Impoverished

By Conrado de Quiros

I’m aghast at and overwhelmed and thoroughly defeated by the death of Kristel Pilar Mariz Tejada. Some deaths do not particularly weigh heavily on the mind; others do. This is one of those that do.

… UP officials theorize that Tejada may have had all sorts of personal problems. But they do not rule out the possibility that her financial troubles might also have contributed to it. They have since sent their commiseration to the Tejada family and, not a little ironically, financial help to see them through in their hour of need. They cannot blame the Tejadas if the Tejadas regard their overtures less than appreciatively and remember the saying about “Aanhin pa ang damo….”

It’s tragic in all the ways that tragic can be.

At the very least, it’s so in that it’s truly tragic to be poor, mahirap ang mahirap. Many years ago, I wrote a speech titled “Tongues on Fire,” which also became the title of a book of speeches I later published. There I talked about a horrific insight I got about what it means to be poor. I’ve known poor, I’ve breathed poor, I’ve lived poor. And I’ve not forgotten the sight and sound and smell of poor, I’ve not forgotten the fear and trembling of poor.

But nothing quite prepared me for a news story I read about someone not just taking his own life but those of his entire family from having nothing in life. Nothing to see him through, nothing to look forward to. The guy had tried to keep his wife’s and five kids’ bodies and souls together, but adversity kept thwarting his efforts. The sound of his children crying themselves to sleep on their empty stomachs haunted him, and finally he and his wife decided to end it all and drag their children into it. The man came home one day, mixed insecticide into a last meal, and they went to sleep without ever waking up.

An insanity? The action of a thoroughly deranged man? To be sure. But it also gives glimpses into the pit of desperation, into the darkness of despair, into the nightmare of the poor. It is the feeling of having no one to turn to, no refuge to go to, no means of escape. It’s the feeling of being boxed in, you cannot move an inch however you squirm or thrash about.

You look at it with rich or middle-class eyes, you’ll find P6,337 or even P8,000 the silliest thing to die for. Indeed, the most incomprehensible thing to kill yourself for. Which, too, should give us whole new insights into our relative valuations of value. A peso may be bubog to us, but it is life and death, or at least food and hunger, to the street kids that regularly scour the streets badgering cars for coins.

But what makes this even more tragic is that it has to do with education, with learning, with enlightenment. It has to do with escape, with freedom, with a heroic effort to better one’s lot. What makes this even more tragic is that whatever drove Tejada to still her breath, whatever other grief she may have had in life, a good part of it was also that she could no longer go to school, she could no longer escape, she could no longer dream the dream. How can you not weep at the utter wastefulness of the wanton destruction of this girl? How can you not feel bereft at the loss of so precious a life?

That Tejada was studying at UP to begin with must suggest that she was a bright and promising kid. You cannot get to UP without being so, poor alone doesn’t cut it. That she was taking up behavioral science hammers home the loss, or the irony of that loss, all the more. To want to understood how people behave, why people act the way they do, but to not understand in the here and now why people do what they do, why life takes on the aspect of something unfeeling, something cruel, something deadly—that is the most infuriating and depressing thing of all.

Tejada may have died by her own hand, but so only literally, so only visibly, so only immediately. In the end, her hand may have been pushed to it by other things, by other beings, by other people. In the end, her death is an indictment of this country, it is an indictment of all of us, that we can allow things like this to come to pass. John Donne once said that the death of a single person diminishes us all. Certainly, the death of this one person diminishes us all.

The death of this one child impoverishes us all.

