How I Lost Two Pillows

15 August 2009

How I lost two new pillows

Every year I have to exit the Philippines and re-enter in order to renew my visa for another year. For the third year in a row we went to Singapore, because it’s close, it’s easy, it’s super safe, and I wasn’t in the mood for any excitement. We can’t take DugDug out of the country even with Rose’s permission until he’s seven, so we made it a short trip. We left in the evening with DugDug crying in Dandy’s arms where I placed him against his will when we had to say goodbye at the airport. We slept in the Manila airport the first night and took the first flight to Singapore in the morning.

We had been thinking about going to the Singapore zoo, but it has become a tradition to say we’re going to and then not bother. I had talked Tampoka into my mindset—we’re not looking for excitement, but just a visa renewal and a return home as quickly and cheaply as possible. In that vein I was able to talk her into just hanging out around the hotel, watching TV and eating a lot. The hotel where we always stay is in the nightlife district, aka red light district (licensed and legal) where people stay up all night sitting in outdoor cafes eating and talking and smoking. I had never really noticed the prostitutes on the sidewalk before, naïve as I am, but I was walking ten feet behind Tampoka once and suddenly I was being offered “massage, hallo hallo massage” by lady after lady. Well so it took me three trips to Singapore to realize why all these young women were hanging around by themselves on the sidewalk.

Singapore is a great place to eat if you like to eat, as there is authentic Chinese food, authentic Indian food and I don’t know what else. There are four official languages. One year we had eaten in a Thai restaurant in a mall that was about the best food I ever tasted but last year we couldn’t find it again, and anyway it was expensive. These little outdoor cafes are cheap and casual, and all over the place in the area where we stay. The Chinese food is good but my favorite is the heavy egg hotcakes, like thick crepes, which you dip in a variety of curry sauces. I made sure Tampoka wouldn’t get in a weird mood by assuring her that if she ordered something she didn’t like I would eat it and she could just get something else. She loves to eat but like most Filipinos she doesn’t crave the unfamiliar. She can eat chicken heads and feet and fish heads and pig intestines but don’t be putting oregano in her spaghetti sauce.

Since all we have to do in order to renew my annual visa is leave and come back, we only spent one night, with chocolate and one exquisitely non-Filipino beer back in the room, the TV put us to sleep and we left in the morning to catch a mid-morning flight back home. As far as I can remember there was no unwanted excitement on the trip except that I forgot to bring our marriage contract, and the free one-year visa depends on my entering the country with my Filipina WIFE. So we made a point of handing our passports to the immigration agent in Manila at the same time with our left hands so he would see our matching rings. There was no trouble and I got my free visa for another year, so after holding my breath for about two weeks I felt again the cloud of anxiety drop away.

The week preceding the “out trip” had been complicated by a sore throat three days before we had to leave, which could have been a big problem since there is a virus or flu scare of some kind and traveling sick is more or less forbidden. So I had horrible visions of the worst possible thing happening—being torn away from my little boy and sent back to the US or rotting in an Asian prison hospital for trying to exit the country with sniffles. If it had been any worse I’d have rescheduled the trip but everyone wants to gouge the living daylights out of you for that so I took my chances and went to the doctor for some strong antibiotics, two kinds of cough suppressant pills, sore throat lozenges, and a nyquil-like substance so that I would sleep well in those two days I had to get over my cold. It usually takes two weeks.

The other thing I did was to sit in the sun reading for most of those two days. Usually I sit inside molding in front of my computer but I was so anxious about things not going right—considering the consequences if they didn’t, something I don’t want to name because it would be so bad: losing my status as papa of DugDug by being sent away—but I couldn’t concentrate on my work what with being sick and worried to death so I sat in the sun trying to roast the bugs out of my system. I think it helped, and sunburning my rib cage was worth it.

