavenge for our favorite polbora (tiny square chips and centimeter-long wire cuttings).

Ordinarily, our collections were Rose Vinegar bottles and Cliquot softdrink. The Siok Tong or vinegar bote were gin bottles that Inang used for her herbal medicines or coconut oil.There were aluminum casseroles then which commanded better price. But Mama did not discard the ones that got holes (perhaps due to too much scrubbing) as she found them light and good (they didn’t rust unlike kerosene cans) for her kutsay herbs that she used to cure my sisters’ bumps each time they stumble or hit their heads onto something.

No one bought milk and sardine cans. Nonetheless, we treasured these. The flat sardine cans became gargarusa (toy cars) and later for tambourine. The milk cans similarly served as wheels for the sardine cars or made into maracas that we equipped with guava twigs for handle and a dozen or so tiny stones for the sound. The tambourines and the maracas we used as carolling paraphernalia when Christmas came and my sister Arlyne and cousins Elnora, Neneng, and Jessie went to sing “Dashing thru the snow,” “Soap as the boys of an angel” and “Sa-ay lent nayt” in the houses whose owners we knew were not so stingy as to part with 5 centavo or 10 centavo coins each. We would later divide the fruits of our singing efforts and if there was not enough to make all members have at least a diyes (10 centavos) each, Uncle Kusep (oldest brother of Papa and Uncle Ermin) would fill up the deficit — and then we would all go home happy and then later dream of doing another carolling the next Christmas around.

Nourished by Bananas

I’M CURRENTLY working on the production of the very first dictionary of the vanishing Isinay language of Nueva Vizcaya (particularly Aritao, Bambang and Dupax) and each time a new entry emerges from the caverns of my mind, almost always my memory comes alive with images, sounds, tastes, people, places, and events associated with the word.

For instance, while I was thinking of the Isinay term for the Ilocano agpaluom (literally, "to make something ripe"), I thought of the bananas (and also the mangoes, anonas, jackfruits, and avocados) that we used to goad to ripe during those days when buying such was not yet in our household vocabulary.

Never mind that up to when I sat down to write this piece, I was not still contented with what I came up with, that is, “mampayutu” and “mampajinuj” – derived from “nayutu” and “najinuj” (which both means "ripe"). This is because, at least, the remembering brought back to life images of people who played big roles in my boyhood — like Inang (my maternal grandmother Feliza Pudiquet y Lacandazo), Apong (my maternal grandfather Pedro Pudiquet y Duldulao), Papa (Vicente Castro y Mambear), Juan Reyes (my favorite barber), Carlito and Carmelito Lacandazo (my deceased barrio playmates and uncle-cousins), and Bonifacio Campo (a muscular neighbor who Papa often relied on for carrying sacks of rice to the rice garanry that we called kamalig in Ilocano or e-yang in Isinay).

Yes, as a kid, I derived much nutrition from bananas. In my grandparents’ house in I-iyo, we used to have tumok, dippig, lakatan, gloria, immasukar, camarines and other such varieties that my indefatigable Apong and Inang raised in the lower part of their upland farm in Langka and some in their defunct and formerly kasoy-lined bangkag (rainfed farm; gitaw in Isinay) on the left side of the Palabotan Elementary School. I remember Inang had two large earthen jars (burnay in Ilocano; mawaga in Isinay) that she used as container to make the ripening of the bananas faster and even. Presumably bought from Ilocos and used earlier by Apong to brew sugarcane juice into basi (sugarcane wine flavored with fruits of the samak or binunga tree) when the dadapilan (carabao-powered sugar mill; pan-asotan in Isinay) owned by Uncle Berong Miranda was still operating, the burnay were perfect storage containers for bananas as they kept the heat well and they were impervious to rats. Inang would drop a couple of thumb-sized karburo (carbide) stones from Apong’s lampa (carbide-powered lamp used for fishing) and then cover the mouth of the burnay with banana leaves then keep the resulting lid in place by tying it with a strand of lapnit (dried bast fiber from the bark of the bitnong tree that is called tan-ag in Tagalog).

