From Firewood Gatherer to Forester

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hen I went to Dupax last May, I brought my daughter Leia and my sister Arlyne’s grandkids to get a feel of the school and the hills that used to be part of my stomping grounds as a boy. From their looks and shrieks, and notwithstanding the mud on their sandals and the tingle of cogon blades on their juvenile skins, the kids did have fun and agreed we'd go further uphill next time I’d be home.

Little did my little hiking companions know, however, that I was also having the time of my life reminiscing those days when, to borrow a line from the Brothers Four’s song: “It was so good to be young then… to be close to the earth.”

One particular thing that made my heart jump a little was when we chanced at a father and two sons coming down the grassy slope of the mountain carrying on their shoulders what to me were very familiar things -- poles to be cut and split into firewood!

Firewood gatherers of Mt. Abuwew. [May 27, 2011 photo by charlzcastro]

Using almost the same trail that I trod perhaps more than a hundred times before, the trio jolted to life an almost forgotten chapter of my life’s story: When I was growing up in the Isinay territory of Dupax in the 1960s, one of my favorite chores was gathering dried poles and branches in the remnant forests of Mount Abuwew which I would later disijon or basijon (split with axe) into firewood.

The activity was a joyful thing to do on weekends and certainly during the school break in summer. It enriched my off-school days to such an extent that when vacation was coming to an end, I was looking forward to either compare notes with my classmates or do my English theme writing on the topic "What I Did Last Vacation." In fact, if there was an assignment that I loved doing when I could not run to my grandparents’ house in I-iyo and be with my Ilocano friends and fellow river lovers and carabao riders, it was gathering firewood.

Called mangayu in both Isinay and Ilocano, firewood-gathering  was to me a "turtle’s punishment" (as in Rizal’s story of The Monkey and the Turtle) for at least three reasons:

First, being the eldest and the only boy in the family, I was expected to do more household chores than my sisters after me when my mother was busy either sewing or washing clothes. This therefore meant that gathering firewood made me sort of exempted from such responsibilities as cooking the rice, bathing the pigs, washing the dishes, and baby-sitting kid sisters. And so I was free to eat whatever wild or communal fruits were in season – bayawas, sompalo, anunas, mangga, sarisay, sapang, arusip, bujnay, kamiring, lumbuy, kitkitiwit, majanilan si araw – without feeling guilty that I didn't share them with my sisters.

Second, firewood-gathering meant going out there in the wilderness of Mount Abuwew west of the Dupax Central Elementary School (or occasionally in the woods near the Dupax Subsidiary Nursery upstream of Abannatan) and use the activity as pretext so I could spend many hours running after the birds with my baris (slingshot; palsi-it in Ilocano), finding tulin (rice sparrow; billit-tuleng in Ilocano) nests in the cogonal areas, waiting for ripe and at times naam-amon (maggoty) mangoes to fall down from their twigs up in the big tree, and testing how my ota^ (bolo; buneng in Ilocano) would go against the giyun (cogon; pan-aw in Ilocano) and wawini (sabawil in Ilocano) that obstructed the trail. And when the soy-ang (sun) was too hot, I would lay down under the lirum (shade) of an arusip tree, listen to the duluriyaw (cicada), the titit (sunbird) and the pinuu^ (bulbul) sing in the forest glades, then probably doze off for a few minutes.When it rained, it was fun running to the  tangngej (tanglag in Ilocano) to make a cave-like structure as shelter, then later watch the tabungeyon (rainbow) on the other side of the valley.

And third, engaging in this exclusive-for-boys activity made me somewhat a bigger boy. For it required one to bravely hack a way into the eyas (forest) to get at a dead tree, climb and haul down a dried-up panga (branch), use skills at tying the poles and branches thus gathered with wa-aj (vine), and then sa^bat (carry on the shoulder) the heavy bundle of wood a couple of kilometers pabujibuj (downslope) and over maro-ot (grassy/bushy) trails. I would only stop to catch my breath while feasting my eyes on the panoramic scene of Dupax downhill.

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here was no discounting the risks involved. Out there you were on your own. Out there you had to be wary of the alaksiyot (wasps/hornets; alumpipinig in Ilocano) and the abubbulij (a large stinging ant called ampipit in Ilocano). Out there you had to always be on the lookout for the venomous immanuy (spitting cobra), the ayatungan (green pit viper; dahong-palay in Tagalog), or the ine^eyaddang (python; beklat in Ilocano). In case you accidentally cut your limbs while bucking or trimming timber, the most that your couple or so of equally young companions could do was to go run and shout for help kilometers away.

