SWEET POTATO Two Weeks in the Boondocks, Sort Of By Ed Cahoon Chapter 1 Why We Go Chapter 2 - Tickets and Passports Chapter 3 Manila Chapter 4 Cebu Chapter 5 Camotes at Last Chapter 6 Nighttime Vigils Chapter 7 I Bathe Chapter 8 The Funeral Chapter 9 The Boondocks Chapter 10 The Beach Chapter 11 Back to Cebu Chapter 12 A Long Day Home Chapter 1 Why We Go "I said to the people of the Philippines whence I came, I shall return. Tonight, I repeat those words: I shall return!" Douglas MacArthur, after his arrival in Australia following his evacuation from the Philippines. 17 October 1944 Negotiating the tight, serpentine drive-thru lane, necessitated by the value of land in Monterey, California, I leave my car window open so I can stick my burrito out into the air, being careful to hold the open end aloft. Experience has taught me that failure to consider this can result in hot burrito contents in my crotch, particularly when paying more attention to driving than proper burrito cooling procedure. Burritos seem to be the only breakfast food served hot enough to burn my mouth if I don't employ this cooling method. I'm surprised any food is served hot enough to burn, particularly given McDonald's litigation experience stemming from overly hot products in laps. I shouldn't complain that my food is too hot. I have broken my fast, albeit of questionable nutritional value, and I can wash it down with a Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, nectar of the Gods, while listening to KPIG radio -"one oh seven oink five"- arguably the last independent radio station in the nation. Yesterday I couldn't do any of these things. Like MacArthur in World War II, I have two previous military tours of duty in the Philippines and I have a warm spot in my heart for Filipinos. My first experience occurred when the sexual mores of my generation were peaking. The Air Force sent me there in 1976 after basic training and technical school. It was, as they call it, my first permanent duty assignment as a young man of 20 from a small town on Cape Cod. I was a walking hormone being sent to one of the sex capitals of the world. I stayed for eleven years. Eventually I had to get married. I was exhausted. It was with great reluctance that I learned what the Air Force meant by the term "permanent" and I was eventually forced to rejoined normal military society outside of the Philippines and complete my military service before taking my pension. I would have certainly completed a third assignment there but the Mount Pinatubo volcano ensured that I could never return, at least not at government expense. Following several weeks of daily telephone updates on the illness of my brother-in-law Andres, my wife, Vilma, finally convinces him to check into a hospital in the city of Cebu, on the island of Cebu, in the central Philippines. The accounts of his condition that Vilma gets from Andres' wife are sketchy and no doctors will deign to get on the phone with us. The initial symptoms that Theresa reports to us are jaundice and an inability to eat caused by some sort of growth in Andres' mouth or ailment to his throat; it's not really made clear to us. The doctors give Theresa their opinions and she relates it all to her nephew, Mark, who accompanied her to the hospital for support. Mark comes out into the lobby, to the only phone we can call in to, and relates it to Vilma. So far, all the updates are communicated in Cebuano, the language of the Central Philippines. When Vilma gets off the phone she translates it all into English for me and then asks for my diagnosis of Andres' condition. I feel an obligation for erudition but I really have no opinion. They have checked Andre into a university hospital in Cebu and he may be under the care of less-than-experienced physicians and nurses. We are told that he hasn't eaten in nearly a month due to the mouth/throat thing and that he has an infection and is dehydrated from weeks of improper nutrition. The hospital puts him on intravenous feeding and starts an antibiotic. After a day or two we learn that the fever and jaundice is reducing. The hospital seems to be doing all the appropriate blood tests and the reports that we get are that all of his internal functions and levels are normal. They do however, bring up the subject of a blood transfusion which strikes me as just a way to make some extra profit. Nothing I've heard so far lends any justification for a transfusion but perhaps Philippine doctors like to do that. I don't know because they still won't get on the phone with us. Several days later we learn that one of the many evaluations they conducted was a bone marrow test. The results of that test were positive for "blood cancer", more commonly called leukemia. We learn, second or third-hand again, that the doctors are recommending that chemotherapy begin immediately. I've been around enough cancer patients to know that you need as healthy a patient as you can get before administering chemotherapy because it works on the general principle that the chemicals bring the patient as close to death as possible in the hopes of killing the cancer first. You don't do that to someone with an infection that's not under control unless it's a last resort. It may be a last resort in this case but no one is telling us that. We recommend through Mark and Theresa that we don't think Andres should be subjected to that yet. After many more international phone calls we learn that the doctors stopped the antibiotic because, as best we can determine, it conflicted with some component of the leukemia or its related side effects. His fever begins to rise again; Vilma's concern rises in exponential proportion; I'm asked to figure it all out, and still no doctors get on the phone with us. I spend as much time as I can on the Internet learning about leukemia. I inquire with the doctor assigned to the military unit I began working for following my military retirement in Monterey, California. There are no answers to be found from any source based on the small amount of information I have to work from. Vilma calls the hospital an exhausting number of times each