When I was still in the elementary grades at Gabaldon and even when I was at St. Mary’s High School, I would sneak into my grandparents house in I-iyo (we called it Surung then) each time I felt like going there. The bananas were a magnet to me that became easier to go to when Papa bought me a bulldog bicycle. Of course, I would bring home some for Mama and my sisters, but not after gorging on a whole sapad (bunch; sapar in Isinay) of the nutritious fruits that my doting grandmother allowed me to, even if the bananas were meant to be sold outside of Surung.

Lest you get the impression that we didn’t have bananas in the ili (poblacion or town center), particularly our house in Domang, let me tell that Papa and I spent countless hours of father-and-son bonding trying to grow some in the solar (fondly called Mangga by my sisters) when it was still arable enough for planting, among other crops, cowpeas (iris in Isinay, kardis in Ilocano), stringbeans (gayya^ in Isinay, utong in Ilocano, sitaw in Tagalog), mungbeans (betung in Isinay, balatong in Ilocano, munggo in Tagalog), eggplant (balaseno in Isinay, tarong in Ilocano, talong in Tagalog), and kamote (sweet potato). Papa’s favorite was the señorita (a banana variety that had small or bite-sitze and fit for kids and very sweet fruits). Uncle Ermin (Herminio Castro) also grew the same variety but also had gloria in his beautiful road-on-all-sides lot across our house, the one where the houses of Ellen and Ninfa now stand.

In Langka, we would know when bananas are ready to be harvested when the crow or raven (gayang in Isinay, uwak in Ilocano and Tagalog) hovered and made loud “kwak-kwak-kwak” among the banana groves. If Apong and Inang were busy in their other farms (such as in Palabutan and Arwat) or had their hands full with their tobacco leaves (aggatud and agtunus, no Isinay terms for these; I guess because Isinays didn't grow as much tobacco as the Ilocanos), the crows and the martines would beat them to the bananas.

Sometimes, the neighboring farmers would help themselves to the ripe ones but would later tell my grandparents about it in the spirit of being neighborly. Often we would have one or two bulig (bunil in Isinay; this is the whole set of fruits along with their “petiole” or “cob”) loaded in the kariton (carabao-powered cart) and we would bring these home to I-iyo. When I was around, it would be my chore, in addition to washing the dishes (manajpat in Isinay, aginnaw in Ilocano), to convert into sapad (bunch) the still green bananas. You could do this by using a sharp knife, but in my case my favorite was the tip of the panabas (huge knife or bolo) used for cleaning the ricefield dike (tambak in Ilocano; tamnang in Isinay) if not the barusok (iron-tipped dibble used for planting upland rice; called asad in Isinay).

Inang would next take over setting the bunches in the burnay (mawaga in Isinay) while I would dump the “cob” in the abandoned tupig pit converted into garbage pit. And then, depending on the time of the day, off to the river or the hills I would go, along with whoever friends in the village were around. A couple of days or so later, the bananas would start to ripen and, because my grandparents were so permissive to me then (which I observed was not the case with my cousins), I would be free to help myself with all the bananas I could stuff in my mouth.

IN THE HOUSE at Domang (I have to tell here that I had some kind of a "dual personality" then, living with my parents in the town on schooldays and staying in my grandparents' house in the barrio on weekends or during vacation from school), Mama and Papa had a different way of ripening bananas. Yes, correct, we did have some stands  in the solar and in the then backyard garden that we used to have in that spot where Mama’s house (also known as Tessie and Romy’s house) now stands.

I always took delight in doing the panagtebba of a banana "tree" (I’m a forester, so I have to be careful here). I forgot the Isinay and Tagalog terms for this activity, but it is simply involved the felling of a banana "plant" whose fruits are ready for harvest. The joy of doing the task simply stemmed from the fact that it would entitle me to whatever ripe fruits there would be in the whole bulig (all right, let’s use the term “bunch” for lack of proper English word). There would always at least be a couple or more of such ready-to-eat fruits in the bunch which I would share to any sister (at the time Baybee, Judith, Tessie, Arlyne, and the late Merlie) who would be around. But they would often not be around as it was either they were too busy with their girly plays or Mama scolded them if their dresses got stained with the banana’s fluid (stain is mansa in both Isinay and Ilocano, mantsa in Tagalog).

