The Spy in the Sandwich

Sunday, April 12, 2026

9:00 AM | Oases

I missed my connecting flight from Iloilo City to Dumaguete via Manila, and rebooking, in this energy crisis, would have cost an arm and two legs. This was bound to happen. I’ve traveled considerably all of my life, both domestic and international, and I have always been on time for every flight, with time to spare—but for some reason, this time around, I misread the “flight time” on my itinerary as “boarding time.” I casually arrived at the counter of Cebu Pacific at the Iloilo Airport, ready to come home to Dumaguete, only to be told that boarding time happened 45 minutes ago, and they had already closed the plane door. There was no chance I was getting on board. What do I do know? I asked the check-in girl, who was in no rush to be empathetic. Buy another ticket for Manila, she said, for a flight scheduled later in the afternoon, and then manage my Manila to Dumaguete flight by rebooking. The thing is, I couldn’t do that, because it wasn’t I who bought my ticket. And again, all these would cost an arm and two legs.

So I opted to do the land trip home, via ferry from Iloilo City to Bacolod, and then the mind-bending six-hour bus trip to Dumaguete. It wasn’t the most comfortable way of getting home, but it certainly was the cheaper option. A part of me was also curiously pragmatic: at least, this way, I’d know the land and sea route from Negros if I wanted to visit Iloilo City again.

I Bonamine’d through the rough seas, and the Oceanjet took about an hour and thirty minutes to cross Guimaras Strait, docking in Bacolod. I immediately flagged down a taxi to take me to South Bus Terminal, in order to catch the next available aircon bus bound for Dumaguete. This part of this trip would take more than six hours, and I wanted to be as comfortable as possible. I toyed with the idea of hiring a car or a van, but the leasing company was asking for seven thousand total for the entire trip—which I understand in the parlance of an energy crisis, but much too much for me to even consider as a viable alternative. In my GC with friends, Ernest told me, “The Ceres bus is comfortable naman.” That gave some comfort. Plus I’ve always loved Ceres buses. As a Negrense, I grew up riding it.

I was lucky to get a good seat in the bus. My body, reeling from the subterfuges of sudden travel changes, was too wired up to even be bothered by the fact that two Pentecostal preachers came one after another to offer visions of fire and brimstone if there was no salvation for us, and then handing out envelopes for charity. I ignored both of them so very thoroughly. I needed sleep, not a promise of flimsy salvation. After almost an hour of marinating in the confines of that bus terminal, we finally felt the movement of the bus moving quickly along half-deserted highways. The energy crisis has a silver lining: no traffic as usual.

I would go back and forth between waking and sleeping while the bus plowed its way down south of the western side of Negros. It was mostly nighttime, and there was only darkness staring at me from my window—so sleep was preferable. I was growing hungry though. I had only eaten one ensaymada while in the pier in Iloilo.

All told, the sea and land route would take about nine hours of my life, but at a thousand pesos in total fares, this was preferable than forking over almost twenty thousand pesos. [P20,000!!!] In that sense, the hassle was not quite a hassle, to be honest. And something else entirely different didn’t make me mind everything at all.

The reason was this: I am endlessly fascinated by the mealtime stopover in Mabinay—always in Mabinay—the halfway point in the mountains between the two Negros capitals. When I go to Bacolod, this happens around lunchtime or maybe in the early afternoon. That night, however, it occurred around half-past 9 PM—and I was already thinking there was to be no such stop and I was already very hungry and I’d eaten all the butterscotch squares that Leny Ledesma, our Iloilo host, had given me. I calculated there were two more hours before arrival in Dumaguete, and my hunger could wait.

But there was a stop, finally! Somewhere in the mountain darkness, the Ceres ground to a halt and I heard the bus driver say, “Manihapon ta!”

I bolted out of my seat to exit and line up at this well-lit carinderia whose existence seems to primarily depend on regular bus loads of hungry people coming its way. It had about fifteen tables for the taking, most of them already occupied. Somehow I remembered the protocol of ordering: at the counter, I pointed at my choices of viands—a plate of two pieces of fried chicken and a plate of bihon—then to another table where the plates of rice were, and I got one serving—then to the refrigerator at the side to grab a sakto Sprite. Having gotten a table shared with another hungry passenger—a girl—I proceeded to eat, and after a while, someone came over to check what I’d gotten, and issued a bill written on a small, green Post-It note: P170.

I was happy and full. “But was it delicious?” someone asked me on Facebook when I recounted all of these in a short post. My answer: my hunger told me it was delicious.

I don’t know why I look forward to these mealtime stopovers on my Ceres trips, because there’s no such thing as taking your pleasurable time to eat, since you have to finish your meal before the conductor and the bus driver finish theirs. It’s also a very simple meal, not even hot—but it does feel to me like some culinary version of an oasis in the desert.

It’s sustenance in the middle of a very long trip.

It’s also a chance to awaken your sleepy legs.

And it’s a moment to reflect, while eating, on the realization that you’re almost home [or near your destination], which is a kind of excitement all its own.

Labels: food, life, negros, travel

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Saturday, December 06, 2025

7:00 PM | Reading to Children

To get back on track, I accepted this invitation from Virginia Stack and her Valencia Book Mobile brigade to read my picture book The Great Little Hunter, to a bunch of youngsters, aged 7-10, in Bong-ao, Valencia last Saturday. I had the time of my life! The children were initially shy but they were also curious and interested, and I really do think this is the best age range to get kids to start and love reading, the way I was when I was their age and encountered Henny Penny. This is the thing about Dumaguete becoming a UNESCO City of Literature: it is curious to have this designation now in an age when literacy among children is falling away fast. How can we have a City of Literature when nobody reads anymore? That's a question we are grappling with, and this literacy program is part of our solution. Thank you Tata and your Indefatigable team of teachers and volunteers for making this commitment work!

Here's a video of me reading:

Labels: children, children's books, city of literature, dumaguete, life, literacy, negros, reading, UNESCO

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Thursday, October 02, 2025

9:00 AM | Tropical Comforts and Watercolor Serenity

I did not get to see Gretchen Villanueva-Heras’ new solo exhibition, Tropical State of Mind, when it opened at The Gallery by Pinspired at The Henry Resort last August 23—which feels like forever. The show has since been extended to October 14, which speaks volumes about its popularity. Indeed, when I finally made time to see the exhibition for myself, most of the works have been marked “reserved”—the good news of buyers waiting in the wings.

I liked it. I think the show showcases Gretchen’s delicate watercolor works with the unmistakable intimacy of someone who paints not to impress but to remember. [Point of disclosure: Gretchen is a former student.] Also known by her moniker “GretchensWater,” I know her to be a self-taught artist from Bais City whose previous works have seemed to me to be shaped by memory, place, and personal history. In this new collection, she definitely draws inspiration from her coastal hometown and the tropics that surround her. I like, above all their clarity, and simplicity: there is no grandstanding in this show, no forced irony, no attempts at avant-garde shock. Instead, what we have is a clearness of vision steeped in the ordinary, but translated into light, into color, and into tenderness.

In this sense, Gretchen’s work has to be read as something deeply personal. You can also sense in her brushstrokes the shadow of her artist father’s craftsmanship. You can also sense her nostalgia of growing up in a house where hands built things meant to last. You can sense that there is a deep affection for heritage and family woven into her compositions, which is why each painting feels like a page from a watercolor diary. Clearly influenced by her own fascination with the past, Gretchen’s works are not just depictions of flora and provincial landscapes but fragments of storytelling—they are memories folded into botanical patterns and sunlit textures.

There is a quiet lushness in these watercolors, a sense of calm that feels almost radical in an age addicted to speed and spectacle. The series—botanical vignettes, glimpses of familiar roads, curated moments of tropical life—wears its heart on its sleeve. They do not shout. They do not demand. They invite. And in that invitation, they allow us to remember what it means to breathe.

What strikes me first is the brushwork. Watercolor is a famously unforgiving medium; one careless stroke and the whole composition buckles into mud. Yet here we see restraint: the veins of banana leaves rendered with precision, the glisten of palm fronds caught mid-sway, the woven fibers of a solihiya chair articulated with tenderness. The artist gives us details that never overwhelm but always anchor, as if to say: the tropics are not chaos, they are order disguised as abundance.

