The Long Trip Back From Bicol

Travelling back to Albay, Bicol was unexpected, rushed, and fast. On the 3rd of November, an aunt called to say our 89-year old grandfather had passed away: by the next day, we break the news to my grandmother about her elder brother, and relatives go back to the province one by one. Chores and schedules delay my departure but I reach Bicol in time for the last two days of the wake. There is no time to notice any superfluous details, or frivolous thoughts: there are acquaintances to attend to, cousins to support in their hours of grief, a brother to baby-sit, deadlines and backlogs to be negotiated through text. All of these climax during the funeral, where nearly an entire century of history, stories and sadness descends upon the mourners after the coffin is sealed and entombed. His passing away is still something that I have yet to come to terms with, and have difficulty in writing about. Now that the ceremonies are over, I distract myself by taking unnecessary notes, as if being engrossed in the details of everything else is the only form of coping in this place and time.

The next day is Sunday. We are anxious to leave for Manila by 10 a.m. in time for my brother's grade school classes the next day, to not add more absences to his red-marked class record. We hurriedly bid goodbye to our relatives, who understand because the trip back to Cubao takes 12 hours at the least and because morning bus trips are few and far between in this part of the province.

The first trip to Manila from Albay comes during mid-afternoon, we are informed. Fearing it too late, we try our luck in the bus terminal located a few kilometers away, in the next town. After one minibus and tricycle ride to the place for thirty minutes, barkers tell us that we've missed that first trip by a mere five minutes. The next trip leaves 12 noon, they say. I look at my cellphone: it's 9:30 a.m.

We have little other choic but to wait it out for hours in a dingy terminal housed next to what seems to be an entire plantation of coconuts. The 'terminal' is actually nothing more but a large concrete and corrugated-iron shed on the outskirts of the town, populated by ambulant vendors and and a few barkers. The lone sari-sari store in the vicinity is laden with overpriced styrofoam cups of instant noodles, whose flavors are marked by different colors, crackers, candy, water, chips, abanico fans painted in gaudy green, pink, orange, and yellow, and cigarette sticks. Neat, geometrical rows of barbed wire segregate meters of unruly palm leaves from the dusty high-way.

I take a seat inside the only bus parked in the shed. The still-empty bus is sparsely decorated with the standard fare of secular altarpieces: yellow rubber Pokemon figures hanging from a nylon string, gold-plated Chinese charms, stale canisters of My Shaldan air freshener, pink and white plastic carnations jutting out of jade-colored bottles, prayers printed and covered with plastic framed by bright red and sky-blue plastic rosaries.

The drone of far-away tricycles and motorbikes is drowned out by the wails of a prepubescent girl belting out “Bed of Roses” on an ancient videoke machine. In between songs, the entire place waxes quiet, so silent you can ever hear the tired trudge of toes as passers-by amble along.

Nobody is doing anything productive in this part of the place. An elderly man transfers to the three-seater side of the bus, crouching in a fetal position on the seat to sleep things off. The driver idles around, pretending to do some last-minute repairs. I peek out of the window at the terminal: the vendors stare back, hoping that someone from our side will buy. We are too weary to complain, and already tired from a trip that hasn't even started.

My mother tries to make small talk with other passengers. Barring regional ties and idiosnycrasies, the only common denominator among Filipinos is the current political and economic crisis. She and the bus driver exchange a few words on how absurdly expensive gasoline prices have risen in the past few months. He complains that this has caused their bus company to drastically cut down on regular trips, leaving only when they fill their quota of passengers. The logic behind the initially-incomprehensible and seemingly whimsical bus schedules in Bicol is actually based on the inversely proportional relations between fluctuations in the world prices of crude oil and government support programs.

Its hopeless, the driver blurts as he lets out a tired sigh. Another passenger has harsher words to describe the entire state of things. Ito ang impiyerno ni Gloria, he angrily blurts out. His voice echoes nastily like a tin can struck by stones.

A century ago into the colonial era, did the word impiyerno conjure the same connotations to our laborers and peasants whenever the kura paroko uttered the word? Did they conceive of impiyerno as a tangible hell on earth, a rampage of evil upon their lands and bodies, rather than a surreal realm filled with brimstone and demons?

Even so, it wasn't hard to imagine this place the way it was half a century ago. Many people are still poor and unemployed despite the richness of the land and the steam brimming beneath it. Soldiers hungry for the blood of dissidents still scour the plains and fields. There is a geothermal plant and a few upgraded commercial stores in the town centers, but not much 'developments' have gotten around. Yes, some people have died, there are more babies and streets and painted houses, but nothing much has really, fundamentally changed in this landscape of sleepy fiefdoms fronting the sea.

After three long hours of idleness, the bus suddenly fills up with passengers and noise: families of five, six, even eight lugging along huge boxes and woven tampipis. A lone soldier or two, identifiable by the physique and camouflaged pants. Talkative kids. Workers returning to a few short and unstable months of hard labor in the cities. Young girls barely bringing along anything, perhaps visiting their relatives a few towns away. They all jostle for the better seating spaces left in the vehicle and settle down. The conductor, now alert after the long nap, pulls out a wad of tickets and begins ticking away with his puncher, leaving a trail of small paper circles floating along the aisle as he passes by.

This bus rumbles to life, and slowly leaves the terminal in a haze of dust. It gathers speed along the sleeping highway. Soon we will be part of this rolling landscape filled with lush leaves and bullets, still impenetrable from the vistas of the distant metropolis.

An hour ago, it was hot and humid. Now all I can see for miles are clouds pregnant with rain. I close the half-jammed window and view the countryside obscured by the cloudy and scratched fiberglass and raindrops. All I can see are overlapping planes of green, grey, and brown, all fading into dusk: planes populated by rice fields, and jungles, ancestral houses and peasants' huts, the tracks of the living and the tombs of the dead.

I spend hours staring outside the window. It is sad and unsettling to leave this place of lush, smoldering shores and restive seas, to depart from those finally at rest and those resting for the work of days to come. I don't know why, but there is a beauty in this quiet, sleeping silence, like that of a powerful volcano ready to erupt.

November 2005