Scent of A Smoky Mountain

                                            by Anna Mae N. Morallas

         Six years had passed and there is little reminder left of what used to be the Smoky Mountain of Davao City. The stench of a rotting and burning mountain of garbage no longer assaults commuters who take the “super-highway” either to avoid the traffic along MacArthur Highway or to take the shorter route in going northward. Wary drivers no longer have to carefully march along a carpet of broken glasses which would cover a good portion of the road that goes uphill, inch by inch. But the little that is left of the garbage heap cannot be ignored by closing one’s car windows or covering one’s face with a handkerchief. What is left is a stench that assaults the heart, for what is left are the people who continue to scavenge in order to live.

         Whenever I pass by this stretch of the superhighway, I do not fail to notice the house with a sari-sari store that stands elevated some good feet from the paved road. (The house was built on land that became exposed when the Matina Hill was bulldozed to clear a path for the paved highway.) What is noticeable about the house is that it is the only one in the Smoky Mountain neighborhood that doesn’t look like a crumpled sepia photograph of a house. It is the only house that doesn’t have patches of recycled rusty flat iron sheets for a roof or cardboard boxes and plastic sheets for walls. It is the only house that looks clean and complete.

         One cloudy morning, my curiosity got the better of me. I turned my car around and parked across the store. Two teen-age girls stared at me as I stepped out of my car. They didn’t stop looking as I climbed the four steps that were carved on the slope which inclined at a forty-five degree angle. On each step was a used car tire. I had to stretch my leg up to the next like I was taking two staircase steps at a time. The steps led to a bamboo porch that served as a landing for the customers. The floor was not quite steady as the bamboo slats were a little too thin and the gaps between them were a little too far apart. But as I stood on it, a picturesque view loomed before me: the waters of the Davao Gulf glimmered faintly as if paying homage to the statuesque Talomo Ranges that were partly hidden by gauzy clouds.

         The postcard view of mountain and sea gave a surreal backdrop to the sight below me: a dozen or so houses, mostly made out of recycled rusty iron sheets and cardboard boxes, stood so close to each other that they looked like a fence along the highway’s shoulder, hiding the ravine behind it. All the houses had potted plants on the front but the bougainvillas dominated the scene, their bloody-red flowers gracefully swaying with the breeze unmindful of the cargo trucks that wheezed and chomped as they climbed the road. At the front of one of the houses, a tree stood with a white round wall clock on its thin trunk: the time on its face read ten o’clock. On my watch, the time was 11:30.

         Inside the store, a boy stood just a little above the bottles with candies and cigarettes. I asked his name. Dennis, he said. He was eleven years old and he was left to tend the store. His parents and older brother are away, planting vegetables down below where they have a patch of land that is adjacent to the Orange Grove subdivision, one of the high-cost housing projects in the city. Is that your car ma’am? he asked as he fixed his gaze at my car down below the highway. Yes, I answered. You are rich, he stated. I felt embarrassed, so I asked for a stick of Marlboro. I only have Mark, Fortune and Hope, Dennis replied. I felt more embarrassed. I was not a regular smoker and it was too late before I realized that Marlboro is a relatively expensive vice for scavengers.

         While I puffed on a stick of Hope, I probed into the life of Dennis. He has a soft expression on his sunburned face. His eyebrows, fine and naturally well-shaped, arched gently, a little closely above his eyes that sparkle when he talks. His voice is soft, almost like a girl’s. He finished grade four but he seemed to be very smart. He was also very courteous. He said “Excuse me, ma’am” on the three occasions when he had to stop talking to me and checked on something inside the house. Dennis’s father is from Bukidnon, his mother is from Davao City, and they have lived in the Smoky Mountain neighborhood even before Dennis was born. Dennis’s 15-year-old brother didn’t finish elementary school.

         I opened the two cooking pots that were displayed on the ledge of the store window. One had pancit guisado in it and the other had monggo soup. Do the neighbors buy your viand? I asked. “Usahay, hinay, kay magluto man sila og ilang sud-an,” Dennis explained. (Sometimes, the sale is not good because they cook their own viand at home).

