No Exit

"Do people ever sleep there?" the taxi driver asked, pointing to the boxlike structure where I came from. "That building has always been alive until morning," he observed.
"The newspaper never sleeps," I said, explaining. At that hour, the production people were  still about to take their turn printing tomorrow's newspaper. The editors--I work as a copy editor, so, me included-- had just closed and approved the pages.  They had to see to it that they were there when they the page closed to ensure that everything that came out passed under editorial scrutiny.
"But people need sleep," he said. "Who goes there in the morning?"
"After the production people finish printing," I continued, "The newsboys come in at dawn to get the papers and deliver them to the newsstands. Sometimes, they also deliver the papers right at the subscribers' doorsteps. At eight, the business and advertising people come. So, are other office workers, like the editorial assistants, in the newsroom. The day desk editors also come in to see to it that reporters pursue the latest news stories for the day. In the afternoon and towards the evening, the reporters start trickling in to write their stories. Then, afterwards, it's editing time all over again."
It was already half past 12 in the morning when I talked to the taxi driver on my way home. Late in the morning, I went to the laundromat and watched the washing machine, and then, the dryer, spin. "The newspaper is one huge machine," I couldn't help mumbling.
The man running the laundromat who kept asking where I worked, looked up.
"Well, I work for a huge machine that never stops churning," I said, and marveled at the irony of my words. I thought, "I don't think I could ever serve a machine, no matter how big."
Then, I started dreaming of going to a far flung place where no machine could ever reach me. Instead, I conjured images of the remote mountains of Mindanao, where the machines were more deadly. People getting killed by another type of machines---the machine guns--right in the places where they lived.
With the Human Security Act, policies that cater to the World Bank and the global capitalist system, debt servicing, the deregulation of everything, privatization even of health services and more, even governments can be deadly killer machines.
Societies, civilisation  are machines that demand subjection from everyone within reach. Even the groups fighting for change have to invent their own "machine." 
Probably, in this life, there's no escaping from the rule of the machine. But isn't it terribly sad?

Death in the Newsroom

"It's a masculine newsroom," I confessed to Anton at the rooftop canteen, delighting upon the fact that I was able to point out the cause of the "strangeness" I've been feeling about the place. Anton crossed his eyes in disbelief. He was quick to retort. "Whaaat?!" he said. "There are more women in that newsroom!"
"That doesn't necessarily follow." How could I explain, how could I picture a female newsroom to someone, who has never seen, never experienced, and perhaps, could never believe it can exist? "Journalism, itself, is a masculine profession," I said. Most often, when they're not very careful, unsuspecting women who venture into the profession are often trained or are forced to think like men. Anton opened his mouth and said, again, "Whaaaa?!"
There might already be some headway made by some women somewhere, but right here and now, in this country, in this world where I live in, the institutionalized mainstream press is still pathetically masculine, made for the purpose of perpetrating the rule of the patriarchal culture, or, to serve the male-controlled commerce and industries.
The closest image I have of female-ness is Amy, in one of those meetings, when she fleets from one subject to another, turning the discussion into a crazy patchwork of life and anecdotes. You can feel right there and then, that each story that gets inserted is a living thing that has a potential to grow. So that the meeting can turn into a crazy whirl that can easily spin and confuse an average male, obsessed with rule and order. Yet, I've always felt richer and fuller after those meetings, because of the glimpses of life they offered. They allowed your imagination to run wild and your creativity to grow untrammeled. Don't talk about imagination in a masculine newsroom. Men are afraid of wild women and of minds allowed to roam free. Women spell trouble for men. In the Middle Ages, they labeled these women as witches and burned them at the stake so that inside the newsrooms of today, women would no longer know what innate power and magic they've got. They could no longer recognize who they are.

My Changing Landscape

My landscape has been changing so fast the last few days. First, I remember taking a snapshot of davaotoday at the two-story YMCA building in Davao at the back of The Venue. Now, as I climb up the Cebu Daily News' rooftop canteen to eat, I can't believe I'm being greeted by the sight of cranes and containers being loaded at the Maersk container port! Last night, I climbed up here at six o'clock and I actually saw all those lighted cranes at work! What would Ja say if he'd find out I'm closely living close to Maersk?! He has been in love with Maersk for a long time. He has been in love with all container ports for that matter. Cargo boats and cranes and container vans litter his adult dreams. His love has been so deadly and fatal that it has driven us out of our rented house in Matina! Maersk, of course, had delivered his shipment of bananas to Vladivostok! But sometimes, luck is in short supply. Sometimes, the yellow corn from Bulgaria also get stranded in the Black Sea on their way to Vietnam. So, we are cast homeless. Now, I can't believe I'm actually staring at the pile of Maersk containers at the port! Sighing and turning around, I see on the opposite end, far off Nivel Hills, where Marco Polo Plaza beckons! This is a totally different landscape!

Trying Out

In the last 10 days, I've been trying a hand on some editing works inside the newsroom of Cebu Daily News. The work stretches from the three o'clock story conference---when the editors decide on the headlines and stories of the day and give page assignments---to deep hours in the night when the editors finally put the paper to bed. On the first days I was here, I was bowling with laughter from the police stories assigned to me because they were---tragic, comic and absurd! They were also the toughest works to edit. After the first days (urrhm, nights), I discovered the benefits of coffee but I fought the urge to draw out a stick of cigarette. My cigarette memories are still with Nico, outside the gate of PDI Mindanao bureau where we can watch the Bachelor buses from Butuan passing us by; or with Dasia, whose ashtrays bear the marks of nicotine abuse while we allow our minds to roam. Inside the newsroom, I can't probably allow my mind to roam. I have to fix an eye on the copies and make sure that they stay there. There's not enough time to explore the depth and breadth of things. You have to deliver the finished product before the first rays of the next day.
Over the weekend, I handled a page on a heritage building along Osmena Boulevard. I liked doing it because I wanted to get inside that building--a museum---and take a look inside. Cebu is teeming with those centuries-old Cathedrals and colonial Churches that are remnants of our past. I have the urge to go out and stare at them in the afternoons to summon all the ghosts and understand my future. But what can I do? I'm inside the newsroom!

Waters at Santa Ana Wharf

Life Behind Bars

This is how it looks when the sun is about to set at the Davao Penal Colony and you happen to look up from where you're seated outside the security gate talking to a broadcaster behind bars for libel. Your eyes momentarily leave the face of the person you're talking to and the absorbed faces of your companions to roam around and wonder what lie beyond the shadows.
On Easter Sunday, when the Communist New People's Army (NPA) led by Kumander Parago raided the Davao Penal Colony's armory without firing a single shot, jailed Davao broadcaster Lex Adonis was already inside to serve his four and a half year sentence in jail. He was brought there from the Maa city jail two weeks before. At the Penal Colony, he said he would surely meet the shadowy characters he had attacked on air. But his father, who visited him on the eve of the raid, had said it was much, much safer for him to be there than anywhere else. The day after the NPA raid, the whole area was crawling with journalists feasting on the breaking story of the day, not knowing that one of them was already behind those bars, unable to break that story.

Another journalist is nabbed for libel

Jeez, I can't believe it. Jofelle is simply too beautiful to spend time in jail! This is unbelievable!

You Must Remember this!

Now that detained junior officer Antonio Trillanes finally made it to the Senate, it's time to look again into the Greenbase Expose and find out more truths about the twin Davao bombing in 2003.