And the other thing I did was to never run out of drinking water during the trip; they couldn’t see me gagging and choking and coughing. Of course the first thing that happened upon our entering the airport to leave Davao was one of those coughing fits that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t exactly the wrong time and place, but I stifled it and went into a snack and trinket stall to buy the first of many bottles of water that I would buy on this trip even if it meant having to give it up at the next security station. I could barely choke out the words “mineral water” and was afraid that the clerk in the stall would run to the Quarantine agent to turn me in but as the trip went along I realized things have softened up since the Bush boys have been sent home, and airport security was not what I have gotten used to since 9-11. So up to the point of returning to the Philippines and getting my visa, I have nothing more exciting to report than the fear of spewing phlegm on a security guard.

We had been transported to Davao for our departure by Dodo in his multi-cab, that’s a minivan in front and pickup in back and it fits about 20 Filipinos so quite a few people came along to see us off. DugDug had been warned that he would have to say goodbye to us for a little but of course when it came time to do it we knew he would be unwilling, so we’d agreed to keep it short and just leave him in capable hands and just get into the airport. The weather cooperated; it was raining like crazy and everyone except DugDug wanted us to leave quickly so they could get back under their tarp in the back of the multicab.

Dodo hauled Dandy and Rose and their two kids over to Bebing’s house where she lives with her son Jayruse, who is in school to learn aircraft drafting. DugDug loves to stay at Bebing’s house and we thought it would be nice if he could stay with her since she lives in Davao, then they could meet us at the airport when we returned in only two days. We had plans to go shopping in Davao when we came back instead of blowing a lot of money in Singapore without him. I wanted to find him one of those hot wheels tricycles that was popular in the US a while back, I don’t know if they still make them, but the cheap claptrap they have here is so poorly made that I thought it would be nice to find him one of those one-piece plastic tricycles, low to the ground with a big wheel in front. I also wanted to find some new pillows for our bed and a new microphone for my karaoke habit. And get my bogus “out ticket” refunded at the mall. I have to carry a one way ticket for later on in the year, for any destination leaving the Philippines, in case someone asks to see it and they usually don’t. No one wants to get stuck with a stray American, so if you want them to let you into their country you have to show that you will be allowed in by the next country you are going to after theirs, and they might worry that the next country won’t let you in unless you can prove that you have a way out of there too. That’s an “out ticket”. The cost of doing business, the budget airline makes a mint off these tickets since the penalty for refunding a ticket is over half the price of the dang thing.

So DugDug got dropped off with Dandy, Rose, SaySay and Sayruse at Bebing’s cave in the squatter’s area in Davao. Not my favorite part of the setup, where Bebing lives. But from her viewpoint, it’s walking distance to Jayruse’s tech school and it’s not with her in-laws, where she could have built her house, and I think she likes more independence than most Filipinas care about.

Bebing’s husband Ruben had kind of left her for many years while Tampoka raised Jayruse till he was about 11 and Bebing lived in Manila and worked as a midwife. When I came here for the first time to get married, Ruben had just been gotten back by hook and by crook; they don’t have divorce here and Bebing had him blacklisted at the organization where his work assignments originate, for not paying child support. So he had no choice but to ask for her family’s forgiveness and start sending her money to take care of her and Jayruse’s needs. He could go back to work and Bebing could get out of Manila.

Bypassing the offer of a bit of land to build a house on at Ruben’s family’s property here in Panabo, Ruben took over the shell of a small two-story cinder block building in a squatters’ area in Davao and while between ships he and some friends worked 20 hours a day to put the house back together, ending up with a windowless two-story boarding house for Bebing and Jayruse to live in and rent out bedspace in several bunks upstairs. Don’t ask me how you go about getting utility accounts in a squatters’ area but she has running water and electricity and even managed to wangle a used computer and some sort of internet for Jayruse. So other than putting it in a squatters’ area and not putting any windows in it, I guess Ruben is to be commended for his effort.

Returning from Singapore we stayed at Bebing’s house and I was happy to take my medicine again as I hadn’t taken any pills with me on the trip in case they searched my bags and figured out I had a cold. Being in a windowless, brand new cement box has its advantages: fewer bugs. (The worst bug experience I’ve had in the Phils was sleeping by an open window in a middle-class home and waking to find myself being walked on by multiple cockroaches. It must have been a sudden invasion as Tampoka and I woke simultaneously and both starting flipping roaches across the room at the same time. We closed the window for the rest of the night. Another reason to live in the country; I would never live in town unless it was in an air-conditioned place so I could close the windows at night. The open sewers of town don’t exist at Manggahan; we have septic tanks here, and from time to time someone burns the trash pit which helps a lot. In town everything is someone else’s problem.)