Getting arms and legs bruised by suwit (thorns) and sharp-edged blades of grass were normal.  Getting paltus (callus; kapuyo in Ilocano) on your palms as a result of constant cutting of wood was also par for the course, in much the same manner that cases of naburuwan (acquiring skin allergy; nabuduan in Ilocano) as a result of getting in contact with the atattaru (itchy larva), plus getting matoler (stung; masilud in Ilocano) by the alaksiyot (wasp; alumpipinig in Ilocano), nipped by the e-ja (tailor ant; abuos in Ilocano), or malurun (mapurisan in Ilocano) were also part and parcel of the territory.

Not only that. Occasionally you got to encounter a mavungot (prone to anger) homestead or kaingin owner. And no matter how you swore innocence, no matter if you showed incontrovertible evidence that you went near his area only to find the tiktikrubung (sparrow) you shot down, you get shouted at with something like: “Gaddemet… da^yut manger-eraw si abukado on mangga!” (Goddammit… you avocado and mango thieves!)

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ast forward a little to when I was a student in the UPLB College of Forestry. I realize now that my firewood-gathering days (not to mention my bird-sniping, tree-climbing, kaingin-farming and river-fishing experiences) were a fitting prelude to my pursuing the B.S. in Forestry (major in Forest Resources Management).

I really didn’t dream to become a forester. In fact, when I was in my senior year at St. Mary's High School, I wanted instead to be a journalist, inspired by a note along that line on my souvenir book by my English Literature and Grammar teacher, Madam Ermelinda Castañeda-Magalad. Our parish priest at the time, Father Theo Bonarius, also thought I would be a good candidate for the priesthood.

But it turned out that an increasing number of Isinays were then going into the profession called Forestry. I didn't know them very well then, but I heard such names as Vicente Magno, Omer Laccay, Sixto Badua, Segundino Laccay, and Rogelio Felix as having gone to take up Forestry in the University of the Philippines at Los Baños.

At the time, the logging industry was the top dollar-earner for the Philippines, rivaled only now and then by the sugar industry. At the time, there was a noisy sawmill across the sementeryo in Santa Maria, north of Domang, where every hour or so logging trucks would go to unload gigantic dipterocarp logs hauled downhill from the Ilongot territory in the blue hills upstream of Banila and Carolotan.

And so it came to pass that superior orders mandated that I go to forestry school. And because it was never my sweet dream to be a logger or to have anything to do with strangers who cut giant narra, apitong, lauan and bagtikan trees into isahan, dalawahan, and tatluhan logs (and whose bulldozers and logging trucks came to destroy and muddy the river in I-iyo where I loved to go spearfishing), I merely tried to keep my nose above the academic cesspool. I merely contented floating thru college life like in a dream, tried to make sense of my UP life by joining the student movement to awaken the Filipino people to the -isms that make life difficult for the country. And the rest I left to my lucky stars.

Ayyu-ayyu ra Ente^ on Dalen Castro! (What a pity for Vic and Maggie Castro!) No matter if they felt my inner rebellion against having been forced to take a course I didn’t have a heart for, they still went on scraping the little they could so I would become a UP-produced forester.

Looking back now, it could have been worse.

Had I not used as "wind beneath my wings" those wondrous days of my youth as a firewood-gatherer in the hills of Dupax, I could have called it quits to what I considered then as an uninteresting yet difficult course. I would not have loved volunteering to climb trees in my Forest Dendrology classes and chop the bark of some for easier species identification (using the same bolo I used to cut firewood back home). I would not have enjoyed, too, my Silviculture and Forest Nursery laboratory sessions, as well as my Summer classes where we cooked out, measured hundreds of trees, visited kaingin farms, and hiked a lot to and from the Mudspring area and up to the leech-rich peaks of Mount Makiling.

Put another way, had my firewood-gathering days not made me immune to the stings and scratches of student life, had my carrying heavy loads not made me spiritually and physically strong inside, and had not my discovery that freedom had a twin called responsibility, I would have stopped struggling to pass my courses.

Instead, I would have gone full-time in the activist movement or probably ran away to a place far from Los Baños and Dupax, found a wage-earning job as an upland farmer or fisher or whatever on a coastal village somewhere in Mindoro or Quezon or Bicol, and got a barriotic maiden for a wife with whom I could watch the tallivung (full moon) by the sea and share my rainbow-colored fantasies as a country boy.

