My parents had three tours with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the Philippines. In their second tour, which occurred in the late 50’s early 60’s , they worked mostly in what we called an “allocation.” As translators, it was important for them to be in a situation where they were both immersed in the local population, culture and language AND that population should be speaking a pretty pure form of the language being studied. In Bukidnon Province, the lowlands had a pretty big mix of language use. The trade language was Visayan and the local language was Binokid. My folks were studying Binokid. Lowland villages no longer had the “pure” language with many trade language words, not to mention English and Spanish words creeping into the daily lexicon.
So, on their second tour, they moved back away from the valleys taking refuge in the pure linguistic highlands of the hinterland. “Our” village was called Kibalabag (Key Bah La Bahg). To get there, you drove to the end of the highway from the provincial capital, Malaybalay. I am not sure how far of a drive it was, but, certainly not more than several miles. From that point, we meandered through the valleys gradually climbing higher into the mountains. We crossed one river once, one river twice and one river 9 times. “Crossing” is defined as wading through the river. There was no significant road, certainly no bridges, just a faint path. During the three to four month long rainy season, no one went in and no one went out. You just could not cross the rivers. Kibalabag was about 8 miles back into the mountains and covered a bit of a patch on the side of a mountain. I used to say the town I grew up in was so small we had no crime in the streets. We had crime, we just did not have streets!
My parents and brother and sister lived here most of the time and were home schooled by my parents. I stayed in bording school at Nasuli, about 12 miles on the far side of Malaybalay. Isn’t it funny how time changes things? It seemed like the other side of the world, but, in reality, it was only about 20 miles away! So, in the vacations I went up to the mountains. I loved it! I enjoyed going out into the jungle with the boys of my vintage in the village.
One of the joys I had was making rope with the folks who lived there. Cash crops were few and far in between. One of the few was finished rope or the hemp necessary to make the rope. A banana tree like plant called “abaca” (ahh bah cah) was the source of the hemp. You cut the tree down about 6 inches above the ground. Now, the term tree is used loosely. It only took one or two, maybe three whacks with a bolo (machete) to cut through the tree. It is made, like the banana tree, with thick layers of a fiberous, high water content, built like cardboard boats. These layers are kind of like petals with a leaf at the very top. After cutting the tree down, you cut off the top just below the leaves. The layers then just pop right off with a light tug. After removing a layer, the top sixteenth of an inch thick skin is pulled off. This is done by inserting a knife under about four to six inches of the skin then grabbing that bit and pulling it up which strips it off the entire six to 8 feet or so of the layer. Then, you do the same with the remaining portion and just discard the thicker portion of the layer. Next, you take the pieces of skin to a machine which has a metal blade with small teeth. You lift the blade with your foot. Throw the bulk of the skin on the far side of the machine, insert six inches or so of the skin under the blade, let the blade down, grab that short piece of skin, pull briskly and drag it through the blade. Then, reverse the process and get rid of the pulp from the last bit you held on. The fibers are hung up and dried for several days. Finally, they are either woven into ropes or packed into huge bales. In both cases, the product is taken in packs on the villagers’ backs down the trail described above and sold in Malaybalay.
We got most of our water from the river which was about half a mile away. We had large bamboo stalks about 5 to six inches diameter and about five to six feet long. Bamboo is hollow and has a membrane every foot or so that makes each compartment watertight. We would knock out all these membranes except the bottom. I do not know how much water you could carry in one tube, but, I would guess about four to five gallons.
We cooked on a fire table. This table was to one side of the kitchen. It was aboutthree feet deep and four feet wide. It was covered with the same grass roof that covered most of the roof. Oddly enough, it never caught on fire. I never understood that. We built two fires on the table and cooked in pots hung over the fires. The fire table was only walled in about 3/4s of the way up to the roof so the smake could escape outside of the house. We also had a small two burner kerosene stove; however, kerosene had to be brought in on people’s back so it was not practicle to use it. I do not recall it ever being used.
Bathing was either with a washbasin or more likely just going to the river and doing it in conjuction with washing the clothes and getting the drinking water. Remember, Get water upstream, wash downstream!
Mostly, we went to bed early. But on those days we stayed up for special circumstances we used a coleman lantern. Again, fuel had to be carried in so it was used sparingly. Being close to the equator, we did have fairly long days.
We had a two way radio and maintained a morning and evening daily contact with our headquarters in Nasuli. We did run a generator which ran the radio. I think the only time we ran it besides to run the radio was on Christmas, my dad hooked it up to the Christmas Tree lights and ran it for about an hour. The entire village turned out to see that. This radio was ultimately important to my family because we had a very strangely behaving cat. My dad killed it (one of the horrible memories etched in my brain), cut off its head and shipped the head to Nasuli to be shipped to Manila to check for the potential of Rabbies. Turned out to be infexted and we all had to leave to get shots, but that is another story. I was spared due to my arrival time at the village.
I could be like Led Zepplin and Ramble On over many topics, but will end with the only part of this story related to fishing.
We had a pretty wide river which I mentioned earlier. at times, there was virtually no water and at other times, it was a raging torrent many feet above “normal.” I can not recall ever seeing any significant fish come from the river. That has always been strange to me, even as a young kid. There were all kinds of little critters, perhaps part of the salamander family, that lived in the water and under the river rocks. These were taken for food and I can recall hunting for them with other village boys. I do not know how they tasted because they ended up in their homes. My mom was pretty flexible, but she drew the line at wierd things and the field rats which were a delicacy in this village. Those were huge critters a good 2 feet from nose to tip of tail.
I will probably write a few more stories about this village as it has many fond memories so if this sort of thing appeals to you, check back again.
In the meantime, enjoy the Emmrod fishing system as shown on the web site www.MyCompactFishing.com.