Breaking Taboos

I arrived at the davaotoday office one day to find a stranger in our midst. I thought, who is this guy staring at Gra's computer monitor?? For all I can see from the door was a clean shaven head and a back of someone wearing a shirt, someone I initially thought was a he. Until she turned around and I saw that it was Chi. Why a sweet, young girl suddenly decides to shave her hair like that--must be for a very good reason. I tried hard to hide my surprise. But how can I stifle my excitement?? For a young woman to shed herself of that crown of hair that people used to define her gender is no mean, ordinary feat! It was an act of defiance! It was crossing to the other side of taboo!
For doing the "unspeakable," she had crossed the line that constricted her, the line that used to define her as girl/woman and all the restrictions that come along with it. By breaking taboo, she has crossed the line to the other side where the rules no longer apply and any attempt at definition is no longer possible. She's now in a place where taboo has suddenly lost its grip and power! It's no wonder, then, that everybody who has any inkling of this big triumph gravitates towards her---and for me, Chi has turned into some sort of a heroine that day!

Voice from the Killing Fields

Fr. Albert Alejo (who preferred to call himself "Paring Bert") said he wrote this poem in 1987 at the height of the alsa masa movement against the NPAs which earned Davao the reputation as the country's "killing fields." Now, amidst the extra-judicial killings happening in the country and in Davao particularly, I often catch people saying that all these killings have been bequeathed to us by the history of bloody killings that characterized Davao in the past. This poem has been originally posted in the Filipino Jesuit literary blog and posted here with the permission from the author.


Sanayan Lang Ang Pagpatay
(Para sa sektor nating pumapatay ng tao)

ni Paring Bert Alejo, SJ

Pagpatay ng tao? Sanayan lang 'yan pare.
Parang sa butiki. Sa una siyempre
Ikaw'y nangingimi.
Hindi mo masikmurang
Tiradurin o hampasing tulad ng ipis o lamok
Pagkat para bang lagi 'yang nakadapo
Sa noo ng santo sa altar
At tila may tinig na nagsasabing
Bawal bawal bawal 'yang pumatay.
Subalit tulad lang ng maraming bagay
Ang pagpatay ay natututuhan din kung magtitiyaga
Kang makinig sa may higit na karanasan.
Nakuha ko sa tiyuhin ko kung paanong balibagin ng tsinelas
O pilantikin ng lampin ang nakatitig na butiki sa aming kisame
At kapag nalaglag na't nagkikikisay sa sahig
Ay agad ipitin nang hindi makapuslit
Habang dahan-dahang tinitipon ang buong bigat
Sa isang paang nakatingkayad: sabay bagsak.

Magandang pagsasanay ito sapagkat
Hindi mo nakikita, naririnig lamang na lumalangutngot
Ang buo't bungo ng lintik na butiking hindi na makahalutiktik.
(kung sa bagay, kilabot din 'yan sa mga gamu-gamo.)
Nang magtagal-tagal ay naging malikhain na rin
Ang aking mga kamay sa pagdukit ng mata,
Pagbleyd ng paa, pagpisa ng itlog sa loob ng tiyan
Hanggang mamilipit 'yang parang nasa ibabaw ng baga.
O kung panahon ng Pasko't maraming paputok
Maingat kong sinusubuan 'yan ng rebentador
Upang sa pagsabog ay magpaalaman ang nguso at buntot.
(Ang hindi ko lamang maintindihan ay kung bakit
Patuloy pa rin 'yang nadaragdagan.)

Kaya't ang pagpatay ay nakasasawa rin kung minsan.
Mabuti na lamang at nakaluluwag ng loob
Ang pinto at bintanang kahit hindi mo sinasadya
At may paraan ng pagpuksa ng buhay.
Ganyang lang talaga ang pagpatay:
Kung hindi ako ay iba naman ang babanat;
Kung hindi ngayon ay sa iba namang oras.
Subalit ang higit na nagbibigay sa akin ng lakas ng loob
Ay ang malalim nating pagsasamahan:
Habang ako'y pumapatay, kayo nama'y nanonood.

My Borrowed Workplaces

To honor all borrowed workplaces in my increasingly nomadic life.

Madwoman on the Streets

I'm about to become a full-fledged street bum. I'm about to be cast out of the house and my boys are no longer with me. The other night under the crescent moon, I was hungrily gobbling chunks of barbecue on my table when a street child approached me, said he badly wanted some food. I said, "Are you sure?" I can't forget another boy begging alms with a blind man in Maramag, Bukidnon several days before this. He turned down my offer of food because he wanted money. The people who saw me offering my food to the boy scolded me for being so stupid. "They don't need food, Miss, they need cold cash. Begging is a business enterprise." But the child the other night said he was sure he wanted food. He was very hungry, he said. So, I said, "Stay there, don't move." As if he was going to run if I ordered some food. The man at the next table eyed the street child with loathing and cast one hard look at me. "Who is this crazy woman now to tolerate this form of mendicancy?" The jeepney driver the other day said to give in to beggars was the height of stupidity. He called it soft-heartedness. So, I never smiled as the child and I gobbled our barbecues across each other. I tried hard to look tough. I glared at the boy and I glared at the man at the next table. I didn't even notice that the boy had finished eating---and went away to look for water and came back to thank me before he ran away---because I was still so busy glaring at everyone, trying my best to look very, very tough!

Goodbye, Home

“You won’t be able to bear it,” JA warned as he was about to leave.
“Just turn everything on,” he said, his eyes on the television set. “The silence would be overwhelming, it would be unbearable." He cast a worried glance at me before he looked around the place that had housed us and the boys all through these years.
Then, as if to comfort me, he turned on the television set. I felt the familiar surge of irritation as the unwelcome noise filled the room. I rushed to turn it off. “I’m not afraid of silence,” I said. “I will love it here.”
For a brief moment, I saw in his eyes a kind of admission. He was someone who has never been very comfortable with silence in the first place. "I have always been afraid of silence," he admitted for the first time.
As he picked up his bags and turned to leave, the past came to me in a flash. How I hid the radio inside the cupboard because I could no longer bear its noise. How he always kept it turned on, even when no one was around. "Is that your way of driving away the thieves or the spirits?" I used to ask, incredulous, because I felt I was the one being driven away by the noise. Why would anyone turn on the radio when he didn't even care to listen to it in the first place? I used to ask. How could anyone be so afraid of silence, he had to fill the room with noise?
How I threatened to crush the television set, enraged at how I could no longer have a good conversation with anyone in the house without sharing its attention.
Now that I'm alone, I will welcome the silence that will engulf me as I go home. This is the home that had kept my small family intact in the last six years. Now that my small family is breaking apart, this is my way of expressing my gratitude to the house that had been more than a roof over our heads over those years. It's also my way of saying goodbye. I won't begrudge the house its silence.

Stop Making Fools of Mothers!

I can't believe it! I wake up to a totally different world today. On the pages of the newspapers are images of mothers and daughters hugging each other as if motherhood is the greatest miracle to ever happen in the world! Everyone is singing praises to mothers! Everybody is treating their moms to a spa or to a parlor or a makeover (as if to erase the traces of abuse and neglect evident on her ageing face!), or bringing her to a fancy restaurant for dinner (as if this can make up for her being a slave for the rest of her life!) It's sickening!
I can't believe how they hype and promote the myth of perfect, sweet motherhood, and condescendingly pat mothers on their backs to make up for the kind of maltreatment mothers suffer for the rest of their lives. If the world is really sincere in trying to honor mothers, instead of making mother's day just one great marketing campaign, the world will not leave the task of mothering to the mothers alone! Society has a greater task of taking care of the children, now seen roaming the streets rummaging for garbage, pushed away from school just because they are poor! If the world is really sincere, what has it done to this mother? Will it listen to this mother's plea?