         A truck came and stopped in front of the houses across the store. Soon, several people were putting out sacks filled with empty mineral-water bottles. A weighing scale stood on the ground. I bid Dennis good-bye and slowly descended to the highway. I asked one of the men how much the empty bottles are sold for. Fourteen pesos a kilo, he said. A man from one of the houses had just placed his third sack beside the weighing scale.

         Dennis and his family are among the many that chose to stay after the squatters who lived in the midst of rubbish were demolished in 1998. Dodong lives with his wife, Jocelyn, and their 11-month-old son, Anthony, in the house across the sari-sari store. He goes to the city center on his kariton which is propelled by a bicycle; he scavenges around the city’s main streets from four o’clock in the afternoon until midnight. He stayed behind because scavenging in the new dumpsite is more difficult: the road gets very muddy during heavy rainfall that even the garbage trucks, the only available means of transportation, cannot pass through.

         About five meters from the sari-sari store, Donna and her two children are sheltered in a makeshift house made of trapal. A month ago, her house burned down. It was made of cardboard boxes. The neighbors could not contain the fire. Donna’s four-year-old son was found, curled and charred, beside the steel frame of the bed. Donna had to leave her young son late in the evening because she had to get some bets for the last two game (gambling based on the last two digits of the winning sweepstakes lottery). She earns a living as a last two usher.

         “Maluoy mi sa iya kay bulag man siya sa iyang bana. Taga-Negros na siya, walay paryente diri. Ambot, asa nang Negros? Pero unsa man ang among ikahatag? Pobre man sad mi. Nabuhi lang man sad mi sa basura,” Jocelyn said, expressing the burden of helplessness. (We pity her because she is separated from her husband. She has no relatives here because she comes from Negros. I don’t know where Negros is. But what can we offer? We, too, are poor. We also survive by scavenging).

         I waved to Dennis as I started to inch my car along the highway. Dennis waved back. I could only see his arm. His face was in the shadows.

Mappings 3

june tesorero

            On Friday, 25 June 2004, Isabelle Tesorero, 27, was attacked by three motorcycle-riding men. It happened at half past eleven in the evening at the basketball court just across their house in Davao Executive Homes in Matina. The victim got help up five meters away from her front gate.

            She was sitting at the long cement slab that served as a bench, using her cellular phone, when from the Ecoland entrance to the subdivision a red motorcycle carrying three men appeared. They sped past her but seeing the light from her mobile phone, they doubled back, alighted from the vehicle and approached her. They were dark and scruffy-looking, and seemed barely out of their teens. One of them asked her the time, and as she looked to her watch, the others took out kitchen knives. Brandishing their weapons, they asked for her phone. She refused, and a struggle ensued. She instinctively tried to hold on to the phone. Angered by her defiance, one of her attackers aimed for her chest, making a small cut on her left chest.

            “Pa! Paaa!” the victim called out just before the men succeeded in taking the phone from her. They then tugged at her handbag. Sensing someone nearby heard her cry, they pushed her off the bench and ran back to their motorcycle. Tesorero fell into the canal below the bench. Her bag, which they were not able to seize from her, was now floating in the canal with her.

            The man carrying her phone accidentally dropped it when they were still about 3 meters away. But he was able to pick it up and they sped away just as the victim’s father rushed out the gate. He found his daughter sitting in the canal, wet, dirty, and clearly shaken.

            It is easy to lay the blame on my sister. (Why did not wait until she was inside the house to use her phone? Why did she sit in the dark basketball court by herself?) And I did blame her for her fate. But she would have been less worthy of the blame if we lived in a safe village where the officials look out for the welfare of the people in the community. What happened to my sister would cause a furor in any village, and compel the people concerned to beef up security measures, but not in our village. A week later, on July 2, April Ginese, niece of a police major residing in the subdivision, also got held up. She was headed home, walking along Rolls Royce Avenue, when two men, also riding a motorcycle, came up to her. Unlike my sister however, Ginese did not put up a fight. Her hold-uppers were able to take her cellular phone. 
        
