The road cuts through the geographics, the lay of the land. It cuts through the social fabric. It cuts through culture over boundaries of time. We can never understand where we came from by sitting on our butts at a cafe in the city or listening to some university professor’s take on history. One has to pack up one’s bag and take to the road. By public bus is the best way. But even a car will do.
Or at least, that’s what we thought when we were younger. We took to the road looking for distant relatives. This one, to a small coastal town going West from Cagayan de Oro. It is the middle of the 1980s, before the highway was finished. The road was being worked on. We rode over rocks and gravel, foundation for the concrete that would later on be poured over all these.
It was a rough ride. But we drove a World War II Willys Jeep converted to such an extent as to be “street-legal” but still nevertheless worthy for roads rough enough to shake apart an ordinary car. The Jeep had a name carved in relief below the windshield: “BS”, which was not at all a bad name considering the car’s mechanical state and the roads we drove it through.
Mindanao back then was in the thick of many insurgent conflicts. It was the Philippine socio-economic and political frontier. How much illegal logging and mining can a corporation get away with? How much land can be grabbed from ancient ancestral dwellers for converting into cane-fields? How big a political dynasty can be established here for defending by force of private arms and the government armed forces?
How much can you get away with by way of pillage? At the other extreme in opposition of the aforesaid; How far can poor people be organized in pursuit of independence, reform and revolution? These were questions with all possible resolutions being tested here. They could go either way.
It was not a place to drive through without risks. Although we had been told that we would be fine if we kept inside certain places and never traveled at night. Which was why we left early that morning. The goal being less than 50 kilometers away, we felt relatively sure we would be home way before night fall.
The first thing an uninitiated Cebuano discovers about Mindanao is that almost everyone speaks Cebuano, which might be as far as the commonalities go. The next thing a Cebuano soon realizes is that Mindanao is a huge place. The expanses of land are unbelievable. The phrase “as far as the eyes can see” takes on its true intended meaning. In Cebu, we see only as far as the seas can be seen. Imagine driving up the heights of Bukidnon and looking out to land and forested mountain ranges disappearing into sky and horizon. There is a sense of exhilaration. Sadly, one also understands by first-sight why this land is fought for, has been fought for and will probably still be fought for way into the future.
Mindanao is a glorious golden green expanse, unprecedented in one’s experience. Even a drive is wonderful. But wonderfully challenging as we soon discovered driving through the paving rocks of what would eventually become the highway to Iligan City. Despite the shaking, it seemed at first we were on our way until the engine began sputtering to a stop.
It still ran but no more than a few meters at a time. We would soon be out of battery for repeatedly starting the engine. Unless we found out what was wrong and fixed it.
What was wrong was quite easy to find. A rock had flown from the tires and hit the distributor cap causing a crack which ran almost all the way to the top.
The crack distended the cap to such an extent as to cause the ignition to go awry. It could be easily replaced. But this far from the city, we had the choice of trying to fix it or flagging the next bus and leaving the Jeep by the roadside. Our experience with BS, this particular Jeep, could be summarized in a sentence: It always took us home.
We tried many possible solutions, each one taking us a few kilometers along the way. But the best solution came with a shoestring. And then we discovered how you can tie up a distributor cap with shoestring to keep it working. Not exactly well, but enough to take you home.
Night was falling. Somewhat as an epilogue to all these, we drove through the wrong lane on the highway to the city.
A squad of soldiers in a Volkswagen buggy gave us chase. They were armed to the teeth with long arms, even a machine gun. We thought this was it. But they were not that bad at all.
They asked for the driver’s license. Which as it turned out was many months expired. They didn’t even see it. They flagged us onwards with only a warning.
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