I took the MSU scholarship exam together with our presumed class valedictorian. My over-eagerness to pass the exam, a passport to a college education, made me tense. The time pressure made it worst. Forgetting to consult my borrowed wristwatch, I was always late in the succeeding test sections or modules. In mental block, I had difficulty in solving the otherwise easy geometry problems. Geometry was one of my favorite subjects in high school. That night, I dreamed of taking the same exam but my pencil would break every time I attempted to write my answers. I had to re-sharpen my pencil again and again. I had not answered a single test question when the exam was over. I woke up drenched in sweats and was relieved it was only a dream. Two months later or thereabouts (it’s hard to recall now), I received a notice. I failed to qualify for the full scholarship but having expected for the worst, I was happy to qualify for partial scholarship. I had a better luck than our class valedictorian.
Thrilled at the prospect of a college education, I did not mind that I had only a few clothing tucked inside my kaban (wooden luggage) when I reported to the Mindanao State University. I was wearing my PMT khaki uniform when I traveled with my father to Marawi City. He arranged for my board and lodging in the house of an acquaintance, Mr. Moldes, who worked in the DPWH Engineering District based in the city. The house was located in Barrio Green, near Camp Keithley, former US military camp named in honor of Private Fernando Keithley who was killed in action in November 1903 by spear wounds inflicted by Moro tribesmen while serving in the US Army during the Philippine Insurrection. Inside the camp was a road marker that bore the number “0”, it being the reference point of all national roads in Mindanao.
I stayed as a guest lodger at the Moldes house during my first semester in the university where I enrolled in the College of Engineering. Before I transferred to the university campus, I lodged for one year with Sgt. Villarin’s family in their house located near the bank of Lake Lanao, not far from the military camp. There I cooked my own food. I had two co-bed spacers. One was a teacher of a private school in the city but I wondered how he came up with the grades of his high school students since I never saw him bother to check or to read the examination papers and term papers he brought from the school. When not in school he spent most of his time playing mahjong in the adjoining house of the Elumbaring family. He was a married man and during school breaks, he visited his family in Misamis Occidental. The other, Jun Lood, was a freshman student of the MSU. He was the student who trembled in our Spanish class. Mr. de los Santos, a tall and slim mestizo, would loudly announced the word “Lo-od”, which in the vernacular would describe my discomfort when I drink water after eating salted fish or at the sight of the milky viscous substance that exudes from a large spider when you step on it. I wondered why our Spanish instructor scared him. Jun was a regular guy and in his hometown I can’t imagine that his peers would dare mess with him. Yet, who says that only dogs are territorial?