         Prior to these two incidents, there have been numerous other kinds of security problems in our subdivision.  There have been drug busts and break-ins in the past. Since the last quarter of last year, house break-ins have been occurring almost every month. Before that, thefts occurred less often, and the thieves were took pains to ensure they would not be caught. Now, thieves enter houses brazenly, in the middle of the day. Over the years, the things that have been stolen include fighting cocks from the house right across ours, the television set of the village seamstress, an important engine part of the jeep owned my sister’s boyfriend, Shellane gas in my friend’s house, and clothes hanging out to dry in another friend’s house. Cars, furniture, gas ranges, jewelry, and money have also been stolen from other village people. It had gotten worse over the years. I knew it would not be long until we ourselves would become victims of the thieves hovering like vultures around the village at night.

         We had dogs. Lots of bitches actually, which made thieves wary of even thinking of looting out house. Or so we thought. Early this year the robbers zeroed in on our house. They did not steal any of our cars or television sets. They took my dead grandmother’s orchids. The morning I found out about it I hoped she would haunt the thieves. My grandmother was very fond of her orchids, and mother had to take the responsibility of taking care of them now that she was dead. I was angry and amused at the same time. Angry because they succeeded in taking something from us, amused because all they could take were plants. This is now beyond mere thievery. Was this now desperation or a case of collective kleptomania? 

            Davao Executive Homes is a nice little spot to burgle. Situated beside the Matina Gallera Cock Pit along McArthur Highway, and just below the main entrance going up the Holy Infant Jesus Shrine, the subdivision has 200 houses on 300square-meter lots. There are two main avenues – Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz, and between them, eight streets named after less expensive cars. There are four entrance/exit points to the village, two along Quimpo Boulevard, and two along McArthur Highway.  The Quimpo Boulevard exits are near Doña Luisa Subdivision and SM City. Behind the subdivision is the Matina Golf Club, where, from the kitchen window, we can see our uncle playing golf on Sundays. Before the fences were built, the sprawling golf club was accessible from the back of our house. On sunny afternoons, little kids rolled across the greens as the older people sat and watched them. The fences were built because thieves would exit to the golf club to escape.

          Just a few days after the Ginese hold-up, another break-in occurred. On July 15, two men entered a house rented by a certain Cruz on Lancer Street.  The forced entry took place at about nine in the morning. Apparently, the thieves going around the village do their homework well. They knew there was nobody inside the house at that hour; the residents have either gone to school or work. And there was no maid. Unfortunately for them, a neighbor from the adjacent house saw them come in. The neighbor knew there was not supposed to be anybody home at that time. She ran out and alerted the village tambays sitting around the nearby sari-sari store. By the time one of the robbers opened the front gate to leave, ten men were waiting for him with dos-por-dos, batutas, and other tools by which to turn him to pulp.

          Vince Apurada, one of the men who helped beat up the caught thief, said they also called the Barangay Police, and even ABS-CBN. After beating up the first robber, they had to see if the second robber was still inside the house. But without proper authorization, they would be accused of illegal entry. So they called for ABS-CBN to act as witness that if they enter the house they would not take anything. But the second robber was no longer inside. The other robber, seeing his crime partner being ganged upon by angry villagers, was amazingly, able to escape. The villagers suspected he climbed out the roof and as his colleague was being pummeled. He was never caught. 

          Due to lack of cooperation from the members of the community, and the absence of initiative from the leaders, Davao Executive Homes is a headless chicken running amok. Crimes are being dealt with harshly, violent anger clearly getting the better of  justice and propriety.