The next day we carried out the planned shopping trip with Bebing along for fun and Jayruse at school. I couldn’t find the simple hot wheels thing so I had to settle for a pedal-go-kart which is a lot heavier than I wanted and comes unassembled in a big cardboard box. At the last minute I decided I better get Cyrus a little plastic tricycle too, never mind that it wouldn’t last long, but I knew DugDug wouldn’t share his new “bike” for at least a few days once we got it home. We didn’t have time to get my bogus out ticket refunded so I suggested we stay one more night at Bebing’s and everyone thought that was a good idea except DugDug who wanted to rush home and put his bike together right now.

The next morning I was very antsy to get home but had to keep quiet and try to flow with the relaxed pace of my wife who doesn’t like to hurry unless it’s her idea, and anyway she always enjoys visiting with any of her siblings. Finally I started whining about 10 a.m. and wanted to know if Bebing was coming along, bugging Tampoka about details and trying to get her interested in the mall where we needed to go. We had lots of “cellophane”—five bags full of small stuff collected in the previous day’s marathon mall-to-mall shopping trip, as well as two new pillows, a little plastic tricycle, and a big box with go-kart, so the plan was to send a text to Dodo and offer him the P500 we’d have to pay a too-small taxi to take us to Panabo. At least in Dodo’s multicab our stuff would ride comfortably.

Finally I could see the light at the end of Bebing’s cave: there was some supportable evidence that we would be out of there and on our way to one last mall in five minutes or less, or at least less than 45 minutes. The whole neighborhood, not just the house, gives me claustrophobia. It’s next to a smelly beach, inadequate sanitation as in God knows what they do for sewers in a squatters’ area, and access is one single-lane road with an opening at each end to roads that lead out of “the tunnel” as I think of it since it’s lined on both sides with shacks made of just about anything, practically holding each other up. Bebing’s cement box is quite a nice house for the area and I felt pretty weird driving in there the night before with a taxi full of new pillows, bikes, and groceries. The ten dollars I spent on one of those pillows would have fed one of those families for a few weeks, unfortunately. I wanted to go home real bad.

As is necessary and correct in a neighborhood like that, Bebing has an open-door policy and without windows you better bet the front door is open till bedtime. People started running in the door to say there was a big fire.

My first reaction to something like that is to wish real hard that I was dreaming. I hate emergencies where hundreds of people are running back and forth screaming. As a matter of fact, I avoid them as much as possible.

In mere seconds I snapped out of it as did the others, and I “calmly” went outside to see the fire while Tampoka and Bebing flew into a panic. It occurred to me that they were right to panic, being as how we were trapped in a cave in a tunnel and there might be trouble if there really were a big fire in the area. Out in the street I saw that a house, about a short block away, was indeed sky high in flames and to tell you the truth the next few minutes are hard to remember in exact order. I went inside to find DugDug and leave, remembering my training and vowing to leave empty-handed with only DugDug and the others, happy to survive.

It wasn’t so simple to the others. Tampoka screamed at Bebing to turn off the gas tank and the electricity and Bebing screamed that she already had. Bebing was on her knees in the totally dark bedroom trying to get the computer unplugged so it could be saved. Tampoka was running back and forth shouting, and I got the sinking feeling that if I grabbed DugDug and left, we would be alone. Not a happy thought. I already had most of our stuff packed and the cell phone was in my pocket so I shouted at Tampoka and told her we were leaving, Right Now! but it wasn’t that simple to her. She wanted to help her sister. I saw her gathering our cellophanes together, and Bebing still in the dark room…It occurred to me that caving in to the many conflicting feelings I was having was a bad idea, and I decided I had to be decisive or maybe suffer grave consequences. Our three small traveling bags had straps so I put them all on and picked up all five of our cellophanes. Never mind the two bikes. I looked at Tampoka and what was she carrying? DugDug? No, the bikes. OK forget the cellophane, I put it all down and said goodbye to it, grabbed DugDug, and walked out the door, shouting to Tampoka that she was going to come with me. Too bad for Bebing, if she wouldn’t leave I couldn’t help her. Her stuff would all be lost and she could do nothing about it. If only she hadn’t turned out the lights…but it was too late for me to help. My mind was jumping in every direction and I could only walk, I couldn’t try to help her with her stuff.

