Posts Tagged ‘Mindanao’
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
To my mother’s everlasting delight, I was born at a very young age. Shortly thereafter, I began training with my parents for our move to the Philippines. Of course, my memories of this training are dim indeed. I do know from hearsay I almost died of malaria or some related disease in a Mexican jungle during my parents “Jungle Training Camp” which was a course where they learned how to deal with jungle living. My second birthday was held in great festive manner aboard a tramp freighter in Manila Harbor. I know this is true because I saw, like George, John, Paul and Ringo, the photograph.
My memories do begin filtering in after that. Most of them deal with growing things or doing things in the jungle. I have a visceral need to grow. Everywhere I have gone in my almost sixty years, I have had some sort of garden. One of my early gardens which spanned about eight to ten years was my orchid garden. While living in Mindanao, Philippines, I had a huge playground. Probably a hundred square miles of jungle, rivers, streams, swamps that I roamed, mostly alone but, sometimes with other American kids or Filipino friends. Inevitably, I found interesting orchids on each trip. Sometimes, they were in the ground, sometimes I climbed huge trees to get them. Gradually, my collection of orchids grew. I had over 50 different kinds all growing on the trees in my yard or hanging from wooden pots filled with shredded coconut husks which I made. For a kid growing up where there were absolutely no jobs, I managed to earn some spending money by selling these orchids. When they were in bloom, they sold. Ten centavos here and ten centavos there and I had enough money to buy rubber for my slingshots and hooks and lines for my fishing.
In 1964, we returned to the Philippines, but, I did not go back to Mindanao. I stayed in Manila to attend high school at Faith Academy. During one short vacation, I went with the Mayfields up to the allocation where they worked with the Negritos. These folk were shorter and had emigrated from somewhere other than where the more brown skinned Asian looking Filipinos had. Their skin was darker and hair more curly. Papua New Guinea? Australia’s aboriginals? I do not know. What I did know was they lived remotely and in the Jungle. Just my cup of tea. While up there, I continued my orchid hunting habits and found a very nice one. This type of orchid grew a new spike each year. The spike hung rather than stuck up in the air. Each year, the new growth would be longer than the previous growth. During the cycle, the leaves would fall off and in their place a bud would grow. Oddly, this orchid was fragrant and strongly fragrant. It was a vibrant and beautiful purple.
At the end of the semester, I headed back to Mindanao for a vacation and put this new acquisition on the front porch along with my others. I never saw it bloom again because it bloomed during the school year and I was away in boarding school. During my senior year, my dad took a bloom, put it in a small Gerber’s baby food jar with some water soaked cotton and somehow got it sent up to me at school. For some reason, the administrative staff gave it to me while I was in class. I opened the jar and the fragrance permeated the atmosphere in seconds. It was so beautiful. The memories of the flower, the fragrance and my father’s love still mist my eyes 40 plus years later.
I never saw my last childhood home again. After graduating, I left directly for the US. I have made a couple trips back to the Philippines but they were limited to Luzon and Palawan and they were business with little time to go on a vacation. Maybe it is better to retain the sweet memories of my childhood than to actually go back.
The final note on The Big Purple Orchid was for the remainder of my parents term in the Philippines, my dad said whenever that plant was in bloom, people both Americans and Filipinos from around the area would come to look at it and take pictures of it. In the final year they were there, it had 32 huge blooms on it.
My dad is long since gone and my mom is not that healthy, but both the memory of growing up with them and that orchid is fresh as spring.
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Tags: Emmrod, Mindanao, orchids, Philippines
Posted in Growing up in the Philippines | 14 Comments »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Over the course of my life, I have had a number of occasions where Mother Earth gave me a glimpse of her raw, naked power. I know why we attribute a female nature to “Earth.” We do not say “Father Earth.” It is always “Mother Earth.” It must be that ability to go from Peace, Light and Beauty to raging, unbridled explosion of the energized screaming heebee jeebees in virtual nanoseconds, and then, return to Peace, Light and Beauty as if there had been no change since the previous calm. Perhaps I need to have Billy Joel add a verse to “She’s Only a Woman to me.” Well, I digress.