The subject matter might tempt dismissal by some as “hotel art”—those safe, decorative canvases designed to be pleasant backdrops in lobbies and conference rooms, scrubbed clean of specificity. But to call these works as such would be to misread their intention. What we have here is not mere décor, but comfort art—and there is a difference. Hotel art is soulless, a manufactured neutrality. Comfort art, for me, is art that chooses warmth over confrontation, solace over provocation. It acknowledges the necessity of beauty in a world already heavy with fracture.

Consider the piece with the empty chair nestled among heliconias and monstera. It is not just a chair—it is a longing. Someone has just left, or someone is about to arrive. It suggests presence through absence, memory through arrangement. Or the piece of sugarcane trucks lined up on a highway beneath a row of palms: it’s not just a rural roadscape, but a meditation on rhythm and patience, on the pulse of provincial life. These are images that comfort not because they are shallow, but because they are deeply familiar.

There is also something quietly radical about insisting on tropical beauty as subject matter. For too long, the tropics have been exoticized from the outside, or dismissed from within as mere backdrop. Here, the artist reclaims it as central. The leaves, the plants, the cane fields—they are not supporting cast, but protagonists. In an art world that often insists on rupture and dissonance as markers of seriousness, it is refreshing to see someone insist that serenity is just as valid a pursuit.

And this is where Gretchen’s work finds its place within Dumaguete’s art scene. Dumaguete has long been a haven for artists, writers, and performers, but it often leans toward the cerebral and the literary, where provocation is prized and irony is the order of the day. In the visual arts, too, there has been a surge of experimental and conceptual work—installations, mixed media, even performance-based pieces—that speak to the intellectual ferment of the city. Against that backdrop, Gretchen’s watercolors—like that of her comrade in art, Kat Banay—may seem modest, but their modesty is precisely their power.

Her paintings remind us that Dumaguete’s art scene need not only be about breaking forms or pushing limits; it can also be about grounding ourselves in the pleasures of the familiar. In a city by the sea, lined with acacia trees and shadowed by mountains, Gretchen gives us a mirror of the place we already inhabit but often forget to see. Her art is both a celebration and a preservation of the tropical sensibility that marks life in Negros Oriental.

True, the paintings are not ironic. They are not self-consciously clever. But they are sincere, and that sincerity might be the boldest thing about them. They remind us that sometimes the truest art is not the art that unsettles, but the art that steadies. And in their tropical state of mind, these watercolors give us the most necessary of gifts: a space to sit, to look, and to feel at home.

Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, friends, negros, painting

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Friday, April 25, 2025

9:00 PM | Finding Melanio

Every time I see an anthology of regional writing, especially in Binisaya, the portion allocated to Central Visayas, particularly from Negros Oriental, is always zero. Like, wala jud. And I’m always like, “Madahaaaan...” Makasapot baya usahay. This is why I’m currently compiling works in Binisaya from the province, especially from decades past, and some discoveries have been amazing.

Like finding out about a mambabalak from Pamplona named Melanio E. Relatado, who used to write balak in the 1960s. My sister-in-law, Daisy, is a Relatado. So I casually asked her if she knew him. “He’s my father,” she told me. Like, what? Like, how did I not know this? Then again, many others don’t. Melanio Relatado used to contribute to Bisaya Magazine and the Philippines Free Press, but the poem below, titled “Larawan, Pahawa!” and published on 6 November 1968, is the only thing I have of him:

Naghigda ka niining timawa
Matag mingawng gutling sa paginusara:
Yam-id ang pahiyom ‘mong makabibihag
Naghimaraot ‘nng masulub-ong kalag;
Maidlot ug ‘tuling mga bangkaw
Lagbas ‘ning dughan, ang ‘lulot ‘mong panan-aw;
Lanog sa biaybiay ‘ning sa paglaom ilo na
Ang mahunihong tagingting sa imong katawa.

Busa lagi ‘tawon, Larawan, pahawa na
Uban sa kalipayng imong gipangita:
Pasagding sa kasakit ako mag-antos
Kay ‘na maoy angay ‘ning alaot ug kabos;
Hinaot ‘ta nga kalipay sa gugma imong mapupo
Samtang sa asgad mga luha ako magpatulo.

I’m also looking for other writers as well: Prospero V. Cañete of Bais, Felix B. Samson of Tanjay, Agustin N. Manalop of Bais, Sotero O. Nocos of Guihulngan, Linalang Timawa of Dumaguete, Leonardo A. Visorro Jr. of Dumaguete, and Norberta T. Elnar. Does anybody know these people? They used to contribute to Bisaya Magazine from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Labels: balak, bisaya, dumaguete, negros, philippine literature, regional literature, writers

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Monday, January 20, 2025

11:44 AM | How to Make Baye-Baye

If you hail from Bayawan, down at the southern bend of Negros Oriental, chances are you have grown up eating the city’s foremost delicacy—the baye-baye. Ian has maternal roots in Bayawan, and spent a significant part of his childhood there before the family moved for good to Dumaguete in 1980. He grew up eating the baye-baye, will trust only the ones made by the family of Manang Julia Occena of Barangay Villareal [formerly Balabag]—and until today, he has very specific tastes that determine for him which baye-baye is the real deal.

“Don’t eat the popular and commercial ones you find readily available in stores,” he says with a passion. “They’re rubbish.”

My mother Fennie with Manang Julia in Bayawan in 2017

Manang Julia's baye-baye

The baye-baye is made from roasted glutinous rice, coconut, and sugar that are pounded or ground together, and is often mistaken to be the local equivalent of the espasol. It is not. It is its own unique thing. It is also actually not native to Bayawan, but has roots in Pavia, Iloilo. There was a significant migration of Ilonggos to Bayawan at the turn of the 20th century, owing to agricultural opportunities, which is why many Bayawanons speak Kiniray-a, and baye-baye became a local delicacy. The Bayawan variety though is more starchy, while the Iloilo original is more sticky. [They’re also finished differently, with the Iloilo baye-baye shaped into a roll, while the Bayawan baye-baye is made into a sandwich-shaped cake.]

Ian insists on eating it fresh—because the delicacy quickly turns bad after a day of storage. “Fresh baye-baye is soft and pillowy,” Ian says. He also insists that its stickiness should be well-balanced with the pinipig powder that coats the entire thing.

A few years ago, in 2018, Ian’s family found themselves back in Bayawan for a visit—and somehow also found themselves making a trek to old Balabag, to search out Manang Julia where she still lived in her advanced years in her hut, already blind from old age—but still directing her family to make the delicacy that has been their tradition for generations. The baye-baye they bought that day in 2018 still retained the same sticky goodness from memory. Last year, one member of Manang Julia’s family came over to Dumaguete to demonstrate the making of baye-baye at Adorno Galeria y Café at the Locsin Heritage House, masterminded by proprietor Jansen Tan, with the whole event made possible by the Bayawan City Tourism Office, and through the efforts of Pristine Martinez-Raymond, the first lady of the city.

For one day last August, Manang Mercy Barroca let us into her world of baye-baye making. We watched her hands mix glutinous rice and coconut into something more than food: a story, a memory, a taste of heritage. Manang Mercy’s reputation preceded her: she carried not just the skill but the heart of her in-laws’ legacy, a lineage intertwined with the rhythms of mortar and pestle, with the scent of toasted rice hanging in the air.

The stage for this demonstration was set with care. In the center stood the tools of her trade: the “lusokan,” a mortar and pestle made from casay wood. Casay, Manang Mercy explained, is not just a traditional implement; it was necessity. Other woods, though abundant, cannot promise the food-safe quality that casay does. And like any artist, Manang Mercy’s tools carried their own history—her mortar was twenty years old; the pestle was sixty. It was a lineage of objects meeting a lineage of hands.

To understand baye-baye is to begin with the grain. Glutinous rice, whole and unassuming, will find its place in the “kalaha,” the wok. Over steady flame, Manang Mercy stirred the ingredients, her movements deliberate, patient. Soon the grains turned golden, releasing a nutty fragrance that danced through the air and signaled their transformation. These toasted grains, tinged with fire, were milled into a fine powder, soft as talcum.

But baye-baye does not rest on rice alone. There is the coconut, grated and cooked down in its milk with brown sugar until it becomes caramelized perfection. The mixture, dark as molasses and glistening with unctuous richness, held the promise of flavor. “It shouldn’t be dry,” Manang Mercy said. “It should still shine.”

The marriage of these ingredients is where the craft truly begins. The glutinous rice flour and the caramelized coconut are mixed in the lusokan, where they are pounded and rotated in a ritualistic rhythm. No white streaks of flour should remain; no hint of separation should betray the harmony of the ingredients.