So here we are hurrying away through a seething mass of humanity, Tampoka dragging a huge cardboard box full of go kart in one hand and the little plastic trike in the other, me with DugDug and our three cloth bags, DugDug crying, Tampoka pretty hysterical. People running both directions, crying and screaming and carrying TVs, clothes wrapped up in blankets, people with nothing to save helping the others. The fire was getting closer and fast, there was no excuse for Bebing not to leave. (I’m not being melodramatic on purpose—I’ll say now that she did get out and wasn’t hurt).

I couldn’t bear to see Tampoka dragging the big box through the mud so I carried DugDug in one arm and picked up the back end of the box in the other. I didn’t look anyone in the eye, I was embarrassed to be seen saving rich people’s junk while people on all sides of me were in real trouble. But as far as I was concerned, I could easily die that day. (Five people did. The two children who started it, the old grandpa they were trying to cook for, and the baby who was sleeping unsupervised in their landlady’s place downstairs.) I was very worried about a stampede. With the fire in the middle of the squatters’ blocks, there was one way in and out of this place.

We stopped in front of a little store and stood in the shade shouting at each other. She wanted to leave me and DugDug there and go back and help Bebing. I told her the whole neighborhood was going to go up in flames all at once and we would all be killed in a stampede and she dithered noisily for a while, then made up her mind to go back. I told her to hurry and never mind Bebing if she refused to come. What made up her mind was when I mentioned my new microphone. She had just realized that I left all our cellophanes. I felt irresponsible waiting there for her but couldn’t make myself leave without her. I knew she’d be OK but I was worried about me and DugDug.

DugDug was amazingly brave at this point. I expected pure hysteria from him when Tampoka left. Surprisingly, he was OK as long as I stood in the shade near the store, but when I tried to walk into the street to see the fire he screamed, Dagan, dagan! Sunog, sunog! (Run, there’s a fire!) He was the smartest of the bunch, he didn’t give a fig about his bike at that point. My arms were shaking from adrenalin poisoning and the fatigue of holding him, not for an instant did I consider putting him down in that mess. The man who lived there offered me a chair but I couldn’t sit when my very smart little boy was telling me to run. The least I could do was stand ready, not that it would do any good if there was an explosion or any other excuse for everybody to try and leave the area at once.

After an eternity Tampoka finally made it back with our cellophanes and a big flat plastic washtub carrying Bebing’s computer. Tampoka had hired some little boys to carry all that stuff for her. She was beside herself and ready to collapse, I said we can go now but she couldn’t yet. We argued for a while and finally she got someone with one of those motorcycle sidecars that fits 20 Filipinos to load all our stuff on it. I held DugDug and stood there watching him load up our stuff; he had doubts too, I could tell he was afraid and thought better of being there at all, especially when Tampoka left. Tampoka had gone back to try and make Bebing leave, but came back not able to say where Bebing was; the house was already burning. Our driver had the presence of mind to get the man who lived there to give us some “tie-back” or plastic twine, as the load was precarious, and I walked along behind, feeling like maybe we were going to survive after all, but wondering if Bebing might have gotten trapped in the house. When we got to the pavement they made me get in and ride, as DugDug was sitting next to her screaming because he thought I was being left behind.

We offloaded everything on the main road, where there was no sign that there was a big emergency only a few blocks away. I was amazed that the people weren’t thronging out of there and occupying the general vicinity; apparently those who didn’t leave right away were still in there watching it burn and carrying loads of stuff to the beach, hoping for the best. Other than firetrucks going by, there was no indication, where we were, that anything was going wrong about five blocks away.