day. After several days of medical stasis she takes a respite from the phone for one day. That evening the phone rings at an unusual hour. I answer and it's a call from the Philippines. It fills me with dread. It's very costly for someone in the Philippines to call the United States and it rarely occurs. The last time I can recall it happening was 14 months prior when we received a call that Francio, Vilma's eldest brother, had died. This evening's message is short, to save money: "Please call us back at this phone number" and I hurriedly write the number down. Vilma grabs the phone and dials furiously, and I know she's feeling guilty that she hasn't called all day. I don't know who she's talking to but I understand what she's saying in Cebuano, "No bad news, no bad news, no bad news." Who ever is on the other end of the line doesn't get to complete their message, because Vilma has the phone behind her head now. Apparently they said enough that she knows she doesn't want to hear the rest. She's face down on the pillow saying the same thing over and over. She's sobbing now so I take the phone and say "hello". I can hear a faint voice answer me but there's no point in attempting a conversation over such a poor connection since their English often isn't any better than my Cebuano so I just hang up, confident they'll figure out what's going on at this end. Vilma traveled to the Philippines 14 months ago for Francio's funeral and again recently to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his death. There was some significance of the second visit that I never quite grasped but I could tell she felt an obligation to make that trip. Francio was 62 upon his death, Andres is only 52. We spent a fair amount of money for the two previous trips and the prospect of another one so soon is difficult to consider but I know how important it is to her. After Vilma recovers slightly she says to me, "I don't think I can handle another trip, emotionally." "I know how you feel and your family will understand if you don't go." "Why don't you go with me?" I quickly calculate that, even if she doesn't travel we will still be obligated for all the expenses associated with the hospital stay and the funeral. If we both travel the expenses would be complicated. "That's not very practical and my passport is expired" I offer. I have been in my current job for a little over a year and have just enough vacation days accumulated to cover a trip like this and Vilma's leave balance is near zero since she's made the two long trips in the span of just over a year. For both of us to burn so much leave doesn't make much practical sense. I know she's considered the option of not going at all and the option of going without me but she keeps coming back to both of us traveling. She is committed to going but seems equally committed to the notion that she can't handle the stress without the support of my presence. The costs seem irrelevant to her, probably owing to my history of being able to support whatever crisis has emerged from the Philippines over the years. The very next day we start paying the casket, transportation, and funeral expenses through international money transfers. We get a bit of good new that Theresa has an unusually rare job in the Philippines that actually has health insurance so most of the hospital expenses are covered and will not be our responsibility. Theresa's pay is poor so I'm very surprised by this news. It's fortunate for another reason. Hospitals in the Philippines will not discharge a patient until their bill is paid. This applies to healthy people who have survived their hospital treatment. I observed this years ago when friends required hospitalization. Discharge is often controlled by bars on the windows, and by placing the nurses' station by the exit doors. I remember people who could not pay their bill and for every day they remained in the hospital the charges increased. When a hospital has a failure-to-thrive incident they hold the corpse hostage until the bill is paid. That presents a significantly easier logistics challenge for the hospital but I do wonder if they ever get stiffed anyway. Pun intended. I can't expect you to make it through this dry background material without entertaining you as often as reverence will permit. I'm not kidding about holding the deceased hostage and, fortunately, Theresa's insurance pays quickly and they are able to attend to the details of the funeral and transportation from Cebu to the hometown of Vilma's family. The Philippines, located 9,000 miles from the United States' west coast, is a nation comprised of 7,107 islands, many barely qualifying for that designation. There are almost a dozen major islands with Luzon being the northernmost, and the location of the capital city of Manila. Mindanao is the southernmost major island. Luzon and Mindanao are about the same size and bookend, north to south, most of the other 7,105 islands. Cebu is approximately midway between Luzon and Mindanao. Cebu is the name of the island and the capital city on the island. It is also the name of the province incorporating some smaller outlying islands. The group of central islands of the Philippines are referred to collectively as the Visayan Islands. There are said to be over 1,000 different dialects spoken in the Philippines. The language spoken in Cebu has been largely adopted in the Visayas. It's called Cebuano but sometimes referred to as Visayan. It's also widely spoken on Mindanao but not indigenous to Luzon. The adopted national language is based on Tagalog, the indigenous language of parts of Luzon, to include Manila. The national language is officially called Pilipino, though I don't hear that word used often. English is widely spoken in varying degrees, a result of the country being an American colony for 50 years. The correct way to spell the country name is Philippines and the correct way to spell the word describing people originating there is Filipino. A native speaker will enunciate those two words as Pilippines (dropping the H) and Pilipino respectively. The hard "F" sound is one of seven consonants now in the