 

 

suicide’s a bitch (updated)

UP manila and CHED are grasping at straws, hoping an investigation will reveal that it wasn’t just the tuition problem but a confluence of events — besides the poverty, there was an unfaithful boyfriend perhaps?  an uncaring or cruel parent?   a personality or mental disorder that suddenly manifested?  all of the above? — that drove kristel to suicide.

but even if she had had other problems, doubtless the overriding one was the tuition problem, which preoccupied and worried her no end over the last months of her life. and she and her parents did not lack for due diligence, checking out all options, writing the letters that had to be written, pleading begging meeting with admin people for help, trying to meet deadlines, dealing with red tape, while studying to get good grades.

it’s easy to say that she could should have settled for less, like PUP where it’s cheaper, or that she could have, while on leave-of-absence, gotten a job and made ipon to pay her loans and the next tuition.  it’s easy to say that she should have been strong and tough, rolled with the punches instead of throwing in the towel. easy to say she was wrong, she was sick, she was dysfunctional.

easy to say, because clearly you have no idea what it’s like to be poor, most likely you don’t really KNOW anyone who’s poor, and you just do not have the mind-heart to imagine the suffering and despair that being poor, having no money, having to go hungry is all about.  obviously, you are happy enough with the status quo, you are happy enough with this state of affairs in which you find yourself among the fortunate few, and you are in denial about the gross and long-running injustice that underpins your individual happiness, never mind that it has oppressed so many for so long.

yeah, it’s infinitely easier to condemn kristel than to condemn the political economic educational system that is at the root of our poverty.  yes, OUR poverty, because the poverty of the majority is the poverty of all.  ang sakit ng kalingkingan ay sakit ng buong katawan; lalo pang masakit kung halos buong katawan ang naghihirap.  and if you don’t feel the sakit, if you’re dedma, then you must be an extremely dead cell, like hair, or patay na kuko, and the least you can do is suffer our grief in dead silence.

*

read, too, ana marie pamintuan’s Despair, and rody vera’s facebook status that i’m privileged to share here.

Rodolfo Vera  May mga nagsasabi na marami daw factors kung bakit nagsu-suicide ang isang tao kung kaya’t hindi daw dapat ibintang sa sistema ang kamatayan ni Kristel. At saka hindi naman daw sinabi ng sistema na magpakamatay siya. Marami naman daw nagkagayon ang financial situation pero hindi naman nagpakamatay. Gusto kong isuka sa kanila ang mga katwirang iyan nang marinig ko si Christopher Tejada, ang tatay ni Kristel, kung paano niya nasaksihan ang dahan-dahang pagbulusok ng damdamin at kalagayan ni Kristel:

“Sa Sta Cruz kami noon, bumili ang anak ko ng kendi sa halagang 20 pesos. Ang sabi ko, ‘anak, bakit mo ginastos lahat iyan sa kendi?’ Ang sagot niya sa akin, ‘Tay, lunch ko na po ito.’ Ganoon siya ka pursigido para lang makapasok sa school… Kahit pa siya magutom, makapasok lang. UP ang naging buhay niya…”

Maaring maraming factor ang nagdudulot ng pagpapatiwakal ng isang tao. PERO hindi ibig sabihin na natawaran na ang pinsalang dinulot ng tiwaling sistema sa edukasyon sa isang tulad ni Kristel. Totoong maraming nananatiling buhay at nagtitimpi lamang, o tinitiis ang ganyang sistema. Nagpapasya ang iba na huwag na lang ito pansinin, huwag nang manggulo para sa pagbabago. Sa partikular na kontekstong ito hindi ko tuloy alam kung sino sa kanila ang mas matapang.

Oo, hindi sinabi ng sistema na magpakamatay tayo. Dahil walang pakialam ang sistema kung magpakamatay ka, o magutom ka, o mag-abroad ka, o manigas ka sa kinatatayuan mo ngayon. Ang importante lang sa sistema ay magbayad ka. Wala itong pakialam kung saan mo kukunin ang pambayad. At hindi magbabago ang sistema kung tiniis mo lang ito dahil kapag tiniis mo ito, magiging pruweba ka lang ng sistema na epektibo naman pala ito. Kaya natin tinutuligsa ang sistema ay dahil WALA ITONG PAKIALAM kung buhay o mamatay o magutom ang enrolee. Basta nagbayad siya. Yun ang bulgar, yun ang burgis. Yun ang walang puso. Nakakasulasok. Ito ang pinakanakakahiyang panahon para sa U.P. at sistemang edukasyon sa bayan ko.