          Ironically, the people have lost the drive to form our leaders. We no longer want to hold assemblies and meet other members of the village. No one wants to organize meetings and take proper action. Now that there is all the more reason for us to band together and erase the rising crime rate in our village, we sit complacent. This year, there was no election for both the DEH Homeowners Association and the Youth Organization. Since there was no election held, Butch Birondo, Homeowners Association president for the past two years, is still DEHHA president. It seems however, that Birondo does not wish to take any responsibility anymore.  According to other members of the DEHHA Youth Org, Allen Arquiza, DEHHA Youth President, is too busy with his personal life to address pressing issues in the village.

          On nights like this when I feel encumbered by my mind to moralize, I think about how our village has become a microcosm of Philippine society. The reason we cannot move forward as a nation is because our immediate communities are regressing. I think about the times in the past when we would receive letters from the association president and from the youth org president encouraging us to attend meetings, fill up membership forms, meet with the other people in the village. Being the self-important stuck-up snob /  paranoid recluse that I was, I snickered at the thought of ever seeing myself attend meetings. Nobody could make me go meet the other kids. I did not want neighborhood friends. I did not want to care.  Now my guilt is choking me. The other kids don’t care anymore too. Oh well, I tell myself. I let out a sigh, push the guilty feeling back down my throat and fall immediately to sleep.

^FOOTNOTES:

¹ Velasco, Ferdinand. Knowing San Juan Metro Manila. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

² ---. Founding History of San Juan as an Independent Municipality. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

³ Ibid.

⁴ Joaquin, Nick. San Juan del Monte, 1899. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ ---. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

⁷ Alvior, Jose. Battle of Pinaglabanan August 30, 1896. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

⁸ Alvior, Jose. Significant Dates and Events Which Led to the Battle of Pinaglabanan. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

⁹ ---. Monuments and Landscapes of San Juan. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

¹⁰ ---. The Pinaglabanan Memorial Shrine & the Spirit of Pinaglabanan Monument. San Juan Metro Manila 104^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pinaglabanan. MG Reprographic Inc: Metro Manila. 2000.

¹¹ Op.cit. Footnote 2.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Ibid.

³ December 16, 1998. Author’s first hand account

“This is so tight!”, my cousin from the states beamed. I looked at her quizzically, what could she possibly mean? Was she referring to the yellow top she was wearing? Or to the interior of the jeepney we were currently riding? After pondering for a minute, I realized that it was her way of saying: tsadaha ani uy! 1

She kept on waving at the people we passed by as we traveled from the hotel where we were staying in downtown Cagayan de Oro to our destination – Malasag Park 2 somewhere in Gusa. 3 It must be the novelty of riding a jeepney for the first time, I thought. It showed that she was excited. If it were possible, she would be bouncing all over the seat and would be hanging from the hand bars too. But I thought that she was handling her excitement very well, bouncing just whenever she’d forget that she had her make-up on, was wearing a tight top and pink short short shorts, and that she was already fourteen, a young lady not given to hysterics. I looked over to my other cousin who was a year older. Sitting beside my cuz from the states, she looked frowzier than usual, with her ill fitting blouse and faded pants. She had this weird expression stuck on her face as she looked on at the antics of our cousin, a what-is-she-doing?-I-should-be-indulging-her-after-all-this-is-her-first-jeepney-ride.-I-want-to-strangle-her-but-I-like-her.-I-need-to-defecate smile.

Our American cousin turns to us and say, “I haven’t seen this many Asians in one place before !” 4

“Hey Richmond! Wanna come with us?” my uncle hollered as I came down the hotel stairway to the lobby. “I’m going to take Nikki and your other cousins to Malasag Park.” I was starting to get bored, I had nothing better to do in the hotel anyway, so I thought ‘why not’.

We all went to the parking area where this red jeepney awaited us. The mirror was filled with lewd stickers of girls in bathing suits advertising how drivers can be sweet lovers; a panoramic painting of a beach with tall coconut trees and a mountain backdrop was painted in the outside walls; Thomas, Peter, Sarah, and Leah written on the roof – must be the owner’s children; and bible quotes written along the walls inside. It looked liked a preened cock, ready for a sabong match, with all the colorful designs, ribbons and flaglets.