Today’s memories will be three vignettes of Mother Nature’s wildness as demonstrated by the Ocean.
I made two trips to the Sulu Sea. In my first trip during the very early 1960’s, we left Mindanao on an inter-island freighter. Even with the expanded memories of my young eyes–10-11 years old at the time, I do not recall this freighter being very large. Perhaps a hundred feet long. I do not recall a lot of steel like the freighters that plied between the US and the Philippines which I clearly recall from my trips back and forth across the Pacific. In my mind’s eye, I recall a wooden boat. It had a main cargo bay in which most of the people also sat. The primary cargo was copra. Copra is the fruit of a mature coconut after the coconut is halved and the meat is popped out. The meat is dried, bagged in large burlap bags and transported to processing centers where any number of products are made. Much of it is squeezed dry and the oil saved for use in soaps, lotions and cosmetics. In its unprocessed state, it has a very strong odor. Not unpleasant, in normal circumstances. These inter-island boats are powered by large diesel engines which, in this case seem to leave a lot of the fumes in the hold.
As we started our journey from Southern Mindanao and hopped from island to island loading and unloading goods and people on a journey that would almost reach Indonesia’s outer islands, the ocean was smooth, loving, nururing and pleasant. Several hours into the trip that changed. I do not recall the transition, although there must have been one. I just remember vividly as the waves grew, the violence of the freighter’s shaking motion grew. The waves were over the top of the boat and at least 30 to 35 feet high. The babies were crying, the mothers were vomiting. The copra was emitting its fragrance in seemingly more potent quantities. The diesel engines pumped more fumes into this cacophony of smell and sound. It became unbearable to me and I felt myself becoming ill. I was regretting the fine supper I had experienced before boarding. Finally, I went up to the top of the freighter. Although seeing the violence of the ocean was frightening, the wind did clear my head which magically calmed my stomach. I remained up top for the rest of the trip. I do not know if Jonah was on board and the crew heaved him over the side or if there was another reason, but, within a few hours, the wind died to nothing, the sea was glassy and smooth with the rest of our voyage moving forward without incident.
On another day in the late 1980’s, I went fishing off the rocks about a half mile beyond the end of the road in Makaha, Waianae Coast, Oahu, Hawaii. These rocks, while old, are not so old as to have been ground down by the forces of the winds and tides. On the contrary, they are razor edged from almost any angle you touch them. They are not smooth but full of ridges, crags, valleys, cuts and breaks. When walking you need to pay attention. You better not try them barefoot. But, if you can get out to the edge, you can catch some very nice fish. All that makes these rocks hard to walk on makes them great habitat for fish. On the day I went fishing there, the ocean was calm, the sky was blue and it was just beautiful out. Now, waves come in sets, typically, about 7 in a group. You start with a small wave and the waves grow in size until the seventh which is the largest, then, it starts over again. You must watch the waves when near the edge. I do not think most of us out on those rocks that day were paying much attention. Suddenly, one wave came roaring up from the depths. It dwarfed all the large waves of the preceding hour. It was as if Neptune had been forking a bit out of each wave that came by to stockpile for a single big onslaught against the interlopers on the rocks. The wave came boiling out of the depths, crashing over the rocks in places almost three to four feet deep. Fortunately for me, I was on a rock a bit above the fray. Unfortunately for one young lady, she was in a bit of a low spot. The wave grabbed her, threw her down on the rocks and drug her about 50 or 60 feet back in towards the path. Then, with a barely a whimper, the water all dribbled away. However, the witness remained. This lady was wearing a bathing suit. Her right leg had been dragged over the lava rock the entire distance and was sliced, diced and lacerated from her thigh to her calf. It was an ugly site indeed. Someone called an ambulance to come to minister to her.
