JAN-D-7

 

JANUARY 29-A, OUR FIRST OF TWO WEDNESDAYS,

BEGINS WITH A PROPOSED EARLY TAKEOFF POSTPONED

BY A PAIR OF EMERGENCIES TO BE OPERATED BEFORE WE LEAVE

 

THEN, RIDE ACROSS LEYTE IN TROPICAL RAIN,

TURNING NORTH BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS AT MAKAPLAG,

THEN VISIT HILL I20, TOLOSA, MACARTHUR PARK AND

TACLOBAN AND THE SAN JUANICO BRIDGE TO SAMAR

 

THEN CATCH PAL 194 TO MANILA, AND

BOARD PAL 112 FOR THE THIRTEEN HOURS (AND SECOND WEDNESDAY’S)

TRANSPACIFIC A-340 LONG FLIGHT

 

January 29-A, 2003

 

            We had come back last night in a steady rain which would continue for the day, and had returned from Maasin and the dinner at the Leyte Baptist Seminary postponed from the missed prior night.  The windows were fogged from the high humidity outside and the cooler temperature inside the little AUV; it is easy to see how the limited visibility and the heavy pedestrian traffic on the roads leads to the kind of collision that cost the life of the drunk bicyclist and the damages to the ambulance of LBH last week.  I had scurried to pack away all the things I would not need, but still had to carry on the flight—such as all of my packaged exposed and the unexposed residual film, and a few more things that I would need, like warmer clothes when I returned to winter in the world of the West.  I turned in at eleven PM with all of us knowing we would be getting up at 4:30 to be on the road at 6:00 AM.

 

            That was not to be.   I had wrestled the big bag down and the carryon stuff to the vehicle that Bahby would be carrying us to Tacloban in the morning so that we could visit a few of the historic sites there before a lunch at her “ancestral home” (her father was mayor of an island province just off Leyte) before we checked in to our PAL flight from Tacloban to Manila to catch our return trip.  If we did not leave early, we would wither not see any sights and/or cut too close to our takeoff time without any room built in for contingencies not foreseen.

 

            We left at 9:30 AM.  What we did before then was to evaluate a very acute abdominal pain which was inevitably appendicitis.  Under a not very effective spinal anesthetic, I was going to help Bahby do a swift appendectomy through a little Rocky-Davis incision.  This, of course, would have to be a retrocecal appendix, hard to deliver, but then easily excised.  When we finished with that, a fellow who had had a motorbike accident in the rain was brought t in with large open wounds and an alleged tendon injury.  He was cleaned up and debrided, treated as a war wound.  When we finally got packed up we went to the hospital where a farewell ceremony was held for us with a fervent wish for our return, including a promise from Jennifer, whose trip is sponsored by NIFA’ donation, that she would be returning also—but that would depend again on sponsorship which probably ought to be spread around among a variety of talents of varying spectrum.  I taped the song and prayer at our takeoff.  Then, we returned again to pick up the driver’s license that Bahby had forgotten.

 

            Despite our late start, we were asked to stop repeatedly by Jennifer, who would get out and stand in the rain to take pictures of carabow, rice planters, or the “neap” (“little straw thatched bamboo hose in the rice paddies.”)  This shortened our time at real sites we would pass later.  We drove through the west coast of Leyte heading toward Ormo where there is a geothermal facility, and then turned east to climb out of the rice paddy countryside and up and over the central mountains of Leyte.

 

            `We saw lots of people walking along holding a large banana leaf overhead as a readily available disposable umbrella.  We saw lots of coconut palms which were encouraged in the high country by Ferdinand Marcos, whose wife Imelda had been raised in Tolosa on a large estate, daughter of a local politician and the speaker of the Senate after whom the Tacloban airport is named.  These are loyalists in these hills, since Marcos favored this part of the Philippines because of his wife’s ancestral connections here.  In fact, Tacloban, to which we are heading, is known for three entities: Imelda Marcos and her family, the General Douglas MacArthur site of the “return” to the Philippines in triumph, and the “Philtranco Route”, the longest bridge in the Philippines connecting Leyte across a strait with Pacific shipping access to the San Juanico area of West Samar.  This Philtranco system means that one can take a bus over a mostly paved road—even if only two lanes at best and crowded with pedestrians day and night, and broken through in many places where potholes can swallow a vehicle, from Mindanao in the south and ride to the north of Mindanao, where the bus is carried by ferry to Maasin in South Leyte, from which the road continues over the San Juanico Bridge into West and then East Samar, and, by means of another long ferry ride, connect to Luzon.  So, one can go by road, carried twice by ferry and once by a big bridge, from South Mindanao to Manila.  This is quite a trip, and takes several days, and these buses are not exactly Pullman suites, but it is an adventure most people have the ability to dream of affording, since the trip from Tacloban to Mindanao costs less than 1,000Ppesos and can be done in less than two days straight.

