I Will Be the One Read online

“What do you do again, Rhonda?” I asked.

  “I’m a registered nurse back in Providence, and my little town on Mindanao has a clinic next to the high school there. The hospital is in the provincial capital, but this village where I’m going is big enough that it has a clinic and a transient doctor. There are a couple of nurses there full time, and I’ll be helping them.”

  I looked at her as if absorbing all she said, then turned to Margaret. Before I could ask about her situation, she began to explain to me about it.

  “I’m working with the Department of Agriculture,” she said smiling through her raspy voice and tobacco-stained teeth. “Now, how did an English Lit professor from Amherst get picked to live about a fourth the way up Mt. Apo with an agency that concentrates on forestry and erosion management? Someone explain that to me. But actually, I’m rather excited about it. I’ll be living almost totally alone. I mean out in the countryside, not even in a barangay. But it couldn’t be any more dangerous than Boston. The department head I’ll be working with, and his family, lives next door, and it should be safe enough. I have a bowie knife, just in case. And some mace.”

  “I’ll teach math at an elementary school,” Jenny said, as if it was her turn to speak. “It’s a desperately poor village, but the provincial capital is a jeepney ride away. I’ll survive.”

  A jeepney is a Filipino contraption that derived from their imagination and old Army jeep parts left over from when the Americans ruled the Philippines. It’s the major means of transport throughout the Philippines.

  “You’re going to be a teacher too, aren’t you?” Margaret asked, looking at Lois.

  “I’ll teach English at a high school out in the barangay,” Lois answered. “It’s about an hour from Cotabato City, off the major highway, I have to take a jeepney down some dirt roads to get to my village. That’s another hour. The village has a post office and a high school. Even a mayor’s office. The buildings are in real dismal shape, though. It’s very poor there. But they’re building me a Nipa Hut. Same story as you guys. No running water or electricity either. We’ll see how that works.”

  “An hour off the highway from Cotabato City, you say,” Rhonda chimed with a wicked grin. “Rather convenient, wouldn’t you say, Mississippi?”

  I tried to keep a straight face, but burst out laughing. That was all the answer anyone needed. Their imaginations were salivating.

  “Did you get a Nipa Hut built for you?” Jenny asked me.

  “Naw. I live in town, right smack dab in Cotabato City, near the marketplace. That’s where the bank is where I’ll work. No Nipa Huts there. I found a retired high school history teacher who rents out rooms. She’s ninety years old and has a big two-story house all to herself. I get a bedroom upstairs, and there’s some college girls that share a room downstairs near her bedroom and the living room. They call her Lola.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet,” Rhonda said. “ ‘Lola’ is like we’d say ‘Granny’ or something.”

  “Mr. Banker here,” Margaret hooted at me. “You’ve got it rough. Near the marketplace, in a nice building. All the conveniences. Even sexy college girls.”

  “Chicks,” Jenny said, making a small hiss as she did so.

  They all glanced at Lois, who appeared unfazed.

  “Well,” I came back at them, “since you’re already so jealous of my situation, let me tell you more. I’ll have access to electricity, so I can have a fan in my room, and the bank has air conditioning. At least in the main office, one of those window units. And I get flown every two months, at the Central Bank’s expense, to Manila to report what I’m doing.”

  “Oh, you’re pathetic,” Margaret howled. “How do you live with yourself? Spoiled brat! You better take us out when we come visit you in Cotabato City. Although, when I sow any wild oats, it’s going to be in Davao. That’s closer to where my site is. And it’s the second largest city in the Philippines, so it might be the scene of some great escapes for us. But you’ll be taking good care of Lois in Cotabato City, it sounds like, there, Mississippi. I’m sure of that.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Rhonda and Jenny chided.

  My shy grin helped me not blush from their implications.

  ****

  Muslim boats in the Basilan strait between the island and Zamboanga City were unique. Lois and I often went to an oceanside bar just to feel the sea breeze and look at them as they sailed. Whole families made their livelihoods from fishing on them, and they often lived on them, as well. The sails were rectangular but usually were broader based at the bottom of the sail than at the top and often were variegated, with broad vertical stripes, each sail with its own colors.