Sean loves Martial Law!

EXCERPT FROM AN OLD JOURNAL
I found this while rummaging through my old files the other night.
September 21, 2006---On the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the picture of the deposed President Marcos who declared Martial Law 34 years ago appeared side by side with the news of Martial Law just being declared in Thailand after a bloodless coup that unseated the Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra only a few days ago. What kind of coincidence it was that Martial Law was declared in Thailand on the day we remembered with horror its anniversary in our country? But what coincidence, indeed! We’ve been living so close to this monster for decades that sometimes, we almost forget it continues to exist in our midst! Or, have we successfully deluded ourselves into thinking we are free until it sticks its ugly head out again to kill us? We gasped as we stared in horror at the picture of the Thai army on the streets of Bangkok’s Dusit area.
“I can’t believe it!” I exclaimed, catching my breath as I held up the picture on the front page to J.A., who for the first time in my life finally agreed with me and was nodding his head rather glumly.
“But that is my favorite!” said five-year old Sean, tiptoeing just to get a glimpse of the picture that caused my agitation. I did not mind him, at first, for I was still reeling from the unexpected (at least, for me) turn of events. I stood up and brought the newspaper to my room to read every line of it but Sean followed me there, pointing at the picture, saying, “But I like it! It’s my favorite!” He was pointing at the picture of Bangkok. I was puzzled.
“But it’s bad to be under Martial Law, Sean," I said, gesturing a gag on my mouth. "Under Martial Law, we can’t talk anymore.”
“But I love Martial Law,” he insisted.
I went back to the kitchen again and then back to my room, and back to the kitchen, until I finally sat down at the table to sip coffee with J.A., who started his long reminiscences about where he was when Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972. But before he can finish his third sentence—when he was telling me how, as the one who used to handle public relations of a multinational firm, he arrived at the airport with all those Japanese visitors in tow to let them take their return flight to Tokyo and found all those soldiers in camouflage telling him there’s no longer any flight that day---Sean barged in again and J.A. had to stop in mid-sentence.
“Do we have Martial Law here in Davao, Ma?” I shook my head.
“Martial Law is bad, Sean,” J.A. said, turning to his son. “There will be lots of people on the streets with guns. They’ll point a gun at you and you can’t do anything about it. Don’t ever wish for it.”
Sean looked at us, hurt. “But I love Martial Law, di ba, Ma?! Martial Law is sweet!” he declared, fiercely. “I’ve tasted Martial Law! It’s soft and comes in different colors! I love the smaller Martial Law better than the big ones. I know because somebody from davaotoday gave it to me. Let’s buy Martial Law, Ma! Maybe, they’re selling it in the mall.”
J.A. and I looked at each other before the light of understanding finally dawned upon my confused mind. “AAAh!” I whispered, “You mean, marshmallows?!”

How to explain Martial Law to a kid who loves Marshmallows

After our momentary confusion about the meaning of sounds, I finally heard Sean explaining to Nina Valerie, the girl next door, the difference between Marshmallows and Martial Law.

“Marshmallows are good but Martial Law is bad.”
“Marshmallows are sweet but Martial Law is bitter.”
"Marshmallows are soft but Martial Law is hard.”
“Marshmallows are full of colors but Martial Law is dark.”
“Marshmallows are smooth but Martial Law is rough.”
“Marshmallows are love and pleasure, Martial Law is hate and pain.”

Sunset at Magsaysay Park

"Sanayan lang ang pagpatay," Paring Bert wrote.

The Raging Debate

But who can help it? The jailing of Davao's Bombo broadcaster Lex Adonis has stirred a raging debate in our midst not because Lex Adonis is kind of a 'hero' but because libel touches all of us who happen to wield the power of the pen for a living, a power that is coupled with responsibility. But does a law as harsh as libel have a reason to exist in our midst? International media groups like the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, the Paris-based Reporters without Borders and lately, the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) and Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Seapa) through the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility have expressed strong views over the jailing of a broadcaster for libel because of what it means to freedom of expression and press freedom in a democracy like the Philippines. We read about Conrado de Quiros' "Naked" on the pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In Mindanao, Mindaviews columnist Patricio Diaz wrote "Beyond Lex's Case." Diaz said he had once faced a libel case, himself, and was rather thankful that his publishers "defended him to the hilt." His column prompted a reader to react, so that he had to unleash another series of columns, "Inconsistent Logic," and "Balance of Rights."
I remember a distressing fact from a banana workers' forum I covered in early 2005. I learned how seven (?) or nine (?) year old children were actually made to work inside those banana plantations, digging holes where bananas were planted and paid P1 per hole. Then, I came upon Dr. Romy Quijano, who was facing a libel case for a report he did on the high incidence of cancer and other diseases in communities surrounding the plantation areas in Guihing, Davao del Sur. The powerful banana plantation sued him and the case dragged on for years. He told me how the arresting officer and the police who knocked at his door were surprised to find out that they were about to arrest a doctor. They apologized to him and spoke to him with respect. He was not able to spend time in prison because he was able to post bail right there and then. Long after he finished his story, I kept staring at Dr. Quijano, shocked and awed. I was awed at Dr. Quijano's greatness and his courage to fight for what is right. I was also shocked and horrified that someone as poor as a rat (as I was!) would have been too helpless to fight back and save herself!

Dialogues for Press Freedom

The dialogues for press freedom are actually dialogues where one question is being answered by many questions. I never knew anything about it until I found myself in its midst. Now, it suddenly dawned on me that they're not dialogues at all but a raging debate desperately begging for action. Chancing upon broadcaster Dodong Solis, the manager of Davao's dxdc radio station, one Saturday afternoon, I had one brief moment of illumination.

If you don't want libel classified as a crime---in other words, you want it 'de-criminalized'--- how will you protect anyone from the abuses of the press?”
“Which type of abuse has a much greater impact on our democracy, Plata, the abuse of 'freedom of the press' that you are talking about? Or, the abuses of those in power? Which type of abuse can affect the great number of people? Would you rather curtail a broadcaster’s freedom to report on something just because this can be a potential for abuse? Who will speak up against the abuse of power if journalists are constantly under threat of libel? Whose interest is being sacrificed when a journalist is stopped from reporting the truth? Whose interest is sacrificed when we curtail the freedom of the press? Is it the interest of journalists, as individuals? Or, is it the interest of the people who are kept in the dark on what is going on in different branches of our government? Whose interest is sacrificed if a journalist is stopped from reporting a story? Is it the interest of journalist as an individual? Or is it the interest of the people’s right to know? If you say, that libel has indeed served to protect the people against the abuses of the press, how often has this law been used by those in power to stifle criticisms and legitimate dissent? Will you please count the number of libel cases existing in the Philippine Courts today, Plata, to find out how many of them were filed by abusive politicians who have all the money and the clout to harass the press? Would you rather leave to other institutions and sectors the job of policing our ranks, Plata? Do we lack the capacity to police our ranks, ourselves? Are you really that irresponsible, Plata? How can the press fulfill its Constitutional duty to be a watchdog of democracy--to guard democracy against the potential abuses by the powers-that-be---if a law has also been installed in our midst to stop us from doing our duty? Please answer me, Plata. Your answer means so much to me.