In other words: Neyyi otyan charlz castro an mansulsulat si attun sutsur! (There would have been no charlz castro writing this kind of story now!)

This Elusive Bird Helped Shy Dupax Boys Get Circumcised

When I was growing up, we uncircumcised boys hated being teased by our elders when out of nowhere the sound “ku-ku-ku-kuk… supput… supput!” reverberated in the grassy thickets. And so, days before Holy Week, you would see adolescents contacting one another so they could go as a team to undergo the razor on Huebes Santo or Sabado de Gloria or any day within the Lenten season except Good Friday.

I chanced upon this tsakuk by the river in Langka-Mammayang, upstream of Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, one cloudy day in September 2010

I don’t know about the rural Tagalogs, Bicolanos, Cebuanos, Boholanos, Ilongos, Kapampangans, Pangasinenses, Cordillerans, Ifugaos, Kalingas, Ibanags, Muslims, Lumads, or even Ilocanos in Ilocos Republic. But we young and old male citizens of Dupax in southern Nueva Vizcaya are quite particular – or rather, used to be very sensitive – as to whether one is circumcised or not.

Being circumcised was such a badge of honor in our part of the woods. Conversely, not being circumcised would mean something to be ashamed of. Thus, when word gets out that a particular guy was seen bathing in the Abannatan stream or the Benay river with his “manhood” still in tact and not open like what a normal man’s should be, pretty soon the whole town would know about it.

If the "uncut" guy were an English-speaking European, the conclusion would be that the Caucasian husband of a local maiden would also be like him. If the subject happened to be a local, not long after the discovery, the word supput (Ilocano and Isinay term for “uncircumcised”) would be appended to his first name as if it were an integral part of the one he was baptized with. 

Not only that. The poor guy’s being “supput” would be a talk of the town or barrio for several generations or for as long as he lived.  And so, if he were still around or when somebody remembers, his case would be cited as an example of a billy-goat-smelling guy being able to get women pregnant even if the skin of his phallus has not undergone the razor’s cut. If he has gone to Kingdom come or migrated to less nosy villages but anyone of his boys would still be around, the stigma would remain like a monument and so the poor kid would still be called ana^ Anut Supput (Isinay for “child of Anut the Uncircumcised”).

In grade school, if your circumcised male classmates would know that you are like Anut, you better sharpen the way you stare or get ready to project a murderous don’t-test-my-patience look. For, more often than not, during recess or before the school bell rings for the afternoon classes, they would tease you with something like “give me salt” especially when a couple of guys came to class with their T-shirts bursting with marasaba (literally “banana-like” in ripeness) tamarind fruits they hauled down from a child-friendly tree on the way to school.

The reference to salt comes from the fact that uncircumcised “birds” are known to have whitish and salt-like particles technically called smegma. Oh well, that grainy material (called kaper in Ilocano) is indeed salty as it forms when the penis is left unwashed for long and part of the urine dries up and accumulates as salt on its way out of the prepuce.

The Conspiratorial Bird

Like most teasing events, however, the kantiaw (jeering)  didn’t end when the tamarind trees or, alternatively, the mango trees, have ran out of fruits. Thanks (but no thanks) to a bird that kept the song playing. This bird is the Philippine coucal (Centropus viridis), a species of cuckoo that is native to the Philippines and described by avid Philippine-bird photographer Romy Ocon in his blog (http://romyocon.blogspot.com) as “more commonly heard than seen, as it prefers to skulk in the dense grasses or undergrowth.”

Called tsakuk, kakuk or sakuk in Ilocano, siggu^ in Isinay, and sabukot in Tagalog, the bird played a large part in sending boys of Dupax, be they Isinay or Ilocano or Tagalog, to the mangngugit or circumcision man. (Hey, don’t ask me about gays, particularly if they also underwent circumcision. As far as I recall, when I was a boy, there were not so many of such creatures in our part of Planet Earth then; if ever there were some, their closet must have been so tight shut as to get noticed.)

The love call of the tsakuk didn’t exactly say when it is season to undergo circumcision, much unlike the way the song at twilight of the pitpitaw (a type of cuckoo, I gave it that name by onomatopoea or by the sound it made) would mean no rain the following day. Nor was the presence of this often solitary bird in the bamboo clumps or the tall Miscanthus reeds (runo in Ilocano and Isinay) would mean the coming of a specific activity or weather phenomenon.

