PART 5: A Forest-Blessed Childhood in Isinay Country

CONNECTING THE dots now, I feel sad that even those whose childhood was lived near the forest are not aggressively tapping their experience to help keep the Philippines nature-rich and beautifully green.

Henry David Thoreau, himself once a forest dweller (when Walden Pond was still sylvan and biodiversity-rich), had a quotation that touches on this:
“Each more melodious note I hear brings this reproach to me, that I alone afford the ear what would the music be.”

Another pertinent call comes to mind: “We didn’t inherit the world from our parents, we borrowed them from our children.”

What I’m really trying to say is that we adults have a moral duty to pass on to our children a still healthy and livable world and to guide and hand-hold them on how to keep that world bright and wonderful.

No matter how brief or infrequent, exposing kids to things of nature such as hills and rivers, including the flora and fauna and culture that are associated with them, can work wonders to young people’s attitude and behavior towards nature and the environment later in life.

I happened to walk along this teach-your-children-well trail when, even as I was a weekend father most of the time when my three “forest products” were in their formative years, I made effort to find quality time to teach them to be at home with the things of nature. Yes, through playing under the pine trees and sylvan outdoors that Baguio still had then.

My children are all grown-ups now and (probably as a natural hangover of those days when it was still pure joy to see them delight in playing with pine cones and dandelions) I recently got into the habit of nudging them with these lines:

“When you have kids of your own, don’t forget to give me and your mom freedom to bring them out – like what we used to do when you were small – to play hide and seek under the trees, pick dandelions, chase butterflies, catch tadpoles, pitch tent on the grass, build bonfire and roast corn and camote, etc.”

A FEW MORE personal trips and dips down Philippine forest memory lane:

As a young forester I happened to play bit roles, as it were, in the information, extension and communication (or IEC) aspects of forestry, using my hands-on learning and exposure to forests and nature as, oh well, wind beneath my wings.

Among my pleasant memories was having been part of the UP Los Baños team that tried to seduce teachers in Manila, Quezon City, Pasay City, Caloocan, Rizal, Province, Nueva Ecija, Mindoro, Lubang Island, Iloilo, Antique, and Sultan Kudarat to love forests – and to in turn pass on that sylvan love to their pupils (as part of that nationwide program in the seventies that sought to inject Forest Conservation in the curriculum of public elementary schools).

I was also fresh out of college when the UPLB College of Forestry’s outreach publications – Conservation Circular, Forestry Digest, Makiling News, the Ilocano forest magazine Anaraar – were literally and figuratively my bedmates. And as part of my assignments I once wrote a news story about illegal logging in the watershed of Pantabangan Dam. The item became front-page material in one issue of the Manila Bulletin, was made into an editorial the following day, and reportedly caught the attention of then President Marcos, who consequently sent a phalanx of government foresters to investigate the matter.

I got assigned next to handle the publications and communications activities of the then UPLB Northern Luzon Forestry Extension Office in Pacdal, Baguio City. I helped conduct film showing and community lectures on forest conservation matters in remote areas of the Cordillera and the Ilocos region, and played supportive role in the training on extension work of several batches of Forest Guards in the two regions of the then Bureau of Forest Development.

While in Baguio, easily one of my memorable extra-curricular activities was my having been an instructor (on a part-time basis) at the University of Baguio which was then offering the BS in Forestry degree. This was where I had a student who would later become what I call “my beloved forester’s guard” and mother of my “forest products.”

At the time, my little writing skills as a forester started to bear fruit. For instance, I qualified for an assignment as Philippine correspondent of the FAO Forest News (and each time I would get my pay check in dollars from Dr. Chandrasekharan, I would go buy myself a new pair of Levi’s).

When I got “pirated” from UPLB to the BFD central office, I got immersed as one of the water boys of social forestry and upland development. That was in the early 1980s when we were yet convincing fellow foresters to balance timber-focused mindsets with concern for agroforestry and the poor forest-based communities.

Perhaps because there was no one else intrepid enough to do the job, at one time I was a speechwriter – on forestry matters. It was not an easy assignment, being a ghostwriter. But, oh my, how I enjoyed putting words to the mouths of my superiors at the then Bureau of Forest Development and the Ministry of Natural Resources, including then President Marcos!

