Baguio Midland Courier Website

EDITORIAL

The View from Carabao Mountain

Last week, on June 12, we had a gathering to memorialize the first anniversary of Cecile Afable’s passing. I was asked to write something to mark the event, perhaps an editorial, and found myself reflecting on my parents and my childhood. There are many things that I remember about my parents, and I have numerous stories about my mother. When I tried to write my “editorial,” I felt like thanking my parents. This “editorial” does it in a most indirect way. To our first homes and surroundings, and to our parents’ attitudes, we owe the paths we take.

* * * * * * * * * *
We lived first in Guisad, in a yellow two-story house that had some gingerbread scrollwork below the eaves, but only along the side visible from Ferguson Road. The gingerbread was a flourish to give the house some ornamentation; the house was large but otherwise plain. I have some memories, probably recreated from stories that were told to me, of our short residence in Batangas, where my parents, Silvestre and Cecile attempted to set up house after the war. But my first memories are really of Guisad.

The house was not accessible by car. Groceries were carried from an alley off Ferguson Road, downhill, then across a bridge, then past two or three houses. There was also a path from Bokawkan Road where even today the school for the blind stands. The steep downhill path from the school ended in our backyard. There was land on one side of the house, enough for a poultry, and a large garden which was tended by my uncle Bernie (Okubo) who had a room in our house. Downstairs lived two boarders, my Uncle Sebyo and a man named Agosto, who worked in the Kairuz lumber mill near Sepic Road.

I crossed the garden then went down a few steps to the alley that led directly to the road to the Campo Filipino Elementary School. This alley was muddy when it rained, and even then had tin shacks wedged against the older more solidly built homes. I did not know it then, but the alley – already crowded and dirty – was a precursor to the anarchic future of Baguio City architecture.

In 1947, my grandmother Josefa, who was bedridden and lived with us, died. It was also the year my brother Bembo was born, and the year I went to first grade. In 1947, my mother also started to write for the Midland Courier.

After my mother’s death last year, I went to revisit my old school (now Bonifacio Elementary) and follow the paths that led to our house. The distances have shrunk; I suppose that for a child of four or five, to climb the steep path to Bokawkan Road was a sustained effort worthy of praise. The flat land of Guisad, which surrounded our school was farm and pasture land. The land of the Bureau of Plant Industry adjoined the farmland, and their vegetable gardens added yet more green and more space.

In that first house, with its spacious central room, and in the farmland of Guisad Valley, I had my first experience of the world and my first notions of a home. The world was spacious and seemed to expand from the house. What lay beyond the green hills of Quezon Hill and Pinsao was uncharted and yet to be explored.

When we moved to P. Burgos, where Cecile Afable lived for 60 years, it seemed like a faraway place to move (I was eight). The road and our driveway were freshly bulldozed continuations of P. Burgos from what is now Santo Nino Hospital. “Upper P. Burgos” and the spur that intersects with Bokawkan were footpaths that were not frequently used. To get to town, we walked to Trinidad Road (now Magsaysay) and were very happy to ride in a jeep that came from Lucban.

We had an impressive view of Carabao Mountain from our windows. When I was about 12, I hiked up Carabao Mountain with some friends. We started from Lucban, and soon were away from houses. The trail that led to the top was worn and was slick with dried pine needles. From the mountain top we could see our house across Lucban Valley, amazed that we had walked so far. Then we crossed over the ridge and followed a steeper trail downhill. The trail ended behind a cockpit, in Trinidad, close to the main road.

Much later, after a long-delayed homecoming because of Martial Law (c. 1974) I was distressed at my first sight of Carabao Mountain. All over were houses, and the mountain I remembered, green with outcroppings of gray boulders, had simply been erased. At night the lights from the mountain were a pretty sight, but by day we could see the reality of urban blight in Baguio.

The four-story cement building that stands beside our P. Burgos house was built by an uncaring investor and has blocked out a big portion of our view of Carabao Mountain. Today, a dozen years later, the building is unfinished. Rusty rebar sticks out of the roof lines, and a few plants have started to sprout on the roof. This building next door, which was squeezed into a narrow lot, is unfinished like many cement monstrosities in Baguio. Currently it is occupied by an evangelical college, with a sign encouraging students “to enroll anytime.”

My mother has been recognized for many things: for being an early activist for ethnic pride, for being a feminist before “feminist” was a buzz word, for being an environmentalist, and not the least, for her sustained work as a journalist. Little known is that P. Burgos was a sanctuary for activists during the most punitive time of Martial Law.

Cecile Afable was a super mom, able to balance being a mother with her drive to succeed in the civic realm.

For us, the children, she was Inay – mother. “Inay” was a word from my father, Silvestre, who was from Batangas. I believe that when I was young, living in the ‘50s in P. Burgos, that we had the most varied library in Baguio. My parents acquired books. Both were curious journalists who were happy when we met people from faraway places. The curiosity they engendered is a natural extension of the spaces we lived in when we were young. This, then, was the gift our parents gave us-- a capability to imagine a life that was outward bound and venturesome, yet a life also linked to our childhood homes. (Andy Afable, June 2013)