Coming Home

Most of us...become prisoners of our dream and the pseudo-convenient lifestyle we become accustomed to."

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It was one lazy afternoon about two years ago. The annual organizational meeting of the Barangay Pongso Power Association was scheduled for that early afternoon. Since I represent the town of Barugo in the board of the electric cooperative, my presence, more in form than in substance, was required.

Barangay Pongso is both near and remote. It is near and easily accessible, crossing Pongso River from Barangay Pikas if not for the typhoon damaged and now impassable spillway or submarine bridge. So you have to take the circuitous route going through several barangays. From my home in Cabarasan I rode my dirt bike, the better to feel the simulated freedom of the wind, through mostly rough and some short portions of paved roads along Busay, Calincaguing, San Roque and interior barangays Roosevelt and Pitogo. In between these villages the topography is mostly coconut trees and hectares of rice land. The deeper you go inland, the vista is lush vegetation with sections of uncultivated thick forest. Reminds you that you’re here and not there somewhere longing for the day you’ll get back. Quando, quando…

After the meeting, which took only about an hour, I was invited by a friend who happens to be the resident kingpin of Barangay Pongso. He is the former barangay chairman who ran unopposed in his last term and was succeeded by his wife who also ran unopposed. He can deliver almost the entire vote of the barangay to a candidate.  I know so. Three elections ago, my younger brother got 95% of the vote in that barangay when he ran for councilor. Behind his back his friends refer to him in jest as the local warlord.

Over bahal and hinatukan nga manok our conversation centered on politics, my friend’s favorite topic. His tuba was close to perfection, clear of the usual impurities. It was just the right bahal, not before its time, mildly bitter to the palate, and most importantly without the rancid smell, proof positive of the sanitary practice by the manunggiti (or manung for the shorter term of endearment) in its production. Just like me, my friend has a very discriminatory taste in his choice of tuba. Reminds me I am home!

The devil in me wanted to stay until whenever but I had to leave with about an hour of sunlight left. I thanked my friend and bid him goodbye but, always the gracious host, he reprimanded me for thanking him. There will always be the next time, he says.

I took a different route on my way back. From Pongso I followed the right arm of the fork that leads to barangays Hiagsam and Can-isak. The only female manung known to mankind happens to be from Can-isak. If there be another one from de las islas Pilipinas, please speak up now or forever hold your peace. She is for real. I met her recently and she is pregnant. (But I swear I had nothing to do with it.) She looks like she’s in her late 30’s. She became a manung (manang?) by necessity, when her first husband died and this was the only means she knew how to support the family. A crew from the TV network ABS-CBN came to Can-isak to interview her for a feature story in one of its telemagazine shows.

From Can-isak I crossed the bridge over Amahit River onto Barangay Astorga of the neighboring town of Tunga. Once in Tunga proper I made a right turn towards Sitio Pasakay of Barangay Amahit. Sitio Pasakay is well known for producing perhaps the best tuba from Barugo. Apparently, the ideal tuba production is dependent on a combination of geography/climate and art form, similar to that of French wine. The skills of the manung in the extraction and preparation of the concoction with the right quality tungog or baruk is just as important as the quality of the soil from where the coconut trees grow.

Art and science, but I would not discount religion. Seems like an oxymoronic trinity. Twice a day, every day except Sunday, very religiously early morning and late afternoon the manung has to climb each tree and retrieve the juice from the lakub. He pours the fresh tuba (bag-o nga hiwat), yet to be aged and not ready for prime time, into the kawit he carries on his back. He then cleans the kawit with the hugas or wooden brush using clean water. After cleaning, he puts enough amount of baruk, grated to the precise granularity, into the lakub. He dismounts from the tree and on to the next one. Depending on the number of sanggutan, it could be dark by the time he’s done with his afternoon round. Most of these are tall indigenous coconut trees, not the dwarf hybrid type. So there is the obvious inherent risk. So many have fallen but only a few quit, if they survive.  (The lazy manung, who doesn’t care about his tuba and is more into commercial production, uses powder baruk. He also cleans the lakub with the newly extracted juice, not clean water. Grating the baruk sticks is extra work and carrying clean water is extra baggage on his belt.)

The barangay road network, or farm-to-market roads, of Barugo now provides arterial connectivity and motor vehicle accessibility. In most barangays there is a fork that leads to other barangays. If you follow the bend of the paved road along Amahit, it will take you to that long stretch of road that is barangay Pikas. At the other end of Pikas you will cross the bridge over Himanglos River onto Calingcaguing. That takes you to the national highway; you make a right turn towards San Roque (formerly Ibiron and Mag-asawa) straight to Hinugayan and Sta. Rosa. If you turn left instead, that leads to Cuta, New Road and the town proper of Barugo. But from Amahit if, as you approach the bend, you turn left onto the rough road you’ll be on your way to Bukid and either San Isidro or Hilaba, both ending up on the Barugo-Carigara highway going right towards the town proper after you cross Himanglos Bridge, or the other direction towards Santarin, Minuswang and Canomantag. However, coming from Amahit just past the Bukid boundary you can turn right, and another right turn after two kilometers takes you to Tutug-an where there’s an old hanging bridge over Himanglos River that takes you to the national highway in Calingcaguing. If you don’t make that second turn and keep going straight towards the old Spanish road you’ll end up in historic Sitio Nasunogan, where the first Barugo settlement was originally located.