For a couple of years, too, I was a forestry voice on radio – handling such Ilocano programs as “Kabakiran” and “Kayo: Pagbaknangan ti Tao.” And occasionally I would insert Isinay lines, to call on my fellow Isinays to go slow on their making soppeng and to instead plant more trees so that our rivers would not go dry (mabdu-anan) in the hot summer months.

Years later, I got lucky to land a Research Fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu where – under the tutelage of one of the foremost Filipino forestry communicators Nap Vergara – I co-edited one of the pioneering books on social forestry in the Asia-Pacific region.

My Hawaiian experience was soon followed by a two-year assignment in Bangladesh, this time as Extension/Communication Specialist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Nandyan na rin lang tayo, may I add a few more things:

1) the little list of books, magazines, journals and newsletters on forest ecosystems, social forestry, upland development, and environment that I edited/co-edited;
2) the almost fifty fellow foresters and a few in associate disciplines who I helped in crafting and/or polishing their MS and PhD theses, most of them at UP Los Banos;
3) the more than a hundred technical personnel of the DENR (particularly those at the Central Office and in Regions 1, 2, 3, 4A, 4B, 5, and CAR), who I shared tips on how to confidently write better, meatier, more readable, and more grammatical reports, office communications, project proposals, and the like;
4) a couple of success-story comics on agroforestry that I did for the Society of Filipino Foresters (one on the Kalahan forest community and the other on a trail-blazing rattan planter); and
5) my little stint with a World Bank-funded project that sought to pump-prime some 120 LGUs in the Bicol, Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas, and Caraga regions en route to their taking care of their natural resources, including watersheds, marine resources, mangroves, ecotourism potentials, wildlife, and remnant forests.

Yes, I guess you could say katas ng kagubatan ang dugong nananalaytay sa aking katauhan. But I really wish I could do more. A senior citizen now, and with the sunny forests, meadows and rivers of my youth admittedly no longer as poem-inducing as they used to, I feel I no longer have the stamina for forestry IEC work.

Perhaps teaching appreciation for leaves, trees, birds, beetles, cicadas, bees, dragonflies, fireflies, fish, hills, ponds, and rivers to my grandchildren yet to come would compensate for this shortcoming? Well, I just hope that my fellow senior foresters would follow suit and that, by doing so, the kids would become better and smarter natural resource stewards of the Philippines and, for that matter, Planet Earth, than we have ever been.

SALAMAT SI TIPE YUAR AN NANBASA SI SATIEN SUTSUR!

PART 4: Once Upon a Forest-Blessed Childhood in Isinay Country

FOR MANY YEARS we thought that the Amorsolo-painting-like nature of my hometown, especially my boyhood barrio, would never end. The picture began to change when bulldozers and strangers on board noisy trucks they called “six by” arrived.

At first we were glad to see new faces. We were also happy the strangers improved the muddy road that passed by our barrio and opened up new routes in the hills that avoided ricefields and river crossings. As children, we were excited, too, each time a logging truck stopped on our way home from the upland farms and the driver allowed us to sit atop his load of gigantic logs. We enjoyed how the wind brushed our faces like we were riding a carabao running non-stop up and down the mountain trail.

But it didn’t take long before our appreciation for such logging-induced amenities faded. The bulldozing of riversides to either build or stabilize logging roads appeared to go on forever. The resulting mud and silt did not only make our fishing fruitless but also drove the fish and other river edibles away. With the new roads and the free rides, more and more people also opened up forested areas to kaingin and settlement. Opportunities for wage labor were available to locals in the timber-cutting areas and in the sawmill, yes. But only for a few able-bodied males.

As if on cue, incidences of beheading in the forest fringes vanished as the presence of strangers on the hillsides and riverbanks may have proved too big a challenge to the Ilongots. But in exchange we got problems we didn’t encounter before. Farm huts where anyone could seek shelter at night or when caught by thunderstorm, started to lose their resident salt, rice kettle, and firewood. Cornfields and peanut farms whose produce have yet to be tasted by their owners had significant quantities of their edible parts missing.

Before the loggers came, our rivers never got murky nor ferocious. But a few years after logging started our swimming holes became chocolate-colored and flood waters from upstream washed away bamboo clumps, food-rich thickets, vegetable farms, and ricefields by the riverside.

I wrote an essay many years ago for the Forestry Digest about such price my town had to pay for allowing its forests to be ransacked by non-natives. Titled “No More Poems for My Children,” it lamented how my would-be kids and other children would be deprived of their forest heritage. Many years later, my sentiments got echoed by Asin with their “Kapaligiran” song:

Ang mga batang ngayon lang isinilang
May mga ilog pa kayang lalanguyan...
May mga puno pa kaya silang aakyatin
May dagat pa kaya silang matitikman.

