Crying Trees, Killer Fish and Rental Corpses: Only in the Philippines

CRYING TREES, KILLER FISH AND RENTAL CORPSES

Only in the Philippines

Jay Maclean

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Copyright © 2017 by Jay Maclean

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ISBN: 9781537868172

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1980. Into the Wild Northwest

1981. Venturing Out

1982. The Urge to Climb

1983. Year of Domestic Travel

1984. Tales from the Near and Far South

1985. Taking a New Plunge

1986. The Revolution

1987. Life and Death and a Coup Attempt

1988. Typhoons, Diving Paradise and the Golden Dragon

1989. Life and Death and Coups Revisited

1990. Disaster Season

1991. Beggars, More Typhoons, Earthquakes and Lahar

1992. Filipiniana and Memorable Diving

1993. Mediphobia, Artiphilia and Brownouts

1994. Moving Blues

1995. Tubbataha Reprise

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INTRODUCTION

IN THE 1980S, MANILA, CAPITAL of the Philippines,was a decrepit, low-rise city plagued by random bombings. Buses and errant policemen ruled the roads and taxis were held together with string. Outside Manila, the provinces basked in undiscovered splendor and poverty. The 1980s also saw the unprecedented bloodless revolution that deposed the country’s long-time dictator Marcos, a new constitution and several later coup attempts to unseat the new government. The 1990s began with more political stability but suffered successive volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and floods. Through it all, the country and its people remained unshaken; and buildings grew taller, as did newspaper stories about life and events around the country.

The author settled in Manila in 1980 and began to write letters to Steve, a friend who occasionally visited from Australia, about the events, tragedies and comedies that comprise the Philippines. The letters were rather earthy snapshots, with little regard to ethereal Philippine politics. The images they conjure up show a surprisingly ‘innocent’ country that is now fast disappearing as globalization strips away its culture along with charming folk beliefs, home-grown resorts and local markets.

This account is based on the contents of some of those letters written during 1980 to 1995. Readers may recognize that many of the situations and places have not changed much since then. I refrained from updating those that have, so millennial readers can discover for themselves some lesser-known aspects of the country’s recent ‘history.’

1980. INTO THE WILD NORTHWEST

BY THE LATE 1970S, MANILA was simply tumultuous. Wherever you looked, there were armed people in variously colored uniforms, army roadblocks, police roadblocks, and guards with belts full of shiny bullets and heavy pistols at the entrance to every building. The traffic was chaotic and undisciplined. A curfew was in place. From an Australian perspective, this was the real wild (north)west.

I was invited to Manila for an interview for a position in an international nongovernment organization that dealt with tropical fisheries. It would be the kind of work I would enjoy. I stayed for a week in early November 1979, at the Mandarin Hotel in Makati.

After visiting the nearby headquarters of my prospective employer one afternoon, I found the front door of the Mandarin Hotel closed off by police lines. There had just been a shootout in the lobby of that elegant establishment. Well armed police were everywhere.

That impression of danger wasn’t softened by a trip to Central Luzon State University about a hundred miles north of Manila. I drove with Roger, a scientist who joined the organization six months earlier and who was to become my best friend. He was showing me his project there. The roads were fraught with danger from careering high-speed buses and lumbering trucks. We turned off the main road and bounced along a track through fields of tall weeds. I was feeling very tired from the arduous trip but hearing a whistle, sat up and, looking to the right, glimpsed a diesel train engine bearing down on us from among the tall weeds. I yelled Stop. Roger slammed his foot on the brake; the car stopped a few feet from the railway line, and the train thundered by, disappearing into the weeds to our left. It was the first time he had seen a train on that line, he said. And nearly the last, I replied.

I left for Sydney heavy hearted. Although I was excited at the job prospect and astounded at the modernity and size of Manila—having expected conditions like those in Papua New Guinea where I worked previously, only to find the city taller and far larger than Sydney—the Philippines was too dangerous. Manila seemed like a dark movie about life in the US underworld, in which all the parts were being played by Filipinos. Out of town, danger seemed to lurk at every corner and intersection.

On the day of my arrival in Sydney, there was a shootout in the Supreme Court in Melbourne; the chief witness in a murder case was killed and the suspect escaped with the killer. Hearing the news, my ideas of Manila softened. I told myself: Manila, here I come and sent off a telegram of acceptance of the job.

By late January 1980, I was back in the Philippines, being introduced to the team, a small group of scientists and support staff. The term lean and mean was a common epithet, used in a commending manner, to describe the organization.

The streets of Manila were exciting and challenging. As I came to learn, these were days of martial law; of arbitrary road blocks at night and killings without apparent motives; the country was being wrenched apart by bloody political and military factions.