The tsakuk rather made us “unbaptized” boys hate it, hate our uncles, hate the older boys who had already undergone circumcision. For when out of no where the sound “ku-ku-ku-kuk… supput… supput!” reverberated in the thickets and made its way to the consciousness of our elders, almost always someone among them would stop planting rice and call out: “Nangngegmo, barok? Agpakugitka kanon!” (Did you hear that, son? It says it’s time for you to get circumcised!)

Preparing for the Cut

Naturally, no matter how afraid we were then of getting our “birds” kissed by the barber’s razor, we would murmur to ourselves something like “Never again!” And so, there and then we would resolve for the nth time to finally undergo the rite of kugit (circumcision) come Lenten Season. 

The foreplay, as it were, would take time.

In addition to going after the tsakuk with a pocketful of river pebbles and our ever-present slingshots when our extrasensory perceptions said there was one about to sound off its irritating call in the ledda (bittuh in Isinay; talahib in Tagalog; scientific name Saccharum spontaneum) reeds nearby, we would be doing a number of preparations for when the big day comes.

Not exactly in any order of priority, one activity would be to scout around the barrio for cousins or playmates or newly arrived migrants from Central Luzon, the Ilocos or the Cordillera provinces who are also ready and willing to undergo the rite. It seemed the fear let alone the pain of undergoing the razor would be greatly lessened when it is shared with other kids.

We would also be asking from those who have recently undergone the cut who was the best mangngugit in the village – plus how much he would accept as “doctor’s fee” or, alternatively, if it was okay to give him a handful of fermented then dried betel nut plus a bottle of gin or Siok Tong.

Depending on how far the skin of your manhood could be retracted backward from its tip, we would also spend more time than ever getting rid of its salt deposits when we bathed by the river. As was normal for us river-loving boys then, we would compare notes as to how much could our respective skins be pulled back. (Note: There would always be hair-like green algae in the more placid parts of the river and we would put some of them around our birds, imagining how the real appearance would be when we would grow up and have genuine hair where there was none before.)

Help from a Wild Plant

If our skin was not yet ready, we would be looking for the shrub with milky sap we called kuribetbet (Tagalog kampupot or pandakaki; scientific name Tabernaemontana pandacaqui). The plant grew by itself by the river bank or on the roadside and we used its sap to shrink our boils or to stop our skin itches, particularly ringworm (Ilocano kurad; Isinay aksep; Tagalog buni), from spreading to other parts of our body.

I don’t remember now who advised us to use the plant’s milk to make our “birds” ready for the cut but I do recall experimenting with it a couple of times and, indeed, the magic worked and gave me a half centimeter mileage each time (but not before I felt stinging pain at first followed by a burning itch that quickly went off once I jumped back to the soothing coolness of the ever friendly river).

Kuribetbet (pandakaki) leaves and fruits from http://www.stuartxchange.org/PandakakiPuti.html

Lent is Circumcision Time

Lent (often referred to as Cuaresma or Holy Week) mercifully always coincided with summer vacation from school. It was also that brief time of the year when we hyperactive kids hang our slingshots and took a break from our bird-sniping, grasshopper-snatching, cicada-catching, and dragonfly-torturing pursuits. 

In place of going outdoors, we farm kids would be asked to help our old folks husk corn, shell peanuts, roll tobacco leaves, baby sit younger cousins or sisters, help squeeze out spiny amaranth or bamboo thorns lodged on an elder's soles, etc.

In many parts of Philippine Christendom, Lent also meant undergoing certain forms of physical sacrifice as form of penitence and “sympathy” with the crucified Son of God.

Like circumcision.

There is a happy confluence to all this, as I see it now. It is as if Holy Week was purposely designed to allow boys the opportunity to go through the rites of manhood that the Man on the Cross was said to have similarly undergone as a boy. Consider, for example, the following:

• First, the school break meant freedom from  school assignments, rough schoolmates, and daily classes that would otherwise stay on the way of getting one’s phallic wound heal quickly. 
• Second, the good behavior enforced by the Lenten “curfew” meant one’s elders would not say no to a few coins to buy a bottle of gin or to ask one from grandmother’s mini store to use as “thank you” to the circumcision expert.
• Third, since the past few days of Lent saw one being able to do many chores as well as favors, the days after the cut would mean well deserved exemption from such chores as splitting wood, fetching water, taking the carabao to the hills, and riding one’s bike to town for some errands. 
• And fourth, the bloodletting plus the throbbing pain days after the cut would pass for a cleansing of sorts and a penitencia that befits the season.