Rescued from the Dustbin

J.A. tells me this morning to stop reading Anais Nin, which he describes as 'garbage.' He says, you should start reading my old manuals to correct whatever eye problem you have when you're behind a camera. But I always find J.A.'s way of seeing things every bit problematic simply because he always defines the world in clear outlines. His pictures must always be in sharp focus. I can't do that. Sometimes, I'm more comfortable with blurry images. I don't attempt to define a world, any world, because I, myself, defy all definitions. I am Woman.

The Anger of Carlos Bulosan

“I am an angry man,” Carlos Bulosan wrote somewhere in his essay, “I am not a Laughing Man,” in a book “Bulosan: An Introduction with Selections” by literary critic, poet and fictionist E. San Juan Jr., a 2004 edition copy of which I found at the National Bookstore in Davao several years ago.
“I am an angry man,” Bulosan wrote, “That is why I started writing. I guess you will have to be angry at something if you want to be a writer."
Bulosan, whom I never heard fondly spoken of by literary writers who regard themselves artists for Art’s sake, was driven away from his homeland almost a century ago, his family scattered away from their farm in Northern Luzon, victims of the oppressive peasant conditions in the Philippines that can be traced back to the
Spanish times. Because of poverty, Carlos Bulosan was forced to leave the country to work in various fish canneries and asparagus farms in America for a pittance, an experience that had driven him to the brink of starvation and ---as a Filipino feeling alienation in America---turned him into a very angry man. He was real sore that he wrote furiously. He said one had to be sore at something to be a writer.
I, too, am a very angry woman. I am not only sore at something. I am sore at everything. The deprivation that Carlos Bulosan had once suffered in a far, far away land is no stranger to me right in my homeland, where millions are leaving each year to work as domestic helpers, entertainers, caregivers, welders, nurses and truck drivers abroad, fueling the worldwide Filipino diaspora that started back in Carlos Bulosan’s time. Nowadays, they fake papers, cross borders, bribe officers, even marry old bald foreigners just to get out of the country to find odd jobs abroad, odd jobs nobody else want to take just to stave off starvation at home.
I am not sore at Carlos Bulosan. In fact, I find the part of myself I never used to know-- in his writings. But I am sore because as a woman oftentimes stuck with all the unpaid chores at home, I suffer twice, thrice, four times and even five times the odds of Carlos Bulosan. I am sore because as a woman journalist paid only for every published story I write, I often end up not earning anything when I get stuck at home for a reason. I am sore because I’m getting too familiar with women’s works both at home and outside, which are often characterized by their numbing repetitiveness that trap instead of liberate the mind. I am sore because people---inside and outside the home---often expect these tasks from me and it takes my focus and concentration simply to refuse and to avoid them. I am sore because it never crossed my mind to leave the country until recently, while slicing tomatoes and nursing a sick child at home, I heard the radio announcer rattle the salaries of domestic help in Kuwait and caregivers in Canada and entertainers in Japan. I am very sore when I think a prostitute is actually getting much more than what I am earning as woman journalist, facing almost the same job hazard. I am mad because while I write stories about the right of workers to reasonable wages, I’m actually getting much, much, much less than what they’re being paid. I am sore because I had to put away my boys 500 kilometers away in my sister’s home just to be able to work full time but when I sit down to work full time before the computer, I am only staring at the blank wall, thinking of my boys. I am sore because I am actually living at the edge of starvation. I was shocked and sore last March when the preschool head teacher blamed me for failing to pay my little boy’s tuition fee.
I was not so shocked that they did not allow my child to take his final exams. But I was shocked because I asked them if my child could enter Grade One if I can pay his tuition in the opening of classes in June and they said, yes because he was actually doing well in school. I was very, very sore. I was sore to learn that the teachers had no idea about education as a right, instead of a privilege. I was already too shocked and too sore to say anything. I was shocked and sore because I remembered my other child in public school last year, where they had to hold classes in a very noisy gym every afternoon because another set of children had to use their classroom for the other half of the day. I was shocked and sore to realize that more children are actually dropping out of school. I was already very, very sore that I did not say anything as I walked out of the campus, looking for an ATM machine, but when I found out I only had the last P15 there, I was no longer shocked and sore. I was already in panic. I walked away briskly and anxiously to buy “turon” for lunch with the last change in my pocket before heading for office for some editing job. But then, again, I was sore at the woman on the jeepney who shooed a beggar in rags, just because he was smelly, dirty and had no money to pay. I was so sore because the woman tried to meet my eyes, thinking I shared her disgust towards the beggar, when all I felt was sheer disgust for life.
I was angry because a long, long time ago I quit an eight to five office job, where all I needed to do was punch my card on the Bundy Clock to get a salary and the rest of my work did not matter. I was so angry that I turned down all offers to work in eight to five jobs after that and started taking odd writing jobs, documenting workshops, just like how a laundry woman next door has been taking laundry from all kinds of people just to earn her keeps. I was very, very sore because I heard Julie Alipala telling us in August last year that some journalists in Zamboanga had to vend fish in the public market to live. I was angry because every other journalist I met during the 5th national congress of the NUJP in Tagaytay had death threats and libel cases. I was shocked to realize that a woman, if she manages to escape from the killer chores at home, can still end up getting killed outside if she is not very careful as a journalist. I was very, very angry that I could not say anything! I was very, very angry that I could not write!
For despite my love for Carlos Bulosan whose anger was so intense it turned him into a writer, my anger is not the anger of Carlos Bulosan. My anger is of a totally different kind. My anger is the anger of Ceres, the harvest Goddess, who at one time or so, was so angry with Pluto for raping her child, that she refused the Earth her blessings so that the sun refused to shine and the corn refused to grow. For just like corn seeds that the harvest Goddess tends, writing also needs some nourishment to thrive. I am angry because I am being punished for being a mother. It is this anger that confronts me now as I sit before the computer, hands on the keyboard, unable to write, because deep inside me everything is wilting. The harvest Goddess has turned away from me, plunging my world into darkness and despair. Since my fury is not the fury of Carlos Bulosan (whose spirit refused to die) but a fury of Ceres, who bestowed Death and Despair in response to injustice, I will continue staring at the empty computer screen—until I can find food and nourishment again.

My Easter Feast

Yes, it's a Happy Easter Sunday! Curiously, though, the only Easter greeting I received was from a long lost friend Taher, who is a Muslim. "May the resurrected Christ Jesus give us more strength and courage in our work," said Taher in a text message the evening of Black Saturday, "Advance Happy Easter Sunday!" Early in the morning, I had intended to greet my Ma and Pa, my sisters, my sons and niece before I boarded my bus for Davao; and then as the bus was running, I intended to greet my Aunt in Bulacan who was constantly texting me while I was on my way; I intended to text Che who said earlier she will only finish a story for davaotoday.com only after Christ has risen on a Sunday; I wanted to ask her if Christ has really risen this day, instead of a Monday or a Tuesday???--but I never made it; my mind was so busy to focus on anything while I was on my way home today so, here, I am at six o'clock in the evening, home at last and greeting everyone a belated "Happy Easter!" while I partake on my Easter feast that began last Sunday to continue on and on.