Manang Mercy demonstrating how to make baye-baye

Mixing baye-baye ingredients in a demonstration at Adorno Cafe

Manang Mercy worked with quiet confidence. Her hands guided the pestle, her movements precise yet unhurried. She knew when to stop, when to let the mixture rest, and when to press forward. In her hands, the lusokan seemed alive, an extension of her will. When the texture was just right—smooth and pliable—Manang Mercy reached for a rectangular plastic container, its surface dusted with flour. She pressed the mass into it, shaping it with a sandok until it took the form of a rectangle. With a practiced flip, she plopped it onto a plate, where it laid like a gift. The final act was a careful slicing the delicacy into squares, each piece a testament to the culinary craft that birthed it.

In a world rushing toward convenience, where food often loses its soul in the quest for speed, Manang Mercy, with her carrying on the traditional way of making baye-baye, stood as beacon of patience, of reverence for tradition. Her baye-baye was more than a snack; it was a connection to the past, a bridge to the future. The lusokan, the casay wood, the golden rice—each element held a fragment of memory, each strike of the pestle an affirmation that some things are worth preserving. Bayawan’s cultural stewards understood this, which is why they facilitated that demonstration. Baye-baye, humble as it may seem, is a symbol of resilience, of community, of the enduring power of tradition.

As we left Adorno Café, the scent of toasted rice and caramelized coconut still clung to the air, a reminder that sometimes the most profound stories are told not in words but in the simple, deliberate act of making something with love, and from tradition.

Labels: food, heritage, negros

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Sunday, December 15, 2024

9:00 AM | The Beauty of Old Houses

The old house along Acias Pinili Street in Tinago was easy to overlook, even if you’ve lived in Dumaguete for so long. We tend to avert our gaze from what looks like the apotheosis of the decrepit—the fading brownness of old wood making what is otherwise an imposing structure blend into what background there is: often that’s wild vegetation; sometimes it’s the other buildings around it. Old houses always melt into nothingness. Structures of this kind—the heritage houses of the community’s landed families of long ago—are easy to miss, indeed, except when one trains their eyes to see beauty in the old and often abandoned.

So many of these still abound in Dumaguete—some still being used in myriad ways by their owners, some seemingly abandoned. Here’s an incomplete rundown: There’s the imposing one between the local branch of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the building that houses a Mercury Drug in Daro, right near the crossing of the National Highway and E.J. Blanco Drive. There’s the one just along Perdices Street, near Ever Mall, right in the center of town, which was converted into a now defunct budget hotel. There’s the one owned by the family of the late Teresa Basa—her of the infamous murder case in Chicago solved by her ghost—right near the corner of Lorenzo Teves Street and Calle Sta. Catalina, which has seen better days.

My two favorites are contrasts: the small white house at the corner of Pinili Street and Calle Sta. Catalina, which is still beautiful to behold after all these years; and the Flores house at the corner of E.J. Blanco Drive and Hibbard Avenue, which is still largely intact—but has lost its beautiful front lawn and garden [which had a beautiful willowy tree at the corner] to an ill-conceived structure that has housed an ever-revolving array of businesses, from an eatery to a barber shop.

Some are lost forever, like that splendid small white house with Greek columns beside the Dumaguete Rural Bank, which was later demolished to make way for an ugly grill house, which soon closed shop anyway. But I’m just happy to note that this fate has escaped the historic Locsin house at the corner of Dr. V. Locsin Street and Calle Sta. Catalina—important for being the house that hosted the final meeting that divided Negros Oriental and Negros Occidental early in 1901. Today, it has been largely preserved.

These structures are repositories of family histories—the people who helped make Dumaguete become a vibrant community—and in turn, they have helped create the makeup of local history as well. So when we lose them, we lose a small but significant part of that history as well. We lose our stories with their loss.

The conundrum, of course, lies in the fact that these are privately-owned structures whose fates lie in the hands of owners. Some are neglectful, or ignorant of family history. Some only see these as pieces of real estate—and valuable in that sense only. But some owners see value in the old structures—because they are truly beautiful once restored—and have made good cases for adaptive reuse, because restoring the original architectural splendor actually do add value to the property. Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for, and has been specifically used as a term to salvage heritage buildings. Wikipedia notes that “with adaptive reuse becoming an effective strategy for optimizing the operational and commercial performance of built assets, “ it has “prevented thousands of buildings’ demolition and has allowed them to become critical components of urban regeneration”—with stakeholders such as architects, developers, builders, and entrepreneurs making sure “that the finished product will still serve the need of the market, that it will be completely useful for its new purpose, and that it will be competitively priced” once rejuvenated and restored. For me, adaptive reuse of an old structure is still better than demolishing it and then replacing it with a new one that has no character, whose aesthetics are so bland they actually are eye sores. [Don’t get me started on the tendency of current Dumaguete builders to drop another “box building” on us.]

Many of the old sugar mansions along Rizal Avenue, like the Serafin Teves mansion [which now houses Starbucks Dakong Balay] and the Manuel Teves mansion [which now houses Sans Rival], are great cases of adaptive reuse. So is The Spanish Heritage at the corner of Calle San Juan and Calle Sta. Catalina, built from an old warehouse. [I’m also glad it is back to being used as an events place, after being used as a church for so long—a strange kind of sequestration which felt like a loss to the cultural heritage of the community.] Another good case for adaptive reuse is Buglas Isla Café, which used to be the Rotea heritage house in Bais City, transferred brick by brick and wood panel by wood panel to Dumaguete by the Lhuillers. [The Lhuillers also restored the old Wuthrich mansion along Rizal Avenue.] I was also happy to see the Blas Elnar building—a splendid Art Deco building at the corner of Dr. V. Locsin Street and Calle Maria Christina, whose beauty was lost to the ravages of time—restored, although it has yet to show any sign of being in use.

The best recent example remains the Dumaguete Presidencia—which used to house many of the offices of City Hall, and whose architectural integrity, as designed by the great architect Juan M. Arellano, was lost to ill-conceived renovations and expansions over the decades, which reduced the 1936 building to an ugly shadow of its former self. Restoration started in 2017, and now it houses the Dumaguete branch of the National Museum of the Philippines.

But the upkeep of old houses is expensive, and proper restoration needs expertise—and a considerably deep pocket. I don’t blame owners for hedging on their properties on economic reasons alone. I don’t blame them for abandonment, especially if all other recourse beyond selling seems impossible to undertake.

Casa Arrieta, built in the 1920s, is a house that I have loved for many years, and I have always been concerned that the owners were “neglecting” it and was not seeing its full potential. But we must also consider the Arrieta family who owned the heritage house, and how it must have been prohibitive for them to do the upkeep of an old house, even though they might not have wanted to part with it. Anna May Cruz would later tell me: “My aunt’s family didn’t want to part with it but no one could afford its upkeep. The neglect was not intentional.”

One day, a few months ago, passing by its old location, it was just ... gone.

That really made me despondent, and I thought again about how many heritage houses in Dumaguete were disappearing.

And then I was told that this old house, about to be demolished, was actually bought wholesale by Leon Gallery’s Jaime Ponce de Leon, and transferred from Pinili Street to a lot located in Fatima Village in Bantayan.

It has been restored to its full glory, and now called Casa Paquita, named after Doña Francisca “Paquita” Somoza Arnaiz-Ponce de Leon, Popong’s lola. [Doña Paquita was the wife of Dr. Ramon Ponce de Leon, the first Filipino resident director of the Mission Hospital—the precursor of the Silliman University Medical Center—and its medical director during the Japanese occupation of Dumaguete.]

Last December 12, it finally opened via the small restaurant in the premises called Café Maria, named after another lola, Doña Maria Arnaiz-Diaz, and managed by Mikel and Nadia Teves of Si, Señor. [The legendary Inday Iyay Diaz was once provincial board member, and was active in civic work all over Negros Oriental—including involvements with the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and the Philippine Mental Health Association. She also founded East Negros Institute in Tanjay to accommodate secondary school aspirants in the then town, and built chapels, basketball courts, reading centers, health centers and the like, even after her terms in the provincial board, when she retired from politics.]

Save for the restaurant, there are no set plans for the rest of Casa Paquita for the moment—but I am told that Popong intends to make it a showcase for how a 1920s residence in Dumaguete looked like, and has currently furnished it with things appropriate to the period. A museum of 1920s Dumaguete residential elegance, so to speak. Dumaguete, bereft of heritage projects like this for so long, needs this capsule of history as a token to its past. At this juncture of our story as a community when the city seems to be bursting in the seams in the name of progress, Casa Paquita is a necessary corrective.