As always, I would also process the bananas into small bunches, taking care not to injure the fruits. Then Mama would bring out a carton box and place the banana bunches there and cover them with fresh madre cacao leaves before putting the box beside or atop the pile of firewood (itungu in Isinay, pagsungrod in Ilocano, panggatong in Tagalog) near the kitchen. By the way, the box we used to ripen the bananas usually was a discarded “pagikkan iti mureng” (place for putting soiled clothes) which originally was a grocery goods container box  from the Chinese merchant Co Peng in whose puwesto (stall) in the public market in Malasin my mama and I would regularly go to encash Papa’s tseke (paycheck; usually not more than 200 pesos, if my memory serves me right).

I have not yet told of my tales about the banana that could probably make it to Guinness' book of records for having the most number of seeds. We called such variety saba ti sunggo in Ilocano/Iluko and majanilan si araw in Isinay, which both mean either "monkey banana" or "banana suited for monkeys." But I have to park for now and save the other tales for separate postings later. -- CHARLZ CASTRO

Once Upon a Breezy Hill

IF I WERE to choose a place for my final resting place, I want it to be on a hill overlooking Surong, the tiny village in Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, that can probably lay claim to molding much of what I am now as a nature lover even as I was born in the central part of the town and spent most of my elementary and high school years in the house of my parents in Domang in the northwestern part of thee town.

There are many hills surrounding Surong (or I-iyo or Palobotan or Daya, as the village has also been called when I was young). But I prefer the  hill  on the left when you face the Palabotan Elementary School. It has both a commanding view of the village of my youth as well as the “pasto” that formed part of my life as a hill-loving young man.

Equally significant, I remember that that was the first hill I ever got to climb as a child when my grandmother would take me with her to dig tiny shrubs for their ginseng-looking roots she mixed with siok-tong and dispensed as “panig-an” to her women patients who just gave birth. The hill is also beside the lot where my grandfather planted the kasoy seeds he brought from Coron, Palawan, which grew to be small but robust trees that became our source of pride as his grandkids when their fruits turned luscious yellow then red-orange.

The hill was part of my playground with my friends in I-iyo (Arthur, Duardo, Tony, Rilo, Dinong, Cardo) and relatives (the Lacandazo brothers Litok, Milit, Mamer, Junior, Tasio, and Castor, as well as my cousins Melchor, Peter, Robert and Emy/Tems Pudiquet). We went to the hill when we felt like enjoying hide-and-seek among the tanglag or just to try our luck at finding where the kulipattung bird built its nest. Snakes? If ever we heard of such danger, we ignored it.

Surong, of course, was our perpetual “supermarket” when I was young. It was not only because my maternal grandparents lived there and their house was always home to me and my siblings and cousins. It was also where we sourced most if not all the vegetables, fish, rice, banana, corn, peanuts, tugi, shells, ferns, and bamboo shoots that blessed our dining table. In fact, were we to put a peso sign to all the myriad goods that my family got from the place, the amount would be far, far more than the combined monetary earnings of my teacher father and my dressmaker cum hair-stylist mother.

We went to Surong during the first rains of April and May to catch “abal-abal” (May beetle). We went to Surong when Inang Feliza called for an impromptu family reunion over “iniruban” (pinipig in Tagalog) which meant everyone had to pitch in from the gathering of the glutinous rice to its burning to its pounding then winnowing. We went to Surong to hold family picnics by the river and enjoy the akasit, ahdaw, sappilan, dalah, tilapia, pattat, and alalu that almost always were provided by the then very rich river via the “rama” (fish-aggregating device made of stones and bamboo branches) that my Apong Pedro built. Mama and I went to Surong when it was mushroom or “kudet” (edible tiny fungi) season or when the wild ampalaya in the “uma” (swidden far) were big enough to uproot for their nutritious leaves. Almost everybody in our part of town looked up to Surong during All Saints/All Souls Day for the “kankanen” (native rice cakes), particularly “tupig” (a delicacy made of glutinous rice ,mixed with young coconut meat, and roasted on tinplates).
Surong to me meant freedom, friends and relatives, lots of fun and sunshine, immense joy when at play in the ricefields, the hills, or by the river, and when dealing with the things of Mother Nature. Surong meant unfettered hours catching fish with “pana” or by “sarep,” playing cowboys with our carabaos, testing our bravery with the “bambannagaw” (chameleon), “ampipit” (a paniful-stinging large ant), “uyukan” (honeybee) , and haunted places, or proving one’s capacity with the bites of the “abuos” (tailor ant), the itch of the “budo-budo” (butterfly larva whose hair causes skin allergy), the stings of the “alumpipinig” (a tiny hornet), or the scary tactics of the “alinta” (freshwater leech).