My poultry farm sits on a 6.5-hectare property, sentimentally named Himanglos Farms, located in Sitio Nasunogan. Less than two hundred meters from Himanglos Farms lay the ruins of the 16^th century Spanish stone church, close to the bank of Himanglos River. Across the road is where once the old cemetery was. Across the river from Sitio Nasunogan is Barangay Cuta. The late Joel V. Aruta wrote, based on his extensive research, that after this first settlement was burned down, the settlers “moved to another place which is now called Binongto-an, meaning a place abandoned as a town, now a sitio of Barangay Pikas. The settlers did not stay there long and moved eventually to the present site of the town.”

The present site of the town is along the coast of Carigara Bay. As a small boy I played with my friends along the shore chasing and picking up karas. But the shoreline is now gone, swallowed by large mangrove trees planted, wisely or otherwise, sometime in the 1980s. Sadly, from the sea there is no town to be seen and, inversely, from the town there is no sight of the sea. Thankfully, I have my childhood memories but, unfortunately, our children of today will never know the difference.

Residents of the coastal villages are engaged mainly in small-scale fishing and aquaculture. These are barangays Santarin, Minuswang and Canomantag to the west of town and Domogdog, Minuhang, Balud and Duka to the east. The fish supply from Carigara Bay, especially the once abundant area encompassing the towns of Capoocan, Carigara, Barugo and San Miguel has been shrinking at an annual rate that is grossly scary. Some species are at the brink of extinction. Some have completely disappeared. Sustainable fishing is hardly ever practiced anymore except by the small-scale fishermen. Illegal trawling, which destroys anything on its path including precious coral reefs, and other forms of illegal commercial fishing are the main culprit. Dynamite fishing is rampant in Balud and Duka. The blast is hardly heard in town and so it is done with impunity. Minuhang used to be the epicenter of the fishing industry in Barugo. It is still a fishing village but no longer of the same scale as of yesteryears. It has the largest population of all barangays while Balud is the only village inaccessible by motor vehicle. A foot bridge over the mouth of Cabarasan River connects it to Minuhang.

The planned road that is supposed to connect Balud to Duka is just what it is, still in the drawing board questionably yet to be accomplished. So is the economic zone in Duka, where supposedly a big seaport and an international airport are to be built. Definitely maybe. Perhaps something on a smaller scale should be built first, like the bridge to Balud. One that is similar to Himanglos Bridge.

Himanglos Bridge is the gateway to the town of Barugo. In grade school my friends and I used to cut classes in the afternoon to go for a dip just below the old, wooden bridge. This is where I learned how to swim, self-taught. The water was not quite, but close to, pristine. But folks swim no more in the now murky waters of Himanglos River.  Years of sand-and-gravel quarrying, legally and some illegally, and combined perhaps with the indiscriminate cutting of trees somewhere up in the mountains, has resulted in the heavy sediment carried by the river flowing to the sea. But who will ever know the difference? I cherish my childhood memories.    

Next to tuba, the other cottage industry in Barugo is roscas, delicious pastry made of flour, sugar, eggs, anis, baking powder and shortening made from pork-belly fat. Using margarine is almost a crime. There are two producers’ cooperatives in town engaged in the commercial production of roscas. Oftentimes you can buy better made roscas from independent makers whose product is more traditional than commercial. Some copycats from the neighboring towns of Tunga and Carigara do try to compete. But the resulting product is perversely dismal, more like machacao in its resistance to your bite. And the taste is, oh well, so like machacao dipped in sugar. Well, it’s true; imitation is the best form of flattery, so they say. Maybe Tunga should stick to chicharron and Carigara to pastillas.  The texture of our own Barugo roscas is brittle, and once it crumbles from a light bite, almost instantly melts in the mouth in a creamy state and spreads in your taste buds with a mouth-watering effect fit for the gods.

The secret to making roscas is in how the ingredients are mixed and prepared. It is a very closely guarded secret, similar to the code required to launch a ballistic missile. Water used in mixing the ingredients is part of the secret. Something mysteriously simple is done to the water short of becoming holy. In Barugo the Holy Grail of roscas is passed from generation to generation, mother to daughter. In unusual circumstances, intra-generation, wife to husband. But never mother to son.  

I so miss my mother.  She died over a year ago just six months shy of 90. Fortunately I had settled down in Barugo eighteen months before she died. It let me have a relatively long bonding time with her. I am glad. There has to be some deeper meaning in being here and not there somewhere pretending to be here. After over 33 years in the land of milk and honey, my decision to settle down in Barugo was not easy, but unwittingly a good one.  I was 21 and young when I left, part of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” aptly like those alluded to in the sonnet “The New Collosus” by Emma Lazarus.  “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Most of us who leave for greener pasture endeavor to escape the harsh realities from whence we come, real or perceived, only to become prisoners of our dream and the pseudo-convenient lifestyle we become accustomed to.  It is so easy to get caught in this trap. But for some of us it could be, for a lot of different reasons, by necessity that we endure being prisoners of our dream.

Funny that it was the same “yearning to breathe free” that gave me reason to come home. “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.” A simple yet insightful reflection by John Ed Pearce.

I have lived in Cabarasan since I came home three years ago. It’s a modest 3-bedroom house surrounded by mango and dwarf coconut trees in the middle of a rice field. Recently, I finished building a one-bedroom house on Himanglos Farms. I thought the small house would be a nice getaway, somewhat of a vacation every now and then. Not to be the case. I now spend most of my time here in this God-forsaken place that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, yes, far enough for solitude but close enough for solace. 

Perhaps I pretend to be on vacation every day. In my own make believe world. Perhaps not…