The major newspaper, the Bulletin Today, was practically a free mouthpiece for the government. The country had been under martial law since 21 September 1972, imposed by still incumbent President Marcos. At a meeting I attended sometime in 1980 about media and information, the government’s press secretary complained, in a speech about freedom of the press, that one day he could only get 6 of the 10 government press releases he wanted on the front page of the Bulletin. The deplorable situation in 1972 that led to martial law was such that the Daily Express was the only newspaper to report the proclamation of Martial Law (it claimed) and that was three days later.

The universities were muzzled. Volume 1, Number 1, July 1980, of a (presumably short-lived) rag called The University Reporter, contained many patriotic articles by one Mario C. Terre. The front page extolled Fil-American relationships and the first lady, known at home only for her singing: There has not been a female name that could equal the stellar name of Metro Manila Governor and Minister of Human Settlements, Imelda Romualdez Marcos [in] today’s era in regard to political and foreign affairs. Second ranking names may pinpoint Madame Indhira of India and Prime Minister Sirimavo Banadarnaike of Sri Lanka.

~

One of my staff, employed as an artist, was responsible for my first leisure trip out of Manila, for the blessing in early 1980 of a house he built in the yard of his parents’ house in Bataan on the opposite side of Manila Bay. It was to be my first real Philippine culture shock.

The new construction was close up against the old family house, in a small lot surrounded by similar old wooden houses on stilts. You could talk to your neighbors without raising your voice; this was provincial town living. The fence was almost at the front door; beyond, the constant roar of jeepneys, the main form of public transport, and buzz of motorized tricycles that also carried passengers—both forms of transport overloaded with people, most of whom stared at me as they passed. The narrow streets were also full of children and I was surrounded by them wherever I went. I was center stage, a foreign face. It was not something a Sydneysider could handle nonchalantly and I looked around in confusion. My host rescued me, waved a hand dismissively at the kids and they ran off in peals of laughter. Later, I was given the master bedroom in the old house, his parents’ room, which was the normal courtesy and a lovely gesture, unlike the spare bedroom treatment one expects in western countries.

I can still hear the sounds that woke me in the predawn hours of the next morning. A pitiful screaming, so loud it might have been in the room. In fact, it was just beneath the room, a pig being bled on a table on the dirt floor under the house while it was still alive, strapped and held down by several men, prior to cooking for the feast that was to accompany the house blessing. This is a wild pig said my host proudly. It had come, he explained all the way from Aparri on the north coast of Luzon Island. Much tastier than the local pigs, he added. The pig, a black short-haired boar, was bleedinig profusely. Its throat had been slit, and the blood was being collected from under its neck to make a delicacy of some kind. At the same time, boiling water was being poured over it to loosen its hair for easier shaving its skin; don’t want to be spitting out hairs in the bacon. The work started so early because it took hours to roast the pig to perfection.

There was activity all around as less gory foods were prepared and tables were set; music blared, another compulsory feature of nearly all Philippine activities—from lecture theaters to operating theaters. A priest came along and the assembled adults trailed behind him with candles as he sprinkled water around the new house; dozens of children, mostly in tattered clothing, darted in and out, having their own chaotic party under the adults’ un-noticing gaze.

Then came the finale, eating the lechon, as they called the roast pig. As the honored guest, I had to go to the table first and was offered crispy boar’s ear, clearly a special treat being such a small organ. But I could not face it. And no one else could eat until I began, as my host whispered to me. All eyes must have been on me. They were all waiting for the moment when they could descend on the loaded table and get down to the business of eating. I had no idea at the time, that eating could be such a central part of life. It made sense when later explained to me. Apart from such occasions as this, most people ate very simple fare, rice with a sauce or with a small fish or some simple vegetable like kangkong, a small leafed plant growing in swamps—at every meal.

But here was an ear before me, looking like just that. Even fish are disguised in western countries these days. One gets a slab of fish in batter or whatever, bones already removed. I was disgusted at first seeing whole fish being served, their eyes vacantly popped, on Philippine tables. People here have a working knowledge of fish anatomy and easily avoid or deal with the bones and intestines as they dig into the carcasses, while I had to learn it at university. Strange world I thought, assuming all the time that my way was preferable, superior.

I took a small bite of the pig’s ear, wondering if I would pick up some intestinal disease I had been lectured about in Biology classes. If my textbook Animals parasitic in Man was any guide, there could be hydatid cysts, tapeworms, nematode worms, and various pig diseases lurking under the crispy exterior of this pig from the wilds of northern Luzon. My thoughts were drowned out in the shouting and rush for the table that my first bite precipitated. I retreated to a quiet corner, surreptitiously spitting the piece of ear into a tissue and thought about corn flakes and peanut butter and other ‘civilized’ food.