Surong meant feasts each time somebody there got married and never mind if you are not related to any of the couples being wed for as long as the cooks were somebody’s relations, you get generous shares of the “ittip” (rice tip) fresh from the giant cauldrons, you were called to the long bamboo table even before the newlyweds arrived from church, after which you went to the nearby “banawang” (irrigation ditch) for a dip and more play, then squeezed your way back again later in the now more thickly populated dining table for another dig at the lauya, igado, dinardaraan and whatever delicacy it was that the Ilocano cooks often prepared during wedding in those times.

Surong was where I got circumcised at age 11 or so. This was on a Thursday, a Maundy Thursday if my memory is correct, when there was no school. The surgeon was Apong Berto Lacandazo, a younger brother of my Inang Feliza. The blood-letting rite was at the river across the then big kallautit (Tagalog kalumpit) tree where once, when I was still “supot” (uncircumcized) my friend Duardo Guillermo hit my bird with the fruit of the kallautit while we were all enjoying its sweetish sour fallen purple fruits, and we were all naked as we just took time off from enjoying our diving and swimming in the nearby “pual” (deep part of the river caused by a fallen tree or bamboo clump), and it hurt a bit.

Surong, many years earlier, was also where I first learned to sketch my name CHARLIE. My teacher was Uncle Atong (Liberato Pudiquet), younger brother of my mother. No, sir, there was no pencil nor pad paper. What we had was only a “ruting” (bamboo twig) over the rain-soaked ground. Uncle Atong wrote my name on the soil and told me to imitate what he sketched. I loved the challenge then even as it took me a precious hour or so from playing with my equally curious playmates.

Surong was where I had experiences that my children nor any children even in I-iyo will most likely never get to experience in their lifetime. One was sugarcane milling time using the “dadapilan” (carabao-drawn sugarcane crusher). (I have a separate post for this.) Another was watching how the “lapnit” (bast fiber made out of the bitnong tree bark) was made into ropes with the use of a wheeled and Y-shaped contraption that twisted three long strands of the lapnit until became one sturdy rope. And another was when masked strangers came to the village with metallic cylinders on their backs and went from house to house to spray their insides with a smelly white liquid they called DDT.

Surong was where I had farm work not undergone by other kids. In my memory stands out tobacco growing and harvesting. I was once given my row of tobacco plants and after being couched by my doting grandmother on how to detect the green worms among the very green leaves, I did enjoy the newly acquired skill and power of hunting and squeezing them pests with my tiny fingers. But soon the call of the mountain clock birds became frequent and the sun on my uncovered head caused sweat to drop and the soil which a few moments earlier was soft and kind to my bare soles became hot like river sand on a summer day, I had to beg off and asked to go make a “bubon” (shallow well) by the river which took longer than usual as I was at the same time hunting for ripe kitkitiwit (Passiflora foetida) that abound on the river banks in the area of Mammayang and Langka then.

Surong was witness to the many creatures I harmed or annihilated as part of my nature-rich childhood and business of growing up. Fish and snails were normal. The birrurukong (Japanese snail) were often targets of our slingshots if not used as projectiles. For birds, our common targets were the pirruka, billit-tuleng, pagaw, sitsitik, tukling, pirpiriw, tiktikrubong, kinkin-od, garakgak, and kulipattung. There were also occasionally kali, kebkeb, tariktik, alimuken, puwek and kilyawan. For insects, there were all colors of the dragonflies and damsel flies, the abal-abal, arus-arus, sammi-sammi, simmawa, barrairong, riyari, kundidit, ararawan, dudon, kuriat, ansisilud. There were also alumbayad, arabas, bambannagaw, banias, mutit. We spared the butterflies and bees but not the Atlas moth.