Finally, on another day, probably in late 1985, I was outside of our Makaha condominium playing on the beach with my daughter and son. My daughter was up a ways playing in the dry sand. My two year old was a bit lower and I was even closer to the water fishing. Suddenly, this same Neptune thrown abnormal wave came roiling out of the depths. Before I knew it, Willie was rolling towards the Ocean. Had I been three feet further away, I doubt I could have caught him. But, thank God, I was able to grab him before he became victim of the Ocean’s insatiable hunger.
Thus, over my life I have learned, the power of Nature is awesome. Do not take either the calm or the storm for granted. Our lives are nothing against it. I thank God for protecting me and mine in those cases were the line between life and death, health and ill can be so thin.
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Tags: 8 coil fishing rod, compact fishing, Emmrod, Fishing fun, hawaii, Mindanao, mother nature, Pacific Ocean Fishing, wave action
Posted in Environmental issues, Fishing and Hawaii experiences, Growing up in the Philippines | 17 Comments »
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Growing up in the Philippines, I was a mini-Tarzan. I spent a lot of my spare time in the jungle surrounding the missionary town where we lived. As a boarding student, I spent a lot of my time in solitary hunting and fishing endeavours. Nasuli was a couple hundred acre area where we had the headquarters for the southern branch of Wycliffe Bible Translators. The “town” was on the edge of the jungle with a river on one side and fields on the other with an airport at the top end where our Helio Courriers were kept. Over the years, the number of houses expanded to about 50 or 60. We lived in about three different sections of the town over the years as my parents were founding members going out in 1953. They were stationed there several times and out in the jungles others. I took most of my schooling up to 7th grade there be it living with my folks or in a boarding school we had.
I was fearless as a kid. I roamed an area up to about 15 miles in some directions and about five to ten miles in others. I had three particular passions. Growing a garden, collecting orchids and fishing! Fishing in Nasuli involved mostly trot line fishing. The budding Atherton Enterprises, grew stuff in the garden and sold the produce or went to the jungle and collected orchids which were then sold to the other missionary families for the centavos necessary to go to Bankod to buy hooks and line. Then, the fishing started.
On occassion, I would fish in the small lake for which Nasuli was named. This was a five or ten acre lake with three deep 20-30 foot springs. The water was crystal clear, cold and drew us kids like magnets. I was in and out of that pool many times a day. I was also fishing it. There were three kinds of fish, minnows, mud fish and eels.
The eels were about five feet long and about five inches thick. We rarely saw these and the only time I was invovled in catching one was with Uncle Seymore A. who shot it late one night with a spear. Pretty good meat!
I fished for the minnows pretty regularly. These were 2 to about 4 inches long and we ate them too. I never developed a taste for them, but, they were fun to catch. I used a pretty small hook and a single piece of cooked rice on the end. Our fancy poles consisted of a six or seven foot bamboo cane cut for that purpose with my “bolo.” My bolo was made from spring steel harvested from a derelict truck. Nice, heavy and pretty sharp. I could cut a large bamboo pole several inches thick in two or three whacks. Other bait for the minnows was bread spit balls. I hated fishing with Buzzy D because he always ate the bait. He would promise not to, then, all of a sudden, it would be gone. Man! You had to bake the bread back then, you could not just go get another loaf! What was baked never lasted long! I am still mad at you Buzzy. (not)
Mud fish was the other kind of fish in this lake. The Binokid or Visayan (I am not sure which language the name came from. The local language was Binokid, the trade language was Visayan.) term for this fish is pronounced ”Hollow on.” Thais call this fish Pla chon but it shows on the menus as Snake Head Fish. Looking through photos of fish from Thailand and the Philippines, I am pretty sure it is a variety of the snake head fish family. Anyway, it was alive and well in the waters at Nasuli. Occasionally, I caught them by throwing a line out with a minnow, worms or a live frog on it. Other times, I got impatient and snagged them. By far, the most common way I fished for these was on a trot line.