~

In March 1980, a letter came from Sydney friend Chris. His letter was an update on the latest news there: a week of train strikes, followed by a week of petrol strikes, and this week offers strikes from both. The news about Manila in the Sydney papers was only about some nuts or terrorists throwing hand grenades around a Manila theatre.

I had to reply that the grenades, however dangerous, made for a more exciting life than petrol and train strikes. A resident of only three months, I was already adapting to Philippine life.

~

At about the same time, I took delivery of a new car, as promised in my contract, a beige Toyota Corolla. In the Philippines, cars are driven on the right hand side of the road. I had spent the previous 23 years driving on the left side, in Australia and Papua New Guinea. I am telling you this to explain why, with seven kilometers on its clock, I drove it into the back of an unsuspecting, beautifully kept vintage Volkswagen Beetle. I simply failed to comprehend that as I sat in the driver’s seat on the left side, most of the car was on my right side.

Gradually a foreigner learns to swim in the sea of Filipinos. Learning the national language Tagalog is a first step. My teacher was a Filipina who was teaching US Peace Corps volunteers. I made good progress in elementary Tagalog, but suddenly she left for Mindanao in the south of the country to teach the language to Vietnamese refugees growing in number in processing centers there. I never did get back into the swing of learning the language after that and my Tagalog has always remained elementary.

But a little Tagalog goes a long way. Nearly everyone spoke far better English than I did Tagalog and when I did make attempts to converse in Tagalog, people kindly replied in English, knowing that I would never have understood a Tagalog response.

Gradually also, faces and personalities began to appear in what at first was a confusion of simply foreign-looking faces. Looking back, this was not a trivial process. I probably dissociated myself from them, thinking of Filipinos as among the underprivileged and anonymous people that our organization was trying to help; and this help was at a distance. It was research that would provide long-term benefits, not a hand-out and a long way from passing out money to passers-by on the street.

The climax of recognition of Filipinos as neighbors, colleagues and friends, was quite distinct. I was in the office elevator and, at nearly 1.8 meters, taller than most Filipinos. I was looking over a mass of animated black hair. The noise was, as usual, incredible by Australian elevator standards. Listening to the unintelligible chatter, I suddenly felt the strong desire to be part of the scene, not apart from it. Faces suddenly became individuals. Most of the elevator riders were women, girls, and I began to see their beauty. By the time I left the elevator, I felt much changed, as if I had finally arrived in the Philippines. Later, I related this epiphany to Roger as being like a hammer blow, it was so forceful and instantaneous.

I imagine that this is a feeling that most tourists and short-term visitors expecting to help the country are denied. Passing aid workers are no doubt sympathetic and probably work from a sense of pity, unable to absorb in a short time the nuances of the culture or to feel empathy with the Filipinos.

~

There seemed to be a few clear cut types of Filipinas, or so rumor would have it, with regard to ‘foreigners.’ At one extreme were those who thought themselves above relationships with foreigners. They invariably had mixed blood nevertheless, Spanish as a rule, which they felt, also combined with large estates, put them above the rest of the population. This inheritance was gained at a time when Spain’s star was only just rising from a status that had for decades earned the population at large various ignominious nicknames in the west. In a book by the Philippine Historical Conservation Society called the Theology of the Conquest, the author exemplifies the outlook: D. Pedro Pablo Roxas who by virtue of the fact that he was the wealthiest man in the Philippines around the turn of this [20th] century became its whitest Spaniard despite the fact that he was as black as a piece of coal. Money not race was the deciding factor. That attitude, in Manila, had its quaint side—and some people still refuse to speak Tagalog, to emphasize that they are really Spanish: castaways in the wrong continent. They are living fossils from the Philippines colony of Spain’s King Phillip II.

There was (is) a love-hate relationship with the Japanese: hate as a result of World War II, which destroyed most of Manila and a large proportion of its citizens, and love because of the wealth they bring to this developing country as investors and tourists. At the Ayala Museum in Makati, there is a series of dioramas depicting Philippine history. When it came to the Japanese occupation, the occupying troops were featured almost as demons as they herded Filipinos into trucks. That scene has since been softened (history is always being rewritten to suit the current circumstances; don’t offend your donors) but the attitude lingers on.

Of course, the Australian attitude was no better, and probably worse. My mother’s keep away from foreigners admonition was not atypical. The white Australia policy it was blatantly called. All immigrants at the time were white (Caucasian) and even they were treated brutally in conversational Australian. The difference was that while the Australian nationals were mainly middle class, the immigrants tended to be less well off, while in the Philippines the reverse has been the case.

Returning to Filipina types (I cannot speak for the men), there were those who would flirt from a distance with foreigners or expats as we called ourselves, like moths around a distant light globe, unwilling to be burned. If an expat returned their glance, they would shy away and be shocked at the expat’s behavior.

There were those who felt that marrying a foreigner was desirable because the resulting children would "improve