My cousin Nikki, this being her first time in the Philippines, was already there, excited to go on her first ever jeepney ride. Unlike most girls her age here in our country, Nikki feels mortified if somebody sees her without her make-up. Nikki is only fourteen, and girls her age here probably don’t even think of putting on make-up until they’re, at least, in college.

She had been pleading with her father to let her ride a jeepney from day one, and her persistency paid off.

She said hi to the people in the jeepney beside us as we stopped at an intersection, she called out to the people waiting for their rides, “Hi there!”, “Hi!”, “Hey!” Most of the time, the other people ignored her, or would look at her oddly then continue what they have been doing. I was a bit ashamed, Filipino’s are supposedly know for their hospitality, and here I was, with my cousin back from the states, and my fellow Cagay-anon’s were ignoring her friendly greetings! Sometimes, somebody would wave back but more or less these were tambays fascinated with her bikini top.

After a while, when we were stuck in the middle of traffic, Nikki suddenly stopped waving and looked worriedly towards us. “Are they mad at me? The people, the drivers?”

I said no, of course not. They’re just busy.

“Busy? Doing what?”

Ah, well, just busy. I was stuttering, it was difficult to tell her people are just not interested.

“But why are they honking?”

Honking? I was getting perplexed.

“The drivers, they’re honking!”

Oh God! Language barrier! I reviewed the conversation in my mind, perhaps I slipped and started taking in Visayan. Why is she asking me that?

I started to answer her when I was interrupted by my uncle, her dad, “Nikki, they do that a lot here. It’s not you, it’s not us.” Then he turns to the rest and explains, “Sa States man gud, magserbato lang and driver pag nakasala ka like if nag overtake ka.” 5

I was laughing hard, grateful that it was a ‘cultural barrier’ instead of a language barrier. Putcha! English Major ko tapos dili nako sya masabtan! 6

_____________

We were cruising along Carmen when our jeepney stopped for a red light. Just inches away, four sacks of rotting garbage sat by the sidewalk as if it belonged there. My other cousins all covered their noses. I saw all their eyes rivet towards Nikki waiting for her reaction. Nikki was busy saying ‘hi’ to the old folks in the old green Volkswagen on our right who was just as busy trying to ignore her. When the stench of the rotting garbage finally assailed her nostrils, her shoulders stiffened and she jerkily turned to see what was giving off such a foul stench. We all felt a little uncomfortable, even my kid cousins wanted to impress her with what our country had to offer and admittedly, we all were intimidated. We didn’t want her to think she was better than us just because she lived in the great US of A.

Nikki didn’t cover her nose. I think she knew what we were all thinking. Nikki, who was from California, exclaimed instead, “Phew! Just like in New York, right dad?”

_____________

The jeepney parked carefully by the entrance of the park somewhere up a small mountain. I took Nikki’s hand as I guided her off the jeepney. My frowzy cousin pointed at the view of Cagayan de Oro City from where we stood, “That’s Cagayan.” I could hear pride in her voice. I was proud too of my city. And as we three gazed over the rooftops of the houses, the tall buildings and not so tall ones, the blue sea and the brown beaches, and over to the factories to our right, I imagined that Nikki was proud too. I hope that the next time I see her, it will be to hear her say, “I haven’t seen this many Filipinos in one place before.”

“Come on!” I said, “We’ll show you something you can actually brag to your friends in the states!”

We paid the entrance fee, an additional five pesos per person since we were with a foreigner and foreigners are rich with a never ending supply of dollars, and raced inside.

_____

1 This is so cool!

2 Malasag is an Ecological and Cultural Park

3 Gusa is in the outskirts of Cagayan de Oro City

4 Filipinos are lumped together with all other Asian in the USA as one minority

5 In the States, people only honk when the other driver has made a mistake like overtaking.

6 ******! I’m an English Major and I can’t understand her!