Labels: architecture, dumaguete, heritage, negros, old houses

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

7:00 PM | Casa Paquita

I’ve been wanting to share the photos below for a few months now, but Jaime Ponce de Leon asked me to wait. You see, I’ve loved this old, old house along Pinili Street for many years, and I have always been concerned that the owners were neglecting it and was not seeing its full potential. Then one day, passing by its old location, it was just ... gone. That really made me despondent, and I thought about how many heritage houses in Dumaguete were disappearing, because some owners consider them useless, or their possible restoration would take so much work [and finances]. For the Arrieta family who owned the heritage house, it must have been prohibitive to do the upkeep of an old house, even though they might not have wanted to part with it. Anna May Cruz would later tell me: “My aunt’s family didn’t want to part with it but no one could afford its upkeep. The neglect was not intentional.”

And then I was told that this old house, about to be demolished, was actually bought wholesale, and transferred to somewhere in Fatima Village, restored to its full glory. Tomorrow, December 12, it finally opens as Cafe Maria in Casa Paquita, a restaurant and a gallery. Congratulations, Mikel Teves and Nadia Teves!

[Cafe Maria is named after Maria Arnaiz-Diaz and Casa Paquita is named after Paquita Arnaiz-Ponce de Leon.]

Labels: cafes, dumaguete, gallries, heritage, negros, old houses, restaurants

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Sunday, December 01, 2024

9:00 AM | A Second Homecoming for Elsa Martinez Coscolluela

She is one of the best writers I know—although when you mention that to her, Elsa Victoria Martinez Coscolluela would demur. Once I remember her referring to her brother, the late David Martinez, as the better writer in the family. Granted, he was also a Palanca winner—he did the astonishing double whammy in 1997 by winning the Palanca first prizes for both the short story and poetry. But I think Ma’am Elsie is in a class of her own, and I will always be her grateful reader.

Admittedly, I first knew about her from two things. First, in high school, I came upon her short story “After This, Our Exile,” which won third prize at the 1972 Palanca Awards. I did not exactly know the import of her name yet, but I remember being blown away by the story’s instinctive feel for hacienda life in Negros, able to look beyond the gloss and see the rot behind the glitter of sugar. Second, when I knew more about her upon entering college at Silliman University, I learned that she was in fact crowned Miss Silliman in 1964—and I was quite astonished to realize one can actually be a great writer and also be a campus beauty queen. [Alas, when you’re younger, you tend to pigeonhole people into specifics. I later learned beauty queen writers were actually not uncommon. The equally great Dumaguete writer Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas was crowned Miss Negros Oriental in 1970. There’s also Jacqueline Veloso-Antonio who was Miss Dumaguete in 1985 and Miss Negros Oriental in 1987—and while she would not really call herself a writer, she is in fact a fascinating essayist, usually writing about local culture and heritage.]

Ma’am Elsie is still a beauty after all these years, and I have always taken to her as a kind of long-distance mentor. We chat often on Messenger, and the last time I was in Bacolod early this year, she went out of her way to take me out to dinner. I find this personal relationship with her very humbling. It is an honor to be friends with one of Silliman’s greatest writers.

The thing about Ma’am Elsie is that she is prolific. She writes poetry. She writes essays. She writes short stories. And she writes plays of various kinds—theatrical ones, of course, but also ones written for television and film. In the late 1960s until the 1980s, she was so prolific in her literary output that eventually she was elevated to the Palanca Hall of Fame in 1996—for the feat of having won five first prizes. Which is not something very easy to do. [For the record, she has won a total of 24 Palanca Awards.]

I love her plays. Her subject is so varied, but she returns often to the Negros of her childhood—which is in Dumaguete; and her adulthood—which is in Bacolod. That she is considered one of the foremost writers of both Negrense capitals means she has the pulse of Negros in her writings. And thus she is able to write truthfully about the place, and about us.

The thing about her plays, however, is that they’re seldom performed, if ever, even if they have won awards. The recurring joke about winning the Palanca for the play is that, after the awards ceremony, these plays find home not on the stage but in the drawer. But not for lack of trying by these playwrights; who wouldn’t want to have their plays staged? The simple reason is this: theatrical productions of local plays are very rare—unless you’re Nick Joaquin, Rene O. Villanueva, Nicolas Pichay, Floy Quintos, or Rody Vera, or, of late, Vincent de Jesus, Carlo Vergara, Dustin Celestino, Joshua Lim So, Guelan Varela-Luarca, or Eljay Castro Deldoc. You will notice a preponderance of Manila writers. The seeming exception seems to be Glenn Sevilla Mas from Iloilo, but he does work and live in Manila. Even in regional theater, play selections tend to favor Manila writers. How many times have we seen Marcelo Agana Jr.’s New Yorker in Tondo in Dumaguete? Or F. Sionil Jose’s Progress in Cebu? Too many times. They’re classics, of course—but their constant rotation in terms of local production seems to come at the expense of local writers.

One of Ma’am Elsie’s most famous plays is In My Father’s House, which won the Palanca in 1980. This is a Dumaguete play, based on the lives of her father and uncle who lived through World War II in Dumaguete, and who suffered tragically during the Japanese Occupation of the Oriental Negrense town. [Dumaguete would only become a city in 1948.] After the play won the Palanca, it was performed everywhere—at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila and at the University of the Philippines-Diliman in Quezon City; in Singapore; in L.A.; even in Tokyo. But it was never staged in Dumaguete. Here it was, a quintessential Dumaguete play, but never performed in Dumaguete itself.

That is until 2013, when the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council took the chance of bringing it back home, under the direction of Amiel Leonardia. I was part of that cast at the Luce Auditorium, and we were honored to be part of that history in the making.

And that’s the thing. There are so many playwrights from Silliman and/or Negros Oriental. We have Ricaredo Demetillo, Bobby Flores Villasis, Linda Faigao-Hall, Rosario Cruz Lucero, Roberto Ponteñila Jr., Lemuel Torrevillas, Alfred Yuson, Leoncio Deriada, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Luna Griño-Inocian, Dessa Quesada-Palm, Rolin Migyel Obina, and many others. Ang among the younger set, we have Beryl Andrea Delicana, Earnest Hope Tinambacan, Karla Longjas, Junsly Kitay, Michael Aaron Gomez, Benjie Kitay, and Jireh Catacutan. Their plays keep winning plaudits everywhere—but they remain unstaged.

Which is why last year, Dessa and I took the initiative to start staging Palanca-winning plays by local writers, to be directed by our student directors at the Speech and Theater Department of Silliman University as part of their senior thesis productions. We thought this would give their works a chance to come alive. We started with the Palanca-winning one-act plays by Bobby Flores Villasis last year. This year, we have continued this project with the Palanca-winning one-act plays by Elsa Martinez Coscolluela. Staging In My Father’s House in 2013 was her homecoming to Dumaguete; this play festival should serve as the second one.

Last November 28, we finally raised the curtain on the first playdate of the Elsa Martinez Coscolluela Play Festival at the Woodward Blackbox Theatre at Silliman University. We knew the endeavor is partly to honor our beloved Dumaguete [and Bacolod] playwright, but we also were aware that the project is still essentially a laboratory for Silliman’s theatre students. We were going to watch student-directed plays, not professionally staged ones—and for that, we knew it will mostly be a hit or miss affair depending on the strengths of the student director involved. [You take these things with a grain of salt, always hoping for the best.]

Which is really to say: I was awed by what I saw of the Set A plays that night—with Bret Bonnie Ybañez directing Japayukisan, the opening play, and Francis Esguerra directing Blood Spoor, the final play for opening night. Mr. Ybañez took the melodrama of a young woman arriving home from abroad to attend her father’s funeral and keeping fiercely the secret that she works as a Japayuki [or nightclub entertainer] in Japan, and staged the play with surprising restraint and subtlety. [Even with a delicious catfight involved!] Even with a forlorn scene of having closure with an old boyfriend! [This scene actually made me tear up.]