(PLEASE TURN TO PART 5)

PART 3: Once Upon a Forest-Blessed Childhood in Isinay Country

MY EXPOSURE to forests had its roots in the fact that as a child I happened to shuffle between two homes both of which gave me opportunity to explore the outdoors. One was my parents’ house near the western hills of town where my playmates were Isinays. The other was my grandparents’ place in the barrio nestled between the river and the cattle-grazing tracts, and where our neighbors were all Ilocanos.

In both worlds, almost all boys in my time wore slingshots on their necks. We used the slingshot to hunt wild chickens (kalatan in Isinay, abuyo in Ilocano) and monitor lizard (baniyas in Isinay, banias in Ilocano, bayawak in Tagalog), and to drive away field rats (gandaw in Isinay, utot in Ilocano) and rice sparrows (tulin In Isinay, billite-tuleng in Ilocano, maya in Tagalog) that fed on our ripening rice crops.

The slingshot was a toy but when no one was looking, we also used it to bring down seductive guava or mango fruits. It also boosted one’s bravery when sent for errands that required passing by houses with unfriendly dogs or geriatric trees believed to house sinampade, lampong, kapre, enkantada, ansisit, and other supernatural beings said to be dwelling in forests.

Please don’t get the impression though that playing outdoors was an everyday thing for me. No sir. As the eldest of eight children, I had to squeeze in time for my books and class projects while doing such chores as sweeping the yard of fallen starapple leaves, feeding the chickens and pigs, watering the coffee and ornamental plants, running errands for my mother, and taking care of baby sisters.

Saturdays were not all slingshot time either. I had to be around my father when we needed to mend fences, tend the backyard vegetable garden, or split firewood. It was my duty, too, to bring a cavan of palay to the rice mill and back when Mother’s rice bin was running empty.

But you will note that even such chores, including the ones I had in the barrio (such as taking the carabaos to pasture or helping weed the upland rice and the squash and beans in the kaingin), were not completely divorced from the forests and related “fields of the Lord.”

Whenever a hen has hatched eggs, I would search the bamboo groves for termite nest-balls to feed the chicks. To make the rice-bran feed more delicious to the pigs, I would comb stream banks for the herb Amorphophallus campanulatus (called imbayang in Isinay, tigi in Ilocano, pongapong in Tagalog, pamangkilon in Bisaya, tokod-banua in Pampanga, bagong in Bikol, corpse flower in English).

In the barrio, while the carabaos grazed, my friends and I would play hide and seek among the arosip and wild guava trees. If in the ricefields, we chased the tuklingin Ilocano, siboj in Isinay (gallinule) or the wild ducks (engaj in Isinay, papa in Ilocano) that searched the mudholes for stranded shells, frogs and fish. We gorged on the fruits of kaluttit and bujnay in Ilocano, painted our faces ala-Indian with appatut (achuete) seeds, and carried firewood on our sunburnt shoulders on the way back home.

MY TOWN’S FORESTS are not known to have ever hosted charismatic (or ‘elite’) wildlife such as the Philippine eagle, the tamaraw, and the tarsier. Such lack of fascinating creatures might however be counter-balanced by the presence, as mentioned, of the Ilongots. Yes, when I was little, the tribe lent color and a sense of adventure to our forests, apart from having the heart and jungle skills that could put them at par with the American Indians.

Our forests may not have been as photogenic as those of the pine stands of the Cordillera either. But at the time, if one happened to survive a plane crash in our side of the Nueva Vizcaya wilderness, at least there was plenty of wild food he could stay alive with. For example, bush meat from the ugsa (deer), alingo (wild pig), mutit (civet cat), paniki (fruit bat), and banias (monitor lizard) were common table fare then. Each time I had scabies on my legs (acquired from eating igat or eel), Inang Baket would ask my uncles to go hunt monkeys the adobo meat of which would make my skin allergies disappear.