Richmond Anthony Riain B. Alfonso

00-35684

Mappings 2

Mappings # 1

The House That Was Not A Home

by: anna mae n. morallas

         At 12:00 noon, the military trustee arrives with a pot of rice on one hand and a pot of steaming pork sinigang on the other. The char-blackened pots have no lids on them and the aroma from the sinigang glides tantalizingly around one’s nostrils. The trustee sets the pots down and inserts a key into the keyhole of the iron-bar gate that kept prisoners locked from the outside. He is about to turn the key when suddenly, he freezes like an alligator wary of the stillness in its surroundings. Then, like a conductor’s baton, his arrested movement kicks off a cacophony that crumples the heavy film of the noonday heat.

         Metals clashed against metal, rocks pounded on iron, and writing pens tapped on drinking glasses. The sonorous notes from the glass-metal-rock concert, or the “noise barrage” as it was aptly called, swept across the Davao Metrodiscom barracks.¹ The sounds soared beyond the compound, slashing the somniferous air inside the Philippine National Bank, invading the incense-curtained sacristy of the San Pedro Cathedral.

         We made the noise barrage on our 14^th day of fasting which had started on June 12, a day that marked two occasions: the first day of Ramahdan and the 85th anniversary of Philippine Independence. We refused to eat the rationed food, took only biscuits and milk at sundown, to call attention to the issues affecting us, political prisoners. Our issues ranged from the simple, e.g. regular and longer outdoor hours, to the complex, i.e. repeal of the Presidential Commitment Order (PCO).

         The not-too-complex issues involved the prevailing conditions in what we mockingly called the “boarding house.” Among other concessions, we wanted “sunning” time scheduled on a longer and regular basis, not on an arbitrary manner as what was being practiced. We were allowed only thirty minutes of sunning time, a time to breathe fresh outdoor air which was quite a short respite from our cramped 14-square-foot cell. (Female political prisoners were kept in two cells; at that time, one cell had five prisoners, the other, where I was, had six. Male political prisoners were kept in slightly bigger cells). Sunning meant a time for gardening: soiling our fingers by planting oreganos, roses and cactuses in tin cans, setting a row of oreganos like cancan dancers in front of the barbed-wire fence to soften its sharp, jagged look. And for some of us, sunning was a time for gazing through the mesh of barbed wires, at the face of a male political prisoner who may be a friend, a boyfriend, or a husband. Sunning brought not so much the heat of the sun on our yellowed skin but more of the warmth from memories of days when we flirted with the sun, unrestricted, un-timed.

         On the other end, the more complex issue that we wanted to call attention to was the arbitrary arrest and detention of suspected political dissidents. Martial rule spawned laws that allowed state agents, particularly the military, to catch the “enemies of the state” as fishermen would catch bangus fry into their nets. The neat-sounding PCO (Presidential Commitment Order) which replaced the coarse-sounding ASSO (Arrest, Search and Seize Order) legalized our imprisonment despite the lack of evidence, and worst, despite charges against us having been dismissed by the courts. Martial law was inhospitable, to say the least, to political dissent in any form: underground, aboveground, subversive, subtle, practical, rhetorical, methodical, and theatrical.

         Thus, our noise barrage brought upon us the proverbial “fire and brimstone.” Crimson-faced soldiers yelled, cursed, and barged into the detention center some minutes after the noise barrage subsided. “Mga putang ina kayo! Ginugulo ‘nyo ang Pilipinas!” a soldier in full-battle gear shouted at us. Then he ordered his aide, a short and portly soldier who had a hammer in his hand, to open the iron-bar door of our cell; the soldier pushed with such strength that it swung back at him. Unfazed, the soldier stormed into our detention cell, and without much ado, hacked at the legs of our wooden double-deck bed until the furniture was reduced into a heap of broken pieces of wood.