What made the production work was that Mr. Ybañez knew how to get to the interiority of the story; he also knew that good casting for our protagonist would be enough to telegraph the emotional core of the story. Mass Communication student Joriz Angel Palermo as Mayang the Japayuki truly gets to the heart of her character so well: we commiserated with her when she grappled with her secret; we ached for her when she confronted her sister and mother about having to support her family while her siblings got the privilege of going to school on her dime while she stripped away her dignity in a mob-controlled bar in Japan; and we rooted for her when she was tearing the hair out of a nosy “family friend.” When she is later confronted by her ex-boyfriend to get to the heart of their breakup, we finally comprehend where she is coming from and the extent to which she has arrived at a hard-earned worldly wisdom: “We don’t always get what we want. Plans miscarry, feelings change, dreams die—.” Heady stuff, and yet I like that at the end of it, the two characters choose to be kind to each other, to say goodbye in tacit understanding of their parting. Powerful stuff.

Mr. Esguerra, on the other hand, has the luckier hand in directing a material that invites the epic and the atmospheric. But he also shows that he knows what exactly to do with every beat of the story: he begins the play with bird sound in complete darkness, then with the actors coming in from the direction of the audience, screaming incoherent pain in that darkness—until suddenly, a shaft of stage light shows us a woman on centerstage cradling a dying, bloodied girl. Then we get a sense of the other characters in the melee, all looking bloody, and then we understand that this is a community of Mindanao lumad, their homes having been randomly attacked by the military. There is much wailing, and recrimination, and later on, some quiet moments when the characters ponder their fate with each other. And then all of that gets embraced with some uncanny use of supernatural elements—fog and chanting and blinking lights do the trick—which are somehow tied up with the age-old beliefs and rituals of the hurting tribe. It is a very serious play, but it works. It is also very bloody and deadly, although all the violence occurs off-stage. I quite liked it. I admired how Esguerra knew how to pace the material, how to block, how to use music effectively, and how to detonate the drama with eerie silence. I like that he has a good sense of stage spectacle, which is rarely achieved by most student directors.

As of this publication, Set A [Japayukisan and Blood Spoor] would have finished their two-day run. You can still, however, catch Set B [First Fruits and Late Journey Home] on December 2 and 3, and Set C [The Captive Word] on December 6 and 7. The first two plays were more than the worth of the measly P200 ticket. If you are in Dumaguete, do yourself a favor and catch the remainder of the festival. This is truly a celebration of Dumaguete’s literary heritage.

This year, Dumaguete City is the official Philippine endorsee to become a UNESCO City of Literature in 2025, and it deserves that distinction truly. Doing this kind of theatre festival, of putting life to the literary works of our local literary artists, is very much a part of that effort.

Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, negros, philippine history, philippine literature, silliman, theatre, writers

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

Sunday, November 17, 2024

9:00 AM | The Dumaguete Inato as Life

This is, admittedly, a generalization—and many exceptions abound! But the following are things non-Dumagueteños—especially poor Manila people who come to our city bound by the rules of engagement they have been doing in the metropolis for years and who think their praxis is universal—should learn about doing events in our beloved city of infinite mysteries:

[1] No one will answer your emails. The best way to get in touch with anyone in Dumaguete with a high degree of responsiveness, is through Messenger. [Not even Viber!] It helps, of course, that you have a well-connected point-person who can gather everyone else in your group chat.

[2] Dumagueteños live dangerously by doing everything last minute. Because if we plan too much ahead, things will not usually happen.

[3] Dumaguete is such a small city, but we rarely see each other. This has to be noted, especially if you expect us to always be under each other’s beck and call, because everyone is “five minutes away.”

[4] Don’t fret about only having three people register for your events through your officials channels, and you’re scared about nobody showing up. A good audience, always seemingly out of nowhere, will arrive on the very day itself. Same with ticket sales. Everyone buys tickets to events on the day itself.

And finally: [5] The event will almost always go well, nonetheless.

This is just how things go in Dumaguete.

I’ve come to this conclusion because it has happened twice, at least for me, this year. We will not mention the events very specifically, just to protect the identifies of all involved, but the first one—a matter of national importance—occurred sometime midyear. The person in charge who hailed from a major national office in the capital was emailing everyone concerned in Dumaguete for at least two months. They had questions, they needed to coordinate. We were supposed to meet earlier, but our schedules did not coincide—and it took some time for both of us to finally “meet” online. They continued emailing everyone in the interim—except me—but no one was answering back, except for one or two. [I do get the need the need to email. It’s official, especially if you are using the office-assigned email address. It’s also for paper trail. I get that, and I get why they were continuing to do so.] They would also try to call people—but no one was answering. Three weeks before the event, I finally messaged them in Messenger [I got their account from someone else involved in the project]. We connected. I told them I knew everyone they needed in the team and that Messenger would be faster for everyone to contribute their share of the work—and I promised to gather them all via the app. And then we all finally converged, and everyone started replying, and the project started. And the event was a resounding success.

A few months later, another national event was to take place in Dumaguete. The same deal: the people from the national office tried to email everyone. Tried to even email the hotels they intended to stay in, and the restaurants they intended to hold officials banquets in. Again, no responses via email. They finally chose a different venue for the event—because the first venue was not answering back, via email. I met the organizers for the first time in person a day before the event. They told me they were not sure anyone would show up, because nobody was answering their invitation emails. They budgeted for 70 people, but only three registered so far. I told them people would just show on the day itself, and not to worry. I also told them I’d invite people I knew—via Messenger—as soon as I could. The next day, people indeed showed up. And more people showed up on the second day. And the event was a resounding success.

I think back to one other event that happened in Dumaguete a few years ago. A theatrical company wanted to do a leg of a play they were touring around the country in Dumaguete. Their very efficient creative team came all the way from Manila, doing everything the Manila way. It was very instructional, and some of the things they did were things us locals actually learned from. But I remember one particular demand they wanted to accomplish in Dumaguete: they wanted a press conference in a mall. And we were like: “Umm, no one really does press conferences for cultural shows in Dumaguete, unless it’s a beauty pageant.” The press would probably not show up, except for campus journalists. And even if they did, we were not sure they would even see the show to write about it. True enough, the press conference that eventually happened was a disaster. But the show itself was somewhat well-received by the locals. It ran for about a week.

The lesson I guess is that every place has its own culture with which to do things, and it pays to be aware of these specificities—or at least have someone local and knowledgeable who can guide you through the intricacies. Best practices in Manila are not necessarily best practices in Dumaguete. Seasoned businessmen know this. The way you make a deal in New York is not the way you make a deal in Tokyo, or Shanghai, or Kuala Lumpur. There are cultural barriers at play—and one tiny mistake in misreading will lead to disappointment, and no deal.

I posted a short version of this essay on Facebook and the response has been tremendous. I thought there would be people who would negate everything I said—“Dumaguete Pride,” and all that—but to my astonishment, most of the responses only underlined what I said as something true of the community. Gaba-an Youth Lead’s Dennis Caballero said: “Tinuod gud ni!” DTI’s Anton Gabila said: “True! Especially the second one. On the last hour of the previous day, mapuno ra gyud mga sign-up forms.” Bun Yeng Ngan, who runs a successful events company in Manila but is from Dumaguete, said: “You’re telling me! After 31 years as an organizer of corporate events, sa Dumaguete ra jud ko bilib! Ikatawa na lang para dili ka ma-pikon. Nothing personal. It is what it is! I love Dumaguete.” The National Book Development Board’s Bethel Samson Delatado said: “I experienced the [no email response] one, hehehe.” Travel diva Angelo Villanueva said: “Trulalooooo!” Lawyer Golda Benjamin said: “No one answers emails. OMG. So true!” Playwright Lendz Barinque said: “The first and the second used to frustrate me so much, until I just gave in. And que sera, sera.” Back Pack Solutions’ Ernest Acar said: “I had to let go of the usual conventions of what event preparation should be when I moved back here. Makapasmo, pero lingaw. Haha.”

But why don’t we answer emails? I have a feeling this has something to do with the formality we have come to associate with this kind of correspondence. And Dumaguete as a place is far from a bastion of the formal. We are relentlessly informal. I sometimes teach wearing tsinelas and shorts, and no one will bat an eyelash. Messenger is very informal, like the Sunday tabo-an we love in Valencia. [The best way to do emails in Dumaguete? Email the secretaries. And then call them to tell them that you sent an email.]

Why do we do everything last minute? I think this is a remnant of the way Dumaguete used to be: the smallness of the place allowed us to do so many things in a given day. Unlike Manila, where life is so hectic and the region so huge and the traffic so relentless, you are trained to do only one thing a day, and two if you have superpowers. In Dumaguete, we can do five, seven, ten things in succession in a day—and so it is easier to put things together in less time. And we forget the immediacy of events if we plan it ahead with too much time to plan and execute. Dumaguete loves immediacy. Which is why it is easier to do “instant fairs,” “pop-up events,” and the like here. Plan things too much and people will dilly-dally more. Plan it one minute before, and people will show up. I remember someone telling me that fifteen years or so ago, many Dumagueteños would only begin to proceed to the airport to catch the flight they are scheduled on when they can already hear the airplane landing. That is the heart of the Dumaguete “last-minute.”

