Wild Boar's Tooth (Part 1)

This is not going to be about what I had for breakfast and how I rarely have it.

Just a few minutes ago, I was out there on the veranda trying to withstand the cold wind, smoking. I thought about a place that I would frequent as a child. This was in a remote town where people relied on farming to live, where my parents grew up. I thought about this place while trying to decide on whether I should just go back home and teach. It is difficult to understand how I would always be pulled into the memory of this beautiful town while I was in the middle of making a decision that would shape tomorrows in the most exciting yet frightful ways imaginable.

In the name of expediency, allow me to be a fallen leaf on a river that knows no bound, so I will go with the current and talk about this place.

From the city where I grew up, it takes 3 hours to get there. The jeepney (there weren't buses yet) would only get me as far as the last municipality (Pitogo), and from there, I would either walk or ride a horse, if I got lucky. Most of the time, it was a long walk to this beautiful town, which I would just call Lower (short for "Lower Panikian").

Back then, about 27 years ago, electricity was something that people were praying for, so that arriving late in Pitogo would mean an exciting hike in the dark to Lower. I was not aware of the dangers on the road, where rebels or soldiers were known to pass by after sunset. Yes, even soldiers were a threat. My folks had learned to live with this uncertainty, and they had done it so well that I thought of the hike nothing but fun.

I remember I would be given my own sulo- a torch made of dried coconut leaves tied together. I particularly liked this, as its light would never die out. I only had to wave it in the air when the fire went out, and it would be lit again. It has been many years since I last saw something like this.

Lower is a very quiet (I was tempted to say peaceful, but I would be inconsistent later when I talk about armed men) place, almost serene. I remember four houses in the village besides my grandparents': Aunt Juanita's, Aunt Annie's, Lolo Publing's, and another relative's house. They are about fifty steps apart from each other. Lola's (as we call grandmother in Filipino) place is at the highest point, with front and back yards covered with bermudagrass. Though this house is bigger than the rest in the village, it is still standing on stilts. The space under the house is used to store farming tools, chickens, corn and a rice grinder (a simple machinery that you push and pull to mill rice).

To get to the other houses, I would be running down a small hill, amidst coconut and Talisay trees. I would do this after breakfast, so I could invite my cousins to play hide and seek or to climb trees; my favorite is the Batilis tree at the back of my grandparents' house, overlooking a deep valley and a small river.

If I wanted to have some casava, I would go up the mountain where my uncle Titing is. I remember him having a lot of this root crop. He would cook some for me and my cousins, and allow us to have half a cup of some coffee they got from the "Sentro", a bigger town. 

It was fascinating to observe how the coffee was prepared. First, he would put some water into the rice pan that he would place on three rocks, and using the ember of some dried, fallen branches to boil the water. Then he would put the powdered coffee, then some sugar. The smell always brought a smile.

This is how I fell in love with coffee.