*

Lutong Makaw

By Solita Collas-Monsod

I HAVE had three very long conversations on the Sabah issue with historian Samuel K. Tan (PhD from Syracuse), who taught at UP for 30 years and was at one point the chairman of the History Department. Tan is a very prolific writer with at least six books under his belt, including A History of the Philippines, The Muslim South and Beyond, Suratsog (annotated Bibliography of Jawi materials of the Muslim South), Selected Essays on the Filipino Muslims. His interest in the Sabah issue may be because he himself was born and raised in Sulu, but he is a treasure trove of information on the topic. And I’d like to share some of what I learned from him, as well as from his brother, lawyer Ancheta Tan.

First, the question of whether the transaction between the Sultan of Sulu (Jamalul Kiram I) and Gustave Baron Overbeck in 1878 was a cession (grant) or a lease. The contract was written in Tausog — the sultan spoke no English — and the controversy centers on the translation of the Tausog word “padjak.” You have American, Dutch and Spanish linguists on one side (lease) and the British on the other (cede/grant).

Well, Tan is Tausog, and his Suratsog is an annotated translation of Tausog documents spanning the reign of Sultan Jamalul Kiram II. And he says “padjak” is unambiguous: it means lease. Aside from the fact that the $5,000 annual payment in perpetuity is consistent with a lease contract and not with a cession, there is one argument, this time forwarded by Chet Tan, that should convince anyone but the British government, and now the Malaysian government. In Tausog, there is a specific term for “sale” (“dagang”), and “buy” (“bi”). So if North Borneo was sold or bought, the term used would not have been “padjak.” That British translation was clearly in bad faith, with malice aforethought.

I have elsewhere discussed another action in bad faith of the British government — when it annexed North Borneo as a colony a mere six days after the Philippines became independent, and faced with humongous problems related to the aftermath of WW II. But Samuel K. Tan points out another: this time related to the so-called Cobbold Commission.

But first, a little background. The Federation of Malaya, composed of 11 states in the Malay Peninsula, won its independence from Great Britain in 1957. It seems that there was growing international pressure at that time on the latter, including pressure from the United States, to grant independence to its colonies (their unpreparedness being no excuse, per the UN resolution). Two of its largest colonies were Sarawak and Sabah (formerly North Borneo) in the island of Borneo. Whether it was Tungku Abdul Rahman of Malaya or the British government who first got the idea to enfold Sabah and Sarawak into the Federation of Malaya (and call it Malaysia) is immaterial — but both countries certainly were enthusiastic about it. For the Federation, it would mean increasing their land area by two and a half times. For Great Britain, it would at least ensure that the former colonies would be “safe” from Indonesia and the Philippines.

And so the Cobbold Commission (CC) was created (Jan. 1962) formally known as “Commission of Enquiry,” with the stated purpose of ascertaining the views of the peoples of North Borneo and Sarawak on the proposed merger.

The CC was composed of three British: Cobbold, former governor of the Bank of England, plus a former governor of Sarawak, and a former official of the Federation of Malaya; on the Malayan side, a former chief minister and the top official of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Samuel Tan points out a glaring flaw: the citizens of Sabah and Sarawak had no representation in the CC.

Tan also points out another glaring shortcoming: that no referendum was actually held, in the sense of the people of Sabah and Sarawak casting a vote to be part of the proposed Malaysia. What instead happened was either that their “leaders” were consulted and/or “hearings” were conducted.

Understand, Reader, that Sabah and Sarawak together have a land area about two-thirds the size of the Philippines. And yet by June of 1962,or scarcely five months after the CC was formed, its report was submitted (in confidence) to their principals — the prime ministers of Great Britain and the Malayan Federation respectively.

And guess what it said? That one-third of the people of Sabah and Sarawak were fully supportive; one-third were conditionally supportive (safeguards had to be included); and one third-wanted either that Sarawak and North Borneo gain independence first before thinking about a merger, or were totally against the merger.