 

            We saw large drying racks of the abaca fibers from which many things are made, from the hemp of “Manila rope” to baskets, sandals, and –in its highest art form—the T’nalak of the Tboli area in Mindanao, of which you will learn a great deal more in book, video and the original art works of the National Treasure (Lang Dulang) of the Philippines in its best form.  There are many coconut processing places along the way in which the coconut meat is dried to produce the number one export from Philippines still--Copra—the dried coconut “meat.”  This is use din bases for paints and pigments and everything else from animal feed to thickeners in ice cream.  Men climb up coconut trees to knock down these heavy coconuts (“bombs away!”) and carry them by abaca fiber baskets to horses where they are packed into panniers for the horse to take to the drying places.  The price for copra has dropped so that there is very little other things they can do for an income, but can hardly afford the horse or the effort to harvest copra at 200 pesos per day gathering dozens of kilos of copra, with a lot of work involved in it is production.  This was one of the sources of consternation with Ferdinand Marcos, who had subsidized the copra production that left a lot of people beggared when the price fell, and led in part to the coups d’ etat

           

            We arrived at the junction where we swing north along the east coast of Leyte at Makaplag, and headed up the Leyte Gulf which is of such significance from events centered her fifty seven years ago.  I was in Saipan just before the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion of the Marianas Islands and recapture by the Americans from the Japanese, and now I am here after the big celebration in 1994 of the fiftieth anniversary of the successful re-landing in the Philippines.  The date October 20 is a holiday throughout Leyte, and there is even a small town here named “MacArthur.” We re-traced several of those events that occurred half a century ago, for which a few of the Philippines have direct and personal memory, and all have an acculturated respect for the rescue and liberation by the Americans, with many parts of this area of Leyte named after the events of that stormy period in world history, the last time it was on center stage—and , like Micronesia, probably the only time it is likely to be given the change in the strategic value of these outlying areas which no longer have military or political significance, since even the Japanese economy, dependent upon the Americans as well for their recovery, have made contributions to the memorials in the name of peace and abject apologies for their earlier aggression in history

 

THE MEMORIALS OF A BIG DAY MARKING THE TURNING POINT OF WW II

IN THE PHILIPPINES AND THE US LIBERATION OF IT

 

            Makalplag is at 10* 39.14 N, 124* 56. 55 E, which put it about two or more hours of road miles through the rice paddies and then over the mountains, but only 24.7 miles on my GPS at 206* from Leyte at LBH.  This still makes it 8,695 miles from HOME over the top by the shortest course just east of the North Pole at 21* bearing.  The small village of Macarthur, otherwise unremarkable from the others we had passed, came next along the coast, and then the Hill 120—a renowned site of WW II, 120 steps up a lookout hill from which the Japanese watched the Americans under Macarthur land on the beach below at 10:00 AM on October 20, 1944, and only 42 minutes later, the 96th Infantry had taken the hill and the Japanese on it in a very expensive battle that secured the raising of the US Stars and Stripes for the first time since they were hauled down on April 9 1942 on retreating from Bataan above Manila Bay.  There is a large helmet with the slogan “Deadeyes” on it in a Memorial Park atop the hill with the kinds of miniature statues that are painted to resemble US GI’s reduced to Philippino size.   It looks like the Korean War Monument on the DC Mall if the statues were shrunk to one fourth size.   Amid these military statues and the carnage of what the war site must have looked like there is a statuette of a nude woman pouring water from an amphora, presumably looking as if she is the virgin Philippines for whom the GI’s are struggling to liberate.

 

            It rained as long as I was out and about, and the 120 steps were slimy with moss, and slippery.  This was a pivotal and psychologically important moment in the Great War, as another set of military from the US are being deployed in lands as foreign as these were to the American people for some geopolitical purpose to project power in a distant place where no territorial conquest is sought.  This sleepy seaside area looks about as it did then, with the exception that the jeeps left behind became the much more colorful Jeepneys.

 

            We next passed the ancestral homeland of Imelda Marcos where she grew up as a little girl in her Senator Father’s house now surrounded by high walls and enclosing a garden, large hill, golf course and scuba diving reef.  This is Tolosa, at 11* 07. 15 N, 125* 01. 00E—you can tell from the latitude and longitude that we have crawled north and east by a degree, heading toward the city of Tacloban, seat of the government of Leyte North.  As we get closer, we arrive at Macarthur Park, the site where he waded ashore along with representative Philippine Exile Army officers, fulfilling his “I shall return” promise to the Philippine people.  MACA in bronze in their reflecting pool is at 11* 10. 28 N, and 125* 00. 33 E, and 14.5 miles from the “HILL” 120 at 176* bearing, and 58.8 miles from Leyte at LBH along bearing 190*.  This site is called Palon Bay, which simply means “spanking” in Tagalog.