Surong calls to mind those times when my grandparents were hosting the Ilongots who came down the hills either to barter their “pindang” (dried meat) and camote (sweet potato) with our salt and tobacco – or (this I realized later) to escape from being persecuted by the military sent to go after members of the tribe that cut the heads off the bodies of some Isinay kaingineros, including the reputedly muscular Turo^ Maejan and on a separate occasion the Fragata family who lived in a house beside the Lacanal’s house a block away from our house in Dupax and one member of which, Bobot Fragata, was once caught and furiously scolded by Papa while gathering the tumpup or bamboo shoots in our solar. (I’ll have a separate post later on the Ilongots and their headhunting practice.)

Surong once upon a time also played host to a platoon or more of fatigue-uniformed soldiers. I’m not sure if the names and numbers are correct but they sounded like 7th Infantry BCT, Tabak Division or something. They got a few of the younger and idle men to cut bamboos, gather pan-aw (cogon), make bamban (split green bamboo used for tying) and pretty soon there was a kamarin (open-sided bamboo-cum-cogon hut) at the entrance of the village near the Jovinal and Raza farms, near where we got the tebbeg fruits for our trumpo (spinning top) and daldalig (wheel) toys. And almost daily, while they were camped there, there was a fiesta of sort as a dog, a pig or or lots of mudfish would be cooked and since the area was one of our playgrounds and, as it was normal for strangers to be objects of curiosity and attention by barrio kids then, we were almost always invited to join in their sumptuous meals. I have no recollection, however, of the soldiers having caught even one Ilongot brave. In fact, I don’t remember seeing them leave their camp at all.

Surong was where I first came to doubts about the benefits of logging. Even as occasionally we would be allowed to ride atop the huge logs fastened by cables on noisy logging trucks during late afternoons when we would go home to I-iyo from a day’s work weeding rice in Langka or Mammayang, I detested the way the crystal-clear rivers were often muddied by their road-building activities and a few years later their causing floods. Even as in the ili, the sawmill at least made firewood bountiful via the slabs and trimmings and barks they allowed us scavengers to get before being hauled off for burning, still I hated the way the logging industry brought strangers in Dupax.

Surong was where I saw how kariton, pako, tali, garong, dalaydayan, pattuki, tabukol, pagabelan (hand loom), inabel, tanggal, asar, wand other such farm contraptions were made. It was also where I saw how cows and carabaos got branded, how worms are taken out of the hoofs of carabaos, how a young carabao gets its nostril brutally puntured with bamboo stick to allow entry of  its “taldeng” (small rope with knot or a piece of coconut shell on one end to make the beast easy to command). It was in Surong where we got warned to stay indoors each time a “simaron” or “alsa a nuang” (feral carabao) was in the vicinity.

Surong was where I witnessed how the landscape changed over the years… for instance, there used to be plenty of remnant trees called kadir in areas being cleared for bangkag (vegetable farm). There are no such black-and-white large trees now. Nor are there giant pungdol (tree stump) dotting the farms now. In fact, when I was in high school there were still patches of remnant forests on the banks of my boyhood river. The last time I looked, I hated the emptiness I saw. No more bamboos, no more kallautits, no more bitnongs, no more ariwat and fern thickets! Gone too was that pond like portion in the farm of the Dotimas family where we used to go “liwliw” (angle) susay and tilapia when Gabriel “Buisit” Dotimas or his boys were not around. In fact, the last time I made a hesitant glimpse of I-iyo on my way to my farm in Sinagat, I saw that the banawang that also formed much of my reasons for liking the village was also nowhere to see — the river became mad sometime back and swept away all the vegetation and the land of Lakaya Pilis “Lawa” Raza that served as divide between the river and the banawang, and in the process erasing many traces of my boyhood playground, circumcision spot, and foraging ground.

Surong was where only the lazy could not survive. My grandfather had no land but there were hills you could make kaingins in and grow upland rice, squash, tugi, and ube. There were flood plains you could plow and grow corn, camote, eggplants, cassava, tomato, mustasa. And the rivers are teeming with crabs, shrimps, and fish. The ricefields have leddeg, bisukol, birabid, and buntiek. Some creeks have suso or gusipeng and if you’re lucky they have giant frogs. The banks of the rivers as well as the sides of the irrigation ditches have ferns, button/cherry tomatoes, and gabi. The remnant forests have ratipan for ubog, rattan for barit, uyukan for diro or at least allid. Almost anywhere there are bamboos underneath which you could go hunt mushrooms or bamboo shoots when they are in season. There are wild bananas whose blossoms (sabunganay) are better for salads than domestic ones. There are abandoned uma areas where the decaying tree trunks and branches play host to edible and dryable fungi called kudet. You could build a hut of bamboo and cogon and grow camote and raise ducks on by the river or on some idle lands and rest assured no one would question you for squatting.

