Eager to get a job after I finished my college degree, I applied for a job at the American-owned Findlay-Millar Timber Company in Kolambugan. The personnel officer read my resume with the meticulousness of a forensic scientist and I sensed that he doubted its veracity. During the ensuing interview, he told me to speak in English and he looked surprised but reassured when I did. He administered the entrance examination. I got the second highest score so far since the time the company started giving exams to applicants. After a few days, I was hired as an office clerk at the newly opened plant that manufactured pre-fabricated furniture parts for export. As Production Clerk, I prepared the daily production reports using the report form that I designed. I earned P6.00 a day. Mr. Cuenca, the department manager, was very appreciative of my initiative and creativity. But I had another job coming and left the company after three months.
I was appointed as a Farm Management Technician of the Agricultural Productivity Commission days before my graduation. The Provincial Agriculture Officer, Mr. Ismael Dianalan, assigned me to Tamparan, a rice-growing town across the lake. From Marawi City, I commuted to my official station by motorboat.
A senior technical staff at the APC Provincial Office happened to be a resident of Tamparan. He offered me lodging at the two-storey lumber house of his parents-in-law, where he and his wife were staying. I slept alone in their matrimonial bed of sesed mats upstairs, but on weekends when he was around, I slept with the couple inside the large mosquito net. The net, its top edges fastened to a lumber stick frame, was hoisted at daytime and pulled down at night. We slept cloaked in darkness. In Muslim culture, strangers in their homes are cared and protected as their own.
A stranger in the place and a novice in my job, I felt more at ease visiting and talking to the three lady technicians (Minda, Fe and Mildred) clustered in the adjoining town, than to the farmers who clung to their traditional ways and practices and distrusted the sight of my kind. The ladies enjoyed my tall tales and ribald jokes and I enjoyed their snacks and lunches.
It was the time when First Lady Imelda Marcos was doling out her green revolution kits as an attempt to give a dent in the country’s food problem. The kits – containing fertilizers, insecticides and vegetable seeds – were entrusted to the mayors for distribution and were promptly disposed of, but I did not see vegetable gardens sprouting or more vegetables on the tables. The native diet was steamed rice (plenty of it) and fish (mudfish, catfish, white goby, tilapia) cooked with coconut milk and seasoned with turmeric and hot pepper.
I was able to convince the mayor to entrust to me a rice paddy but the demonstration farm that I put up to showcase scientific farming only proved that there is a wide gap between theory and practice. The town chief was not impressed by the result. Consequently, Mayor Palawan Disomimba, a big jolly fellow, enjoyed introducing me around as “Mr. Sumagang who destroyed my farm.”
I was called to a preservice training for community development work so my stint with the APC was only thirteen months. The 6-month training at Los Banos, Laguna was a pre-requisite for employment as Barrio Development Worker with the Presidential Arm on Community Development (PACD).