The Free Press

It's amazing how we can easily tell the kind of freedom of the press we have right in this country just by listening to journalists argue about t-shirts. I have the queasy feeling that something must be terribly wrong in a democracy when journalists start talking about (and sometimes become afraid of) what to wear. "Is it safe to wear t-shirts like this one when we're on coverage?" Riza asked, pointing to the green shirt that Walter wore, bearing the text of Section four Article 3 of the Bill of Rights of the Philippine Constitution, which assures that, "No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression and of the press." Weng was in the midst of the discussion on "safety while on coverage" in the upcoming May elections, projected to be one of the bloodiest ever, what with all the journalist killings that have been going on for how long! "Of course, I wear this because we're here together," quipped Nelson, who was wearing the black version of Walter's shirt. "At least, I am with you and we understand each other. I also wear this when we're on the streets on press freedom day, or when we protest and demand for all the killings to stop, or on a funeral march when one of us has just gotten himself killed by who-knows-who (?) but I don't wear this on coverage."
"It's not advisable," agreed Q, vigorously shaking his head. "Afterall, it's election time. You could easily get killed."
"It's a no-no," said Walter. "Especially when you're in an area which is very dangerous."
"When you're in a conflict zone, maybe," said Weng. "But what's wrong about wearing that when you go to the Comelec office to follow up election results?"
"Isn't it election time?" asked Awi, "When people from all walks of life put forward all kinds of agenda in all forms of advertisements?" "I may not wear that in places where goons with guns freely roam," I can't help saying, "But perhaps, on ordinary days when we cover the news, why not take the chance?" (But I did not actually mean one hundred per cent of what I said because--when wearing something interferes with my getting the story I would rather change my clothes or go naked!) "But aren't we in a democracy here?" Che of davaotoday.com shot back from the booth at the back where all the t-shirts---printed with stop killing journalists---were displayed. "Why do we have this kind of argument about such a trivial thing as a T-shirt to wear when we're supposed to be free?!"
Everyone fell silent. I felt weird because after all, the Philippines has always been touted to have the freest press in Asia and yet, journalists seem to be thinking twice about wearing certain types of T-shirts while on coverage.

Covering the Elections

Who is Afraid of the Naked Truth?

On the day that Gemma Bagayaua of Newsbreak was arrested for libel, we were made to strip inside the Davao city jail in Maa just to visit a broadcaster behind bars.
“What is our fault that we are made to strip like this?” asked Silya Lektrika, my woman companion, who was disgusted by the ordeal. “Are you only out to humiliate us?”
“Who is that prisoner you want to visit, anyway?” asked the inspecting woman cop who surprisingly didn’t even bother to look if a gun or shabu was hidden in my sanitary napkin. “What is his case?”
“He is a broadcaster. He is jailed for libel.”
On the television breaking news later that day, we watched a police handcuffed (or was I just imagining it?) Gemma Bagayaua inside Newsbreak office on Tektite Tower in Makati for the story she wrote for Newsbreak about a man from Vigan who wielded power in the country. In my mind, I saw the metallic chain circled her delicate wrists almost like a bracelet, except that unlike a bracelet, those handcuffs drove home a shattering message to intimidate, to humiliate and to crush her spirit.
Gemma Bagayaua was not able to post bail that day. Her arrest warrant was served at the last hour. When Newsbreak tried to post bail, the Court officer in charge was already on his way home, so that, Gemma Bagayaua, who wasn’t able to avail of the night bail, went through the humiliation of prison life, if only for a night. For libel has been used to threaten and intimidate journalists in the country, to silence voices critical of those in power.
Lex Adonis, a Davao radio broadcaster who carried a story of an important government official allegedly caught in a hotel with a police major’s wife, did not bother to present his side in Court when it was his turn to refute the accusations hurled against him. He jumped bail and was tried in absentia. He was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. He was already there two weeks when it crossed the minds of his colleagues to visit him in jail, not to question the Court’s decision, not to question the merit of the case but perhaps, to ask him why he didn’t bother answer the accusations against him. Why didn’t he ever bother presenting his side? Was it true he had approached quite a number of lawyers who turned him down because they did not want to fight his accuser, a powerful man very close to Malacanang? I thought I could take some shots of a broadcaster holding the cold prison bars that day only to find out as we approached the whitewashed, barbed wired prison walls that no, we can’t bring in our camera, we can’t bring in our cell phone, we can’t bring in our tape recorders, we can’t bring in our notebooks, we can’t bring in our ballpen. Most of all, we were not allowed to wear belts, we had to leave them to the guards at the gate. Our men companions were complaining that walking without belts made them feel naked. They were complaining that their pants might fall. The guards stamped Davao city jail marks upon our arms. After they were searched, the men disappeared inside the gate. It was our turn to enter but the guard stopped us. “We’re not allowed to inspect women here,” said the male guard, “It’s illegal.” We thought he was joking. He pointed to the woman cop standing in the corner. We approached the woman, who said as soon as we came face to face with her: “You have to strip.”
Silya Lektrika’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “Strip?! Why?!”
The woman cop shrugged her shoulders. “It’s the rule here,” she said, with an air of bored indifference. “You have to strip.”
Shocked, Silya Lektrika faced the guard, then, turned her back and faced the woman cop again. “What will you get if you see our bodies naked?” she asked. Afterwards, she turned to the woman cop again and asked, “But can we, at least, close this door while we strip?”
“No,” the woman guard said. “You don’t need to close the door. No one will watch you anyway.”

So, I started arguing with myself. I started arguing with Silya Lektrika, my woman companion. Our bodies---Silya Lektrika’s and mine---suddenly became the site of struggle, the site of war. What is it about our bodies that the world wants to see, anyway? Are women’s bodies keys to women’s soul? Do the jail guards harbor the illusion that they can conquer us by just looking at our bodies? But what is it about naked bodies, anyway?
“Well, it’s up to you if you don’t want to strip,” said the woman cop, turning her back to us. “But you won’t get inside the jail.”
So, I told myself to keep quiet. I have the ability to slip in and out of my body. I took my pants down to my knees and looked at the woman’s cop’s face for reaction but the woman cop was not even looking at me.
“Have we committed any crime that you subject us to this humiliation?” Silya Lektrika resumed asking the woman again. “We’re only here to visit a broadcaster jailed for libel. We haven’t even committed libel, yet, (for she was thinking, libel is a real threat for her) and what is libel, anyway, compared to murder, drug trafficking, embezzlement of public funds, corruption, cheating in an election, illegitimate rule, dictatorship, assassination, ethnocide, extra judicial killings, etc.?” But the woman cop wasn’t listening. It was only much, much later, when I finally reached home and watched the breaking news on TV to see another journalist arrested for libel that I realized what all these stripping naked, handcuffing of hands, and humiliations all about. It suddenly dawned on me that as long as libel remains to be a criminal offense in this country, journalists will continue to face the threat of going to prison like real criminals once they happen to antagonize powers-that-be in their stories. I can hear Silya Lektrika grumbling in my mind. "Who's afraid of the naked truth, anyway?" she asked.

What shall I tell this little boy?