Goodbye to Boyhood

I’ll soon post a more detailed or rather a blow-by-blow account of how I underwent the passage from boyhood to manhood. 

For now, let me park by saying something close to blasphemy. Since the circumcision was made on or earlier than Huebes Santo (Maundy Thursday) and the Sunday after would be Easter, hallelujah – the church bells that went silent since Good Friday would sound like thunder again, saying the Lord has risen… but also seemingly proclaiming to no one in particular: there’s a newly born man in town! 

A new man who no longer gives a damn even if a million tsakuk birds would sing “ku-ku-ku-kuk… supput… supput” all day long! –CHARLZ CASTRO

“Sshhh… Keep Quiet and Don’t Go Under the Trees!”

BELIEF IN CRITICAL HOURS

NOTE: This is the third installment of my 1995 essay on folk beliefs associated with trees and forests that I sharpened a bit and retitled  “Of Fireflies and Forest Fairies” in the hope that its form and content, let alone its call for appreciating  indigenous knowledge systems and practices, would make for pleasant reading and not turn off visitors of http://isinay-bird.blogspot.com. Oh yes, if you have queries, complaints, suggestions, or whatever, you’re welcome anytime to prick my balloon via the comments section of this site or, if you are shy (like me), you can pour out some lines and send them to charlzcastro@gmail.com or charlz1951@yahoo.com.

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any rural communities in the Philippines consider certain times of the day – usually high noon and twilight – as sacred and/or critical. During such hours, it is taboo to go outdoors, climb a tree, build a fire in the fields, throw rocks in the thickets, or engage in vigorous activities like chopping wood. 

The belief is that spirits are active and prone to doing harm to human beings, especially gallivanting kids, during those particular hours.

I recall how in my boyhood days in an upstream barrio of Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, the womenfolk often warned us hyper-kinetic boys from straying too far from the village lest the kumaw (called sipay or manunupot in Tagalog) would get us, put us inside the langgotse (rice sack), bring us to a rangtay (bridge) being constructed in the towns of Bambang or Bayombong downstream, and use our blood as atang (food offering) to the spirits guarding the area, so that the bridge won’t easily be washed out when the Me-et or the Magat River went berserk during heavy rains. 

For some time that scare-tactic worked. And so at least, many a bayyek (tadpole) in the carabao pond, many a tuwwato (dragonfly) along the mountain trail, many a bambannagaw (chameleon) by the riverside, and many a pirruka (bulbul) in the bignay or the samak tree have been spared from some naughty kids’ itchy hands and from their slingshots’ raring-for-action mode. The deep parts of the river that we called lipnok similarly became quiet for a while as no right-minded fellow would go take a dip there without the company of big uncles.

Pretty soon, however, we noticed that the rusty trucks that we suspected to be those of the kumaw were hauling gigantic lawaan and bagtikan logs – not naughty kids – from the blue forests further upstream of the barrio. And pretty soon it was open season again for us mango-munching, bird-hunting and river-loving lads.

But then someone revived stories of the marmarna (roving spirits) or the di makitkita (unseen beings) who roamed aplenty at high noon.  Some of my Isinay relatives talked of seeing tiny footprints  –  believed to be that of the dwarf and long-haired lampong   – on carabao trails in hilly areas where not so many kids go. As if on cue, a couple of mysterious deaths of people we knew – one under a bitnong tree, another in his kaingin – also started to go around. It didn’t take long, indeed, before we kids  avoided engaging in raucous outdoor play again or using our ubiquitous slingshots during the hours that Ilocanos call agmatuon (namalintur in Isinay; literally “time when the sun is directly overhead”). 

I’m not sure if such a belief was intentionally nurtured to ensure peaceful and worry-free noontime siesta for the Hispanized farm folk. I suspect however that the warnings about diurnally active ghosts were also meant to give mango-owning neighbors – when the fruits are in season -- time out in guarding their heavily laden trees from slingshot-happy kids on perpetual search for ripe fruits to target. 

In retrospect, I tend to believe now that in my childhood the belief has somehow helped extend the expiry dates of certain birds, reptiles, and other wilderness creatures. 