         While the soldier was flexing his muscles at the bed, the six of us retreated into the left corner of the cell where we could immediately step into the bathroom and lock ourselves inside. We had previously agreed that if one of us would be forcibly taken out, the rest should form a tight circle around the person, all of us in kapit-bisig; in this way, they would have to drag us like a stalk of a newly-harvested TADECO⁴ banana. While huddled in the corner, we watched another soldier stripping the white walls of painstakingly prison-made artwork: Hilda’s Mt. Apo in water color; Amy’s torso of a farm girl in pencil; Eva’s poster of a barbed wire against a background of orange-red sunset in marking pen and colored pencil. We watched, alert, horrified, enraged, as the soldiers took away the proof of our humanity: books, journals, diaries, writing pens, letters, and Hallmark greeting cards. The only good thing about the horror happening before our eyes was that it made us forget that we haven’t had eaten a single decent meal for two weeks and our stomachs have begun to sound like stones racing and bumping other stones while rolling down a mountain cliff.

         In his time, the great Gandhi probably had it easier. He only had to deal with a single growling stomach, his own. We had to deal with 36 stomachs, 25 male and 11 female, each grumbling to a different cadence, each curdling to a varying degree of acidity.

         On the 32nd day, our fasting escalated into a hunger strike. Already weakened from the month-long fasting, the youngest among us, 16-year-old Flora and 18-year-old Eva, fainted after two days of a liquid-only diet. Escorted by two older prisoners, the two girls were taken to the infirmary - a nearly-dilapidated wooden building some 20 meters away from the detention center - where they recovered after having been intravenously fed with dextroglucose. The next day, the two girls continued with the hunger strike.

         As the days dragged from sunrise to sunset, conditions in the detention center worsened. Two male prisoners, Karl and Volker, accused of leading the fasting, were transferred to the Davao City Jail in Maa where they were kept together with prisoners convicted of murder, rape, theft, robbery, estafa and other common crimes. Our visitors were now limited to immediate family members who were our only link to the world beyond the detention center. Visiting time was restricted to thirty minutes, and a guard stood nearby, listening to every scrap of conversation. The visitor and the prisoner were not allowed body contact, i.e. slipping a hand through the mesh of the barbed-wire fence to touch the hand of the other. We continued to sleep on flattened cardboard boxes that could hardly keep the chill that poked out of the cement floor from creeping into our bones.

         However, the stringent conditions in the detention center only pushed us toward ingenuity. Our families and friends regularly received notes and letters that were folded and rolled a dozen or twenty times to make them look like cigarette sticks or white rabbit candies. Sanitary napkins became a convenient conduit for news from outside because they were handed to us un-inspected. (The guards apparently belonged to that breed of men who would not be caught messing with menstrual paraphernalia even if their lives depended on it.) And among ourselves, we came up with codes and signals to pass on information, to warn the others of an impending danger, to convey consent or opposition to a planned activity, and even to pass on personal messages between prisoners.

         Our hunger strike stretched into ten crucifying days and nights. On some days, our tempers would blow like steam from a whistling kettle; on other days, our dogged spirits would dissipate like mist, gauzy, impalpable. Ironically, the iron bars that kept us locked from outside, the white walls with the tiny openings near the ceiling, and the cold cement floor constantly reminded us of whom and for what we have been fighting; the reminders goaded us to the finish line. On July 24, forty-three days since we started fasting, the military authorities conceded to some of our demands. We ended our hunger strike with stomachs growling but with spirits flaring like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

         The concessions we gained from the hunger strike did not cut the sharp edges of the barbed-wire fence into blunt edges, or turned the detention center into a vacation house. The hunger strike did not deter the military from dumping more political prisoners into the detention center, filling every square inch of space at some point when Dabawenyos took to protesting on the street, en masse.⁵ What the hunger strike left in all of us was an indomitable spirit, impalpable, immeasurable, yet imprinted like a fossil that gives indisputable proof to its very existence. What we gained was another proof that will hopefully be viewed and appreciated by the generations that will come after us, the proof that even with clipped wings, the human spirit can still soar through and beyond white walls, iron bars and barbed wires.

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