Similarly, our streams and rivers were jungle-survival paradise. Seldom murky then, they always made fishing a delight. With bare hands or with small nets one could get enough shrimps to make into “jumping salad” seasoned with bagoong, fern, and green mango or wild tomatoes. Not to be outdone, the ricefields have not yet fallen hostage to chemical fertilizers and pesticides at the time. Thus, it was safe to collect the shells that we call basikul, ambeveyo^ and genga in Isinay (bisukol, leddeg, birabid in Ilocano) and the edible freshwater algae we call bahase in Isinay (barbaradiong in Ilocano) that were at the time part and not pests of ricefield ecosystems.

During heavy rains when fish and shells were hard to find, other organic food could be found in the riverbanks or in the fringes of ricefields. They may be considered exotic food now, but pith of the fishtail palm (called umu^ in Isinay, ubog in Ilocano),rattan shoot (tangpat in Isinay, barit in Ilocano), and the edible jungle fern tabahat were common then.

Usually in April-June, many of us became entomophagous (insect-eaters) as the white eggs and nymphs of the tailor ant (eja in Isinay, abuos in Ilocano, kara-kara in Tagalog) became abundant in the trees near the timberline. At twilight we trooped to grassy spots near the river to catch the also delectable May beetle (called e-ve in Isinay, abal-abal in Ilocano, salagubang in Tagalog). We also considered as delicacy the fat yellow worms (called bate-vate in Isinay, tateg in Ilocano) that wriggled under decaying tree trunks.

When rats, locusts, and mayas (tulin in Isinay, billit-tuleng in Ilocano) diminished our rice harvest, we turned to the wild yam (karut in Ilocano and Isinay; nami in Tagalog; kalot in Bisaya) for alternative staple food.

The essayist Maximo Ramos put it well: “We had gizzards of stone.” Indeed, such appetite for genuinely natural and organic food forms a huge chunk of my happy memories of being nurtured by wild food that most children of today will probably not be able to taste anymore.

(PLEASE MOVE ON TO PART 4)

PART 2: Once Upon a Forest-Blessed Childhood in Isinay Country

IF GUARDIAN angels that shield children from harm really exist, the one assigned to me must have worked non-stop 24/7 for many years. This included my pre-teenage years when I would join my grandfather and uncles in clearing, burning then planting patches of ublag (second-growth) forests to make swidden farm (called soppeng in Isinay, uma in Ilocano, kaingin in Tagalog,) and, when going home to our village base after an exhausting day, we would hitch rides on top of huge dipterocarp and narra logs hauled down from the mountains by rickety logging trucks.

There were stories of upland farmers getting stung by the cobra (called immanuy in Isinay, karasaen in Ilocano, ulupong in Tagalog) and getting chased by a simarron (feral carabao). But I only had minor bruises, thorns lodged on the foot, and skin allergies caused by contact with what I like to call the “babies” of butterflies.

Well, as kids, perhaps we didn’t encounter life-threatening situations because we heeded our elders’ counsels, for example: not to use our bolos this way or that way, especially when in the water. Grandmothers cautioned us not to stray too far, not to climb trees, not to start fire, and not to go swimming during high noon, when malevolent spirits were said to go after hard-headed boys.

As was natural for kids in my time, however, we were not always saints. When someone warned us not to go near this part of the barrio because of the presence of honeybees (iyu-an in Isinay, uyukan in Ilocano, pukyutan in Tagalog), we only half listened. Why? Because the mere mention of honeybees awakened images in our mind of sweet diro (honey) waiting to fill our little mouths, and how much beeswax (allid in Ilocano, lilin in Isinay) the honeycombs could be made to strengthen our carabao ropes and make fishing lines water-proof.

Finding the beehive was easy as almost always blue-green birds we called kulepplew in Isinay (pirpiriw in Ilocano) would noisily hover around the host tree to feast on the bees. We could not resist applying our slingshot skills on the birds. But when our shots would instead hit the bees, to the river or the nearest farm hut we would run as swarms of the angry insects came looking for the culprits.

We committed venial sins, too, in summer when the song of the cicadas, the call of the birds, and the scent of the ripe fruits in the wilderness were at their most seductive pitch. Thus, if not looking for bird’s nests or ensnaring cicadas (duluriyaw in Isinay, ari-ari in Ilocano, kuliglig in Tagalog) with sticks coated with jackfruit latex, you would find us climbing trees. There were plenty of guava, aratiles, tamarind, anonas, bignay, mabolo, santol, and duhat trees then, many of which were on private lands but, as was the rural norm then, you could pick and taste for free their saccharine offerings for as long as you leave some for their owners.

