MORE THAN A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

F     The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR  MANIEBO  PESTELOS

While I visited my home province, Quezon, several times in the past to attend class reunions, helped implement projects and attend burials of relatives and close friends, today it is different from all previous visits. Today, 19 August, I came  to be one of five awardees to receive the Quezon Medalya ng Karangalan Award on Public Service – Community Development, one of five awards given this year, the others being for spiritual leadership, culture and the arts, culinary arts and farming.

On the way from the airport in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, my adopted province for thirty-four years, to Lucena City, the provincial capital where the awards ceremonies would be held,  I was in a van accompanied by my wife, Jojie; a close friend from UP Los Banos, Bing Manalo-Santos, from the sorority, Sigma Delta Phi,  aligned with our  fraternity, Upsilon Sigma Phi; my daughter from a previous relationship during the turbulent martial law years, Cecille, her husband, Edwin, and Aicelle, one of their three daughters.

The composition of those who rode in the van with me represented some marked episodes in my life, more of a coincidence actually rather than by deliberate purpose or design. The others who were supposed to ride with us could not make it for various reasons, mostly for being unable to change previous engagements.

I asked permission from my co-passengers if I could  carry out an itinerary previously submitted to my Quezon High Class 1958 classmates, Nini Lopez-De Asis and Butch Gonzales, volunteer facilitators of my visit during this important occasion.

And so it came to pass that I had a sentimental journey yesterday visiting old friends before we settled for the night in this guest house called WalZen, acronym for the names of the owners, Walter and Zenaida Lopez De Asis.

First we dropped by the home of Manuel and Nora Ramirez whom I knew from my college years at UPLB in the Sixties. Manoling, a 73-year old brod from the Upsilon, had been bedridden for eleven years after a stroke and brain surgery. I remember him as a debonair senior fraternity brother, one of those “crush ng bayan” guys, along with Brods Willie Herrera, Boy Balasoto, Jun Mejia and Joven de Leon  with his lean, athletic body and a perpetual seductive smile on his face.

 It was shocking to see him here on his sick bed, looking helpless and probably waiting only for the final signature, as we used to joke in the old days.

I was proven wrong with this initial impression. While lying in bed, he could do Facebook posting by the sheer ingenuity of being able to position his laptop above his bed and tapping the keyboard with the fingers of his left hand. He could listen to radio and view TV by remote control and positioning the sets conveniently near his bed.

He carries on conversation with his wife, Nora, and guests by writing on his note pad. His ears, by all indications, are still in good order for perfect listening.  During the visit, he asked me about a) where did I go after college; b) what happened to the brods who joined the underground movement in those days; c) how many are my children; d) where do I live now; e) where will I go after visiting him.

We were informed  by Bing, his frequent visitor who would always bring his favorite ayungin and other f fish menus, about his long-kept secret: Manny could paint with his toes! His batch mate in the fraternity, Nestor Navasero, taught him how to do it during one of his visits from Canada where he has lived for years. Someday we would bring his collection of art works and do an exhibit for all  the world to see and be convinced you need not feel helpless while paralyzed in bed.

We laughed with him recalling our crazy adventures as fraternity brods on this campus in the Sixties, including raids on poultry farms just for the sheer challenge of eluding security guards and passers-by and going back to the frat house to other brods waiting for pulutan or sumsuman. As I looked at Manoling on his sick bed, I was thinking that being paralyzed could not be a hindrance to living a happy life. Manoling, you are a hero in that vital sense and we are all proud of you!

Next stop was in the residence of Pete and Mimi Cortes-Ocampo whom I knew also way back in the Sixties at UP Los Banos. I sat next to Pete in my animal husbandry class and knew him as the quiet, scholarly type. Mimi was a Sigma Deltan and distinguished herself as a popular campus figure identified with social causes. We lost track of each other for years but after three decades or so, I finally met her at the UPLB alumni officer where she worked.

I met them several weeks ago during their field evaluation mission in Bohol for CARD projects. My wife and I brought them home for dinner and Pete quickly noted I shared something in common with Mimi: our house was filled with all sorts of files from projects, all waiting to be properly assigned to shelves and boxes all over the house. We validated Pete’s observation in this trip when we saw Mimi’s files everywhere in all sorts of storage spaces and shelves and we all shared a good laugh about it all.

