Barrio Tales and Other Stories

Barrio

Philippine Civilization



Apung Islo was out on the road again, driving his jeepney amidst the "quiet" protestations of passengers who wanted the jeep the gain speed. "Pwe", said Apung Islo, "If you can not take my respectable and safe speed, then take another jeepney." Of course he would always win this argument because he was the only one that had a jeepney in the barrio.

You can take the kalesa or the tricycle or the bicycle but if you have bulky stuff to carry, you have no choice but to take Apung Islo's jeepney. And when it comes to public transportation, Aung Islo is the king of the road.

I sat beside Apung Islo the driver because it's always convenient to sit beside the driver in a jeepney. First you see the world in front of you. Not beside you with your head turned sideways, (which is the case when you sit on one of its long passenger seats); and not behind you if you keep your eyes staring in front (it would be especially depressing if Apung Delya was seated in front of you, she is the one who eats betelnuts and smokes marcangungot at the same time. God how she smells!) Really, there are other world perspectives while riding a jeepney but I won't go into them because it will make my story longer. I am really tempted to talk about jeepney perspectives but not while Apung Delya was sitting in front of me.

So, because I was riding Apung Islo's jeepney to get to school, I opened my History book and began reading.

"What are you reading?" Apung Islo asked me.

"Asian Civilization", I promptly answered.

"Read it to me." He sounded like ordering instead of asking me. Not that I expected Apung Islo be respectful to me - a man of his caliber and stature allows him to get away with so many things. At eighty, he can call the shots and no one shoots back.

So I read a passage about the Philippines having no great civilization compared to other great Asian countries like China, India, and Japan.

"Who the hell wrote that stupid book?" He said as he squinted his eyes against the brightness of morning sun. His usual pace of ten miles an hour got a little faster, I guess by .12 miles per hour (of course I'm guessing) but this was enough to make all the passengers restless.

They knew Apung Islo. Once you get him flared up about something - and I certainly warmed him up about something, I, really, me the stupid me, he'd suddenly turn into some other person different from the one we are seeing now.

He turned the jeepney to a route different from the usual one.

And you probably know how unpleasant this was to the passengers, especially to Apung Delya who had to prepare her bagoong and dried fish to dry up under the sun (which she had to sell in her "variety store"). Or to me who'd get late for school, knowing that the school's gates close at a certain time in the morning. Or to the rest who were going to work or visit relatives somewhere.

But do you think we would do something about it? You bet we would.

In a different fashion.

We started coughing up phlegm that wasn't there. We started scratching our heads like they were full of lice. We turned our heads in different directions looking at no one or nothing in particular. We started whistling. We started tapping the floor with our shoes or slippers or wodden clogs. All these we did to send our message. But no one, not one dared speak directly to Apung Islo to remind him that we didn't want the route he just took. Our body languages should have told him this. He didn't pay us any attention.

Until the brave little soul of Apung Delya (who's a contemporary of Apung Islo) spoke.

"Ka Islo," she said in an almost inaudible voice. "I need to go home in a hurry."

"What?" shouted Apung Islo, loud enough to freeze and intimidate us all, loud because he was hard of hearing.

Apung Delya was suddenly gripped by nervousness, she suddenly changed her tone, a little loudly but differently.(I swear she said she wanted to go home.)

"I need to go home Ka Islo because I want to pee." She fidgeted while the rest stared at her with "How-dare-you-You-brave-of-a-woman-to-tell-him-that" look.

Ka Islo had an instant answer. "Ka Delya, you never went home to pee. You always peed where you were standing as long as you're on the ground. Where we're going, you can get out of the jeepney for a second to pee."

He cleared his throat before continuing.

"I just can not stand by and keep driving while this boy beside me is being forced to read things that destroy the foundation of his soul. His soul will be the soul of our country - and for him to believe that he is inferior only because other people had built a little older civilizations than his country's is unfair to him and to this country."

Apung Islo turned right on Banqueruan fish ponds, he stopped his jeepney on the side of the road surrounded by the view that I saw everyday in my life : the sun, fishpond, mountains in the horizon, the huts dotting the landscape, the cemetery, birds a-flying, insects a-buzzing, everything that everyone is familiar with. He gave me this lecture:

"You have a civilization as old and grand as the others' my child. Do not forget it. You didn't come out of this earth without your parents and without their parents and without... well, the very source of this nation. And what is that source? Look around you - Our civilization is imbedded in the soil.

"Look at this town - do you think it just started yesterday? or last year? or a century ago? This town had been here since the beginning of time, populated by your ancestors as old as the people of all the great civilizations in the world. They had language, music, writing, gods, places of worship but failed to keep them for posterity because our civilization, my child, is a civilization captured by the calamities of Nature.

"Nature is our civilization: our writing is carried in the bosom of strong winds of typhoons; our music is absorbed by the waters of flood; our poems die with the death of the jungles; our places of worship are taken over by the earth broken by earthquakes; our language are adapted by the fish in fishponds; our writing is imbedded in the fibers of the resilient bamboos and pineapples.

"That's why there is nothing recorded - nothing tangible that the world can feel and touch and read and write about and keep and admire and condemn.

"But my child - look at our civilization. It is our Nature painted for us every morning like this."

And I looked at what Apung Islo was trying to show me then, which, as a child I didn't completely understand; nor did I value.

Until today - and I remember the same beauty Apung Islo showed me. It is no longer there. Philippine civilization of Nature is slowly dying.

Alex Maskara

Barrio Tales