by Larry Farmer
As we hurried to the jeep to take us back to Cotabato City, I turned one last time to look at the puppy.
“You’re next,” I said toward the pup fretfully, concerned for its survival.
This Samahang Nayon we were leaving now was not so far from the village where Lois lived. I yearned to ask the bank to leave me somewhere near her and I would gladly find my own way back. But it was the middle of the week, and I would have to miss work to do so, since it took so long to get to Cotabato City with public transportation, namely a jeepney. Disappointing as it was to miss seeing her after being so close to her village, still Lois and I had already agreed to meet at her place the coming weekend.
I liked visiting Lois, I thought to myself on the way to Alamada that next Saturday. Nothing was as entertaining as this ride. For whatever reason, Alamada was considered the Wild West of Mindanao. Since Mindanao was considered the Wild West of the Philippines, why were they sticking a single, white-skinned female Peace Corps Volunteer, namely Lois, out there? And she wasn’t in Alamada itself, but in one of the villages a jeepney ride away.
It didn’t seem dangerous to me, going there. I didn’t doubt the danger, but never saw it. And the locals insisted it was as safe as any place around. Which wasn’t saying much. I assumed its remoteness worried people and they accepted such worry as a way of life.
The national highway from Cotabato City to Digos was in reality a two-lane street. It was paved. Except for the many potholes. That’s the most you could say for it. After the national highway portion of the trip was completed, the road to Alamada itself—and I mean road as in narrow dirt road—went north. We had to pass by and through parts of rain forests. That’s why I liked this trek. A ride through the tropics at its best. At its wildest best, unless going on foot, or by carabao, which is the native water buffalo.
A jeepney is more than the primary means of transportation in the Philippines. It’s the transportation bloodstream of the Philippines. The front of one looks like a jeep, from which it originally derived, but joined as one unit with a body not much longer than a Volkswagen van. It is usually silver or gray in color but with different paintings and slogans on it to make it personal to the company or person owning it. There are no windows. Just open space where windows belong, with bars to provide support for the goods people stuff on these things. Tied to the bumpers at front and rear, and on top of the roof, were water jugs, bags of rice, chickens, pigs, bamboo slats, and anything else someone might need. The animals weren’t just tied, they were strapped upside down, with parts of them hanging over the edges.
When a Filipino arrived at his hut, he would tap on the side of the jeepney, accompanying that with a kissing sound to get the driver’s attention. After letting the passenger off, along with his possessions, often the jeepney would have just begun to pick up speed when yet another passenger tapped and mocked a kiss to get it to stop again. This aspect drove me crazy. The distance between stops was often only a few yards. Filipinos hate walking, especially in the dust and heat, but I determined this was also a grab at what pride they could muster in their poor existence, with a stop made just for them alone. At least the ride to Alamada was remote enough that we didn’t have very many stops along the way.
Halfway along on the trip we crossed a small river, perhaps really a large stream. There was an ancient-looking, rotting embodiment of a structure that surely was a bridge at one time. The only thing that allowed us to cross anymore was a fallen coconut tree laid across this small river. When I say we crossed a river, I don’t mean by jeepney. Passengers had to disembark, untie their belongings, including said chickens, pigs, and supplies, manage them across the coconut tree bridge, then load them again onto a waiting jeepney on the other side of the river to continue their journey. It was irritating, but entertaining. I’m sure my entertainment was only because I seldom came this way, only at times like now to see Lois. It made me feel special that Lois endured this adventure once a week just to see me. Of course, I was keenly aware she also came to see Cotabato City itself, which seemed like Paris, France, to her, I was sure.
I seldom saw more than the marketplace and the jeepney depot of Alamada. Cotabato City had a bus station and even an airport, but Alamada had one small center for transportation, and that was it. This was not just the hub for jeepneys but for tricycles, as well. Tricycles were motorcycles expanded into three-wheeled taxis. Even moderate-sized villages had these. Behind the handlebars was the typical narrow, plastic-covered seat that the driver straddled. Attached solidly behind the seat of the tricycle was an open compartment with seats that held two passengers.
The times I visited Lois’ village, it was too far for me to affordably hire one of these tricycles. So I would find my jeepney, squeeze on it, and wait to be driven. Often times I couldn’t even squeeze onto a jeepney. I shared a ride with other Filipinos, their livestock and goods, so resorted to standing on the bumpers, or even riding on the roof like many of them did. Women were never allowed to ride outside. Too dangerous. Not just because they might fall off, but it tempted fate for an ambush, also. Before long, as if on a shift change at a factory, the jeepney would stop. Those riding the bumpers got inside, and men from inside would take their place. I will be the one, a Filipino would say as he tapped the man he replaced on the shoulder when taking the ride outside. He now took the risks and endured the hardships. The barangay version of Noblesse Oblige. The strong protecting the weak in this third world setting of knights of the round table.