There was a lot of water in this area. A river flowed serenely by one side of our acreage. Actually, our lake flowed into it through a spillway and dam set up in the early days to establish a hydro electric system. I never did learn why that never worked. But, it made a great lake for us to play in so I am glad that was done. Off to one corner of the lake, there was a little slough which proved to be a fertile fishing place. I recall once bellying up to the water’s edge to observe one of these fish that was about 18 inches long and three or four inches thick. They are built like a baseball bat. It was taking care of its tiny little babies which swirled around it but were so small you could barely distinguish one individually. I am sorry to say, the thought of the fish frying overwhelmed any thought of the fish fry and I jumped in and caught that puppy by hand and took it home. Probably severely reduced the number of fish for me to catch over the next few years. We also had a pond which had a lot of mud fish and tilapia which had been stocked by Dr. Monteymeyor from the Muswan Agricultural College about twenty miles away. I loved that man. He was such a humble and nice guy who really took a lonely kid under his wings. In my 18th or 19th year, while living with my uncle in Alabama, I leared he had passed away. It was a sad day for me. Anyway, this pond had the snakehead fish, tilapia and a big two foot plus long fish I stalked for years. I hardly ever saw it and only came close to getting once. I had a bow and arrow with a three prong tip. I saw the fish as it headed for a cave in the side of the bank, I let fly and that arrow was out in the water wiggling all over the place. By the time I grabbed it, Mr. Fish was history. I never saw it again! I did catch a lot more snakeheadfish out of that pond. Again, sorry to say, I fished the tilapia out in a couple years.
My trot line poles consisted of a piece of bamboo about two feet, maybe three feet long. I would notch them about the middle of the stick and tie my line there. Finding a likely place, and I knew the likely places in the river, lake and pond, I would place my stake at a 45 degree angle into the bank almost up to the point where I had the line tied. I had split the top end of the bamboo down an inch or two. I would fold the line into that split so the bait would hang just at the surface of the water but the line could easily pull out to give the fish some play and time to get hooked. My favorite bait was live frogs. They would swim for hours (I still feel a pang of sorrow for the frogs’ pain 40 or so years later!) and their movement was an attractant for the fish. Before leaving, I would flick my fingers in the water making a fairly large glug glug glug sound. This seemed to draw fish–or I had been told it would. I can not say definately if it was that, the frog or luck, but, I caught fish pretty regularly!
So, not much else to say about fishing there. Most of my last three years in the Philippines were spent away at boarding school outside of Manila. I only got to visit the old fishing holes during summer or Christmas breaks. I still miss them but am afraid to go back. I am sure what seemed so huge and awe inspiring to me back then will look much smaller now and I choose to enjoy the memories of grandneur and hugeness.
I did learn as a kid a lesson about conservation from the tilapia issue. If we do not shepherd our resources, we loose them. So, don’t consider me a “go back to before people were here so the animals can live like they used to” kind of guy, but, I sure do want us to do things to not only preserve the fun we can have, but even make it better. Our hunting and fishing licenses really play a big part in accomplishing that end!
One final PS that will not fit in another story. We had lots of iguana’s in this area. Mostly, they were pretty small, but, there was one big fat one that used to hang out by the pond. I tried forever to get it with my sling shot. I was a pretty good shooter and could probably still make one by hand faster than todays kids can load a computer program. One day I was in our dining room (fancy word considering the house, one of the first two or three built in the early 50’s) where we were living. It had a large window overlooking the pond down below and maybe 75 or 80 feet away. Now, this house was built almost entirely from bamboo except for the trees that formed the poles upon which it was built and the cogone grass which made the roof. The floors were split bamboo, the walls were yet another kind of thin walled bamboo split then flattened out and woven together. The grass roof was tied to bamboo slats running latterly along the bamboo pole rafters of the house. The window was a large opening in the wall which you could cover with a large piece of framed woven bamboo in a rainy time. BUT looking out of the window one day, I noticed my target of many hunting trips lying on a large limb of some jungle tree which grew out over the pond almost at eye level of where I stood. I got my sling shot out and three tries later, WHAM, I hit old lizard right in the gizard. Down he went, but, the water revived him and he swam away. I bet he is still there saying where is old David. He better hurry up!