Why don’t we see each other often, even if Dumaguete is so small? I have no idea.

Why do we just show up for things, and why do we buy tickets last minute? Because that’s just us. Because we are doing so many things in a typical Dumaguete day, the only commitment we can make to events is not to register—there’s no time for registration!—but to just show up. I once organized a screening for Lav Diaz’s five-hour film, Norte: The End of History, at Robinsons Movieworld in 2013. You would think a five-hour film would be daunting for an ordinary Dumagueteño. Nope. You would think the slow ticket sales at the start concerned me. Nope. By the morning of screening day, we sold out every ticket. And there were clamors for more.

Like some of the responses above, this way of doing things is not for everyone, not even some Dumagueteños themselves. Vida Tusoy commented: “As an inveterate planner, this will trigger my anxiety.” The truth is, even the “culprits” themselves know this anxiety first hand, and after every successful event, a lot would commiserate among themselves: “Let’s plan better next time”—which means: “Let’s email each other and answer back,” “Let’s not do things last minute,” “Let’s make sure we have proper audience development,” etc. Honorable wishful thinking really, because the next year, the same things still happen.

There’s a whiff of “unprofessionalism” that we can be accused of concerning all these, of course. Bun Yeng Ngan and theatre artist Belen Calingacion did not mince words and called the attitude “inato gihapon diay”—in other words, a “small town” attitude to life. But I think “inato”—which is really best translated as “doing things our own way”—is not really about having a “small town” attitude; it is about steadfastly doing it “our own way,” because time and again, these ways have really proven more effective than the textbook-prescribed “professional way.”

I think that’s really the heart of the Dumagueteño: we have always stubbornly done things our way all throughout our history, and the best things about Dumaguete living have really been the product of that stubbornness. Like the “inasal,” as demonstrated by our Occidental Negrense siblings; it’s chicken grilled in a very particular way that makes it “inasal” in Bacolod, but did we do the same thing in Dumaguete? Nope. We grilled chicken marinated in milk, and the taste was, and is, remarkably different. We called it “inato.” Thus Jo’s Chicken Inato—the epitome of Dumaguete grilled chicken fare—was born.

This “inato” attitude was what made our elites of yore build their mansions along the old Marina—no other elites in major towns in the Philippines did that, having their mansions face the sea. The result? The Rizal Boulevard.

This “inato” attitude keeps us from being too outlandish and preening with our accomplishments—but take a look at all the accomplished Dumagueteños who have ever lived. We have two National Artists [three if you count one heavily identified with Cebu]. And two National Scientists. Since 2017, I have featured weekly on the Dumaguete City Tourism Facebook page at least one prominent Dumagueteño or Oriental Negrense who have done much for their profession or for their community, and a lot of them are actually world-renowned. It is already 2024, and my list has not been exhausted yet.

This “inato” attitude is what keeps everything we do distinctly Dumagueteño. At the first Dumaguete Literary Festival we did last April, we made the “inato” our motif. We had vans to ferry guests, but our official transport was the tricycle. Most literary festivals in the country are held in malls; we purposely held ours in an old heritage house. Most literary festivals in the country would also quietly proscribe a formality in dress by participants; we advised our guests and participants to come in wearing tsinelas and shorts. And it worked!

So I’m not exactly sure I’d call everything we do as “inato” the way it’s connoted—a shaming negative. We’re just “chill” this way. Every place has a rhythm which works for it. This is the Dumaguete rhythm for the most part, and it works.

[Photo by Alan Kirit Jr.]

Labels: culture, dumaguete, life, negros

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

Sunday, September 29, 2024

9:00 AM | Two American Women in Negros, One War

A war will always be ripe for stories. Always of atrocities and sacrifices, and always of perseverance and often of hope. World War II—the last great war that engulfed most of the world—has been the subject of many such stories, and I was reminded of this last September 22 when we commemorated, alas without much notice from the people of Negros Oriental, the 79th anniversary of the surrender of the Japanese forces in the province to American soldiers. This was months after a wave of liberation all over the country started in 20 October 1944 when Gen. Douglas MacArthur famously landed in Leyte, together with President Sergio Osmeña, who became head of the Commonwealth after the death of President Quezon in exile. That landing was a precursor to the end of the war—a seemingly hopeful harbinger, but with it came a rise in grim ferocity and suicidal courage by the Japanese occupying the Philippines.

Negros was largely spared the level of atrocities that attended many areas of the Philippines—but that does not mean we did not get our share of terrors. On 26 April 1945, the Americans finally landed on Negros Oriental soil, in Lo-oc, the very beach in Sibulan where the guerillas had snatched their first victory against the Japanese in 1942. In Dumaguete, only a few days after that landing, the people who spent the last three years hiding in the mountains came down to find isolated ruins [the town of Dumaguete was spared the conflagration that wiped out many other places during the war], but things soon went back to normal—albeit a nerve-wracked one exposed to the evils of humanity. The Japanese had fled to the hills of Valencia, in a last ditch effort to escape surrender, hoping for better and more winning outcomes in the fast-changing tides of warfare. They stayed there for almost half a year.

Finally, on 22 September 1945, they surrendered at Basak Ridge near Guinso-an Bridge in Nasig-id, Zamboanguita. Leading the Japanese forces was Col. Satoshi Oyei who, in a symbol of surrender, handed over his sword to Col. F. Wilson, of the 503rd Airborne Division, with none of the Filipino guerillas in attendance. Oie was the head of the 174th Independent Infantry Battalion, which was stationed in the Dumaguete Garrison, and they were the last battalion who held on to Negros Oriental—fighting in the hinterlands of the towns close to the provincial capital. From the write-ups of history professor Justin Jose Austria Bulado, we learn that the Japanese were suffering from a lack of morale and they were in dire need of food. The remaining Japanese troops under Oie finally came down from the hinterlands and surrendered to the Americans. There were no guerrillas present at that time since Oie and his men intentionally chose—and requested only for—the Americans to accept their formal surrender as they feared guerrilla retribution. The defeated Japanese forces were then sent to the Trade School building in Dumaguete where they would temporarily stay, awaiting their transfer to the various prisoner-of-war camps in the Philippines and in Japan. Oie was later on tried for war crimes in Manila, and was executed in the early hours of 23 October 1948, three years after his surrender in Zamboanguita.

Stories of what World War II was like in Dumaguete and Negros Oriental will always continue to fascinate me—and I am happy that we are blessed with a rich literature detailing its gruesome unfolding, some of it historiography and some of it literary. We have Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez, whose 1989 multi-volume work on the history of the province has one book dedicated to the war years, and inside it we learn of the war in terms of numbers and names and bare details. We also have Earl Jude Cleope, whose book Bandit Zone published in 2002, tackles the history of the so-called “Free Areas” of Negros Island during the war. We also have Justin Bulado who has written many articles about the important local personages during the war years, including wartime provincial governor Guillermo Villanueva and former Dumaguete mayor Mariano Perdices. We also have Salvador Abcede, war hero and guerrilla leader in Negros who largely operated in the mountains of Tanjay, who would release a war novel titled Nita based on his experiences and first published in 1984. We also have Edilberto Tiempo, who wrote two novels set in World War II—Watch in the Night from 1953 [later published in the U.S. as Cry Slaughter! in 1957] and More Than Conquerors in 1982. We also have Scott A. Mills, who published Stranded in the Philippines in 2009, where he wrote about the war experiences of Prof. Henry Roy Bell and his wife Edna, both American teachers at Silliman University.

And then there are the memoirs, a significant number of them—“significant” because Dumaguete is not really a place you would think of when you think of World War II in the Philippines. But despite that, a great deal of literature has indeed sprung from our corner of the occupied world of that time. What struck me most about these war memoirs set in Negros Oriental, however, is the fact that a great number of them were written by American women. [A quick aside: According to Dr. Cleope, there are also two unpublished accounts of the war years in Dumaguete from the Japanese perspective—one by Komei Fujitomi, who was first lieutenant of the 174th Independent Infantry Battalion, and another by Kyuji Yamada, who was corporal of the 31st Educational Flying Corps of the Japanese Imperial Navy.]