(Today, February 23, 2007, is International Day of Action against Impunity. As we count the dead among us, we urge fellow journalists to wear black over the failure of government to solve the extra-judicial killings of journalists in the country, which has become more blatant by the day---a text message I got from the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines-Davao chapter, which sent me rummaging into an old clothes bin, in search of a black T-shirt. )
I found myself talking to this little boy very recently. He was 13 years old and our topic was another boy who was about his age last year and whom he never met: my son. In a manner that was quite surprising, he was sharing with me some of his 13-year-old wisdom, giving out secrets how every mother should treat a son and how to keep little boys like him from telling a lie. “You should always keep your cool,” he said. “No matter how angry you are. If he senses that you’re mad, that will probably scare him and then, he’ll begin to tell a lie.”
“But what really prompts young people to tell a lie?” I asked.
“Fear,” he said. “Nobody in his right mind would ever want to tell a lie. Except when he’s afraid.”
My conversation with him would have been just another normal conversation with another 13-year-old child, except that we were in a room full of people, talking about how his mother and father were killed by unidentified assailants on their way home from work in Kidapawan city last year. A copy of the forensic report had been passed around to me to the little boy and I felt like snatching that document away from him. If the diagram of the bodies, showing bullet holes, had been too disturbing for a grown up like me, who has never known his parents when they were alive, how much more for this little boy? But the boy calmly held up the paper before his eyes, carefully touching the little dots with his fingers, counting them over and over, playfully maybe, but with calm solemnity he alone can muster. Those dots represented bullet holes on his mother's body. Then, a copy of a newspaper article was passed around showing a picture of his mother and father during happier times when they were still alive. “Do you miss them?” I asked, reluctantly because I didn’t want to touch the little boy, where he must still be hurting.
“Wala man (Not at all),” he said quickly, shrugging his shoulders. His reply reassured me for a while. Amazing! I said to myself as I looked at him again, seeing no trace of sadness, no resentment on his face as we listened to someone talked about how the couple were slain in broad daylight, in one of the city’s most populous areas, even in front of the house of a government official and everybody was saying nobody saw anything. Where were the people then?
Then, I heard the little boy speak to me again in the same jovial tone I’ve been very familiar with another 13 year old at home, only that for the first time, I heard in his voice that tinge of disappointment that up to that time, he had been trying so hard to conceal. “Why?” he asked. “How come nobody comes out? Was there really no one there? Not one? Siaro? Nganong wa juy mosulti? (How come nobody speaks up)?
Today, I feel the urgency of the little boy’s questions. The world has a lot of explaining to do to him because his parents’ death has ceased to be just his parents’ death. It has assumed another meaning to us who are living; and to every little boy growing up in these turbulent times, where you can easily get killed just for being “different.” What shall I tell this little boy? Shall I tell him that his pain is not my pain? Shall I tell him that he’s alone? Shall I tell him that I’m not his mother, so, I can’t feel what he’s going through? Shall I tell him to keep quiet? Shall I tell him to just follow what everyone else is doing because being himself might be a big risk? Shall I tell him not to speak his mind? Shall I tell him it’s all right for someone to keep quiet just to stay alive? What shall I tell my little boy at home? What shall I tell every little boy and girl that I meet in the street? What shall I tell every little girl and boy in school? What am I telling them in my silence? Shall I-who call myself a journalist, a mother--disappoint them by refusing to speak up when my freedom is under attack, by setting aside and refusing to answer their very pressing, very important questions???

Under Siege!

When I unexpectedly bumped into another long lost friend over the weekend, I noticed that she was bringing along a copy of Andrew Marshall's Time magazine essay, "A Philippine Shame."
"Why on earth are you bringing that?" I asked Ruby Padilla for having missed her all these years, I was in a very jovial mood and was prepared to tease her about anything. But Ruby's answer shocked me.
"Because he was writing about me." I was puzzled because I had read the article earlier but did not see her name on it, so, I looked again and realized that the reason I did not recognize her was because she was using her husband's family name.
"Ruby Sison is waiting for someone to kill her," Marshall wrote in opening his essay. He met Ruby at a Kidapawan cemetery while paying their respects to slain journalist couple George and Maricel Vigo. George and Maricel were killed on their way home in June last year by unidentified assassins, one of the increasing number of journalist killings in the country that until now remain unsolved. For someone who had known Ruby back in our much happier, younger days in Kabacan, the simplicity of the statement struck me like a lightning bolt. The journalism profession is indeed, under attack and any self-respecting journalist could not afford to just sit around while state forces continue their assault on press freedom and freedom of expression, which is supposed to be the hallmark of a working democracy, the basic element in every journalist's quest for truth.

Bankerohan!

RIVER LIFE

Dead Woman Walking

Seven years ago, Ian Fermin Casocot wrote in very plain, simple words what took me years to figure out and too much beating around the bush to put on paper: “Only a dead woman is a happy woman,” he began his essay on women in Contemporary Drama, which made up our final exams in Prof. Philip Van Peele’s graduate class at Silliman University. “Everything in this world works to make woman very unhappy."
Then, he proceeded to name the women characters---all tragic and sad---in Contemporary Drama by numerous playwrights from Ibsen down to Brecht and others to illustrate his point. It’s only now, seven years later, that looking through myself as the closest flesh and blood woman I happen to know, I felt the full impact of Ian’s words. “Why hadn’t I written that?” I had said the first time I heard it read in class seven years ago. “Why hadn’t I seriously thought of that?” I am thinking now, as I---standing in a doorway after slicing tomatoes, grimly realized the truth I am forced to swallow. I wish I could take a glance at that piece of paper again where he had written that essay but I have taken a close look at my life and finally gotten its message: Only a dead woman is a happy woman. A woman who seeks her own happiness will not likely attain it in this life so that a woman who truly and seriously wants to find her happiness has to take solace in Death as her only means to attain it. How true!

Sweet Valentine

Bloody Workshop

Shortly after the New Year, I bumped into a long lost fellow John Bengan at the SM lobby when the mall was about to close and I was already rushing on my way to the door. I heard someone called out my name and when I saw (with delight!) it was John, my first question was, "Did you go to Ava's wedding?"
He shook his head and threw me one of those morose looks that only John can do. "I was alone, I was looking for you," he said. "But I told her I can't come."
I told John that I did not make it. That it was impossible for me to make it. "I wasn't able to tell her," I said, my shoulders slumped. "I was looking for you, too," I blurted out guiltily because I knew that if I really wanted to look for John, I could just have taken a ride to Mintal and ask for him inside the UP Mindanao campus where he is teaching; and knowing too, that if John really wanted to look for me, he could just have gone out of his campus to look for me downtown, where I'd surely be roaming the dirty streets of Davao, scavenging for news.
Back in the summer of 2003, John and I were fellows to the Iligan national writers' workshop, where we met Ava and three others from Luzon and six others from the Visayas and Mindanao. One has to go through a writers' workshop before one can understand how the bond among the fellows develops, but until now, I continued to be amazed by how easily we took to each other after the bloody whipping each of us got from all the writer panelists in that workshop. Of course, we had a hell of an adventure in some waterfall in the outskirts of Iligan but we also enjoyed exploring each other's mind inside our room, we didn't feel it necessary to go out and have a drink.
I could not forget how Ava and I had taken that elevator up to the third? fourth?? floor of Iligan city's Elenita Inn on our last night there. Our works were the last one to be read by the panel (which included the lovable but highly critical Chari Lucero and the equally critical Leoncio Deriada), who were about to make their judgment on our stories.
Inside the elevator I told Ava the sickening feeling we both feel at that moment was the same one you get when you're about to give birth to your second child. You already know how intense the labor and suffering that awaits you for the night, you wish you could run away and get out of there, but how can you get that child out of your body? Then, I heard Ava's thoughts echoing my own. "Why am I made to suffer for attempting to write fiction?" But we went through the ordeals of that passage rite and in my case, did not regret it a little bit.

Holy Smoke!

FORBIDDEN IN THE CITY: Don't Click!

