Schooling is like Mud Fishing
Filomena Tecson had a special role in my early schooling. To every kid in my barrio she was Impong Menang, a grandmother to all. Often she speaks in metaphors. My six year old mind can’t always see the connections. For example she insists that I be a fisherman.
“Not me,” I pout.
“Ingkong is a bukid fisher, not a sea fisher,” she refers to her husband. “Fishes with a bamboo fish trap. Hovering over a
pilapil(1)’s muddy spot with his
salakab(2) to stake a claim, you’d think it was the
El Dorado Paracale mines in Camarines. In the mud he gropes and grapples with a squirming fish and unsheathes a glistening, whisker-quivering
hito. The catfish goes into his bamboo buslo tied to his waist with abaca twine. Later it reappears in the evening meal’s low
dulang(3) as
inihaw(4).” She explains this complete fishing technique accompanied by a performance worthy of a zarzuela stage act.
“What’s that gotta do with my first grade schooling?” I asked.
“You see,” she explains patiently, “Going to school is like mud fishing. First you personally stake a claim to book learning. Next you gotta feel the content--mull over the mushy ideas. Having understood and negotiated its meaning you draw it out, dress it up, and serve it on a platter.”
“But, I want to be a
maestra(5) like cousin Ating Juling, and teach at Calapan Central and wear nice clothes with collars laced with rick-rack trim,” I declared with an air of self importance that belied my years.
Impong Menang walks with a slightly suspended limp like a water insect tottering over the river tension surface. Stubbornly, she refuses the mahogany
baston(6) embellished with a smooth carabao head: my father’s present from his most recent Manila trip to the
Estrella del Norte at Escolta.
“Can navigate by myself. No expensive cane for me, thank you,” she eyes my father intently. She displays the traditional emblem of the village grandmother--a betel-stained toothy grin that challenges the corner spittoon whenever the masticated reddish juice shoots out. Admits to being fifty-eight, could have been fifteen years younger. A substitute to the betel nuts are her long thin, black
La Yebana brand cigarette. This brand is suitable for chimney smoking, the practice of old women in the northern provinces who smoke with the lighted end of the stick inside their mouths.
She lives in a two-story nipa thatched frame house. The Tecson house sits adjacent to the
Adriatico Memorial Farm School, named after an astute pre-war
politico(7)—Mindoro’s first congressman. The school’s five hectare rice field serves as the eastern foreground for Mount Halcon, the third highest mountain top in the Philippines. At Adriatico, the sixth graders were taught to become plowwrights and carpenters. The fifth graders learned to straight-plow on the school ground and raise experimental rice. The fourth and third graders were taught basketry and to haul in carabao dung as fertilizer. The second and first graders were into truck gardening and raising produce. Indeed, we were princes of the soil, the proud bhumiputra sons and daughters of our parents. My parents are no ordinary
taga bukid(8). They are progressive barrio farmers--tillers of their own land.
“I want you to have book learning,” mother said that first day of school. She has had little formal schooling but immensely valued education.
“Are you ready for school?” Impong Menang teased.
“Show her,
hala na,
anak(9), show her, “ prodded my mother beaming like the naked electric bulb that hang low over a soot-covered kitchen ceiling.
“Haven’t I stretched my arms beyond endurance long enough?” I reasoned. With a raised right arm, I wrapped the crook of my elbow over my crown and reached triumphantly for my left ear.
“There. I’m ready for school.” I had passed the litmus test—the standard measure for first grade admission.
TOP
