Random Thoughts About Zamboanga – Part 2

I passed this plaza and the city hall behind it almost every day in my  walkabouts

Then there was this woman named Janna who is at least a couple of decades younger whom I met on Facebook because she has the same last name as a high school batchmate I was looking for. She also came from the same high school as we did. After a few text messages, I finally met her at her print shop in Southway Shopping Center and as a souvenir, she gave me a coffee mug with my picture on it which she downloaded from Facebook. Nice to finally meet you Janna, and thanks for the mug with my mug J.

The mug says "I Love Zambo"

While Mama was still in the hospital, my kindergarten teacher also happened to be there just a couple of rooms away. I visited Sister Ursula and reintroduced myself. Despite the hundreds if not thousands of kindergartners who went to her class through the decades, she still remembered me. Most remarkable was what she remembered about my brother Larry. She told him that he was used as the baby Jesus in a live Nativity scene at the Catholic church in Jolo one Christmas. Sister Ursula, you don’t look a day older than you were in 1962. I pray that they have resolved your medical problems by now.

Still while in the hospital I met Dr. Romulo Garcia, his wife Aida, and daughter Joy. They were in the emergency room because if I remember correctly, the doc had problems with his blood sugar and blood pressure. We were townmates in Jolo and former neighbors in Zamboanga. They happen to be in the States right now visiting some relatives near San Diego. Hey Joy, if ever you read this, you’re looking as cute as ever and I might even be crushing on you in my old age :D. You’ve got my email address and phone number so if you ever wanna get in touch… After all, you’re single and so am I J.

What do you think folks? Is she cute or what? Photo downloaded from Facebook

One thing I didn’t know until last month was that Mama was one of the first students of Notre Dame of Jolo Girls’ Department. As such, her batch was honored at the Notre Dame Grand Reunion three years ago. Irene Hassan gave me a program from that reunion. Unfortunately the batch picture of Mama was blurry and the people were unrecognizable. Well, what can you expect from an early 1950’s picture?

I was warned by my sister-in-law before I left for Zamboanga about small time kidnappers who would nab you on the street and ask for a small ransom. So I became vigilant during my walks, never going the same route twice in a row, and trying to always be aware of my surroundings. I survived Zamboanga without being kidnapped.

Owning a pharmacy in Zamboanga appears to be very good business. Each time I went to one, the counters were always swarming with customers. It didn’t matter which pharmacy it was - Joan’s, Oro, Mercury, and a couple of others which names I don’t remember.

I can truly say that I overdosed on satti in Zamboanga. I just wish there was more roughage in it, because the white rice tamu certainly didn’t cut it. I would have gotten more fiber if I chewed on the sticks, which were probably not much tougher than the chicken skewered on them.

Whenever people asked about Mama’s ailment and I told them colon cancer, responses would almost always mention Cory Aquino’s valiant battle with it and losing anyway, probably shortening her life with aggressive chemotherapy. Mama decided with the opposite treatment plan, meaning doing nothing  after the initial surgery, and lived a better life for more than 5 years after.

On the night of Mama’s death, I had gone commando for a few hours between the time I was awakened, up to the time I returned home pre-dawn. You see, I slept in this very thin technical shorts with no built in underwear liner because of the heat and humidity. At least the shorts kept some semblance of modesty and decency instead of being completely naked while staying in other people’s homes. In the dark of night you couldn’t see through the shorts. At least I hope you couldn’t and didn’t.

          It just occurred to me a month later that the metal plate I’ve had in my left ankle since 1972 didn’t set off any metal detectors in airports. I was in a motorcycle accident that year.

                Well folks, I think that’s it for my Zamboanga experiences. Thanks for reading if you did and I hope I didn’t bore you too much. 

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A Missed High School Reunion and Why?

I really wanted to go to my Notre Dame High School reunion but dearth of funds prevented me from doing so. In the two weeks prior to the event, I was quietly hoping to win the lottery and make a surprise appearance, but that dream never happened. Imagine me showing up unannounced at my mother’s doorstep. She probably wouldn’t have believed it was me. Let’s see, here is what it all boiled down to. It would have cost about  $1,200 for a round trip ticket to and from Los Angeles to Manila to Zamboanga. Add a couple more grand to that for expenses and money for mom, well, that just made it unaffordable based on my income. Even if I didn’t have to pay the mortgage, bills, and other living expenses, that amount would have taken three months of work to earn. If I was an RN, half a month would have been enough (saying that with envy). I should have chosen a better major in college if I was able to predict then where I would end up now. Well, that’s life. While I was contemplating this, I didn’t even know if my passport was current or already expired so I better dig it out and check (it doesn’t expire until February 2015). I’d better start saving a little bit here and there starting now so hopefully I would have adequate funds in a couple of years for the next reunion which would be our 40^th anniversary. I’m not that old, am I?