Surong was where I heard stories of how life was in the early days, during the Japanese period…. The stories somehow set standards to follow, particularly as regards survival. For instance, what to eat, where to stay, when to do this and that. (More on this in a future post.)

Surong was where everyone knows everyone. It was also where many people were called funny names and so we many  guys were better known for their “birngas” than their true names. Examples: Karansiwa, Pagalmiduran, Manmanaas, Dippig, Sallukob, Nakset, Aradas, Dugang, Sisiaw, Buntiek, Purpuraw, Arikumkom, Lawa, Arikakkak, Buisit, Pangkis, Bangabanga.

Dupax as a Boy's Paradise

As a boy and the first-born grandchild, I lived mostly with my maternal grandparents in I-iyo (also called Surong; Daya in Isinay; officially Palobotan in the map), a hilly and riverside farming village upstream of my hometown Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, in the northern part of the Philippines. It was normal parenting practice in the 1950s to the 1960s (hehehe... I'm now revealing how ancient I am) for kids like me then to be allowed to go outdoors for as long as they want, on the condition that they go home before lunch time and that they look after the carabao and see to it that it was brought to the river before the sun burned its back and cause the farm animal to suffer and probably die due to heat-caused exhaustion (termed masdo in Ilocano). It was also normal for boys in the barrio then to have as playthings (or accessories, if you may) small bolos, slingshots, and spearguns. I had all three.  But let me first describe my affair with the last.

No, sir, the speargun that I used to have was not the kind you see in the movies used to kill sharks and bad guys. It was rather just a small contraption consisting of a guava branch for bolt, the stem of a discarded umbrella for barrel, a piece of sturdy wire for trigger, a length of elastic rubber cut out of the interior part of a jeepney tire for driving mechanism, and sharpened steel fronds also taken from discarded umbrellas for “bullets” or arrows.

Locally called pana, we brought it when on hot summer days we go bring the carabaos to the river and, to make better use of the time while the farm animals enjoyed their bath, we would comb the calm and shallow parts of the water to spear shrimps, crabs, goby, and gourami. The more intrepid ones among us who have goggles went to the deeper parts to look for dalag (snakehead mudfish), paltat (catfish), and tilapia nesting under big rocks or feeding on tiny shrimps attracted to an overhanging bamboo clump. Occasionally, we used the pana to nail down an elusive  but edible frog (tukak in Ilocano; tadah in Isinay; palaka in Tagalog), to punish leeches (alinta or alimatek in Ilocano; bilavil in Isinay; linta in Tagalog) that sucked themselves full of our carabaos’ blood, or as weapon against the immanuy (spitting cobra) that threatened farm kids like us when we went to help our old folks in the uma (upland farm) or the taltalon (ricefield).

Prelude to Transformation

Don’t look now but, yes, to a certain extent I had my share of disturbing biodiversity. In fact, even when I was already in college and pursuing the B.S. in Forestry degree, I confess to having continued using spearguns, slingshots and air-rifles for fun and recreation each time I would go home at the end of each semester or during Christmas and summer break.

I also admit that as a teenager I preferred the company of my uncles and grandparents in clearing forest patches and tending to the resulting farm for growing upland rice, snap beans, string beans, winged peas, squash, bitter gourd, eggplant, sweet potato, cassava, papaya, banana, and yam.

In other words, once upon a time I was both a fisher and a bird-killer. 

Not only that. Once upon a time, too, when the kaingin (swidden farming) practice was still blamed to be the Enemy No. 1 of foresters, I had been a kainginero (slash-and-burn farmer).

I owe such destiny (if we may call it that) to my formation as a child, that is, growing up in a barrio that was relatively well-endowed by nature. Moreover, my grandparents and uncles who nurtured me were full-time land-tilling and forest-using rural folks.