That was June, right? And yet in August of the same year, the CC final report stated that more than 70% of the people of North Borneo and Sarawak were in favor. What kind of arithmetic did they use between June and August? Reportedly, the North Borneans were very surprised at the result.

What is not a surprise that the CC declared itself to be in firm support for a federated Malaysia.

In contemporary lingo, the whole process, although Samuel K. Tan was too polite to say it, was “lutong makaw.”

There is more: Tan says that when it was proposed that the UN step in, in light of several objections raised internally and internationally, Great Britain gave notice that it would not be bound by the findings and recommendations of U Thant (UN Secretary General at the time) Can you imagine the effect that announcement would have on the UN’s report?

And as if to add insult to injury, Tan also recalls that observers sent by the Philippines and Indonesia were hampered by bureaucratic obstacles.

The Boat from Sabah

By Daryll Delgado

I wrote this four years ago, while in the middle of a research project focused on trafficked labor. All these articles and opinions and strong feelings about Sabah surfacing again reminded me of that project, the people we met, the things we observed, the experiences we had, and so many more that have to be left unsaid.

Exactly three in the afternoon, the hour of great mercy, someone announced wryly, when I asked for the time. We arrived at the Zamboanga City port area in a gleaming, cream-colored, Toyota Altis, looking ridiculously conspicuous and unsure of ourselves. We told the driver to take shade, hide a little. He parked the car closest to the wall, but within full view of the area of water where the boat was supposed to dock. To our left, we could see the façade of the gothic Bureau of Customs and Immigrations building – its grand pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, large windows and elaborate tracery providing a stark contrast to the tableau of poverty in front of it. We stayed in the car, hesitant to be out in the scorching hot afternoon, hesitant to confront what we had come all the way to this dramatically stunning but perpetually troubled region for.

The boat from Sabah had not yet arrived, we were told. An opening, however, had already been cleared between a passenger vessel and a domestic cargo ship. Military jeeps, police mobiles, two ambulance units, and an International Committee of the Red Cross wagon were also already in front of the docks. Immigrations authorities in their green fatigues, and Red Cross volunteers in bright red shirts, took advantage of the shade offered by the swaying shadow of the big Basilan-bound passenger boat that was rocking softly in the waters, loading its passengers: women with their children bound to the sides of their waists, and men carrying on their shoulders colorful nylon and plastic bags fashioned into shapes of suitcases.

There was a palpable buzz. The atmosphere at the pier was almost festive. Comfortable, at the very least. There was a relaxed camaraderie and unspoken accord among the people waiting: government workers, local and international volunteers, advocacy groups, the police, the curious, and the cargadores.

Meanwhile, our guide, a young, vivacious nurse working with the Department of Health and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, gave us instructions. We were to follow her and say “From the DOH”. That was all. Nothing more.

But we had many other questions: about the boat carrying the undocumented Filipinos who had been expelled from Sabah; about that place which has rejected and ejected them but which most of these people consider as home; about these people whose notion of country and nation are unlike our own, whose allegiances are created by wherever there is for them a family and a means to live.

The boat from Sabah, our guide said, is a big one with three main sections. It regularly plies the Sabah-Zamboanga route. It is not at all like a prison boat, she said. The first two levels are occupied by paying passengers. A metal latch-door separates them from the passengers of the boat’s topmost section. This section is reserved for the Halaw – the expelled, the rejected, the ones who have been discarded – as the deportees are referred to in the local Tausug language.

Our guide told us that the number of Halaw varies, depending on the Malaysian government’s schedule of deportation. There is what is called a massive deportation, with hundreds to thousands of undocumented Filipinos shipped back to Zamboanga every week. On a regular basis, for the so-called regular deportation, the boat from Sabah comes twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the deportees number from fifty to two hundred per trip. The Malaysian government arranges and pays for the cost of deportation. She said that the people are given some food for the boat trip, too. But most of them have been in detention centers for months, if not years, that apart from their travel documents, they do not have much else – not the money they worked for, or the families they lived with and for – when they land in our shores. Some of them, because of prolonged detention, lose their minds, their memories, and their names as well. The most unfortunate ones lose their lives.

