Back to the question at hand, then. Yours Truly asserted calmly (feeling that vigorous assertions would be perceived by DMS as defensiveness & hence a de facto confession of lack of “serious”-ness) that (1) a couple of days’ travel in open AC-less vehicle through Philippine hinterland would be a day at the beach, a picnic, a walk in the park, & a sunday stroll all rolled into one, and (2) furthermore that even if it were the most hideous torture Yours Truly would gladly undergo it given that the stakes, for all concerned (incl. Epiphyte shareholders) were so high and generally Serious. In retrospect, (1) and (2) in close succession seem to betray some kind of hedging strategy on part of Yours Truly, however at the time DMS was mollified, formally withdrew previous accusations as to moral fiber, etc., and divulged that use of jeepney was tactical masterstroke on his (DMS’s) part in that, where we were going, a Merc with smoked glass or fifty-thousand-dollar Land Rover, or (by extension) any vehicle with extravagances such as upholstered seats, windows with glass in them, shock absorbers dating from post-Kennedy-assassination era, etc., etc. would only draw undesired attention to Mission.
America Shaftoe remained in Manila to stay in touch with Mission via radio & (I supposed) to call in napalm strikes should we find selves embroiled. Bong-Bong Gad & his approx. 12-yr.-old son/business associate Fidel occupied front seat. DMS & Yours Truly shared rear (passenger) section with three mysterious, precisely packed G.I. green duffel bags; approx. 100 kilos of drinking water in plastic bottles; & two Asian gentlemen in their 30s or 40s who exhibited stereotypical inscrutability/impassivity/dignity, etc., etc. during the first four hours of the journey, which were spent simply trying to drive from center of Manila to northern outskirts of same. Nationality of these two was not immediately evident. Many Filipinos are, racially, almost pure Chinese even though their families have been living here for centuries. Perhaps this explained strongly Asian features of our traveling companions and (I now had to assume) business associates.
Proverbial ice was broken as one consequence of pig truck incident which occurred on four-lane highway, narrowed by construction to two, leading N from Manila. Casual obsvn. of Filipino swine suggests that their ludicrous, pink, tabloid-sized ears function as heat exchangers, as do, e.g., the tongues of dogs. They are transported in vehicles consisting of big cage constructed on bed of a straight (as opposed to semiarticulated) truck. Construction of such vehicles appears to tax local resources to the point where they are only economical when maximum conceivable number of swine are packed into confines at all times. Heat buildup ensues. Pigs adapt by fighting their way to perimeter of cage & hanging ear/heat exchangers out over the side to flap in the wind of the truck’s motion.
The appearance of such a vehicle when approached from behind can be easily envisioned without further description. Readers who devote a few moments’ consideration to the subject of excreta need not be pounded over the head vis-a-vis what flies, sprays, drips, etc. from such vehicles either. The Pig Truck Incident was a humorous demonstration of applied hydrodynamics, though since no actual water was involved perhaps “excretodynamics” or “scatodynamics” might better fit. THE GRACE OF GOD had been following a representative Pig Truck for some miles in the hopes of passing it. The sheer quantity of excess body heat radiating from its vast phased array of flapping pink ears caused several of our drinking-water bottles to achieve full rolling boil and explode. Bong-Bong Gad maintained a respectful distance because of excreta hazards, which in no way simplified the problem of passing the truck. Tension climbed to a palpable level & Bong-Bong was subjected to steadily increasing stream of good-natured heckling and unsolicited driving advice from passenger area, esp. from DMS who viewed lingering unwelcome presence of pig truck in our planned trajectory as personal affront & hence challenge to be overcome w/all due pluck, vigor, can-do spirit, & other qualities known to be possessed in abundance by DMS.
After some time Bong-Bong made his move, using one hand to manipulate steering wheel and other to time-share equally important responsibilities of shifting gears and depressing the horn button. As we drew alongside the Pig Truck (which was on my side of the jeepney) the Truck slalomed toward us as if perhaps swerving around some real or imagined roadside hazard. The primary horn of THE GRACE OF GOD was apparently going unheard, possibly because it was competing for audio bandwidth against large numbers of swine voicing their displeasure in same frequency range. With aplomb normally seen only among senescent English butlers, Bong-Bong reached up with his horn/gearshift hand and gripped a brilliant stainless-steel chain flailing from ceiling of cab with a stainless-steel crucifix on the end of it and jerked downwards, energizing the secondary, tertiary, and quaternary honking systems: a trio of tuba-sized stainless-steel horns mounted to the roof of THE GRACE OF GOD and collectively drawing so much power that our vehicle’s speed dropped by (I would estimate) ten km/hr as its energies were diverted into decibel production. A demi-hyperbolic swath of agricultural crops twenty miles long was flattened to the ground by the blast, and, hundreds of miles north, the Taiwanese government, its collective ears still ringing, filed a diplomatic protest with the Philippine ambassador. Dead whales and dolphins washed ashore on the beaches of Luzon for days, and sonar operators in passing U.S. Navy submarines were sent into early retirement with blood streaming from their ears.