Lost and Found

She said she had lost her poems. They were written a long, long, long, long time ago. But recently, she found them on the internet, this one posted by bisayanarsing:

Ginamos ug ang Kinabuhing Daplig-Dagat

ni Che Fiel

Bulanon.
Wa tay mahimo.
Si Nanay nanangpit
Igawas ang garapon
Kay panahon na nga makuhaan
Ang mga bolinaw
Nga usa ka bulan ng giasinan.
Way kuha,
Matud pa ni Tatay
Kay ang mga isda ga iyahay
Sa lapa lapa sa lawud gataguanay.
Nangaon mi tanan
Sa ilalom sa bulan
Pagkahuman nanggawas ang mga silingan -
Ang mga inahan,
Gatapok-tapok sa may pantawan.
Ang mga amahan,
Gatinagayay ug tuba sa may lapyahan
Samtang ang mga bata,
Gapatintero sa basa.

Ug si Nung Tusoy gasugod nag balak
Dinuyugan sa gitara ni Undo nga iyang anak
Samtang ang bulan
Galili sa mga manag-uyab
Nga naggitik-gitik ug gaginukuray
Sa ilalom sa baga nga mga dahon sa Talisay.
Kay ugma kinahanglan na sad maghubang
Para ang pukot unya maandam
Kay sa Kadlawon nga musunod
Ihatud na sad sa mga inahan
Ang tingkarol
Samtang palawig ang mga amahan
Sa mga lawud nga wa pa naadtuan.
Ingon ini akong mahinumduman
Sa dapit nga among giput-an
Lami,
Bisan ginamos among sud-an.


(Si Che usa ka babayeng balaknon. Sa una pirteng latagaw apan karun nahiuli na gyud. Ang iyang binisaya gidalit niya sa iyang kagikan nga anaa nanimuyo karun sa usa ka baryo sa likod sa kinatas-ang bungtod sa Zamboanga Peninsula, ginganlan ug Lumad. Gidalit pud niya ang iyang mga balak sa mga nagkadaiyang pwersa nga karun, sa iyang dughan ug alimpatakan, gasanggka ug gadula.)

Drowning in the Shallows

Stop.Look.Listen.

Caloi's story is also posted in davaotoday.

Mother, Ever Help Me.

I've been doing quite a number of repetitive, endless chores at home these days that I, numbed and dumbed with fatigue, could no longer write a simple sentence. Perhaps--and even if I don't really believe in it---I should borrow that verse in the Galatians that I once saw hanging on the toilet walls of the old Mindanews's office, something that I would never forget: "We should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired,we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, we should never get tired, for we shall reap the harvest."
I don't really believe in what it says about reaping the harvest. Some other people will surely get the chance to reap whatever harvest there might be, right before our very eyes, even before we could lift a finger, as what's happening every day. But at the time, when I'm numb and dumb with exhaustion, it pays to repeat any phrase even if it doesn't mean anything. It's only now that I begin to understand why the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church invented the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary; with its repetitive "Pray for us;" and the Novena of the Mother of Perpetual Help, with its perpetual, "Mother, ever help us."
For the damned women of the past centuries (and now) drowning under the load of heavy, repetitive tasks at home, repeating the phrase, "Mother, ever help us," may spell the difference between madness and sanity.

Her Father's Daughter

I am trying to write about her father's daughter except that she's in Manila right now (I imagine--and I'm just imagining this--that she must have left in a huff???), I wouldn't know. I love reading this, though.

An Excuse for not Blogging

The last 20 days, I have been nursing my five year old asthmatic Sean back to health. I keep missing press conferences, coverages and all types of writing assignments just to make sure that he has his share of protein, fresh fruits, vegetables to finally put an end to his reliance on antibiotics and all those medicine. The last 20 days I thought I was successful. In 2006, he got sick every month. He got sick on February 24, 2006, the 10th year anniversary of the People Power Revolution that ousted a dictator and the day that an unpopular President declared the country under a state of emergency and began her crack down on critical press. When everybody was covering stories about the ironic twist of events, I was massaging Sean's back---a thing any mother would normally do.
I wasn't complaining, of course. After all, with God's help, I was already starving to death. But in the last 20 days, I thought all my instincts were right. I finally conquered the monster that keep hovering over us in the last three years (his attacks started at the age of two.) I had finally saved him from bad eating habits, fatigue, dust, extreme weather condition, weapons of mass destruction.
The last 20 days, I thought. Until last night when the spasm of coughing was back again and I realized we're back to SQUARE ONE. I thought, when will this finally end???

Davao's San Pedro Cathedral

Among the first structures that the early missionaries put up in this place when the (Christian) settlers first arrived in the late 1840s and pushed the heroic Datu Bago deep in the hinterlands of Waan and beyond. The shape of this Cathedral used to puzzle me until recently, when I finally decided it is shaped like a boat. When you happen to stand right at the gate of Camp Domingo Leonor police barracks just across the street, you could almost say, only the masts are missing!
By posting it here I don't mean to glorify the spirit of conquest that this Cathedral may stand for (if only to be blunt and honest about it) but only to reflect on that time of the past that hasn't gone away.As if to straighten out the rough edges of history, some groups who want to make their message clear love to bomb this Cathedral during Davao's most turbulent times, so, until now, as I drop by to light a candle sometimes, I can't help looking around just to see if it's not one of those days again. In the good ol' days of the early 90s, Sunstar reporter Charles Maxey used to love to recount to me how Digong , as what the media like to call Davao city mayor Rodrigo Duterte, had made a 60 year-old man accused of raping his 10 year old granddaughter to walk down San Pedro street to the Cathedral on his knees. I did not see it. I was still with Sunstar Cebu at that time but for Charles, it was a great spectacle that seemed to speak something about him and his people.

Dark Clouds over Davao Gulf

Can you blame me if this is how the New Year looks to me? After all, the Siberian winds are here, blanketing our days with the cold and damp. Gray clouds and rain-soaked streets dominate the landscape. But did it ever cross our mind that this kind of weather is rather late in coming? This is supposed to come in December but in our most recent December, the heat was terrible. Environmentalists have been pinning the blame on global warming but for some of us, it was more than that. It was a killer weather and it was hardly the Christmas we imagined, at least, for some of us. Those who were afflicted by that overwhelming sadness that tend to visit the poor and the oppressed during the happiest part of the year have succumbed to disease and die. I did not manage to die, though. I merely drifted in and out of consciousness while happy Christmas came and went away. In the afternoon of December 25, I was lucky enough to awaken to see eight messages on my phone, one of them from the most beloved Mandaya Moore, but then, it was too late for a Merry Christmas!
Amidst the dark clouds, however, the New Year promises new hope. First, it was the day when five year old Sean finally got well. For refusing to take food for days, he looked gaunt and tired as we reluctantly strained our ears to listen to the proverbial ringing of another year. Karl finally turned 14, despite our absence. Now, as we try to catch up on reading assignments, re-discover a crazy mixture of Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and Sesame street characters, we begin to nurse a fledgling new hope for the year. Maybe, the grasses will continue to grow afterall.

Thank You, Firedog!

For opening us to a hundred ways of seeing this part
of the Davao Bankerohan river.

The Horse Talks Back!