Not even rumors of what they call kumaw in both Isinay and Ilocano (sipay or manunupot in Tagalog) -- said to kidnap gallivanting kids, put them in jute sacks, and squeeze their blood out to fortify bridges in downstream Magat or Cagayan River -- could keep us from enjoying life among the birds and the trees.

Let’s put it this way: Once revved up, it would probably take heaven and earth to wean kids away from Mother Nature.

FOR THE RECORD, one thing was more scary for us than the blood-using kidnappers mentioned above, including tree-dwelling supernatural beings. This was when the bagbag tree (Erythrina species) started to shoot forth its blazing red flowers, signaling the season when Ilongot braves came downhill in search of heads, at the time mostly of Ilocano and Isinay kaingineros, male or female, to collect.

While the kumaw and tree-dwelling spirits may have been fiction fostered by mothers to keep their children from escaping farm or household chores, the Ilongots were real people. Even during off-season for headhunting when they would come downhill to trade their dried venison (laman in Isinay) and wildpig meat, split rattan, and deer-skin with our salt, tobacco, and blankets, we were afraid meeting them outside the barrio. This was because for a couple of summers past we did see their bloody handiwork, swarming with flies while displayed in the plaza for community mourning and proper disposal, minus their heads.

To those who are hearing the name for the first time, the Ilongots are a forest-dwelling tribe, now preferring to be called Bugkalot, whose headhunting tradition has kept virgin forests in southern Nueva Vizcaya and parts of the Sierra Madre and the Caraballo mountains off-limits, first to Spanish missionaries and Ilocano migrants, then centuries later to big-time loggers, miners, ranchers, swidden farmers, rattan gatherers, and yes, even bird-hunting, river-fishing, and fuelwood-gathering kids.

The aviator-naturalist Charles Lindbergh and the Stanford University anthropologist Renato Rozaldo started to befriend them in the 1960s, and soon they stopped chopping off the heads of landgrabbers and other exploiters who dared to intrude into their forest-rich ancestral territory.

(PLEASE PROCEED TO PART 3)

PART 1: Once Upon a Forest-Blessed Childhood in Isinay Country

[NOTE: I had been tied up during most of September polishing my forestry feathers thru participating in the before, during, and after exigencies of this year's Society of Filipino Foresters National Convention held Sept. 19-21 in Subic. As a result, and because I had a similarly engaging and difficult-to-say-no-to activity earlier, I almost got zero in my blog posts for the month. Fortunately, among my outputs for the convention is an essay that filled five pages of the souvenir book. Originally titled "It's Time to Pass the Forest-Care Baton", I thought it would be cool to offer it here as a five-part post and with minor tweaks to suit this blog's readers. After all, much of its contents touch on Isinay World and the experiences of Isinay Bird which I guess are relevant to the whys and wherefores of this blogsite.]

BY WAY OF chipping in to last year’s celebration of the International Year of Forests, I jotted down my recollections on how it was to live in a place and at a time where and when there were plenty of forests. Before I knew it, the memory bytes took on a body of their own that I thought I should share not only to my fellow foresters but also to parents and lolos like me who wish to sow the seeds of nature appreciation among their kids.

Well then, the illustrations for this piece by the veteran nature-education artist Dante N. Pecson capture much of how kids were when I was little. Yes, apart from being more respectful to the elderly, we were very much at home then with trees, birds, beetles, dragonflies, spiders, fireflies, cicadas, butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, snakes, lizards, crickets, earthworms, tadpoles, frogs, rats, bats, monkeys, and what have you.

Unlike many of today’s over-accessorized yet nature-malnourished kids, we made do then with what our sylvan surroundings gave us. No battery-operated nor even plastic toys. The closest to “high-tech” things we got to touch were the rubber of our slingshots and flat sardine cans that we converted into toy trucks with fruits of the tibig (called lavay in Isinay, tebbeg in Ilocano) for wheels.

We made airplanes out of dragonflies (atittino^ in Isinay, tuwwato in Ilocano, tutubi in Tagalog, alindahaw in Bisaya) that we caught by the tail on grassy grounds. At night we chased fireflies (i^irong in Isinay, kulalanti in Ilocano, alitaptap in Tagalog, aninipot in Bisaya) among the gumamela shrubs. We also had fun with betel nut palm fronds for horses, low-lying mango branches for swings, banana trunks for boats, bamboo poles for musical instruments, and hollowed-out sour fruits of the pomelo (lojban in Isinay, lukban in Ilocano) for boxing gloves.