In this part of the world, no one had seen a white man before. Probably ever, even before the civil war. No one seemed ashamed to stare at me, no matter where I went. The youth, especially, accompanied the stares with a “Hey, Joe,” which derived from the time when American soldiers occupied the Philippines as our one and only colony in history. An American soldier was a G.I. Joe, and then just Joe. So now, it was a “Hey, Joe” everywhere I went. Sometimes kids would walk up to me just to touch my skin, as if to see what I was made of. Since I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, ambassador at large, I usually smiled and acknowledged them. But many of these kids liked to show off and insisted on getting my attention constantly. I burned out eventually, somewhere along the line, and ignored them, even putting on my cassette player to listen to music loudly through earplugs. Stay away, my mood said as I thought back to all the weeks I was patient with this treatment before my burnout.
It was early afternoon when I finally arrived at Lois’ village. That was okay, since schools in the Philippines held session on Saturday mornings. At least now she had time for me.
That Filipino schools held session on Saturday morning sounds impressive, as if education was taken seriously. But they only had ten grades. Six elementary school grades, then no middle school, but straight to four years of high school. And village schools were usually of low quality. Kids had to work in the fields with their parents. And any Filipino who had college education at all stayed out of impoverished villages, even their own. All the more reason the Peace Corps volunteered to help fill in the gaps.
Lois knew I was coming, and I saw her leaning out of her window looking for me. My heart leapt. No other way to put it. There she was, and there she was looking for me, for no one else but me. And I was here. When she finally saw me and I beheld her wide smile and exaggerated wave, I wanted to run to her. How the hell did I let this happen to me? To be so excited to see a girl I couldn’t have. I was sure she wanted me just as much, and also sure that assessment didn’t derive from my ego or from longing. Everything about her exuded how much she wanted me. The problem was, What the hell were we going to do about it? We still had not fully come to grips with the fact of our wanting. The fact of a hoped-for “us.”
She held the door to her Nipa Hut open for me as I climbed the bamboo ladder to her one-room studio-sized apartment. There was a longing inside me for a hug, even a kiss, but the momentum of our platonic past kept it from happening.
Her Nipa Hut stood on the edge of the village, adjacent
to the home of the school principal and his family, since she was a lone white American woman. For her security. The Peace Corps insisted she live with a family, but she had found a way to attain her Nipa Hut. In a family setting, members of a household could enter her surroundings and premises at will. Not just from curiosity but for the security concern, as well. And since Filipinos are social to the point of loathing ever to be alone, in their eyes, everyone in the universe wanted eternal companionship. At all times Filipinos had a kasama, or chaperone. By choice. To be alone at any time seemed punishment by solitary confinement to them. Which was another reason Lois insisted on her own Nipa Hut. Privacy. She wanted to be able to escape to privacy somewhere in her village existence, and not have to concoct excuses to find a way to have her sacred aloneness.
No electricity or running water was anywhere to be found in this village. Big cities like Cotabato City had electricity in half or more of the municipality, but not so in these remote rural villages. Luxuries like that didn’t exist except in comic books. The shower in Lois’ Nipa Hut was a small hole in the floor, partitioned off by walls made of palm leaves to create a space the size of a small closet. The shower spout, so to speak, was a coffee can dipped into a bucket of water and poured by hand. The toilet was similar, but with a plastic container beneath the floor on the ground to collect the night soil. Her “kitchen” was similarly primitive: she cooked by placing coconut shell charcoal in a metal pot with a grill over it. The most modern convenience, perhaps, in her entire hut was the kerosene lamps she had spread throughout.
“You’re just in time,” Lois told me, grabbing my hand to lead me back out after I placed my small backpack onto her one table. “I have to collect water before dark. We’ll do it now, if you don’t mind.”
A road led to the only hand water pump her side of town used. Her impatience, however, sought out any shortcut she could find, which included walking through rice paddies. Paddies were bordered with dikes to hold in the flooding required by the rice plants. The dikes were built to a foot or so above water level and were about a foot across, for a path. It was a trick to walk them in tsinelas, but for Lois, carrying a two-gallon jug of water in each hand, and me, with bigger jugs of five gallons each, it was even trickier. These dikes were especially hard to negotiate when we got tired, which happened a lot with all the water we carried. We had to make it to the end of a rice paddy before we could set the jugs down to rest. With each rest stop we felt an inner sigh of relief at our successful journey across the last one.
“How do you manage?” I asked when we got back to her hut. “If you can carry only four gallons at a time, that doesn’t allow you much water.”
“I have to go every other day,” she explained. “But those two boys I’m tutoring help me sometimes, too. I manage. Other people help sometimes. They love their American here.”
I nodded as I thought about it. I could picture it more than I could understand it.
“Mississippi, I need you to come with me.” We had placed the water jugs in a corner near her sink area. “I’m part of a committee in this village that is meeting with an organization from Australia. They are from an agency, something akin to our USAID. You know what that is, right? The US Agency for International Development.”
“Of course I know USAID, Lois.” I grimaced while wrinkling my brow to show how my intelligence felt insulted.
