Buhay Bangkok

Holy Week was a special time in my childhood. It meant our family would make the annual trip to my father’s hometown in Salcedo, Ilocos Sur.

I was nine years old in 1981 when my father bought a passenger-type jeepney. It was a source of additional income for our family as it plied the Guadalupe-Buendia route back then. It came in handy whenever our family took a long trip such as we did during Holy Week.

We would always leave on the night of Holy Wednesday. The journey took at least 10 hours. I remember spending the night catching some sleep while sitting, leaning against whoever happened to be my seatmate during that trip.

A stopover in one of the all-night eateries in Tarlac was a welcome respite from cramped legs and grogginess. Somehow, a steaming cup of Milo was more delicious during those stopovers compared to the Milo I drink for breakfast at home.

Sunrise would find us cresting the ridge overlooking my father’s home village of
Atabay. At the time, the road between Atabay and the Salcedo town proper was unpaved. A bulldozer just blazed a trail in the mountainside, strewn the path with rocks for better traction for the vehicles and that’s it. I still remember the hairpin turns, with the wall of the mountain on one side and a sheer hillside on the other. The vegetation on the slope prevented me from seeing the drop, but it only made my imagination run wilder on how high up the mountain we were.

We would always stay in the house of my great-grandmother. At the time, she was around 70 years old or so but still strong. She would be puttering in the kitchen early in the morning, then go outside to fetch water from the tap by the road, her earthen jug balanced steadily on her head. All the while she’d have a tobacco clamped between her teeth. Everywhere in the house, you’d see plugs of rolled tobacco she would leave in odd corners and crevices. Up to this day, I associate the scent of dried tobacco with my great-grandmother’s house.

Holy Week in Atabay meant playtime for us kids. Although we can hardly speak a literate sentence of Ilocano, we can somehow understand some, as we stayed for six months there when I was five years old.  The streets of the barrio were unpaved, dusty and strewn with stones. Us Manilenos wore rubber slippers while our cousins walked barefoot, the soles of their feet thick after a lifetime of going barefoot (My father would always boast that the callus of his feet were so think the thorns of bamboos are simply broken every time he steps on them. Ouch!).

For Catholics, Good Friday is a solemn day. Kids were not supposed to play, much less shout or romp around in the neighborhood. We were just supposed to sit around the house and bear the summer heat and watch the boring Mass on TV and watch as the mechanical Jesus on the cross lowers his head signifying his death as 3 o’clock in the afternoon strikes. But that was in the sweltering heat of Makati, where we lived with my mother’s Catholic relatives. In Protestant-dominated Ilocos Sur, Good Friday is the best day for going to the karayan, or river.

Early in the morning of Good Friday we would get ready for the picnic in the river. The men would prepare the nets, the earthen pots or palayok, and their itak or machetes while our mothers would prepare the towels, soaps and the clothes we’d change into after bathing.

The karayan of Atabay would always be a raging torrent (some of our older relatives say 10 feet deep) during the monsoon months but during the hot months of April and May, it would be just a trickle of a stream. The riverbed would be a dry wasteland, stretching as wide as 100 meters or so, with boulders the size of houses dominating the sandy landscape. The stream would be just up to our thighs at its deepest, just enough for a nine-year-old to swim in. My sister and cousins would gather stones as big as coconuts and dam portions of the stream to make our swimming area deeper.

Meantime, the men would look for a stagnant pool fed by springs on the banks of the river. Spotting one, they would then cast their small net to catch mudfish and gobies and freshwater crabs.

By noontime, us kids would emerge from our frolics in the stream and join the elders as they cook their catch. Usually they just throw in the fish and the crabs together in the large palayok, pour water in it, sprinkle the brew with lots of salt, onion and ginger and cook it with fire fueled by the dry twigs they have gathered in the woods nearby. By then, they would already have cooked rice too.

Lunch would stretch up to mid-afternoon, as my parents conversed with our relatives to catch up with family goings-on while the children take a nap under the shade of trees in the riverbank. The sky would be a bright summer blue, with cottons of clouds drifting by.

Black Saturday would be spent trekking to the fields. There among the tobaccos and ricefields would be the jackfruits and bananas. My father just loved taking out his itak and chopping off the tree the biggest jackfruit he can find. The same with the bananas. We feel like conquering heroes as we walk home with our burden of jackfruits (with their sap still dripping on our hands and shirts) and bananas and whatever other fruits we got along the way.

All this time, The whole village would be quiet. No laughter or sounds from radios or TVs can be heard. Protestant Ilocanos might enjoy picnics in the riverbanks during Good Fridays, but they also observe the solemnity of the occasion by turning off the sound of the rest of the world. A Holy Week spent in my father’s barrio would convince you that there is indeed a ‘sound of silence.’

All this would change at dawn of Easter Sunday. At a little past midnight of Easter Sunday, my father’s uncle, who acts as the barrio’s patriarch, would preside over the slaughter of one of his cows. His field hands and cronies would lend a hand. In fact, the whole adult male population of the barrio would join in the slaughter. It was organized work: There were the designated butchers, then the parts would be apportioned to the cooks, who would then prepare the dishes. All parts of the cow (or sometimes an old carabao would do) were not wasted (except for the horn and others, of course).

I would not be aware of this process till I reached adulthood. All I remembered when I was just young was waking up on the morning of Easter Sunday to the strains of the FM radio of our next-door neighbor; but more inviting was the scent of stewed beef wafting from the kitchen. Indeed, the scent and taste of beef stew from a freshly-slaughtered cow was eons away from the beef we buy in the Pasay City public market. We would have beef all day.

And mangoes too! If there’s one thing I remember fondly from our yearly trip to Ilocos, it was the scent of ripe mangoes. And their luscious sweetness. During our six-month stay in Ilocos in 1978, I remember refusing any other viand except mangoes. Thailand might offer cheaper-priced mangoes (the ones in the talad can be bought for 10 Baht a kilo), but nothing beats the taste of ripe mangoes from Ilocos Sur.

We also did our best to attend the Easter Sunday worship service in the Assemblies of God church in the barrio. There were no Catholic churches in the village, just two Protesant churches–The Assemblies of God near the hillside and the bigger Methodist one in the barrio’s plaza.

Late afternoon of Easter Sunday would find us preparing to make the trip back home. There would be the long goodbyes as we sit in the jeepney while our relatives, especially the old ones, would brush away a tear or two from their eyes as they say goodbye to their grandchildren. My father’s uncles are not that emotional; they’re too busy loading the jeep with going-away presents: sacks of rice and malagkit, mangoes in tiklis, basketfuls of suman na malagkit wrapped in banana leaves and other delicacies. Somehow, this cornucopia in comparison dwarfed the pasalubong we brought when we arrived: detergent soaps, local chocolates and candies and hand-me-down clothes.

Finally, as the sun begins to set, we would start our journey home. We would retrace our steps, though this time, we would have dinner in an eatery in La Union, with a stopover for coffee (and Milo for me) in Tarlac around 3 AM. Dawn would see us in Monumento and we’d arrive in Makati just as our neighbors start having their breakfast.

Groggily we’d get off the jeepney and help carry the goodies inside the house. After a brief breakfast I’d fall asleep. When I wake up, I would wander outside the house, find my playmates and resume my life in the city. Ilocos would always seem just like a dream to me.