Suddenly, the road behind me and the road before me has become life itself and I have turned into a horse. I am a beast living at the mercy of your whip, which dictates upon me which way I should go up and down the cliff, left or right, without much choice because I am a beast. You thought you’re free to put all your lousy burdens upon my back, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for you to do. You don’t even stop to think of how much you’ve been depriving me of my nature, when you profit from all my work.
You want to tame the beast in me when my bestiality has always been the best thing in me. All I want is to run wild in the fields, feel the breeze upon my mane, and give back to nature what nature has given me but your whip and your reins are now preventing me. Don’t talk to me about being grateful to High Heavens for creating my beautiful mane when I don’t even own my own body. My whole body is for sale and you’ve been selling me so many times ever since I became a horse. You’ve been selling my labor up and down the cliff to people who can’t even scale a simple cliff with their own feet. For they got money, of course.
My market value, you measure, by how fast I can go over that cliff and back again, by how much load I can carry, by how many other young horses I can bring to the world, by how soon my hooves can bring a lazy man to his home, by how much my little body can take all the burdens and toil and abuses imaginable. All for a piece of paper that I can’t even chew and swallow! Sometimes, just to make more money, you even come up with such an outrageous concept as improving my pedigree!
Sometimes, of course, you loosen your hold of the reins just enough to let me go up this difficult cliff unhampered. But most of the time, I can’t even take a rest in this beautiful landscape to grab something to eat. There are times when I look at my hooves and think how powerful they are compared to your delicate frame. Why did I ever allow you to push and order me around? You, who can’t even give one decent kick to kill a beast, what quirk of fate had put you where you are now to lord me over? And how stupid can I get to allow you to?

Lessons from the Bagobo Horseman

PART THREE

How did a horse get a full grasp of the mathematical formula of gravitation? Or, was it born with an innate understanding of the principles of levity? Yet, as it moves its rider to higher grounds, the horse musters all its strength and speed as if the universal mind has stamped upon its body the intelligence to understand and defy gravity. There’s only the rider and the horse on the way up the cliff. No other world exists; not even the landscape, which at that height, can be so fatally captivating! But a moment’s inattention can prove too dangerous. The rider has to time all her movements with the horse, has to become one with the horse in mind and body. She has to let go of all controls and trust everything to the horse, which at that moment becomes an embodiment of wisdom; allowing her a glimpse of the eternal mystery of life and death in a flash of a second.

Lessons from the Bagobo Horseman

PART TWO

STRICTLY NOT FOR SALE:
Horse’s Mane
Made in Heaven, Guaranteed.

As a girl, I grew up on a horse’s back with father’s voice echoing in my ears, warning me never to loosen my hold of the reins, or else the horse will doze off to sleep and stumble on the next pothole. I had set aside father’s warning only once and sure enough, the ancient family horse that we used to love many, many years ago really dozed off to sleep and would have stumbled on a muddy hole if I hadn’t seized the reins on time and awoke it from lethargy. I still keep hearing father’s voice every time I was on horseback but the Bagobo horseman’s horse was no ordinary horse, a four-year-old female beast, never been touched, never been kissed by another horse and endearingly called “Inday” by its master. “You have to let go of the reins now,” Berto, the horseman, says while we were going down a steep incline and the horse’s body unevenly fell and swayed with the sloping ground.
“You mean, really let go??!” I asked, shocked and doubtful.
With what almost felt like wild panic, I surveyed the steep road full of rocks and mud stretching down before us. What if the horse will trip?
I reluctantly let go of the reins, of course. If I can’t trust this beast, just for once, to take me down this very difficult road, I don’t know whom I can trust anymore. My friends have left me—they took the other side of the cliff on foot---and I can’t even trust my knees! On our way to Tudaya, my knees crumbled and lost their strength after we scaled down that deeper ravine at the other side.
But then, was I amazed! The horse just breezed through all those muddy potholes and sharp-angled slabs of stones without tripping---not even once!
The horse is also used to taking orders from its master at our back, as if by remote control. I only found this out when, anxious at how painful the hard rocks must be for the poor beast, I grabbed the reins for a moment and tried to steer the horse away from the rocky track to a soft, grassy patch.
When we almost succeeded at this attempt, I heard the angry grunts of the horseman at our back. “Huh! What kind of beast are you,” the horseman yelled. “There’s a road up ahead and you refuse to take it?! Such a stupid horse! Why go another way?! Go back! Go back!”
Oh, if only the poor beast could talk! I did not tell the horseman that I had caused the trouble!

APPROACHING the foaming waters at the bottom of the ravine and the other side of the cliff looming before us, the horseman talked to me again for another set of instructions. “When we’re going up the hill, clutch at this,” he says fingering the horse’s rich, untrammeled mane, “This is made precisely for the purpose.”
Doubtfully, I looked at the beast’s mane and considered what the horseman said. Then, I tried to pull my hair, just to see if it doesn’t hurt. But of course, it hurts! Wincing at the horseman’s cruelty, I resolved to be gentle with the horse. But as we started our ascent and the horse gathered momentum for the climb, I never had any other choice but to grab thick clumps of its mane to keep myself from falling. At first, I did it with one hand (for my other hand was holding a hat) but when the horse started trotting over the huge slabs of stones, I threw away the hat to clutch at the horse’s mane with both hands. Boy-oh-boy, how I hang on desperately for dear life! How I thanked God's Great Heavens at that moment for having the wisdom and the foresight to create the horse’s mane long before I needed it!
The moment after that was probably the most difficult and the most dangerous part of the climb but it also brought instant illumination to my muddled mind. I felt as if the universe compressed all the wisdom worth knowing in a lifetime and delivered it to me on the horse’s back. (TO BE CONTINUED)

Lessons from a Bagobo Horseman

PART ONE

Just a few hours ago, I learned that during life's most precarious moment, no one is coming to your aid. Except for the advise of a wise horseman, you're on your own. Alone.
I was on horseback for the first time in years, looking down a deep ravine where foaming rapids takes its course more than a hundred feet or so below. The road we were about to negotiate was full of slippery granite stones and muddy craters formed by hooves of horses that have been treading this route before. The only other way out of Tudaya---a hinterland sitio of Santa Cruz town barangay of Sibulan where the Bagobo-Tagabawas live, was through a kilometer climb of another (and deeper) ravine at the other side, a route that was bad for uninitiated knees like mine.
So, I looked down again upon the promise of the road below me, a panorama so beautiful it can make you cry, but my eyes instead took in the image of the cliff precariously hanging near its slippery edge.
"Will I ever get out of here alive?" I asked myself but as I did so, the horse had sunk its left hoof in a soft bed of mud, lurching its body forward so suddenly that it briefly threw me out of balance. I shrieked.
"Hold on! Hold on--and don't ever jump!" said the horseman behind me, with a stiff authority of a scoutmaster. "Jumping off a horseback is a dangerous thing!"
He is a Bagobo-Tagabawa, but his Bisaya is good enough. He is such a small man, one could easily mistake him for a child, but his eight year old son is walking along beside him and so does his 10 year old daughter while he carries my backpack to allow me to concentrate. He said my load is much lighter than the 12 kilos he used to carry for Mt. Apo mountaineers."Always remember," he said, as the horse reaches the grassy spaces in between the boulders, "When negotiating with steep roads like this one, carry your body opposite the slope's direction. That will keep the balance. Then, if the horse makes sudden movement, just hold on, everything will turn out right. Unless the horse's body already lies crumpled on the ground, don't jump. Jumping off the horse back while the horse is negotiating a difficult trail is dangerous."
"Allow the horse freedom to make decisions. The beast is familiar with the trail and knows what to do better than you do. Keep the rein just to keep it from jumping off the cliff but reining it in most of the time, will limit its freedom of movement, hence, impedes its progress. (TO BE CONTINUED)