Weeks before our graduation from Grade Six, the four of us were invited by Samuel, a classmate who lived at the foothill of Bueon-agan. Bueon-agan is a steep, rocky hill stooping down on the small poblacion in the valley cut by the Jal-o River. It got its name, according to local legend, from a girl or woman dinaguit —abducted from what is now called Dumaguit. From there, her body, abused and dissected, was said to have been sun-dried on the rocky slab atop the hill we now call Bueon-agan. Old folks claimed that Bueon-agan was mystically connected to the other hills of Balete: Agtawagon, Nasarok, Eumati, and another whose name is on the tip of my tongue but which I can no longer name. I have long wanted to discover the tales about these hills, but I got distracted every time I went out into the Baleten-on world. Maybe one of these days, when I am no longer preoccupied... Now, the four of us—Roy, Simeon, Jonard, and I—summoned our courage to hike into that mystical hill. This ...

I do not want to end like the old mariner grabbing people to listen to his story at the sunset of his life. I want it that at the end of the day I rest assured that I have rowed my river and handed on to my children the lessons I have learned in my journey upstream to the House of the Father. So I made, early on, a solemn vow, that I would immerse my four daughters into situations that allow them to know and love the God of Jesus of Nazareth. Sadly, like most promises, mine was half-heartedly kept. I can justify why I kept on failing. I was trained and educated to find reasons to the things I do. I have a lot of excuses; all of them are sound and rational. Yet honestly, they are like wicker baskets—they hold stones and boulders but not water. The truth of the matter is although I was raised a Catholic, (I even had seven years of formation in the seminary) I am struggling with my faith given my entanglement with Sartrean Existentialism vis-à-vis the clash of orientations at the local...

A man from the Jal-o came up one day to the Rural Health Center to seek the assistance of the midwives. His wife, he reported, was showing signs of giving birth. He identified himself as a resident of a village downstream and had come by motorboat, then the best means of getting in and out of the place. There was an access road, a dirt road, but it would take hours of hiking, for public transport was rare and the terrain too dangerous to navigate. Besides, he owned the boat. It was his means of living. He was a fisherman. He maintained a couple of tangab , or fish pens, and made his living from the river. Lately, however, he had failed to make his routine harvest because he had been attending to his expectant wife. The Rural Health Physician, noting the typically unhurried day at the RHU, permitted the nurses on rural service to accompany the sole midwife in attending to the fisherman’s wife. Soon, the group boarded the motorboat, and off the fisherman went, navigating the quiet river....

Today is the first anniversary of Yolanda, internationally known as Typhoon Haiyan, which has been regarded as the strongest of those typhoons that ravaged communities all over the world. I intended to let it pass without so much ado, for after all, most of my trees have never recovered when she battered them last years. My neighbor is still without a decent house to live in--despite the reported many humanitarian aids coursed through either the government or the non-government organizations. But there are those who knocked on our doors today, inviting us to see through the bitter experience that we had last year and reflect on the way we chose as we tried to stand up from its havoc. Ms. Viel Aquino Dee, Vice Chair of Assisi Development Foundation and Mayor Bobby Calizo of Balete, Aklan surveyed the boats made by the fisher folks themselves. The callers are the volunteers of the Associate Missionaries of the Assumption or AMA for short. I know them not personally, but I met ...

My friend Lagumbay was relaxing with some buddies over a few bottles of Gold Eagle Beer Mucho in a hut by the Jal-o. Thereupon, a local politician noticed their presence and approached them in an animated fashion. As the custom of the place, the bystanders hurriedly offered the caller a glass of beer. They were not turned down and as the candidate held the bottle, he went on with his animated maneuvering. Soon, he managed to grab the attention of everyone and was already dominating the conversation. The politician was in his element. He took out some bills from his pocket and was ready to order for more beers when Lagumbay interjected. "No sir," he declared. "The beer is on me." This remark of Lagumbay earned him the ridicule of his peers. In rural Balete, politicians are perceived as patrons who call on the bills—be it a hospital bill or a bar chit. Thus, calling onto himself the burden of paying for the beer when there is a politician present is bordering on ridic...

Center. That is the way Baleten-ons referred to the Municipal Health Office since my childhood days. And it stuck until to now. I am particular to this reality as the family used to reside behind the old Puericulture Center of Balete where both my father and mother worked. When my mother got hired as Rural Health Midwife for Balete Rural Health Unit, the family decided to relocate and bought a small house behind it. It was easy to recognize one another then as there were only a handful of households in the poblacion . It was simply either one is from Ilaya or Ilawod . The "Center" is geographically situated at the heart of the poblacion along with the old Town Hall, the Band Stand and the Church. It served as the boundary for the " taga-ilaya " and " taga-ilawod ". It was implicitly regarded as a neutral place where animosity is temporarily set aside among the "warring gangs" of Ilaya and Ilawod . As the bell tolled to call the commun...