One such American memoir, We Did Not Surrender, was written by Silliman teacher Abby Jacobs in 1983 but published only in 2003—a book I have yet to read. Jacobs, the sister of Metta Jacobs Silliman and sister-in-law of Robert Silliman [yes, the namesakes of the present building housing the Silliman University Library], had earlier written an unpublished 27-chapter narrative, also about the war, titled “Soldiers Without Shoes,” but I am not sure if the final book is based on that earlier memoir.

About two years or so ago, I read within a span of a day, and without any intention in my part, two other memoirs by American women, and both published in 1947—only two years after World War II officially ended. These were The Sun Was Darkened by Alice Franklin Bryant [published by Chapman and Grimes in Boston], and Escape to the Hills by James and Ethel Chapman [published by The Jacques Cattell Press, and one must note: while the authorship of the book signifies the two names of the couple, the writing within clearly had been done by Mrs. Chapman alone].

Two years ago, when I began reading these two memoirs, I was coming off from a first-day high of renewed research on the literary history of Negros Oriental, the manuscript of which I finished about seven years ago, fully intending to go over it again in an exhaustive edit—but which I inadvertently abandoned because … life happened. [And there was also a crippling pandemic.] I had dusted off one chapter of that work on the literary history of Negros Oriental—focusing on the formative years of our written literature between 1901 to 1945—for the sake of including it in the second volume of Hugkat the journal of Dumaguete and Oriental Negrense history and culture I’ve been co-editing with Dr. Cleope—and in doing so, was dropped into a rabbit’s hole ushering me into these war memoirs.

Another thing that struck me about these memoirs was this: while the books are connected by several commonalities—the authors are both American women living in Negros Oriental when the World War II broke out in the Pacific—the perspectives are so different from each other. One is clearly the work of a middle-class woman teaching in an American school during the American colonial period; the other is clearly the work of a privileged individual married to an American landowner. The run of their stories is similar—fleeing encroaching Japanese forces into the foothills of the province and living off the land for months on end, and finally getting captured and sent to Bacolod for processing before being interred in the concentration camp for American POWs at the University of Santo Tomas. They also detail atrocities and hardships and the constant fear of the unknown suddenly befalling their lot. But the voices that tell these stories are so different.

Alice Bryant was born Alice Franklin in Fredricktown, Missouri, on 1 May 1899. In The Sun Was Darkened, she talks about being married to a man several years her senior—William Cheney Bryant—who was an American official assigned to the Philippines: “[M]y husband’s roots were deep in the Philippines,” Mrs. Bryant writes in the memoir, “where he had lived and labored since 1902, for many years as a provincial governor and afterwards as a coconut planter. He had, in his youth, vigorously and paternally administered head-hunting Ifugaos, Ibilaos [sic], Manobos, and turbulent Moros. The latter he had pacified in the province of Cotabato, and one of the of the most powerful datus had admired him so much that he had adopted him as a son.” She continues: “These things he had done long before I met him. For the fourteen years just past he had become a coconut planter… Because of my husband’s seniority in age and accomplishments, I have always felt too respectful to call him by his given name, and hence commonly refer to him as the Gov’nor, and sometimes address him as Your Excellency.”

That coconut plantation happened to be located in the town of Pamplona, in the middle of Negros Oriental. And in the beginning of Mrs. Bryant’s book, she tells of a sojourn from America, where the couple purposely left their young daughter Imogene in the care of relatives, before journeying back to the Philippines where their livelihood was located. This was in 1939, and when they started back to Asia via a steamer, most friends and family begged them to stay, fearing an eventual outbreak of a war; they, however, insisted on going back. I like the part when they finally arrive in Dumaguete, where Mrs. Bryant writes: “How happy we had been on the inter-island boat when we saw the Horns of Negros! These well-named precipitous summits of a jungle-covered mountain rise to a height of 5,000 feet, and are so distinctive that, when we saw them, we knew we were almost home… / Now we were so near the shore that, to our right, we could see palms bending gracefully over the beach. In front of us was the pier and, to the left, buildings belonging to Silliman University, a missionary institution, and some fine residences along the waterfront. This was all we could see of Dumaguete…because the town is almost completely hidden by the coconut palms and acacias.” They are met at the pier by American peers, and then she continues: “We motored over to the Far Eastern Grocery, the leading grocery of the province, to get the things [my husband] had already ordered. The Chinese in the store seemed happy to see us back—indeed everyone seemed happy. Perhaps a warm climate predisposes people to be light-hearted and carefree.”

After a few passages, they finally arrive home in their Pamplona plantation. We learn she loved her thatched vine-covered house, perfectly maintained by good servants. She talks of her daily routines at the plantation house, and describes the people that visit her [like “snaggle-toothed old Mrs. Reyes”] or surround her [like “Lame Maria”]: “Life on the plantation was pleasantly secluded, but we were by no means cut off from the world. Good magazines kept us well-informed on current events. News came over the radio from Manila and London, although occasionally we listened to many far-scattered stations.” Later, she would describe their social life as spare but enjoyable: “We went off the plantation very little. Once a week we went to town to do our errands. When they were accomplished my husband had a game of gold with Filipino friends while I taught my Spanish dancing class. Then I would join him and other club members on the lawn in front of the thatched clubhouse for a cold drink while the sunset flamed above us and around us. / Occasionally we attended a ball. Filipino parties have an atmosphere of great enjoyment. Some were given in the club, some in private homes. One of the finest we attended during the year was a ball given after the wedding ceremony of the daughter of one of the sugar planters. Of Spanish descent, she was the most beautiful bride I have ever seen, and her white gown and lace veil were rich and elegant. After the ceremony at the Catholic Church at Bais, we went to the bride’s home. The several hundred guests found tables loaded with a profusion of rich food—pigs roasted over an open fire, turkeys, boned fowls stuffed with sausage, meat pastries, cakes. For me, the dancing was far more important than the food and drink. Filipinos and I agree on this point. In a swirl of pink organza, I did the cariñosa, a pretty flirtatious native dance, with the governor of the province.”

Two years after the Bryants arrived back in Pamplona, in 1941, Pearl Harbor exploded and sent America into the hell of war. Mrs. Bryant prepared for the war the only way she could: with caution, and also increasing helplessness. She writes: “Although I had considered war a possibility, such was my ignorance of military affairs that I was astounded both at our isolation and the speed with which the Japanese were taking the islands around us. I had not realized they would be inevitably be taken, until that fateful moment when the Gov’nor announced, ‘It’s begun!’ Then I had at once sensed our helplessness.”

But she also had an eye for detail, and gossip, which no history book could contain: “An American quartermaster captain became the ranking officer of the province. Poor fellow! Nervous and irritable, he was unpopular with everyone. He was in a climate and a country he hated. He was in an almost hopeless situation and he was worried to death. On one occasion, he ordered an ambulance to hurry to a PT-boat that was wrecked south of Dumaguete. Through someone’s blunder the ambulance was late in arriving, and a mad died in consequence.” And this is why I love memoirs as a complement to history books: they add color and opinion to what is only barebones fact in history. The man is not named but a quick reference with Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez’s book makes us deduce this might be Major Robert N. Vesey.

Pamplona being safely far inland, and away by many kilometers from Bais or Dumaguete, the Bryants would invite other people to take refuge with them during the war, most of them American teachers in Dumaguete. Her descriptions of each guest, often withering, is such a delight to read—especially for one Mahitable Smithers, a spinster and businesswoman who just happened to be in Dumaguete when the war begun: “She was nervous, pessimistic, and noticeably lacking in any joy of living. Her headquarters were in Manila, but she happened to be in in our province when the war erupted.” Ms. Smithers was, in fact, not invited to stay with the Bryants, but she showed up anyway. She soon surprised everyone by doing her share of domestic duties and for being surprisingly agreeable—unlike Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard who “often woke us up in the night…[and during siesta] disturbed us by reading aloud, talking, walking around, and going in and out… Hints were lost upon them.” [Smithers, however, would change when everyone gets captured and transferred to Bacolod.]