Pilipino alphabet reserved only for foreign words. Pilipino speakers will often confuse the "P" and "F" sounds when speaking English. "I'll drink a Fepsi flease" is one notable example. To add to the confusion, male gender is expressed with an "o" at the end of a word and female with an "a", so a male is a Filipino while a female is a Filipina. When speaking of a mixed group the male gender is employed. Philippine history is often summarized as: 300 years in a convent and 50 years in a brothel. The Portuguese explorer Magellan, flying under the flag of Spain, discovered the islands in 1521 while searching for the spices of the Indies. Consequently the Cebuano language is far more Spanish influenced than other languages in the Philippines. Magellan's intended circumnavigation of the globe was terminated by his death at the hands of natives on what is now Cebu. There is a cross on display in the center of the city of Cebu that purports to be the actual one he was crucified on, now encased in a protective outer wood sheath. Spain controlled the Philippines from the 1500's until the Spanish American War when, in 1898 the Spanish were defeated in the Philippines. That began the 50 years as an American colony interrupted for several years by Japanese occupation during WWII. In the Camotes Sea, approximately two hours off-shore from Cebu, depending on the speed of the boat you are traveling, is a small island group of the same name. Camotes consists of three major and one minor island. Camotes is home for Vilma and her family. Andres had been living in Cebu for the financial opportunities offered by the proximity of a city. His body is transported to Camotes for burial in the family plot in the cemetery in the town of San Francisco. Vilma has one remaining brother still living in the Philippines, dividing his time between Cebu and San Francisco, Camotes. Her eldest sister, Fidela lives two hours from us in Central California. Fidela is married to a Filipino named Mamerto but everyone calls him "Joe". Joe is retired from the US Air Force. He spent 18 of his 20 years in the Air Force stationed in the Philippines at Clark Air Base on Luzon. I spent 11 of my 29 years there as well. Joe and Fidela brought Vilma to Luzon from Camotes and gave her a job on Clark Air Base where I met her. Their motives weren't completely altruistic however since she also doubled as a live-in babysitter for their four children for most of the years Joe served there. Filipino families are dedicated to their members and, when you marry into one, you are accorded the same loyalty. Joe and Fidela have been generous and supportive of us over the years. They helped us get on our feet, upon returning to the United States from the Philippines our first time, when we had a young marriage and not too many nickels to rub together. Throughout the years they have always opened their home to us when we have been passing through as we have done for them and their children. Vilma lost both of her parents in fairly quick succession ten years ago so Joe and Fidela are the nearest equivalent to parents-in-law that I have. As such, and in spite of the loyalty and respect that I hold for them, their quirks have become more tedious over the years. Joe is starting to resemble his father, Emignaldo, quite a bit. Emignaldo was a proud WW II veteran who gradually deteriorated due to Alzheimer's disease. We had a lot of mutual admiration; me for what he did fighting in a real war; and he for the simple fact that I was a young person in the service of my country. As his disease worsened he would often talk to me in a confusing blend of English, Cebuano, and Tagalog all in the same sentence. Emignaldo was a chain smoker, and grew nearly deaf. Joe is similarly afflicted and we often have to yell for him to hear us telling him where his cigarettes are. Emignaldo came to the Philippines for a vacation during my second tour there in the mid-1980s. He and I were walking amidst the street merchants who catered mostly to young American military men just outside Clark Air Base. Emignaldo got away from me for a few minutes but then returned, proudly in possession of a new hat foisted upon him by one of the vendors. No harm per se, he needed a new hat, but evidently his mind had deteriorated to the point that he was unable to notice that his new hat had embroidered on the crown: "I may not go down in history, but I will go down on your little sister." I gently convinced him to exchange it for one with a more socially acceptable sentiment. I fear that Joe may be headed for similar deterioration though I understand that Alzheimer's tends to skip generations. Joe is starting to look more like his father every day. His hair is now bright white but he hasn't gone to a crew-cut like his dad did. He is starting to grow more stubborn in what may be an age-appropriate fashion. Fidela seems to be deteriorating in other ways, not necessarily related to dementia, that are very frustrating at times. She spends a lot of time concerned about what people outside the family think of her and she gets pouty whenever anyone inside the family calls her on it. I often admire her insight into other people; I just wish she could apply some of it to herself. She will embarrass you by exaggerating facts about you to total strangers. For example, I talked to Clint Eastwood once at some length backstage at an event in the Monterey area where he and I live. Fidela learned of this and then several months later, at a yard sale with her, I find her telling a total-stranger homeowner that Clint is a good friend of mine. Fidela's need to feel important takes many similar forms, most of which make other people cringe. Fidela's hair is probably white like Joe's but she currently sports a fetching rhubarb shade. Don't get me wrong I respect Joe and Fidela a lot and my observations and opinions are seldom expressed outside of conversations with Vilma who shares my frustration, particularly with Fidela. Sorry, this is all of the story I'm putting on my website for now while I attempt to market this book-length manuscript. You can see photos of the trip here: |