Since we weren’t thinking clearly we were going to go ahead and take a taxi to the mall and get my ticket refunded, but then I realized the agenda had changed and decided we’d grab a taxi and go home to Panabo right now. I know that Tampoka was beyond beyond, as she was agreeing with each of my new plans as I made them. Finally I realized we had to offload the stuff and sit tight and try to help Bebing somehow, since we were already safe. We also remembered the rest of the family and I gave the cellphone to Tampoka so she could get Dodo there with his multicab. She sent some text messages and it turned out that Dede was also in town so pretty soon after a long wait she showed up with her son YanYan who is also in school in Davao. Dodo was on his way, we were holed up with our stuff in a little carendaria (small eating place) and Tampoka was back in form conducting things by way of her cell phone.

Not much more to tell I suppose. Every details sticks in my mind but not in the right order. Dodo showed up with Haiku and naturally the back of the multicab was full of the people from home, now where are we gonna put all our awesome new mall stuff? Well it wouldn’t go in no taxi anyway, the taxis here are pretty small. Naturally since this is the Philippines everybody sat down and ate first and drank lots of Coke, before it was decided that we would all pile into the multicab and go back in.

I couldn’t think of a worse thing to do, and said so, but I stifled it and went along for the ride. The worst was over, the fire was out and about one or two hundred shacks were levelled. We stopped at the beach when the guy I’ll call Dodong waved us over and told us Bebing was OK. Jayruse had heard there was a fire and ran back home from school. Finally Bebing showed up, she was near her house. Jayruse was crying because his new boots got stolen by looters, and I guess that’s where she kept her money, in the boots. She hadn’t thought to rescue the money first, including the money I had paid her to keep DugDug for two days. I paid her again, and today when she and Jayruse went back to see if they could resurrect the place, I paid her again. So she got paid three times to watch DugDug. Well he’s worth it.

Later Jayruse confided to his cousins that the real reason he had been crying was that he had no clean underwear. Not just his boots got burned up, but everything he wasn’t wearing. Bebing had gotten a blanket filled with clothes and dragged it to the door but never got it out the door.

Oddly enough, it was Bebing’s house that stopped the fire. Being solid cement over cinder block it wasn’t easy to burn up, but the inside was gutted. Except for the upstairs where the boarders lived. The lack of windows might have saved the upstairs, as well as the cement ceiling/floor lined with roofing sheet on the bottom side. An ugly ceiling but the upstairs didn’t burn. And the fire stopped there, the houses on both sides of the street past hers were untouched. On the other side, steaming moonscape. A pile of twisted old roofing sheets, levelled to the ground, black and smelly.

I went in her house, I know, it’s stupid, but at least I didn’t go upstairs like Romche. One staircase was ash and the other wasn’t touched. Every other piece of wood and furniture downstairs was ash. I didn’t recognize the place. I couldn’t remember which room was the bedroom and which was the living room. The cement wall was almost too hot to touch and the floor was inches deep in water. Romche pointed, telling me to watch my head, which was about to touch—I looked: a big cockroach on a melted light switch. Survivor.

It took a while, but we eventually got the refrigerator and TV and two bicycles that she’d managed to save by staying behind loaded up, along with all our stuff and all those people. Dede went home the same way she’d gotten there, on the back of Neyong’s motorcycle, and Tampoka, DugDug, Bebing, Jayruse and I got a ride in Dodong’s “tricycle” (bike-powered sidecar) to the place where we could catch a bus. Dodong, a young man with hollow cheeks, asked Tampoka what he could do for his one-month old baby who had a fever. I could only suggest that his wife take some paracetemol, and paid him extra, gave up all the big coins I’d collected in my mall quest. He lost his house that day but it was a pretty normal day for him, by the look of it. At least he hadn’t lost his way of earning money.

At some point last night when we got home, after I had bought numerous liters of Coke for everybody from Dandy’s store, it suddenly hit me: those pillows! We forgot the new pillows. Tampoka said Dodong had seen someone steal them after we left, before the fire got to the house.