Terrified by this sound, all of the pigs (I would suppose) voided their bowels just as the driver of the Pig Truck swerved violently away from us. Certain first-year-physics conservation-of-momentum issues dictated that I be showered with former pig bowel contents in order to enhance shareholder value. This was evidently the funniest thing that the two Asian-looking gentlemen had ever seen, and rendered them helpless for several minutes. One of them actually retched from laughing too hard (the first time that our vehicle’s lack of windows came in handy). The other extended his hand and introduced himself as one Jean Nguyen. This is the French male name “zhohn” and not the Anglo female name “jeen.” Jean Nguyen looked at me expectantly after telling me his name, as did DMS, as if they were expecting me to get a fairly obvious joke. Perhaps preoccupied with hygienic issues, I failed to get it, and they pointed out to me that when “Jean” is pronounced like “John” and “Nguyen” is pronounced the way a lot of Americans mangle it, the name sounds arguably like “John Wayne,” which is how I was encouraged to address this Jean Nguyen from that point onwards. It seemed in retrospect that I was being given an opportunity to have a small chuckle at Jean Nguyen’s expense and thereby to even the scales, in some small but symbolically important sense, for the pig shit incident. My failure to exploit this opportunity left everyone feeling mildly uneasy and like they still owed me one. The other gentleman was introduced as Jackie Woo. He spoke English with a vaguely East Indian crackle which led me to peg him, speculatively, as a Malay Peninsula native of Chinese descent, e.g., from Singapore or Penang.
First day’s travel got us across the central Luzon plain (rice and sugar cane) to the town of San Juan at the foot of the southernmost extension of the Cordillera Central (trees and bugs). By this point it was dark, and to my relief, neither DMS nor Bong-Bong was eager to brave twisty Cordillera roads in darkness. We stayed in a guest house. At this point, having devoted much time to detailed Pig Truck description I will elide various details concerning San Juan, its inhabitants (of various taxonomic phyla some of which I had never encountered until that night), the character-building nature of our lodgings and, in particular, their fanciful plumbing system which was a credit to the imagination, though not the hydrostatic acumen, of its anonymous creator. It was the kind of hostel that makes a traveler eager to get an early and explosively sudden start in the morning, which we did.
A note now about the physical properties of space, as perceived by human beings imprisoned within bodies of limited physical capabilities. I have long noticed that space seems to be more compressed, more involuted, somehow psychically LARGER in some places than others. Covering a distance of three or four miles in the totally open
scrublands of central Washington State is a simple matter, and takes less than an hour on foot, and only a few minutes if you have some kind of vehicle. Covering the same distance in Manhattan takes much longer. It’s not just that the space in Manhattan is more physically obstructed (though it definitely is) but that there is some kind of psychological impact that alters the way you perceive and experience distance. You cannot see as far, and what you do see is so full of people, buildings, goods, vehicles, and other stuff that it takes your brain some amount of effort to sort through, to process. Even if you had some kind of magic carpet that would glide past all of the physical obstructions the distance would seem much longer, and would take longer to cover, simply because your mind would have to deal with more stuff.
The same thing is true of a jungle type of environment as opposed to the plains. Traversing the physical space is basically an ongoing battle against hundreds of different combatants each one of which is, to a traveler, an obstruction, a hazard, or both. I.e., no matter which one of them predominates in a given ten-square-meter area, you are still screwed, as far as getting across that ten square meters is concerned. There are roads through the jungle, but even when they are in good repair they seem more like bottlenecks than vectors of motion, and they are never in good repair—mudslides, fallen trees, huge chuckholes, and the like block them every few hundred meters. Also the same perceptual thing is at work here—you can’t see more than a few meters in any direction, and what you do see is dense with visual inputs, some of which, like butterflies, are (okay, okay) beautiful. My reason for mentioning this is that I know that everyone who reads this probably has multiple maps of Luzon on their wall or in their computer, which, when consulted, will cause it to seem as if we are dealing with a triflingly small area, and covering minuscule distances. But you must try not to think this way and instead imagine that Luzon is effectively as large as, say, the United States west of the Mississippi. In terms of the time it takes to get around the place, it is at least that big.
I mention this not out of some impulse to mewl and convince you all of how strenuously I have worked, but because until you grasp this central fact of the effectively vast size of this part of the world, you will be completely unable to believe the dumbfounding facts that I am slowly getting around to revealing.