Thus, it came to pass that, rather than play basketball all day long or going to pre-fiesta shows and dances at the town plaza at night (as was the norm for most of my peers and classmates in the central part of the town then), I preferred spending summer vacations in the barrio where my similarly outdoor-loving – or hillbilly -- friends and cousins had all the farms, the rivers, the forest glades, the bamboo groves, and the cattle-grazing hills for playground.

Even as once in a while there were cases upstream of the Ilongot (now called Bugkalot, an indigenous people of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range) getting out of their forest territory to collect the heads mostly of forest-using lowlanders, my barrio then was as child-friendly as could be. There were no fences then nor were there “No Entry” markers to discourage kids from sniping at the pirruka (Picnonotus goiaver) or the tariktik (___) that got attracted, respectively, to the luscious fruits of the bignay and kalumpit trees in one’s farmlot. 

Nobody seemed to mind then if my playmates and I got sunburned as we spent hours in the river having friendly competitions as to who would catch the most bunog (minnow), bukto (goby), and buntiek (adolescent mudfish) using bare hands or the speargun. Nobody scolded us if we happened to step on some farmer’s peanuts or corn plants when we ran after the papa (wild mallard), the pugo (quail) and tukling (gallinules), or when we acquired scratches on our legs or kwantung (Amaranth sp.) thorns on our soles while climbing alukon (himbabao in Tagalog) trees in search of pirpiriw (bee-eater) and martin chicks to take care as pets. Nobody seemed to mind if we spent hours in the tropical sun creeping up to a hapless dragonfly to catch it either with our nimble fingers or with a bamboo stick at the end of which we placed super sticky sap from the jackfruit -- then later convert the poor insect into an airplane (complete with paper "wing" attached to its wings), and if it would not fly there was always a hen waiting to feast on it nearby.

As old folks in rural Philippines are wont to do, our elders would advise us not to stray too far, especially during agmatuon (high noon) when the unseen beings guarding the trees and the rivers are said to be in their most active mode. We were also told stories of malevolent spirits dwelling in geriatric trees, especially the balite (strangler fig) and any tree growing beside Spanish-era stone fences. And we were cautioned from using fire, playing with our slingshots, climbing starapple trees, harming the bambannagaw (chameleon) or any other lizard, catching fireflies, and doing raucous behavior during the Lenten season. 

Other than those warnings, we were free to swim in the river with carabaos as diving boards; we were free to chase grasshoppers and dragonflies to feed our pet martin birds; and we were free to paint our faces with the flaming-red seeds of the appatut tree (Bixa orellana) if we wanted to look ala-American Indian.

Blast from a Biodiversity-Rich Past

Indeed, among my favorite stories for my children when they were small was my closeness to birds and other denizens of the wild, and the paradise-like nature of my boyhood barrio. I told them guavas, mushrooms, ferns, palm piths, rattan fruits, bamboo shoots, and other edible plants in the wilderness were common property then. I told them I never felt squeamish playing with earthworms and caterpillars. I told them I never learned to play basketball and never went to dances because I grew up in a place where kids were at the time more at home with wild creatures and the joys of nature than with TV and Jollibee.

I also told my kids how I would escape household chores just to be able to try my slingshot skill on birds like the pirruka  that fed on the ripe fruits of the guava or the bugnay. I told them that my favorite pastime during mango season was to go escape the heat under mango trees, whistle for the wind to come, and be alert for ripe fruits that fall. I told them that my grandparents almost always built cogon-roofed farm huts under a bitnong tree that in turn was always abuzz with sunbirds and bumblebees. I told them how as a toddler I always went with my grandparents to the farm and there get lulled to sleep by the chatter of crows and monkeys and the song of cicadas in the forest glades and the reassuring gurgle of a mountain stream nearby.  

As a first grandchild, indeed, I had the luck of living under the wings of doting grandparents whose nutrition they provided me often reflected the biological richness and diversity then of our place. For instance, for breakfast, we had: frogs or mudfish that my grandfather caught using lampara (carbide-fueled lamp) the night before, along with pinakbet (a dish of mixed vegetables seasoned with salted fish-paste locally called bagoong) and aromatic upland rice. For lunch, we had a merry mix of freshwater fish, shrimps and crabs cooked with wild button-tomatoes, or jumping shrimps seasoned with sugarcane vinegar, or similarly fresh and raw fern seasoned with green mangoes (if in season) and bagoong, plus, again, pinakbet.

