Cambonton Hill and Another Walk in the Clouds

I long for home each time I remember Cambonton. It sits perfectly on the horizon, draped with a thick foliage of coconut trees; the decrepit wooden window of our room framing the panorama. There used to stand atop the hill a tall and hulking tuog, standing high in stature like a proud watchman with sharp aesthesia.

I dreamt of going up Cambonton, albeit daunted by a childhood fear of wak-wak who might cast a hex on me or extract my entrails; I wanted to see how our house and the Tugbungan neighborhood would look like from up there. But the hill was for me far distant – I had to cross the Marihatag River and its tributary Adgay River to get there and maneuvering a boat with a bugsay would just make go in circles without progressing any distance. And the fear of some human-eating creatures behind the depths of the river added to the excuse.

My close encounter with Cambonton happened two years ago - at its foot, near the riverbank during a video documentary project on a women’s group working on the rehabilitation and sustainable use of mangrove forests along the river.

The encounter brought me a whole new discovery - about the beauty of the place that I call home, about the river that puts the distance to Cambonton, and about how detach I was to this side of home. And I must admit too, that it was a discovery of my naivete, of lacking the courage to give in to the subtle conjuring of Cambonton mystic, and of the inability to look beyond the baffling calmness of the Marihatag and Adgay rivers.

Someday, I’l be home again for Cambonton. By then, I’d be on the peak, no longer daunted by some occult invocations possessed by the hill that provides a perfect horizon.

Meanwhile, I’m up for another mountain trek in two weeks – back to the same summit I scaled five months ago. While other people can’t find worthy reasons why we should leave our comfort zones for some lengthy, exhausting activity, trekking has become a sort of a spiritual exercise for me.

Climbing mountains is not easy. It involves effort, perseverance, and a disciplined spirit to endure the climb - the same things you need to survive in a world of madness and muddiness.

But what becomes of a person upon reaching the summit is the greatest reward – triumphant over human spirit, transcending above fears and frailty. At the summit, one feels a true sanctuary – a place where one can walk in the clouds, reminding us who we are and what life really is all about.

The tranquil silence up there makes us hear ourselves too. Most often, we are drowned by exasperating noise brought by this crazy world and mountaintops are perfect respites for disheartened spirits.

But we don’t walk in the clouds all the time because we don’t stay on the mountaintop forever. But surely, when we get back to our real world, we bring with ourselves rejuvenated spirits and a clearer view of life, undaunted by trials that come along with reality.

1:40 am
03-28-10
Cebu City

Beyond Walking

It was 10 pm when Chris and I decided to take a walk. After a long fagging week at work, we needed something to grant ourselves relief. From Gorordo Avenue, near SSS building, we settled to walk all the way to IT Park in Lahug. 

The part of Gorordo Avenue where it merges with Escario Street is a lively ecology of confluence even at this unholy hour. A Korean convenience store never sleeps at this spot, merchandising a haphazard assortment of different kinds, from noodles, kimchi and candies to second-hand TVs, washing machines, refrigerators, etc. – an apparent microcosm of an ukay-ukay-saturated republic.

As we passed by the UP campus, the imposing oblation statue reminded me once again that an ideology that is not translated into action is a moribund rationality and that silence is a perfect accomplice of oppression and injustice. The old yet graceful acacia trees along this part of Gorordo must have gathered all discourses of students huddled beneath their branches, inscribing these opinions and feelings into their barks, made tough and calloused by time.

After passing a colorful intermixture of sidewalk carenderias, barber shops, internet cafes, and sari-sari stores, we came to the end of Gorordo Avenue where it fuses with the uphill Veterans Drive and the animated Salinas Drive. This junction is a perfect spot for street gourmet where the air smells of vibrant foodstuff, of delectable barbecue, ginabut, ngohiong, kinupusan, and lumpia that go scrumptious with puso. One finds this sidewalk panorama every night on this part of Salinas Drive. Pungko-pungko vendors line up their assorted foodstuffs, placed inside plastic containers on top of creaky tables where hungry customers, seated on creaky benches dig into their plates for quick, inexpensive dinners.