According to the government social welfare department records, there has been a rising number of deaths from among the deportees. Infants almost always do not survive the trip. Even the adults, the very sick ones, the severely malnourished, also eventually succumb to death despite efforts to treat and rehabilitate them. Ironic, our guide said, that they should survive harsh conditions in detention, in sea transport, only to die when they are freed on land.

It had been almost half an hour already, and the afternoon was getting hotter. I started seeing mirages everywhere. The glare of the sun was so fierce that the skies, the sea, everything looked white. The blaze outshone the sparkling white sand of the islands in the horizon and we could only see a wide strip of wobbly, wavering, shimmering light from across the sea. The mountains and islands of Basilan had disappeared. No approaching boats could be seen.

In a few more minutes, though, about a dozen Badjao bancas started to float into our vision. Our guide told us that the Badjao – an ethnic indigenous group of sea-dwelling, nomadic people – usually meet the big boats on their bancas. They beg for coins to be thrown into the water, and then they exhibit their magnificent diving skills to the spectator-passengers. The entourage of bancas was a sign that a big passenger boat was approaching. We then alighted from the car and told the driver to head back to the hotel and to wait for our call.

The intense heat accosted us promptly. I swayed a little and had to take deep breaths to steady myself, before I could join my friend and our guide who had started to walk ahead of us toward the docks. As we were walking, the boat from Sabah came into view, spewing out two cones of thick black smoke into the air. The entourage of Badjao bancas u-turned in what looked like a choreographed move, and then they arranged themselves with a theatrical sense of blocking along the boat’s portside. The passengers packed themselves to this side of the boat, leaning against the rails, shouting, applauding, and waving at the kids on the bancas. A few coins glimmered momentarily as these were tossed up in the air and sliced into the sea. The Badjao kids dove swiftly after the coins underwater.

The boat continued to move slowly toward the docks, heavily tilted to one side. I feared it would spill the people over to the water altogether. My heart palpitated in excitement, in anticipation, in anxiety, as the boat neared the pier and its anchor was thrown to the wharf.

At the wharf, the inter-agency team that had come to meet the deportees started to move as well. They pulled themselves from what were earlier relaxed, comfortable poses – leaning against cars, crouched under the shadows – and composed themselves into bodies poised for action. They accorded us with slight disinterest, polite disregard as they took their positions. “From the DOH,” we said, even when nobody bothered to ask.

The smell, the heat, the noise that met us as soon as we stepped into the cargo section of the boat were more than sufficient warning of what we were to witness.

Immigration officers filed past us, followed by the quarantine team, and the Social Welfare Coordinator, who made their way to a room next to the captain’s cabin. All passengers had to pass and get their travel documents stamped in this room before they could be allowed to leave the boat.

I tried to catch up with everyone, slightly fearful of the estivadores who communicated mainly by shouting and routinely spewing colorful curses in Chavacano and some Bisaya, as they unloaded cargo from the ship. I tried even harder not to stare up to the passengers of the topmost section; tried to ignore the panicked, anxious look in their eyes. Their cheeks were sunken, their jaws stood out, their skin had boils and spots. They leaned over the rails, peeked through the metal latch-door, and watched us, not making any move, not making any sound. The rubber soles of my shoes kept sticking to the greasy surface of the metal floor and made embarrassing sucking noises the faster I walked.

In the holding room, a young female nurse who had escorted the deportees was already briefing the team. There were 261 deportees in all. At least eight of them were in emergency medical conditions, and should be rushed to the hospital as soon as possible. But there were also some newborns, infants, and a couple of other children who had to be loaded off the boat first. There was an outbreak of some kind of pox, too. Most of the passengers had already caught it.

After the briefing, we made our way to the topmost section of the boat. The latch-door was pulled and we climbed briskly up the metal stairs. When we were safely inside, the door was closed again behind us with a loud clang that reverberated throughout the floor of the Halaw section.