For snacks: we kids have all the Vitamin C-rich guavas, tamarinds, and mangoes we could munch while we were outdoors, otherwise we had tupig (a roasted native rice delicacy), boiled corn or peanuts, or bananas dipped in pulitipot (sticky sugarcane molasses). For dinner: we had bisukol (apple snail) cooked with squash or, when in season, de-winged and fried abal-abal (May beetles), plus the ever-present pinakbet. And before we call it a day after husking corn, peeling peanuts, sorting tobacco leaves, or pounding newly harvested rice in the kulluong (boat-like facility carved out of the solid trunk of a huge tree, usually narra), we shall have partaken some more of boiled corn, sautéed peanuts, or boiled camote (sweet potato).

I also recall that at least once a month an uncle or a neighbor would be lucky in his fishing or trapping sideline and, depending on his catch, we may feast on the meat of igat (eel), abuyo (wild fowl), mutit (civet cat), or banias (monitor lizard) all cooked adobo-style. When I was in grade school, I saw an uncle catch a pair of kebkeb in his ricefield, using a fishing-net and very carefully crawling on the side of an adjoining rice paddy to get near the long-necked, long-legged and chicken-sized birds. It was only years later that I got to know the hapless creatures were Eastern Sarus cranes. One time, too, a couple of hunters who didn’t speak our Ilocano language dropped by to cook and share to us the meat of a couple of kalaw (Rufous hornbill) they shot in a patch of forest near our village. I was hoping they would leave me one of the bright-red bills of their catch but they didn’t.

Oh yes, at least once or twice a year, the Ilongots would come downhill to barter-trade their split rattan, beeswax, dried meat of deer or wildboar, betel nut, and sweet potatoes with salt, sugar, bolos, canned goods, bagoong, matches, sweaters, threads and needles, colored beads, and blankets. On their return trip to their mountain villages a couple of days hike further upstream, they would drop by my grandparents’ house, stay for a night or so, partake of my grandfather’s basi (sugarcane wine) and tobaccos, chew betel nut and betel leaf with my grandmother, and ask for carabao horns or broken plow shares or other such items they could make into knife handles and spears. One time, they asked for my pet puppy which their interpreter said they would train to hunt deer. In return, when they depart, the Ilongot womenfolk would leave their unsold deer meat and beeswax to my grandmother. The men would leave their split rattan and the chieftain would give tips to my grandfather on which mountain streams and trails in the hills to follow to get to where he could find all the rattan he could gather.

That was in the ‘50s up to the ‘70s. Our town, as well as its neighbors, is no longer as nature-rich as it used to be. Its formerly deep-green forests that were very much coveted for their dipterocarp and narra (Pterocarpus indicus) timber, rattan, and wild pigs, among other resources, have since been over-exploited by loggers and farmers, many of them new faces. The Ilongots, who have changed their tribal name to Bugkalot, no longer hunt Christian heads, and have also stopped coming down the hills to trade their forest products. My boyhood hills no longer sing with birds and the rivers that nurtured me have not only lost their fish but now turn murky and ferocious when it rains, and almost dry and lifeless when there are no rains. 


In fact, the last time I went home and tried to renew my friendship with them hills, fields, and rivers, I felt very sad. Somewhere deep inside me, a voice was asking: Where have you gone? At the same time, I was also asking: Do kids in the barrio still do what I did as a child? Does anybody around, boy or girl, young or young once, still talk to you hills and rivers and fields and call you “friends”?

Aside from the fact that the hills and valleys are now mostly vegetated with yemane (Gmelina arborea) that certainly were not there when I was a boy, there are now more houses and countless faces that I no longer know. The birdy and breezy hills that I used to climb to enjoy the panorama of ricefields and rivers and blue mountains and carabao roads in the distance now have houses. The bamboo groves and verdant forest glades by the banks of the streams and rivers where I used to catch cicadas or snipe at sunbirds all day are no longer there. The sylvan and fish-rich river by the barrio that I loved to go cool my young body in, the lipnuk and the pual where I used to swim with my cousins and barrio friends, the river bend where I got circumcized -- all of them have been totally obliterated and gone!

I felt like I was already a stranger! -- CHARLZ CASTRO