Mimi accompanied us to the office of MADECOR, probably the country’s oldest development consultancy firm, having been founded in early 70s by a team of former scholars and close friends. There I met Pids Del Rosario, MADECOR president who was at one time president of the UP Los Banos Alumni Association. Last year, Pids nominated me to receive the UPLB Outstanding Alumni Award for Community Service and Local Governance. A former awardee and a fraternity brother, Leon Arceo, endorsed the nomination and I got the award.

This visit was in connection with that award, too. When we went home to Bohol after the awarding ceremony 09 October last year, my wife promptly displayed the Mariang Makiling trophy on top of the piano where the other trophies and plaques and laminated certificates were usually displayed. That night after we arrived, a gust of monsoon wind swept away all the things on top of the piano, including my trophy, which promptly broke in several pieces.

The quest for a replacement brought me face to face with my friend Pids, whose help Mimi had sought for the replacement of that trophy. Pids waived the payment for the replacement and Mimi had to bring me here to say thank you to my friend.

From the MADECOR office, this acronym the meaning of which I could not articulate despite knowing the consultancy firm and what it does for underserved clients of development, we went to visit the couple Rem and Kits Bernal-Torres, close friends from our student days through all the decades of alternate joys and despair. I usually drop by their house on the way to destinations this side of Luzon mostly to share updates on family goings-on which could not be covered by FB posting and emails.

The Torreses were usually the willing victims of my unending gripes about life’s circumstances in those days when I was forever growing up. The day with them would not be complete without gentle admonitions to be good.  They played the shepherds to my stubborn self all throughout our student days and those years I had to endure periods of doubt and intense quest for what could be a lifelong mission in life which prosaically turned out to be just to be good at making projects work among the poor.

In this visit on the way to receiving an award from my home province, I was trying to say my gratitude and that of my family to the two of them who had done the most to keep me out of harm’s way in my pursuit of the true path towards liberation from false Messiahs on my cross.

In Lagalag, in this village where I was born, I requested the van driver Rolly to stop where our house used to stand. I remember Rem convinced me to just sell the piece of land left by my Mother and Grandmother in the 80s when they passed away because I could not manage to visit it regularly.

 I looked at the place which had become a gasoline station and I could not bear to walk towards the place where I had spent my childhood for fear I would hear the voices of my mother, grandmother and sister admonishing me for abandoning this place. I just closed my eyes to momentarily pray and then I crossed over to the other side of the road where our neighbor, Ka Nida, stood by the entrance to their house as though expecting our visit after so many decades of my absence from this neighborhood where I grew up.

In the next barangay, Taguan, already a part of Candelaria, the municipality next to Tiaong on the way to the capital, Lucena, I requested the driver to stop in front of the elementary school and called my cousin, Rhodora Pestelos-Renacido. She is a retired nurse who settled in this village where most of the Pesteloses live rather than stay in Holland where she and husband Efren had worked for decades.

Efren came to the highway where our van was parked and led us to their farm house, which turned out to be an elegant two-story building in the middle of what looked like a vast plantation. Dora showed Jojie her collection of dolls and handicraft pieces she has been teaching mothers in the area to make during their spare time so they augment family income. Efren, on the other hand, related to Bing and the others in our group their efforts to develop the place by planting fruit trees and engaging in duck raising.

He recalled that my close friend, Cecilio Adorna, came to visit the place with his son Eman to find out how they were raising ducks for to produce the delicacy known world-wide as balut.

It was around 8 in the evening when we reached Lucena. In front of Max’s restaurant by the highway to Pagbilao, I promptly called my former high school classmate, Nini. She owns the place called WalZen where we would stay for the night.

4.18 a.m., the morning after the awards program. I write this part of the column in a hotel in the middle of the city where another classmate, Butch Gonzales, had booked Jojie and I to spend the night prior to our departure tomorrow.  

We were informed our classmates from high school would come at lunch today for a sort of reunion. I am thankful for Nini and Butch for making our stay here more than a sentimental journey to our home province.

It was actually a journey to reaffirm the common ties we share with both relatives and friends to make life a little more meaningful by dedicating it to a worthy cause. The journey continues. ###

NMP/20 August 2016/4.38 a.m. /Lucena City