“Sorry, sorry!” She smiled. “Just making sure. Anyway, this agency from Australia is here to give money for an earthen dam on the small river nearby. With that the village can regulate irrigation. Right now they are totally dependent on rain for their crops. If they could have irrigation, they could have an extra harvest of rice every year. Imagine that, almost doubling their income every year. They could still get in a planting of mongo beans in between. I think I heard that. But rice is the cash crop, and that would boost their income. Instead of almost starving to death, they’d be up to horrifically poor. I’m sounding like an economist, aren’t I? I guess you’re rubbing off on me. Anyway, come with me. Maybe you could even advise us. We have to leave now, though. That’s why I’m in such a hurry. The meeting is near the school, in the mayor’s office. We’re almost late.”
My smile was my answer, and again she grabbed my hand and pulled me out of her Nipa Hut.
Lois’ village was small, but still larger than what we call a small town in Mississippi. The few real houses in it were small wooden structures. They were the local version of mansions for the rich. Mostly, the village consisted of coconut trees intermingled with Nipa Huts. No shops to speak of, just feeble structures about five feet square that sold cloth, or canned goods, or perhaps a simple cooked meal.
A cleared space was in the middle of the village, approximately the size of a tennis court. This was used as a solar dryer, where farm produce such as rice, mongo beans, or fish was spread over a hard cement surface to be dried by the sun. In between harvests the area was used as a basketball court.
The high school where Lois taught was on the way to the mayor’s house. It was the most solid structure in town, even more so than the town hall where we headed. Both structures were wooden. The high school also took the most space, as much as the solar dryer and town hall combined.
The mayor was short and pudgy and looked to be in his forties. He was also a farmer, owning more than twenty acres, which was a big farm by village standards. He also owned the town’s only jeepney and several tricycles. His house was the biggest in the village, containing four bedrooms. His clothing indicated his standing in the community: a starched blue cotton dress shirt that had a collar, black slacks, and; instead of tsinelas, black leather shoes that laced.
The two Australian officials were tall, athletic-looking men in their thirties. They were friendly, but blunt.
“We’ve helped your village out before, Mr. Mayor,” the taller of the two said. “It is an impoverished village that we sincerely want to help.”
I loved their accents. To the untrained ear it sounds British. But soon the twang becomes evident, similar to that heard in the pop song of the sixties, “Tie Me Kangaroo Down.” I wanted to snicker but behaved myself, sure they felt the same way about my strong Southern accent.
“But,” the other Aussie added, “we have a problem with this village. It seems we want to help you more than you want to help yourselves. This is a loan, not a grant. It is a loan because we need to see signs of accountability. We want to invest this loan and use the proceeds for future investments and loans to help other areas. It is one thing to be poor, but another to insist on staying poor. You will never pull yourselves up without responsible fiscal management. We gave a grant to your village for your solar dryer. But half the money was kept by a previous mayor, who chose to improve his personal lodging with it.”
The present mayor squirmed.
“That mayor is gone now,” the present mayor said. “I can assure you we will not allow corruption.”
“Your solar dryer is half the size for which we gave you money,” the first Aussie said. “Then we provided a loan for your school, and again, it was a loan so that we could hold you more accountable. But much of that money was not paid back by your citizens. Of the money siphoned off, most was shared for personal use by several of your village leaders. They were not invited to this meeting. We want to help your village. You desperately need the extra income this earthen dam would provide. The loan can greatly enrich your community. But it is the last offer our agency will give you. This is your last chance, as far as we’re concerned.”
“I totally understand you,” the mayor said. “I will hold a meeting with all our village leaders, and we will sign an oath, a contract, to return with interest all the money in the loan.”
The men looked the mayor square in the eyes, then reached out to shake his hand as a sign of faith.
“When we see the contract signed,” the original Aussie spokesman said, “we will most probably provide the money for you. Thank you for your understanding.”
“Thank you, sir,” the mayor said. “You will notice I have two American witnesses with us. This gentleman here works with the Central Bank of the Philippines. We have him here to assure you.”
I did not want to spoil the show, but hearing this made me feel uneasy, even with knowing I wasn’t legally responsible for anything. I looked cynically at Lois, thinking she had divulged this information about me to the mayor. She smiled at me sheepishly.
“I’m sorry,” she said as we arrived back at her hut. “I barely remember mentioning to the mayor you were coming. He already knew you worked for the Central Bank, from conversations past. You looked like you wanted to strangle me. Are we still friends, Mississippi?”
“I did feel on the spot, Lois. I know you didn’t mean to get me involved.”
“So, we’re still friends? You’re not afraid to visit me here anymore?”
The smile appeared on my face before I knew it was there. She was vulnerable to me. I liked that. It seemed worth it now, the encounter with the mayor.
“But you know,” she continued, knowing I was okay about things, “as poor as this village is, why are the Australians worried about a few thousand dollars when these people are desperate?”
“Because they need to learn accountability,” I said, point blank. “And like the Aussies said, whether you see them as rich or not, it is an investment that could be used for other projects. Opportunity costs, an economist would say. The poverty is massive here. More accountability is required, more resources need to be renewed, and more projects need to be fulfilled. So I agree with the agency. It’s one thing to help people. It’s another to just pour money down a sewer and reinforce their mindset of taking. Taking responsibility for yourself is the first step to getting on your feet. These villagers have a hard life. Here’s a chance to pull themselves up. But it comes with a cost, and I don’t mean the interest on the loan. I mean responsibility.”