A Journey To Get Inspired Again

Been more than a year since the last time I visited Tingloy, Batangas… the place where I was born. Since it’s where my existence started, the idea of my trip became a voyage to my past life. And because I feel like writing today, I give you the sum of my babyhood in Batangas. :)

the baby me holding a shell and 23 years after...now holding a phone:)

Unlike the majority of newly born babies, I wasn’t born in the hospital but just inside our bahay-kubo or nipa hut. Apparently, the place doesn’t have permanent electricity. I could picture my family holding only ‘sulo’ to sight if I was a girl or a boy. I was named after St. Catherine of I don’t know. I was as little as a 5 ounce coke drink and I cry a lot. I needed to be wrapped until 5 months old to be incubated. A dog even thought I was just an object and picked me through my clothes, I’m glad it didn’t eat me (Jen, I finally said what you want me to blog about, the shameful, lol). When I got there 3 years ago, people who identify me were surprised about how tall I gained. I generally get their Batangueno twanged phrase “Ikaw ga talaga si Kateren na apo ni Misis Salasarrr?? Aba’y kalaki mo na eh!” (Are you really the Catherine who’s the granddaughter of Mrs. Salazar? You are big!)--I only say I am with pride. :) They sound quiet funny which makes Manila people laugh. I know it for sure because I used to have that weird accent. :)

I only lived there for a few years but I have a very vivid memory of our bahay-kubo and the life I used to have. I lived in a little house made of bamboo and the bathroom was separated outside. It was like the Mandaya cottage in Pearl Farm as it was virtually floating by the sea but not as beautiful. But it wasn’t dirty like the floating squatter houses in Ilog Pasig either. The floor and ladder were made of bamboo while the walls were made of wood. It has 1 bedroom which I couldn’t even call a bedroom because we had no bed but just a banig or mat to sleep on. It was just a plain box house, no arte. I remember throwing my dirty clothes through our cube window while my grandpa get and wash them. :D

with mom putting makeup on me. you'd see our bamboo floor :)

Every morning when it’s low tide, my mom and I pick up crabs by the seashore. With my very little hands, I tie them with a yarn to make them as my fake toy carts. I cry every day when they die even if I know I would have another the next day. My playmates call me ‘lampa’, because I easily stumble onto the ground. These scars on my knees and legs are the proof of it. I don’t wish them taken off because somehow, it’s the trace of my short happy childhood. When I went there 2 years ago, a woman named Maria or Marie I think claimed that she was my playmate way way back and she showed me the tiny doll I gave her. I was so touched that she kept it all these years and her baby even plays with it! Giving my possessions is simply my way of telling someone he/she’s special. I didn’t know I started so young being over-romantic! :P More so corny. :D

Sometimes when I’m not playing ‘piko’ (hop-step game) or any outdoor games, my playmates and I steal crops from our neighbor. Getting sweet potatoes straight from the soil is like finding a treasure without a map! And when our neighbor spots us, we run as fast as we could. I get caught of course because I was lampa and the next thing that happens is very obvious. :P I think an almost same situation happened to me in 5th grade in Davao. My friends and I climbed in a guava tree which we thought was our friend’s. The real owner came with his puckered brows and a dagger then took all the guavas even ones we were already eating. I love adventures but things like that are really hilarious and I can’t believe I have done it! Hihihihi! :D

I love the water, the wind that blows my hair and the boats there in Batangas. It’s when I first got my unforgettable experience which I written in my handbook in high school. On one occasion, our boat sank and we floated there for hours then a ship rescued us. And the only thing I was worried about the whole time I was floating was my pizza hut cap given by my terrorist aunt. :P

At a young age, fairy tales aren’t just the stories I heard. I knew every creepy story like flying coffins, white lady, duwende or elf, spirits, fairies and other elements. Oldies tell everyone to be at home before 6 pm or an unknown would take them to a hidden palace somewhere in a big tree. People there believe that my grandma has a duwende friend and her mission was to heal sick or possessed people. I witnessed my neighbors who were possessed and how witch doctors extracted the bad spirits from their bodies. I stooped down and prayed with the other neighbors outside the victim’s houses for their souls to come back. Now that I’m old, I don’t know which to believe. But for someone like me who have felt, smelled, and seen it, I supposed all of them were true.

that's the forest Tingloy before with creepy big roots at our back. I'm on top of a bamboo table, using banana stem as plate :)

As I was told, the whole family moved from Davao to Batangas to hide from the chaos of war. I didn't understand what they mean until I experienced it myself. They moved there with nothing but their clothes and pride. They couldn't possibly bring their possessions so they had to start from scratch. I also heard stories that this duwende friend of my grandma told her not to ever go back to Davao because awful things would still happen. And so far, I like to believe that that elf was right.

To survive in an almost forest-seashore-place, my Lolo worked as a fisherman, far from his logging and farming job in Davao. My Lola got the chance to still work as a grade school teacher. So at 2 years old, I got to go to school with her and sit in with older pupils. My Mommy Baby worked as a vendor distant from her caregiver, stockholder and money lender job after that. She never had a sari-sari store to sell. She only walks for hours to get to the other side of the island and sell her bananacue and other foods she cooks.

I don't want to say that life there was uncivilized. I think it's more appropriate to say it's just a bit prehistoric before my family arrived. It's just the choice of their people to live in a modern way, old, or both ways. Most people there are just very conventional and their life seems more laid back than anywhere else.

the abandoned toilet in a public school that my grandparents built. Paul in a slumdog toilet in a boat :P

I can tell that my grandparents are voyagers, like Magellan, they commenced the modern way of living to their place. People can attest that my grandma was the first one who introduced the bathroom & toilet which made her instant famous aside from her faith-healer-like sideline. People used to deposit their wastes by the sea, rocks, or pilapil. It was like the outdated toilet I have seen in the boats we ride on. If you have seen slumdog millionaire, you would precisely know what I'm talking about. :P

But it’s been 2 decades and Tingloy have changed drastically. A couple of teleseries were even shot there. Most household now got toilets. They also got a scheduled time for their electricity, from 6am-3pm, resumes at 6pm-12am. And some even got their own generators. They got tricycles and 2 jeeps as mode of transportation aside from their bare feet and boats. I have only seen few elderly people wearing no footwear. Most got jobs abroad that made the place even richer. The houses that used to be just bahay-kubo, woods or bamboo are now made of concretes and pricey tiles. They painted their houses with bright colors which gets the attention of passersby. My cousins and I were even pathetically laughing at ourselves because they got more high-tech gadgets than us! To think that it’s really a small town far far away from the city, a town where I started my prehistoric life, it really is astonishing…

Although I may sound poor when I talked about my life there in Tingloy, I was moneyed with immeasurable experiences. I was even factually poorer when I got to Manila because I had tried eating only spanish breads for a long time and I only got uncles to take care of me. No electricity too because we couldn’t pay. But that’s a so sad story, god no good, I wish not to share.

Well, now I’m almost done with my story. So for those people who thought I was born rich, I was not. You look at my hands and check if I work, I do. I was just really given the care that my grandparents thought I needed. This is why I admire well-known people so much who have saved themselves from mediocrity. From failure. It is because they appreciate their success more than anyone else. Though, I know for a fact that everyone would go through failure regardless of one's social status... but only few value their progress, they're unhappy, and cry for more.

I'm back in multiply :) Batangas pictures newly uploaded :D

Now I’m inspired again, this is just truly what I need this time.