A few meters ahead, dining is more refined and tasteful in style with no creaky benches and tables, and diners are served with dandy, courteous attendants – an acute contradiction to the stark setting of pungko-pungko dining. One doesn't fret for a table inside the Ching Palace or Golden Cowrie, or the Korean-Japanese Jumong. Here, you get politely ushered to a comfortable spot.

This part of Salinas Drive, particularly the IT Park is a kaleidoscope at night, an intermingling of colors and a frequent nightspot for people in need of loosening the grip of urban strain. Business and leisure is well-defined in this area for it has become a conglomerate of BPOs, entertainment, wellness, and hospitality.

We melded with the flux of people also taking night walks on the grass-covered part of IT Park. One enjoys a moment of stillness on this spot, with only a mumbling sound of passing jeepneys from a distance and indistinct laughter of partly inebriated yuppies wining at The Walk.

At the culmination of this walk, while we looked forward to end the day with ice-cold drink, some people are yet to come out for another TGIF-night at some watering holes around the place. While the night’s darkness designates many to rest, others are yet to work on some graveyard shifts, the nights their sustenance. We were on our way home along with life’s simple pleasures; beyond walking and the subtle passage of time, joys abound at seeing life behind darkness. 

Photo credits:

http://www.cebudailyphoto.com/?cat=13
http://www.flickr.com/photos/reynaldgeonson/4180024893/


11:35 p.m.

02-11-10

cebu city

Yet hungry

N.B. - This article appeared in Cebu The Voice newspaper p. 10, February 19, 2010 issue.

Last year, we had the opportunity to visit my sister Denise and her family who live an unstrained rustic life in a vast farmland in Malasiqui, Pangasinan. We spent several days of perfect “nature relish”, which I deemed worth reprising. We got there in time for the chico harvest and the rush to fill up crates to meet the New Year celebration’s demand for globose fruits. So were the tomato vines - all limbs drooping heavy with fruits, as though restlessly waiting to be reaped. That made us rushing for baskets for a pleasantly novel gleaning experience.

Back in Cebu, we acquire edibles not from actual gleaning - the nearest farm we could get ourselves into is only the virtual FarmTown. Rather, we have to propel a push cart inside crowded grocery stores. And there’s Carbon Market, always replete with lively assortments to meet the plump urban demand for foodstuffs.

I especially enjoy Carbon Market at nightfall. The place comes even more alive with mingling dust, cacophony of creaky carts and hollering vendors, and crabbed sweaty porters – altogether amalgamating into what defines a bustling economic activity of the proletariat. Truckloads of fruits, vegetables, crops, including cutflowers from Busay, spilling into the dusty streets of M.C. Briones, Manalili, and Plaridel are at their cheapest rates, which make me marvel at the thought of relentless hunger and malnutrition still pervading in our society, like the tenacious culture of corruption in the bureaucracy.

It has been almost 30 years when member nations signed up at the UN World Food Conference in 1974 to pledge “that within a decade, no child will go to bed hungry, that no family will fear for its next day’s bread, and that no human being’s future and capacities will be stunted by malnutrition”. Yet the goal is still unattained. The eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, which comes first in the list of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that 192 member nations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015 is likewise an unfulfilled aspiration. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated 1.02 billion malnourished people in the world in 2009, an increase of more than 100 million since 1990. On the average, a person dies every second as a direct or indirect result of malnutrition - 4000 every hour - 100 000 each day - 36 million each year - 58 % of all deaths (2001-2004 estimates).

Of the 23 countries with 5 million or more undernourished people in 2001-2003, the Philippines ranked 8th, having 15.2 million people on the list. Other countries include India, China, Congo, Pakistan, and some African and Southeast Asian countries. 

While there has been enough food that this planet can supply, with food production at its best yield, one word that encompasses all this perplexity is POVERTY, which leads to unequal food distribution.

Take this case of a hungry dog and a hungry child as an analogy to explain this appalling condition. Food will go to the dog if the owner has money and the child’s parents don’t. This illustrates that food flows in the direction of economic demand, and not nutritional need, especially where people have no money to purchase food. 

I’m wondering if our leaders, who never get hungry, can ever bring themselves to sleep at this thought. Maybe they count sheeps to lull themselves. 15.2 million hungry heads would be too grim and too many to count. 

Photo credits:
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6656647
http://zzaragoza.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/philippines-poverty-2009-8-25-4-10-50.jpg