BY HINDSIGHT, I can tell with conviction now: To get kids to bond with Mother Earth, start with what they like to do best ― play. That was how I learned to identify trees, birds, vines, orchids, insects, herbs, and grasses. That was also how we learned to climb trees ― emboldened at seeing smaller guys able to make their way up a tamarind tree and enjoy its marasaba fruits, while lesser mortals (like the good guy in Jose Rizal’s tale about the monkey and the turtle) just make do with what those up there would throw.

Playing in the green outdoors with friends helped me master what wild fruits were edible, which shrubs to avoid for their itchy leaves, what bushes hosted beetles, and what trees not to cut for fuel because they caused cooking pots to crack.

Our playgrounds were, however, not confined to wooded places, nor what we did every day was gallivant and play.

When goats or carabaos under our care were put to pasture, when waiting for the wild pigeon (manaleban in Isinay, alimuken in Ilocano) to perch on its feeder tree seemed to take forever, or when our slingshots could not touch the feathers of the tariktik high up in the kalumpit tree (kaluttit in Isinay, kallautit in Ilocano), to the river we would go. There we would teach one another how to swim, how to catch fish and freshwater crabs with bare hands, or how to dam a part of the stream and be able to bring home (as good excuse for being outdoors all day) a bamboo-tube full of small fish, shrimps, and crabs.

Often, a couple of carabaos would be enjoying the water near our favorite swimming hole. If the owner was not around, we would use the docile animals as diving board. Alternatively, we would test one another's bravery by searching a carabao's belly for leeches feeding on the former's blood. I cannot do it now but, at the time, I was some expert at turning the slimy blood-fattened creatures inside out with a stick pushed on one end, with blood oozing and all, before letting them squirm again in the water.

Depending on the season, river banks were our supermarket then. Ferns, button tomatoes, wild ampalaya, and other edible plants were common. Palm piths (umu^ in Isinay, ubog in Ilocano), bamboo shoots (tumpup in Isinay, rabong in Ilocano) and the wild tuber called karot in both Isinay and Ilocano (kalut in Bisaya, nami in Tagalog) were free for the taking.

During the rainy season, edible mushrooms (amabuvun in Isinay, uong in Ilocano, kabute in Tagalog) and fungi (such as the urapping and tangtangila in Isinay, kudet and kulat in Ilocano) were a delight to hunt in the thickets.

BE IT IN the hills, forests, or streams, my friends and I exchanged notes as well as folklore concerning the natural world. We shared tips on what vegetation was the favorite nesting place for certain birds, which larvae or lizard you could touch, what snakes were venomous and which ones you could sleep with. We debated on which python one’s grandfather hacked was bigger, what part of the woods was believed to be haunted, and which mountain stream led to Ilongot territory.

From playmates I also learned which herbs could cure ringworm and other such skin diseases, what leaves could stop the bleeding of wounds, and how to use the shrub called kuribetbet in Ilocano (salibukbuk in Bisaya, halibukbuk in Bikol, alibutbut in Kapampangan, pandakaki in Tagalog) to shrink boils, mollify allergies, or prepare the male organ for circumcision.

As friends we traded know-how on which leaves could stupefy river fish and thus make them easy to catch, how to ward off river or terrestrial leeches, and which ponds had plenty of tilapia. But even as we shared tips on which fruiting trees attracted the birds pirruka, alimuken and kolasisi, rarely shared was the live tree where one got his martines chicks. Also kept as secret was where the wild ducks and the jungle fowl (kalatan in Isinay, abuyo in Ilocano) were roosting.

For multi-purpose toys, our favorite was the mini version of the dalaydayan used by our elders to haul logs, bamboo or rattan poles from the forests using carabao power. Instead of real logs, however, we hauled banana trunks from the nagtebbaan (literally, cutting area) to the garbage pit; in place of carabaos, we hitched the sled to friendly dogs; and most of the time we used the toy to babysit younger siblings.

My Isinay friends in the town proper were more advanced. They had mini logging trucks, with tansan (softdrink bottle caps) for headlights. They used these toy trucks to haul slabs and thick barks of dipterocarp logs from the sawmill, and would enjoy riding on them on downhill parts of the road. My father once crafted one such truck for me and I had fun fetching firewood and sawdust with it, until its wooden axles and wheels gave up.

(PLEASE PROCEED TO PART 2)