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Tags: Bukidnon, Emmrod fishing pole, Emmrod fishing systems, Fishing fun, fishing in the Philippines, Malaybalay, Mindanao, minnows, Nasuli, Philippines. Emmrod, sling shot, snake head fish, tilapia
Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
At this point in my life, I am having a hard time recalling exactly when I took this trip. It would have been in 1962 or 1964. So, I was about 12 or about 14. My parents were missionaries in the Philippines. We lived in the second largest Island, Mindanao. Even then, the seeds of lawlessness which pervade that part of the country were there, never-the-less, it was somewhat of a fairyland in my mind. I loved it! One summer, I took a trip to Balut Island with Ken Marriott to visit the island where he worked as a translator. While the drive took almost 13 hours, it was only a bit over 100 miles. The highway was a wide gravel road where you drove in the middle except when passing. At one point, the road was out for some reason. We had to do a detour over a jungle mountain. There might have been some sort of dirt road, but, I clearly recall the bus going in the mud up to its hubs. The fact they got it out of the mud, going uphill, and got it over the mountain is a testament to the “Indomintable” spirit of the Philippinos.
We finally arrived in Cotabato City late in the evening and made arrangements to catch an outrigger canoe to go to Balut Island. I am not sure how far out that was, but, the total trip was estimated at five to six hours. We were leaving about 10 or 11 pm. The canoe was about 25 feet long, two and a half to three feet wide and about 2 feet deep. There was a bamboo cross piece about 1/3 of the way back and about 2/3 of the way back. At the ends of the bamboo and about 10 feet or a bit more out on each side there was an outrigger made from a couple pieces of bamboo. As most of the readers here are fishermen and women, I know you are seeing cane poles in your mind. There are lots of kinds of bamboo. Virtually 80 percent of several of the houses I lived in was made from about three or four kinds of bamboos. In this case, the bamboo was about 5 to 6 inches thick and probably 30 feet long before being trimmed down for the outriggers. About midway in the boat, there was a diesel inboard engine. Sorry motorheads, I have no more information on that subject beyond it turned a propellor somewhere that made the outrigger canoe go. The helmsman sat in the back and steered with a rudder.
Well, we finally pushed off the sandy beach and headed out onto the flat, moonlit sea. Soon, the combination of diesel fumes, the monotonous rocking of the boat and the steady hum of the engine lulled us all to sleep–likely including the helsman. BANG! With a shuddering crash, we came to a halt. As the moon had gone down and the sky was pitch black, a lantern was lit and we discovered we had ploughed through the outrigger of another canoe and our bow was nestled neatly on the side of their canoe. Needless to say, There were four very unhappy Philippino men blaming each other for the accident. Truth was, no one had lights on their boats and it was pitch black out. After about 15 minutes, they parties resolved their differences and pushed apart. Their outrigger was broken, ours had been knocked loose with the ratan lashingings broken. So, I climed out on the far outrigger and one of the Philippino’s climed out and retied the broken lashings. We continued on our way arriving at Balut Island as the sun was rising. The end to a perfect night!
Here are the PS’s!
#1. The guys in the boat we hit had the hugest red snapper like fish I had ever seen. Must have weighed 50 pounds or so.
#2. Looking at the map, we may actually have gone to General Santos vice Cotabato. In my mind, it was Cotabato City, but looking at the map, because Balut island is just off the point of Mindanao, that makes more sense to me.
#3. Otherwise, this is all a true story, not just a fish tale. For those, you need to get an Emmrod fishing system appropriate to your needs, head out into the wild, catch a few fish and send me an email with your fish stories!
Check out the Emmrod products at www.MyCountryhomes.com, www.Emmrodfun.com, www.Emmrodfunstore.com, www.EmmrodIdaho.com Thanks for visiting us! Dave
Tags: 8 coil fishing rod, Emmrod, Fishing fun, Mindanao, night fishing, ocean fishing, out rigger canoe, Pacific Ocean Fishing, red snapper
Posted in Growing up in the Philippines | 5 Comments »
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