 Some of you already know why I haven’t been able to save the last two years. I’ve been searching for an alternative aerobic exercise to running and had bought several equipment starting from a treadmill, an elliptical machine, a road bike, and a spinning bike. In anticipation of my worsening ankle tendons, I had to find a replacement activity the satisfy my daily exercise needs and the search for an endorphin high. But these machines cost a lot of money, ergo, no savings to speak of for two years. Add to that the dental surgery with sleep anesthesia the last couple of years and  partial dentures afterwards, I’m surprised I’m not in the red today.

So there you go my dear classmates. In the end it was all a dollars and cents issue or the lack thereof. Sorry to have missed joining you in the joyous occasion especially when the men were woefully underrepresented. You don’t know how envious I am of all of you who could make it there. I did enjoy looking at all the pictures you posted and the chats we had on Facebook regarding all the activities before and after the event. I don’t know how my social anxiety would have fared had I been there, but I’m sure it would have been manageable within a few minutes of seeing you all again after 38 years. I pray we shall meet again at our 40^th anniversary. More power to the Notre Dame High School Class of 1973! Hail, Hail to Notre Dame!

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Nangka-Nangka Questions Answered

galunggong or tamarung

After I posted the blog regarding Nangka-Nangka (a house of ill repute in our small town) in a closed Facebook group of my high school classmates, it was barraged with comments and answers. Within the first hour, there were already 88 comments.  So let me see if I can digest all this information in as little space as possible. Here are some information I gathered from my classmates in Facebook.

First, I was mistaken about the location. Famy said it was in the middle of Martirez St. in Upper San Raymundo district, and not past the Philippine Constabulary barracks which I thought. That immediately tells you how much I know or better still, don’t know about the place.

The second piece of information was that it was a house and in front of this house was a Nangka (jackfruit) tree, thus the name of the place.

Third, the women there were called Tamarungs, as Froebel reminded us. Well, Tamarung is a kind of cheap fish (galunggong in the Filipino language) which sometimes causes your tongue to itch. The correlation being, if you availed of the services of the women in Nangka-Nangka and you didn’t wear protection, you might develop an itch in your nether regions, or worse, a drip. Wait, maybe those two come hand in hand.

Here is a paraphrase of what Soraya told me. “I remember (in elementary school) when a group of 3 or 4 heavily made up girls with full red lipstick would walk in front of our house and the tricycle drivers would yell “tamarung!”. I asked my grandma why they were called tamarung and she said because they were bad girls from Nangka-Nangka. What is Nangka-Nangka and why is it called so? Because that place has a jackfruit tree on the pathway leading to the house.”

Fourth, per Famy, Nangka-Nangka has ceased to exist since the martial law days of the 70’s.

Several pieces of good information continued to come from Froebel who seems to be an expert on the subject, which brings us to number five. The tamarungs had competition in town! They were sea gypsies from the town of Pangutaran, who even preceded the tamarungs from the town of Jolo in that kind of business. Here is a direct quote from Froebel, “mostly boys back then went for the 'sea gypsies' rather than the girls in nangka-nangka. It’s because they are brunette..slim..young and they are very salty (sultry) :D” 

sea gypsies

Here’s more info from Soraya: the people of Jolo (called Tausugs), never bought tamarung fish because there were so many good variety of other fish to choose from the market, thus the tamarung were usually left to rot. Which I guess is what happened to your genital areas after you went to see the tamarung women.

And one last item from our prolific informant, Froebel. He says, “Back in the day (early 70's)...when I was in my teens, I hung out occasionally and sometimes on weekends at my uncle's house in Upper San Raymundo. Their house stood  right by the corner of the alley going to Nangka-Nangka and must have been 4 houses away from the nangka tree. There I listened to the legends, stories, gossips back in the day. According to the older people, when you visit Nangka-Nangka, you can negotiate with the tamarung about their prize range. With an older tamarung, you pay 10-15, sometimes 20 pesos. Younger ones will cost you double. But if you're short of cash, go there late at night (past 12 a.m.) and prizes can go down to 5 pesos guaranteed. Just like going to the movies (last full show), it’s cheap according to them. These tamarungs were local, pure-bred Tausug.” (*side note – at the time 4 pesos = 1 US dollar*)  Froebel adds, “When it gets slow in Nangka-Nangka, you can see the tamarungs heading West towards the docks. There they met with their no.1 rivals - the sea gypsies. Oh, talking about the sea gypsy girls, I remember a gypsy named Lily-Ann. she was a BO DEREK look-alike (from Bus-Bus district).If only she braided her hair like BO, it could have been her, only saltier!” 

(I wonder if there was some kind of Sharks and Jets feud between those two groups ala West Side Story…)

So there you go folks! Everything you’ve ever (or maybe never) wanted to know about Nangka-Nangka and its resident tamarungs.

