TO THE LAND OF PROMISE

     In 1946, the year that the Philippines became an independent republic, our parents left Carmen, Bohol in search for greener pasture. They joined the exodus of people from the neighboring islands of the Visayas and even from as far as Luzon, to Mindanao. The migrants were enticed by the island’s legendary vast and fertile lands. Together with our father’s father, stepmother and two half- brothers, our parents dared to cross the Mindanao Sea in an old steel-hull vessel. I could imagine my mother cuddling me, not venturing out of her canvass cot, seasick in her first sea travel. As the firstborn son, I was barely a year old then.
     We settled in Tran, Salaman, Cotabato, the place of the acculturated Tiruray tribe where my mother gave birth to a second child, Silvestre. It was in Tran that they had their first taste of the land of promise, which could not be as rosy as they expected since we did not stay long in that strange place. I can still remember my mother telling me about the hassle of caring for her first-born child, which was not easy due to the abundance of mosquitoes in the area. At night, my mother had to wrap me over with a blanket to ward off the swarming insect. I was wrapped when sleeping on the rush plant mat or when inside the cloth hammock tied on both ends tthe beams of the hut. The buzzing of mosquitoes must have minglewith my mother’s lullaby as she gently swung the duyan. These blood-sucking pests emerged from dense foliage, nooks and dark crevices before sunset, in earnest search for warm-blooded animals.
     The presence of soft-skin humans was a boon to the mosquitoes. So every late in the afternoon, my mother had to fumigate the house by burning 
dry leaves and other litter in the yard. With my mother’s vigilance, we were spared of the proboscis of anopheles mosquitoes, a carrier of the deadly malaria.
     Worried of the fragile peace and order conditions of the Muslim- dominated village, the whole clan transferred to Libungan, Cotabato. A homesteader offered my father a farm lot to till as a tenant. With sapling, cogon grass and woven bamboo splits my father built a payag, his second hut in Mindanao. The farm could be at the outskirts of the village since accordingly, our nearest neighbor was beyond shouting distance.
     The rural life in Libungan fell short of my father’s expectations. The family had to move again. In 1949, we set foot in the then undivided Lanao province and settled in Upper Balagatasa, a farm village of Kolambugan, one of the coastal towns along Panguil Bay. Another brother, Bonifacio, was born there. Still very young then, I only had scattered recollections of what happened during our stay in Upper Balagatasa. We lived in a coconut farm that my father tended as a sharecropper. His share from the sale of copra was a way short for even the simplest living but my father was long in industry and patience. To make both ends meet, he planted root crops and vegetables and raised chicken for the fowl’s meat and eggs. Our pigsty was always inhabited by a few native pigs. He planted cassava, mainly as feeds for the pigs. However, while the cassava was a blessing to the pigs, it was not to be with my brother Bonifacio. He died of food poisoning after eating boiled cassava. My father also tapped one or two coconut trees for his daily ration of tuba. He drank the palm wine to soothe his tired muscles after a hard day’s toil and to enliven his spirit. Our supply of vinegar was fermented tuba.
   Being choked with a fish bone was painful and scary so it remained vivid in my memory. I might have swallowed the fish bone while eating our lunch of corn grits and a soup of palutpot (ponyfish) and moringa leaves. The sharp fish bone clung in my throat and would not dislodge even after drinking several cups of coconut water and eating several ripe tundan banana. My father resorted to quackery by  having my throat pawed softly by our pet cat, but to no avail. To distract  me from the excruciating pain, he brought me to the movie house in the urban center of Kolambugan. I must have enjoyed the Rogelio de la Rosa black and white movie since I forgot about the lodged fish bone and the  throbbing pain in my throat was gone when we got out of the theater.  I supposed that in my excitement, I unknowingly dislodged and  swallowed the stubborn fish bone.
     I have blurred memories of playing with Silvestre, in and outside the house. Maybe mostly outside, since there was not much space in our house. The farmhouse was of round timber, bamboos and nipa
palm shingles. The coconut grove was a veritable playground and we might have played hide-and-seek behind the coconut trees and in
the thick bushes.
     Silvestre and I played in the hearth, our faces smeared with charcoal. We made so much ado upon discovering that the cats had been defecating on the earthen hearth, burying their feces at the corners of the abohan.
     My first terrifying experience happened in Upper Balagatasa, when I was still five years old. It had something to do with our carabao (water buffalo)In those days, this “beast of burden” was our only means of transportation in the village. We were home-bound from the weekly market day at Lower Balagatasa, astride on top of the water buffalo. It was still early in the afternoon so the carabao was allowed to nibble the succulent grasses and young tops of shrubs that took its fancy as it trotted on the hoof-puckered and weathered trail. My father was whistling to pass time and I was busy wriggling my buttocks to make myself comfortable on top of the rough and shifting back of the beast. Suddenly, two strangers materialized and accosted us, one brandishing a paliuntud, a homemade shotgun. They were after the carabao and my father, discerning it was foolhardy to offer
resistance, jumped off from the carabao and gesticulated to me to follow suit. I sprinted away as soon as my bare feet touched the ground and continued running until I was short of breath. I must have fled far from the scene since my father had a hard time looking for me afterwards. We arrived home that day without the work animal entrusted to my father’s care by Mr. Nuñez, his landlord.
      “Susmariosep” my mother exclaimed when my father told her what happened. She then mumbled thanks to Jesus, Mary and Joseph for our deliverance from harm. My patron saint, San Vicente Ferrer, was also reverently acknowledged. It was my only encounter with cattle rustlers.
     Cattle rustling by people from the uplands were rampant in those days. The lowlanders, particularly the landowners, had prepared for its eventuality. They did it first through diplomacy by employing intermediaries. An intermediary was a person who can speak the Maranao dialect and was familiar with the upland villages where the stolen animals were brought and sold. Theft of carabao usually occurred when a wedding was to be solemnized and celebrated in these Muslim villages, so the stolen livestock usually ended up as dowries and slaughtered for the wedding feasts that can last several days. When diplomacy failed, the landowners took the law into their hands and mobilized their bands of vigilantes to pursue the cattle
rustlers. In many occasions, these vigilantes were successful in their missions and returned with the stolen animals.