There were too many bunk beds, there was hardly any space to navigate between them. The light was blocked, the air was stale, and then some of the deportees started to smoke. The smell of tobacco blended with that of unwashed bodies, sweat trapped in blankets and sheets, food grease stuck on the steel bed frames, leftovers in the trash bins. But above all that, you could also smell the excitement, the fervor, but also the fear, the exhaustion, and the pain.

There was a slight confusion before we were able to locate the eight deportees in need of emergency medical assistance. Everybody had the same exhausted, but anxious look about them. Everybody looked in need of emergency medical attention.

And then we spotted them, the patients. Their limbs had shrunk, but their heels and feet had swollen to unimaginable shapes. This was the main, the most common complaint: They couldn’t move their legs. They couldn’t feel anything anymore. They had been sitting for too long – three-five-six weeks, months long. They were very rarely allowed to stand or to walk when they were in detention. They could only sit on their heels or lie on their backs. Two of them had tried to stand, and to stand up to the guard on duty, and they both got struck by a cane behind the knee and were forced to sit. So they did. They sat. They sat for too long.

Disuse atrophy of the most severe type, the nurses said. This occurs when there is an injury to, or disease of a nerve, or even from total lack of physical exercise, from simply not using the muscles enough. Considering that most of these people were manual laborers, the injury and utter lack of mobility they had been subjected to must have been pretty harsh, our guide said. She wasn’t sure if this would be reversed with vigorous exercise or better nutrition. She wasn’t even sure if it was just muscle atrophy that was the problem. Based on the pallor of their skin, the color of their eyes, she also suspected kidney failure, due to dehydration and a variety of insults to the body. This, she said, is fast becoming a common cause of mortality among deportees.

Six women went mad all at the same time in one cell, a young male deportee narrated. No, they didn’t go mad, their bodies were inhabited by demon spirits, gisaniban, explained another, a much older Moslem man. These women had grown so thin, had a wild look in their eyes. They howled at night, tore off their clothes, tried to attack the other women in the cell, they said. Good thing an Imam was around. He exorcised the demon spirits from the women’s bodies and insisted that the women be transferred to another room. The women’s chamber was a pretty bad section of the detention center, they all agreed. It was only when the women were transferred to another room that they went back to their normal selves, that they recovered their human bodies, the men said. They shook their heads of the memory, of the sight of those women. Pinaka-luoy gyud ang mga baye. The women really have it worst, said one of the male deportees. And then another one spoke: Luoy pud kaayo ang uban nga mga bata, kadtong gi-detain kauban sa mga tigulang. The others agreed, reminded of other cruelties: the kids, separated from their parents, detained in the same cells as the adults. The men narrated how they would take turns taking care of the young boys who wouldn’t stop crying at night, who refused to eat, who would get sick. They shook their heads again and again, trying to dispel the memory of those kids they weren’t able to save, the kids who eventually died. They related all this with such sadness, such anger, such pain. It was difficult to conceive of them as terrorists, insurgents, criminals, as they have often been referred to in the newspapers here and in Sabah.

The medical team returned. There weren’t enough stretchers, it turned out. One of the patients had to be carried on the back of his brother who was only just strong enough to lift the patient, off the bunk and on to his brother’s back. The patient was too tall, his limbs fell limply along the sides of his brother’s body. His bare, swollen, heavy feet scraped the metal floor as his brother crouched low and lugged the patient’s body heavily along.

Then the boat started to move, and the men panicked. Where are we being taken? What’s going to happen to us? My heart leaped, too. I tried not to panic. Probably just positioning the boat more closely to where the ambulances are, I said. But, why is the boat moving away from the pier? Why is it leaving the dock?! Was there something wrong with our papers? And then, finally, the question was asked with much fear and trepidation: Are we being taken back to Sabah?