Which brings us to the second part of this blog. We now know that Nangka-Nangka is defunct. My classmates and I were batting ideas around about restarting the business in our town. After all there was no competition to speak of. Prior to this, a couple of guys talked about hunting for buried Japanese treasure, but restarting Nangka-Nangka would be more feasible. This time we would plant a durian tree at the pathway and call the place, what else? Durian Durian of course! Please, you can look up durian on the internet yourself, can’t you? 

 Famy mentioned that this could be a very lucrative business because of the presence of U.S. Marines in the area (they are there to train local troops). Salma inquired as to who would like to volunteer to be the Mama San of the place, while Soraya said a feasibility study must be done first. I said we should name the place - Durian Durian: A Notre Dame Alumni Cooperative – brought to you by Batch ’73. It was suggested that Famy should have a large advertising banner placed in town. Business partners from our batch would have included nurses and health clinic workers (free condoms and AIDS tests!), doctors (free consultations and treatments for STD’s!), a banker, a dean of computer studies, a mental health worker (me!), and other venture capitalists.

Well everyone, it sounds like a plan so let’s get the ball rolling, get the show on the road, get it kickstarted, and get the men back on the Tamarung saddle!

*DISCLAIMER. Part two of this blogpost was not intended to be a serious discussion of starting a prostitution business. My classmates and I were only joking around with our posts on Facebook and we were all having fun with how the conversation went. Besides, if Mother Superior ever read what we talked about, she surely would have given each of us 10 slaps of the ruler on the palms of our hands if she didn’t get apoplexy first. Thanks for playing along.

I would never have been able to compile this information without the help of my partners in crime, whose expertise and knowledge of the subject matter, I’m eternally grateful for. Thanks to Froebel, Famy, Soraya, Ric, Jane, Leonie, the director, producer, screenwriter, makeup artist, waterboy, etc., etc., etc… But most of all, thanks to the Tamarungs of Nangka-Nangka for making this blogpost possible.

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Facebook Discussions About High School

Former classmates from our little town of Jolo (in the province of Sulu in the Philippines), and I have been having a discussion on Facebook about happenings in our lives during those days. Even though I say classmates, it wasn’t true in the real sense of the word because we were divided by great distance into the Notre Dame Girl’s Department run by the Dominican Sisters, and Notre Dame Boy’s Department, managed by the Marist Brothers. The discussions centered on secrets people had in high school regarding crushes, admirers, real or imagined relationships, and such. It’s so funny at our age to be pondering these things (we are all in our mid 50’s). Could that mean that we are still young at heart despite our chronological ages? So far, few if any have spilled the beans. Some of these supposed secrets were already known back then but they were never overt. Apparently, a few people knew more about them than others. Those who were in the loop are beginning to drop hints about what purportedly happened. Most, including me were either innocent, utterly clueless, or just lived  sheltered lives under the constant supervision of conservative and very strict parents.

So that got me digging into the deep recesses of my mind to try to remember what I did in high school and why I wasn’t socially active (and still not to this day). Well, I was more involved in sports back then. As a freshman, I played basketball, then learned tennis in my sophomore year, broke my left ankle in a motorcycle accident as a junior, then it was back to tennis as a senior. A lot of my free time was spent at the Bureau of Public Highways tennis court initially, then Jolo Tennis Club, and at the Notre Dame gymnasium tennis courts. In between, there was hunting birds with my cousin (he shot the birds with his BB gun and his maid dressed and cooked them. We even ate a bat and a kingfisher once). There was also table tennis at the house of one of our teachers (Mr. Villanueva) on some weekends. All those physical activities left me no time to be socially involved with male peers or girls. That, and the aforementioned constant supervision of conservative and very strict parents. But then again, that may be just be my reserved personality. My younger brother turned out socially much better under the same parentage after all. By the way, nowadays I socialize better while running. There is something about opening up my sweat glands that make me open up my vocal cords too.

Addendum 8/10/11 @ 400 P.M.: I was not with the boy’s department students taking the jeepneys  from Plaza Rizal to Gandasuli because I usually hitched a ride with the Nangquils  whose father was the district engineer, from their house in BPH. This made miss admiring the PYT’s from the girl’s department while the jeeps circled the plaza.

So my dear classmates who by chance happen to read this -  sorry for not having any juicy secrets to divulge to you, however I’m intrigued to hear about yours. I can only offer you this Beatles song:

Listen,
Do you want to know a secret?,
Do you promise not to tell?, whoa oh, oh.

Closer,
Let me whisper in your ear,
Say the words you long to hear,
I'm in love with you.

p.s. Diana A. in early high school and Ohara N. much later, and one other who happens to be on Facebook who shall remain nameless… I started to type in their last names but I decided otherwise to protect the good names of the innocent. Thanks for letting me share.

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