Holy Week Blues

Photo from

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/primer/primer.html

I don’t know how it is in other rural communities in the Philippine archipelago, but at least in southern Nueva Vizcaya, the enforcement of  the “noontime curfew” was  at its strictest during cuaresma or Lenten season.  For, indeed, it would not be only us malleable adolescents who would observe the ngilin (literally “fasting and abstinence”) but also our basi-loving uncles. If at all they would go out, it would only be to bring the carabao to the river, not to the kaingin.

Thus, no matter how the gurgling song of the clear and cool river was luring us... no matter how sweet it would be to run after the grasshoppers sunning by the side of the carabao grazing field... no matter how seductive were the love calls of the alimuken (bleeding-heart pigeon) or the “come and get me if you can” shrieks of the kilyawan (oriole), it was “stay where you are” command for us. 

For a couple of hours or so, even our enemy tsakuk (Philippine coucal) would have peace taunting us uncircumcized boys with its “kukukukuk… supput… supput” song as the good boys among us would hang our slingshots by the post and do our share in husking the corn, shelling the peanuts, drying the tobacco leaves, baby-sitting kid sisters, squashing the fleas of the dog, or shooing away the neighbor’s hen and her dozen chicks from ruining the newly sown tomato seeds.

If we happened to be in the uma or in the taltalon, we would be expected to have taken the carabaos to their favorite mudhole or bamboo-shaded “parking lot” by then. Then we would join our old folks in the kalapaw (farm hut) to while away the witching hour often by nursing one’s leech bites or squeezing out the thorn of the kwantung (spiny amaranth) lodged in somebody else’s foot. 

More often than not, while doing our “foot surgery” or corn-husking chores , we would get a generous dose or litany of reminders (almost always in reference to our Olympian slingshot skills) the likes of but not limited to: 

“Why don’t you go after the uwak that raided the ripe papaya and banana, instead of the meatless, harmless and sweet-singing sitsitik? Why not pull the barsanga (a weed) or bain-bain (makahiya) off the upland rice patch in the uma instead of combing the hills all day for pugo nests? And why not learn how to make rama (fish aggregating bamboo-cum-river stone contraption) or weave pasiking (rattan backpack) instead of challenging the kids in the ballasiw (other side of the river) to a fight?”

The same curfew would be imposed at dusk when the night cicadas start to sing and it is time to inventory the chickens up in the tamarind or caimito trees and to kindle the dalikan (earthen stove) for supper. In case we needed to go out to urinate or to dump rubbish in the abandoned tupig pit, we would caution the spirits by saying “bari-bari…,” “kayu-kayu….” or “tabi-tabi…”

And when we would eat outdoors whether noon or dark, we would remember to invite the unseen beings who are guarding the place – river, big tree, mountain, farm – by saying “Mangantayo, apo…” (come, let’s eat)  or like what my grandfather himself had been mumbling, “Ne, bagiyo….” (hey, here’s your share). Failing to do such would invite the wrath of the guardian spirit and it would give you stomach ache or some such trouble.

In the Cordilleras

Prill-Brett (1986) relates a similar belief in critical hours among the Bontok Igorot: “There are designated times of the day, from 11 AM to noon and from 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM, that are believed to be dangerous for walking mountain trails. These designated times are dusk and the hottest part of the day, times when malevolent spirits that push people over the mountainsides are believed to be roaming around.”

Beliefs like that, Prill-Brett says, are based on the “assumption  that for activities there is a proper time and place to be observed and respected in order to be in harmony with the supernatural beings in the area.” The said belief is the Bontok’s way of structuring their relationships with the environment, since they perceive themselves to be sharing the land with these supernatural beings who hold them responsible for the stewardship of the land.

Looking back, it would appear now that many forest areas -- especially the Benguet pine (Pinus kesiya) remnants that go tinder-dry and fire-attractive in the sweltering months of March-May -- have been spared from despoliation as a positive result of the reprieve brought about by such belief in sacred and critical hours. 

If summed up over the years, those seemingly insignificant “idle times” or times spent doing nothing would have otherwise been used to engage in forms of spirit-harming activity like chopping down saleng trees for use in the fireplaces of Baguio and La Trinidad, or clearing runo-covered hillsides for growing cabbage, strawberry and snap beans.

(NEXT: Belief in Haunted Places. FORTHCOMING: Belief in Unfit or Disfavored Trees; What’s Next for Folk Beliefs?; Appendix: Isnegs Declare Lapat to Conserve Natural Resources)

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.