There was an oil crisis in 1973 so we had to refuel our vehicle several times on our way to Bukidnon from Lanao del Norte. The 4th Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Yom Kippur War, had disrupted the world oil supply. With gas rationing, gas stations only sold limited quantity of fuel at a time. The rear cargo area of the pickup truck sent by the provincial government of Bukidnon accommodated all our worldly belongings – a spring bed, a singer sewing machine, a gas stove, a phonograph, mats, blankets, pillows, kitchen utensils and clothes. I was seated in front and the rest of the family, Pat and the kids Faith and Ernest, at the backseat. It took us two days to travel the rough roads. We stayed overnight and took our breakfast in Cagayan de Oro City and arrived in Dangcagan late in the afternoon. The ride was so bumpy that Pat and I suffered back pains for several days afterwards. It was harder for Pat who was two months pregnant of our third child.
I scouted for a place to stay before I brought my family to Dangcagan. A co-employee introduced me to Arcadio Napone, one of the fourteen village heads of the town, who had a two-storey lumber house in the vicinity of the parish church and the public market. We rented a room upstairs in that old building until we found a house near the municipal hall. The house was deserted by the Lazarito family after a tragedy and was unoccupied for quite a time. At night, I felt an eerie feeling just to peep at the uninhabited room where the dead husband, reportedly badly mangled by the logging truck accident, was laid for the wake. In my childhood, I heard people talking about ghosts, witches and monsters and the fear of encountering them was deeply rooted in my subconscious mind. For several months we steered away from that room at night and after dinner went directly to the lone bedroom at the opposite side. Pat reported of unusual happenings but I only saw many rats and swarms of cockroaches. This might explain our daughters’ phobia – Faith’s rats and Charity’s cockroaches. The rats would descend upon the house at night. The gnawing and scampering of the rats muddled the pleasant symphony of the nocturnal orchestra of arboreal cicadas and ground crickets (nymphs of cicadas that live underground for many years). The cockroaches that teemed in the crevices of the overlap lumber walls were so hungry they could nibble a whole eggplant overnight. Charity, our second daughter, was born in this house.
The town had no water system and the rainwater in the galvanized iron water tank was barely enough for drinking, cooking and daily baths, so during the dry months we did our weekly washing somewhere. In a village where an elderly couple welcomed us like a family, we washed our clothes using hand-pumped water. My job entailed a lot of fieldwork – organizing Samahang Nayon, attending barangay assemblies, monitoring community-based projects – so I availed myself of the motor vehicle loan of the office. On weekends, the whole family would trek to Kianggat on my Yamaha DT-100 motorcycle. Faith, 5 years old, astride on top of the dirty clothes fasten on the carrier at the rear; Charity, one year old, seated sandwiched between me and Pat on the seat; Ernest, 3 years old, astride on the fuel tank in front. The children would play inside the house and at the yard while Pat and I washed. While waiting for the clothes to dry we would chat with our host couple, Roque and Ninay Lopez, over snacks of bananas or sweet potatoes. The kindred conversations were a great relief. We were in a strange place, detached from our parents, relatives and old friends. We stayed for two years in that rural town where we acquired our first real property, a residential lot near the municipal hall. My first salary loan with the GSIS paid for the lot. It was in Dangcagan that I was initiated to the Cursillos in Christianity, my first lay organization.