We went into the mountains. Around midday, we encountered our first military roadblock. Distance covered from San Juan was pathetic from cartographic p.o.v., but in terms of unexpected hassles creatively surmounted, wrenchingly difficult decisions made, & pits of despair climbed out of by the emotional fingernails, should be considered magnificent achievement on par with any given day of the Lewis & Clark expedition, (excluding, of course, anomalous days such as their first encounters with Ursus horribilis & their epic, stocking-foot traversal of Bitterroot Range.) Roadblock was established in the low-key Filipino style: one man in military uniform (U.S. Army castoffs) standing by roadside smoking & beckoning. We were at a rare wide spot in the road, a place where oncoming Chicken-playing vehicles could pull aside abjectly. Four members of Army (later pegged by insignia-savvy DMS as a first lieutenant, a sergeant, and two privates) had ensconced selves on parked Humvee type vehicle w/absurdly long whip antenna clamped to bumper. The privates, armed with M-16s, stiffly unfolded selves from repose & adopted positions flanking THE GRACE OF GOD from behind, keeping their weapons pointed vaguely at the ground, as if more worried about entomological threats than our little band of travelers. Sergeant was armed with what I first perceived as L-shaped nightstick fashioned from parts scavenged from plumbing aisle of home improvement store & painted black, but on further examination proved to be a submachine gun.
Said Sergeant approached Bong-Bong Gad’s door & conversed with same in Tagalog. Lieutenant was armed only with sidearm & supervised these operations from a shaded area near the Humvee, seeming to espouse a hands-off, as opposed to micromanaging, leadership style. This inspection was limited to the Sergeant peering in through TGOG’s glassless windows & exchanging hearty greetings with DMS (evidently Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo spoke even less Tagalog than Yours Truly). We were then allowed to proceed, although I noticed that the lieutenant immediately commenced a radio transmission. “The sergeant say there are Nice People Around,” Bong-Bong Gad explained to me, using a coy local euphemism for NPA, or New People’s Army, a supposedly revolutionary, but evidently somewhat feckless guerilla organization descended in a direct line from the Hukbalahaps, or Huks, the fighters who resisted the Nipponese occupation (but not so desultorily) in WW2.
We then covered an amount of distance equivalent, in terms of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, to one more Lewis And Clark Expedition Day, a convenient unit of distance, danger, perspirational weight loss, poor sphincter control, wishing you were at home, exasperation, & emotional toll which I will hereinafter abbreviate as LAC. So after 1 LAC we arrived at another roadblock similar to the first except that here there was a troop truck in addition to the Humvee, and some tents pitched, and a pit latrine, whose odor & appearance suggested a long-standing military presence in this area. A luckless private was made to crawl underneath THE GRACE OF GOD with a flashlight, inspecting its undercarriage. The three duffel bags were removed and their contents spread out. I should mention that upon my joining this expedition in Manila, DMS had gone through my bag with a level of inquisitiveness annoying at the time, refused to allow me to bring certain items (such as pharmaceuticals) and transferred remaining items to clear plastic bags of Ziploc type which were placed in the duffels. Merits of this highly modular approach now became clear as inspection of our cargo was wondrously facilitated: duffels were simply upended over tarps spread on ground & contents inspected by sight through transparent inner bags, sometimes by feel to check for compositional inhomogeneities. Certain of these bags contained cartons of American-brand tobacco products which as expected did not make it back into the duffels. Most of my DMS-mandated supply of alkaline AA batteries, which I had thought radically out of proportion to projected demand, also vanished at this time. We were sent on our way and after approx. 0.5 LAC (mostly occasioned by need to remove downed tree from roadway) arrived at a town that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in jungle valley, astride a river. Slept like a dead man in startlingly decent guesthouse that night. Woke up next morning & looked out window to observe large crowd of locals milling around in street below in their best meshback caps & American basketball t-shirts. Descended stairs to discover DMS in dining room, strategically flanked by Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo, at other tables in corners of room, wearing climatically inappropriate jackets & generally projecting the image of concealed-weapon-equipped badass motherfuckers not to be trifled with.
Not wishing to interfere with this psychodrama, Yours Truly took innocuous position at yet another table, well away from projected gunfire corridors, accepted coffee from proprietor, declined local delicacies, negotiated (see expense report) for loan of bowl & spoon, breakfasted upon Cap’n Crunch & warm UHT milk from duffel bag (former had been packed into a Ziploc that when fully loaded adopted the distinctive pillow shape of an individual nugget of Cap’n Crunch, only much larger). Explosive crunching noises of nuggets caused Yours Truly to feel conspicuous and Western. Jean Nguyen & Jackie Woo had declined all refreshments except tea, the better to project image of hair-trigger alertness & potential for instantaneous violence. DMS was eating an omelette with approx. diameter of a Hula Hoop & engaging in one short conversation after another with locals, who were admitted through front door of building one at a time by proprietor and allowed to present their cases to DMS as if he were a traveling magistrate. Between two such interviews, DMS noted my presence in room & bade me join him. I moved my Cap’n Crunch infrastructure to corner of table not occupied by omelette & sat with him during the next couple of dozen interviews, which were conducted in mixture of English and Tagalog. Crowd in street dwindled gradually as they were interviewed and then dismissed by DMS.
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