When the boat stopped, the deportees started moving frantically toward the door, eager to leave this section, eager to get off the boat. This created a commotion that proved difficult to control. Some of the patients had to be settled back on the bunk beds, to let the other passengers out first. Two men decided to wait it out calmly and proceeded to light cigarettes instead. They had been through this before, they said. One of them had been deported thrice already, the other twice. And then they just go back. They will always keep going back. They exit through Taw-tawi, they said. No sweat. It is very easy. In Sabah, they know someone who can produce fake IDs. You want one? They offered. So easy. Sayon ra kaayo mam. It really is very easy, ma’am. They insisted.

I decided to sit with one of the patients who had been asked to stay behind. There didn’t seem to be anything particularly alarming about his condition, although there was a gangrenous wound on his elbow, and a red band was tied tightly right above it. What caught attention was that he spoke English, and only English. His eyes darted from one corner of the boat to another. He couldn’t look straight at any one point longer than a few seconds. When his eyes rested on me, piercingly, although for only a very brief moment, my heart tightened instantly with fear. I hated myself for it. Then he looked away and offered his right hand for a handshake. It took me a while to realize that he had introduced himself. His hand was furrowed, bony, dark, and small. The back of his palm was also spotted with what looked like boils. I took his hand and shook it very lightly in mine.

I only realized that I had been holding my hand out very awkwardly in the air, like I was drying it out, when someone asked me if there was something wrong with it. I shook my head furiously, mumbled something indistinct, and hid my hand behind my back.

It took more than four hours since the boat from Sabah docked, before we finally arrived at the Center for Displaced Persons.

By eight in the evening, the deportees had been loaded off the fleet of six-wheeler trucks that had brought them to their temporary home in Zamboanga, from the pier. They had been oriented of their new status and situation, and were formally welcomed to the Philippines. They were now lining up in front of a makeshift eating area for their first hot meal, since they left Sabah. All around them, the neighborhood kids were clapping their hands, welcoming them, and cheering: Halaw! Halaw! Halaw! Shouting out that derogatory term, which everyone seemed to have embraced and turned into something endearing instead.

You are now in the Philippines, you are now free, the Center Head had told them in Chavacano, Tausug, and then in Bisaya, the default Philippine languages used during orientation. When the Head translated the same message to Bahasa Melayu, some shed tears involuntarily, but very, very quietly. When they were told that they may now stand and start making their way out of the hall and into the eating area, the silence was broken by the sighs of relief, and the shuffle of feet, of some two hundred fifty three hungry people, who had sat for far too long in a place they used to call home.

We didn’t speak to each other, my friend and I, while we were in the car, on our way back to the hotel. Zamboanga looked even more intriguing in the deep blue of a March summer evening. All around us, the city had turned on its lights, the streets were filled with cars. Everywhere, parking lots were full, side streets were blocked. It was a Saturday night, after all. And the place is known for some real good nightlife. The visiting American forces sometimes leave their camps and risk their safety for this nightlife.

We turned all our attention to the driver, as we crawled down Zamboanga’s streets, in search of some mangosteen, lanzones, and other fruits in season, to bring back to Manila the next day. We asked about his family, we joked with him, we made him laugh, and we laughed much too loudly for his comfort. But, my friend and I, we were comfortable only in this kind of gaiety, so we kept at it.

Then, we passed the boulevard, which was lined with lovers and groups of friends out for some simple, inexpensive fun. From the boulevard, we could almost see the boat, decked in lights, lolling softly in the water, waiting for passengers for the return trip to Sabah. We fell silent all the way back to the hotel.

At the hotel, we let each other take as much time as we felt we needed in the shower. When it was my turn, I turned the shower knob to full heat, and let the hot water scald my skin. I opened my palms, scrubbed soap several times on them, and held them up, to cup as much hot water as they could take until they hurt, until they seriously started to hurt.

Out in the hotel balcony, while we smoked, we could almost hear the boat’s droning call, the single continuous note, vibrating through the air. We listened in silence, both of us perhaps wondering, how many of those passengers bound for Sabah would be expelled right back to this very same place with their dreams, their spirits, and their limbs broken.