Later, we learn that the Bryant house in Pamplona was the actual residence President Manuel Quezon and his entourage stayed in before being spirited out of the country via submarine to exile. Mrs. Bryant writes: “Once we returned home after having Sunday dinner at the colonel’s, we were surprised to find two cars by the house. Then we saw two strange girls lying on a basket spread on the lawn in the shade cast by the house. They were both asleep, so we went up the stairs. On the verandah, a plump Filipino was asleep on a divan. Another was in an easy chair with this head thrown back and his mouth open. Just then, the mayor of Tanjay came out onto the verandah. ‘It’s the Quezon family and their party!’ he said to us in a low voice so as not to awaken the sleepers. ‘They escaped from Corregidor on a submarine! I brought them here to take a siesta. Quezon is in there,’ pointing to our room…. At once I sent for my servants, who were not far away in their respective homes, and we soon had a supper prepared, which we served on the verandah to the Quezon family, the politicians who accompanied them, and our houseguests. Quezon was very nervous. He drank one glass of ice-water after another and smoked incessantly. Mrs. Quezon talked as incessantly as her husband smoked, telling how they lived in a tunnel on Corregidor and escaped by submarine…” Again, these are particular and lived-in details you will never read in a history book.

Eventually, with the Japanese occupation of Negros Island in full swing, the Bryants had to leave the comforts of their plantation house and venture up the more challenging terrains of the mountains. She found the jungles beautiful—but also was aware of the lurking, unseen dangers. She was also cognizant of the hardships ahead. “The jungle was so devoid of food that there was not much animal life about us, and what creatures there were preferred to remain unseen,” she writes. “No doubt there were pythons, but we saw none. During the hours of darkness, we heard the barking of large fruit bats… Unfortunately there was one species of widely distributed small animal, which immediately invaded our shelves—rats!” She would see the challenges overcome her companions—especially Mrs. Miller: “She had been the most optimistic of any of us before the Japanese entered our province, but now she saw armed enemies behind every bush, and insisted very brusquely on having brought up … against our wishes several large, heavy suitcases that she had filled with things that could be of no use in the mountains.”

What makes this memoir memorable is the fact that the Bryants were close to the powers that be in Negros Oriental—evident in the fact that their Pamplona residence was the chosen refuge for the President of the Philippine Commonwealth before going to exile. This meant they were close to the political goings-on during the war, including the fate of Pepe Martinez, a local official killed by the guerilla for collaborating with the Japanese. In this memoir, we get behind the scenes of these wartime political happenings, complete with transcribed conversations. Very juicy!

Eventually, the Japanese would capture the Bryant party in the mountains, and they would thgen be taken to Dumaguete and eventually to Bacolod, then to final internment in Manila. I finished the book quickly, finding quite interesting a narrative of the war from a privileged woman’s point-of-view. Further research would reveal that, after the war and after settling back in American society, Mrs. Bryant became a leader in the anti-war movement and also an officer of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She later on became a candidate for United States Representative from the 1st Congressional District in Seattle, Washington, and also ran for the Senate. She died in Seattle on 7 June 1977.

But The Sun Was Darkened was actually my second book which I read that fateful day when I stumbled onto American memoirs about the war in Negros Oriental. I only read it because I had finished quickly something I stumbled into online: an e-copy of James and Ethel Chapman’s wartime memoir Escape to the Hills. The Chapmans were missionary teachers at Silliman University when the war broke out—and both were exemplary members of the Dumaguete community, so much so that today, the Science Complex at Silliman is named after James. He was an entomologist, who played a critical role as an academic and later as a University administrator, responsible for building up the reputation of Silliman in science research. [In preparation for the war, he was also chosen as the provincial supervisor in-charge of food and rationing.]

From the Silliman University website, we learn that “while in Silliman, [Chapman] taught biology, chemistry, and physics, with a special fascination with myrmecology, the study of ants. It was this passion for what many would term as ‘hard sciences’ that brought him to Silliman in 1916 when he joined as a science faculty. He arrived with his wife, Ethel, who joined Silliman as an English teacher.”

Ethel the English Teacher was the one responsible for the riveting memoir she wrote under both their names about their extensive experiences in the mountains of Negros Oriental during the war. I didn’t intend to be so caught up by Escape to the Hills I scanned the first pages just because—but soon found myself riveted by its very engaging writing. I found myself reading nonstop—and if you can understand my ADHD, you know this only happens rarely.

The memoir is so good because it is so thrilling. I loved having a fantastic mental picture of Dumaguete right before World War II broke out in the Pacific in December 1941. I loved the details of the inhabitants preparing for the war to come, rationing food and preparing shelter in the mountains.

I loved learning from the book that Abby Jacobs was a super woman! Asteeeeg! University President Arthur Carson’s order was for all the women and children to immediately evacuate Dumaguete when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, but she stayed behind in campus with the men, and went about the task of publishing The Daily Sillimanian, to print factual information about the war for the Dumaguete community, in order to combat the hysterical fake news they were already being bombarded by. She stayed on that job right until the very end, when she was forced to surrender it. Together with her family, she was eventually ferreted out of Negros via submarine, but stayed in Australia and found work with the military. She was with the liberation force that entered Manila in April 1945.

I loved learning from the book that even with the war going on, James Chapman was still the fervent biologist that he was, going about their evacuation places still collecting plants and animals for study. [The section on ants is endearing! And the section on food was strangely delicious, and enlightening!]

I loved learning from the book that despite all the dangers, they still found time to set-up a “Jungle University,” catering to the education needs of their neighbors in the mountains of Negros.

Finally, I loved learning about surviving the war from the point-of-view of an ordinary English teacher.

I am truly amazed by the bravery and the resourcefulness of our early Silliman teachers. The section that details their eventual interment at the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila was a painful passage to read, and showed how the prisoners had to resort to furtive politics to get things done. [Yes, like the Bryants, the Chapmans were also eventually captured by the Japanese, and imprisoned in Manila].

To be honest, Silliman University should be reprinting this valuable Chapman memoir, first published 77 years ago and long out of print. [Thank God I found a copy to read online.] Because it’s really sad that we only know them now as buildings and nothing else: Ethel Chapman is a building for nursing students, James Chapman is a science building, and Abby Jacobs is a residence hall.

Buildings in their memory are nice. Their stories, preserved and read today, would even be better.

Labels: books, dumaguete, history, negros, war, world war II, writers, writing

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Monday, June 17, 2024

4:36 PM | Piaya, Napoleones, Atbp.

The plan was to go back home to Dumaguete today, but I extended my stay in Bacolod just to be able to watch Kurt Soberano’s Under a Piaya Moon on the big screen. [Vince Groyon wrote the screenplay.] This was such a joy to watch, and you really have to be Negrense to revel in this film in a deeper level. I’m glad I caught this in Bacolod, a most appropriate place to watch this film, and I’m glad I extended my stay here, because I’m sure I won’t be able to watch it anywhere else. When oh when will Dumaguete filmmaking take on stories like this? I’m kinda growing tired of the macho slapstick that seems to define Dumaguete film.

Labels: film, food, negros, philippine cinema

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Sunday, June 16, 2024

10:00 PM | Bacolod Roundup

June 14, Friday. At the Gawad Tolentino of the Tolentine Star, the official publication of the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos in Bacolod. My speech was titled “The Writer at Dusk,” to follow their theme of “Nocturnal.”

June 15, Saturday. It was my first time to be at The Negros Museum in Bacolod City, and it was an honor that they hosted my talk on writing a literary historiography of Negros. [The new Negros Island Region being proclaimed official suddenly makes the project worthwhile.] The whole talk lasted until 4 PM, with a great and long Q and A at the end. I always thought doing this project was such a lonely effort, but today I found kindred spirits. Thank you, Tanya P. Lopez, for making this happen!

Later, at the studio of Bacolod-based Dumaguete artist Kristoffer Ardeña. We had a great time catching up over coffee after this studio visit.

Later, at Italia in Paseo Verde for dinner with the Elsie Coscolluela. I know she rarely goes out these days, so I’m truly honored that I had dinner tonight with her! I discovered the short stories and poetry and plays of Ma’am Elsie in college, and I’ve been a fan since then — and delighted over the fact that this Palanca Hall of Famer is from Dumaguete and is a Sillimanian, although home for her now is Bacolod. It was my honor to play a version of her father in her iconic play In My Father's House when it was finally staged in Dumaguete in 2013. I love this night. Kulang ang three hours with all the talk we did! Thank you, Rayboy Pandan and Sally Pandan, for making this dinner happen!

June 15, Saturday. I didn’t plan to do this but I had some time to kill in Bacolod so I visited the Orange Project.

Later, at the welcome dinner of the 24th IYAS La Salle National Writers Workshop at Raymundo's Diner in Talisay City.

Labels: art and culture, bacolod, negros, philippine literature

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