Little Pampanga

Amirasolo and other Essays.                  

Part 1. Tondo on my Mind

Essay 4. LITTLE PAMPANGA

The first house we owned was located at Kagitingan Street, which is just two streets away from North Harbor. Although my paternal relatives are Cebuano-Visayans, we found ourselves residing in a street teeming with people from Pampanga---the Kapampangans.

Kagitingan Street was truly Little Pampanga then, with almost all of our neighbors coming from that province. The only exception was the family whose house was in front of ours. They we're from Bicol, and the head of their family, Mang Pulen Malayo, became my parents' compadre when my mother stood as sponsor during the baptism of Mang Pulen's youngest child Henry.

The next street going to the piers, on the other hand, was Little Visayas, where the Visayans, Warays from Samar and Leyte mostly, chose to settle on. Their street is Tagumpay Street.

I have a little theory. It seems to me now that the very names of the streets, Kagitingan (courage) and Tagumpay (victory), may have contributed to the arousing of ethnic pride and passion, so much so that the hotheads from each street often resorted to riots and raids to settle once and for all the question of which tribe truly was tougher.

That's the time when criminal gangs sprouted. The Kapampangans had their Sigue-sigue Sputnik gang and the Visayans their Oxo gang. My father Papa Nene once told me of an incident where the Sigue-sigues of Kagitingan Street raided Tagumpay. It had dismal results apparently, because when the raiders came back, one of them was missing an arm which was chopped off by a bolo.

My Cebuano father got along very well with our Kapampangan neighbors. His Kapampangan friends embraced him as one of their own. One even became his compadre, my Ninong Guido Lalu of Candaba, Pampanga. He is my one and only ninong, because it wasn't customary then, in the 1950s, to name several godfathers and godmothers for a child's christening. Ninong Guido's youngest son Nilo later on became my compadre too, when he chose me to be one of the godfathers of his eldest daughter Shiela.

Those days were what I would call the Post-Asiong Salonga era, when the life of that murdered Tondo crime kingpin was made into a movie, which cleansed his image and turned him from a notorious gangster into a much-lamented folk hero. As a result, many criminally-inclined toughies sought to emulate him and organized their own gangs.

One such character was a certain Mario Cortez of Arayat, Pampanga. Seeing how friendly and humble my father was, Mario Cortez took a liking to him, and they became friends. One time, Mario Cortez, brought his group and my father to Cavite, to meet someone. My father said that he was handed a gun by Mario, in anticipation perhaps of some trouble that might ensue. My father wanted to refuse, but he rode along because he didn't want to antagonize Mario. Luckily, nothing untoward happened, and Mario Cortez later on was murdered too. It's good that he was, because if not, my father would have continued being a friend of that toughie, who'd surely be a bad influence on him.

Our all-wood house wasn't along the main road. It was located in the interior, in the so-called 'looban'---whose only access was through an 'eskinita'. To go to our house, you have to walk on a wooden foot-bridge built on top of wet mud---or murky waters after a heavy rain.

The surroundings are so, because our place, Tondo Foreshore, being reclaimed land, was 'swampy'. Many houses were built on low stilt-posts, that's why those houses really have no ground floors. Underneath the houses' floorings were pools of dirty water, where water creatures like very small fish and daphnia (water fleas) thrived.

But growing up, I see nothing miserable in my surroundings. Compare to what our place is today, I won't hesitate to describe what it was then as idyllic. Its ambience almost rural. My childhood was the perfect childhood for a boy.

I remember that I had so much fun then romping about the flooded streets, and even beneath the houses, trying to catch small fishes and daphnia with improvised nets. We boys, always had clear jars with us when we waded through the waters. Those jars were our improvised aquariums where we tried to raise the fish we caught. We called the daphnia, dapya. They are minute water creatures, colored light brown, and were said to be food for the fish. We caught the fishes and daphnia with nets made from worn-out ladies' stockings and wires. But no matter how diligent we were in feeding the fish, every fish we caught lived for only a day or two.

We lived in that house on Kagitingan until 1963, I think. Or, 1964. I can't remember now the exact year. We have to leave the house because it was sinking into the mud. The flooring of one room was no longer level, with one end elevated like a slide. My parents asked close relatives from Cebu to live there for a while until the time when we were able to sell it.

I got to see that house again in 1976, when I was already twenty years old. It was the same house I knew, but it was so sunk in the mud that the second storey flooring was only about two feet off the ground. That house is gone now. It was burned down in a fire that razed a big swath of Tondo Foreshore in 1978. The fire, said to be the biggest fire yet in post-war Manila, lasted 11 hours.

(The top photo of the photo collage above shows from left, my brother Rudy, Vicky Santos-Lalu, Ninong Guido's son and my compadre Nilo Lalu, myself, and my wife Carina. Bottom photo from left, My mother's 'inaanak' or godchild Henry Malayo, myself, and  my compadre Police Officer Zaldy Depositar)