 

            There is also a “Shrine” here, which is a museum of Imelda’s artifacts, from her collection of world leaders’ gifts to them during their long reign of power.  It is no longer maintained and has been steadily looted of its antiques and more valuable objects, a faster process than the original gathering of the same kinds of acquisitive wealth.  Few people around here will speak ill of Imelda, since she was benefactress of her home area, so she retreats here if she is getting ill press, as she had recently when she tried to go to the US, but the US-immigrated Filipinos protested blocking the trip for medical treatment.  Her brother is the mayor of Tacloban, and is also under impeachment, but has been in refuge in a hospital so as to avoid service of process.

 

            We drove on in the rain and tried to check our bags forward to our home destination.  Neither was possible—either the check-in, or later, the through-checking to the home destination.  The police told us simply to leave our bags standing there in the lobby since he would be there, and we did.  I marked the Tacloban Airport at TACL 11* 13. 35 N< 125* 01. 21 E, and its name as Daniel Z Romuoldez Airport—the name of Imelda’s politician father.  Her mother has not been left out, since the medical school in Tacloban is named the “Remedios Romuoldez Faculty of Medicine”—Imelda’s mother.  It also happens that this medical school in two years of students happened to have produced Dr. Bahby at the LBH, Susan and Leslie at the BBH   We saw the hospital and then went to the home of Bahby which is quite sumptuous, marking the relics of power of the former mayor of the island province off Leyte.  There, we parked the small AUV so that it would be convenient for my pushing it to start, since the alternator must have failed in it, so I had to push it to start each time.  We came in for a seafood dinner of shrimp, broiled reef fish and large crabs.  It was prepared by the live-in students and cooks and a number of others who were taking refuge in the house, including Jasper the student nurse who is still recovering from the Sunday morning run we made together.

 

DOCTORS WHO ARE ALL WOULD-BE US NURSES—

IT TURNS OUT THE MAJORITYOF PHILIPPINE DOCTORS!

 

            The woman doctor who had come to help Bahby do the total hysterectomy that had preceded the more complex one done vaginally that I had consulted on at LBH came by to join in the lunch.  She reported something that I had heard of before, but thought that it was a small and fringe group.  She is a qualified consultant and a senior doctor in the government.  She is taking nursing classes, to get a nursing certificate to go to the US and make a really lucrative living.  She says it will be no worries, less pressure and much more civilized hours than being a doctor at 5% the salary.  She is already lined up with the employer that will take a whole group of them going to –of all places—Nevada.  When I remarked about that, Bahby, said not just the classmates of hers, but he senior department chairmen and consultants are the leaders in the rush to become US nurses—and are not embarrassed about the rush to be immigrating to a better life for less status.  The nursing schools complained that the course was too easy for only one year of additional schooling for a nursing certificate for a graduate MD, so it is now extended to two years, and still the number of physicians trying hard to get into nursing is astounding.  I then got the newspaper on the flight out of Tacloban and found out that 60% of ALL Philippine MD’s graduating now are taking nursing courses to get into the US!

 

Those who do not get into the US try to get shipped to the middle east where I had once seen whole hospitals in Saudi Arabia staffed only by identical looking Filipinas—and I told them that any Saudi could take advantage of any one of these Philippine princesses, who are often the sole sources of support for very large families back home.  What would a woman do for abuse?  Complain?  She would get kicked out at a minimum.  There was a movie about a woman who murdered her boss after he took advantage of her in Saudi Arabia and she was beheaded and her body sent back to the Philippines as a public example—“Flora Temptacion”.

 

We scrambled and I pushed the AUV to start it, and drove through the rain to the San Juanico Bridge, to see the island of Samar, looming in the dense green vegetation.  We crossed the bridge to say we had been over to West Samar, and over the Philippines linking bridge between these provinces, and saw the Philtranco bus making its landward passage.

 

We then scrambled to be the last checked-in passengers on the PAL 194 flight from Tacloban to Manila, as our first January 29 comes to a close, and the next one begins as we are over the wide Pacific aboard an A-340 carrying us non-stop for 12 ½ hours on the watch, two days on the calendar and the first of several sleepless nights in the continuing red-eye transit that will conclude the Jan-D-series and the long return from the Philippine Medical Mission..   

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