  Lois and I took a ferry boat on our last free Saturday, after classes, from the port farthest south of the city. I had a fascination with Muslim culture and was excited to see a pure setting. Being a Jew, I had visited Israel once, and went to a Muslim village while there. But it was small, and they seemed defensive in speaking with me. This would be different. I would be an American tourist visiting the local Muslims on their terms.

  “They hold themselves differently,” Lois said as we walked around the port area after we arrived in Basilan. “The Christian Filipinos are very nice people, but they seem to have an inferiority complex. Well, I don’t know if that’s fair. It may be something cultural about them that I’m not picking up. But the Muslims here have a pride about them. A better self-image. At least that’s how it comes across to me.”

  “They are different here,” I affirmed. “Maybe it’s just defiance. They got conquered by the Spanish, by the Christians, by the Americans, and again by Filipino Christians. They may just be in the mode of ‘not going to take it anymore.’ ”

  “Look at all the men smoking,” Lois observed. “And beer sold. I don’t know what I expected. More sharia or something. But they seem like anyone else except for their dress. All the skull caps. Skull caps are Jewish. What’s a Moslem skull cap?”

  “A Jewish skull cap is a kippah,” I explained. “Yeah, I don’t know what they call theirs. Do you want to talk to any of them?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I wouldn’t know what to say. I’d feel like I’m on an interview or something. Let’s just walk around.”

  “And we can’t hold hands,” I instructed. “They seem a bit relaxed for Moslem standards, but Moslems in the Middle East get pretty strict about their women. We don’t want to flaunt our sexuality or freedoms any, just in case, you know.”

  “Okay, we’ll act casual, and just walk around like naïve tourists, which we are, and if we see a shop or a café, we’ll stop. Is that an agenda?”

  I nodded my head as we headed toward the interior of the town.

  I wanted something cultural to demand my attention. But it seemed a poorer and somewhat ethnically different version of Zamboanga. The only thing I was getting out of it was that I was doing it, as if satisfying some curiosity. In the Old City in Jerusalem, the Arab commercial stalls were so interesting. They had distinct character—swarma stands of exotic Arab cuisine, jewelry shops, water pipe shops, clothing stores. You could sit down and drink a cup of Turkish coffee and look at people wearing head dress or talking rapidly about something innervating. There was life and energy there. But now, in Basilan with Lois, I kept walking, just hoping I would stumble onto something that let me know what a Filipino Muslim was. Something especially different. Hopefully exotic.

  “There’s a café over there,” Lois said. “Let’s have a coffee.”

  I sighed and gave her a pronounced blink as a substitute for a nod.

  It was a small outdoor café on the edge of a plaza. Café wasn’t really the word to use, I determined, but it was close enough. It had only three tables, old, carved up, and wobbly. There was no menu, just a glass display nearby with a few food items.

  “Coffee,” we said in unison to the young waiter.

  “I wonder where the mosque is,” Lois said.

  I shrugged, showing my boredom. The wheels started
turning inside like they always did when I got bored. An entertainment to induce, no matter what.

  “The Moslems were so much better to the Jews, in history, than the Christians were,” I said to get conversation going.

  I saw the expected look of surprise on Lois’ face.

  “They seem out to kill us all now,” I said, to start off on a mutual point of reference. “But that’s only since the advent of the state of Israel. I’m not too sympathetic with Moslem attitudes about Israel, but I understand it up to a point. The Holocaust was the last straw for Jews. If it had been the Holocaust and nothing else horrific to the Jews in history, there probably wouldn’t be an Israel. But the Holocaust climaxed a tragic history. And it happened in modern times, with mass communication, so finally enough of the world felt enough pity, or regret, to support a Jewish homeland.”

  “The Nazis weren’t Christian,” Lois answered. “Can’t pin that on Christians.”

  “Not pinning anything on anyone. Just talking. The Crusades were Christian.”

  “They were against the Muslims.”

  “Except that Jewish communities kept popping up on the way to the Holy Land,” I intervened. “Some of the crusaders never made it to the Holy Land to drive the Moslems off. They spent a happy time wiping out the Jews on the way. Pogroms, Inquisitions, mass exiles of Jews by Christians. So then came the Holocaust, and now there’s an Israel. But until then, I can’t say it was a Jewish paradise in Moslem countries. We were definitely second-class citizens, with many restrictions, but there was at least a peaceful coexistence most of the time. We were simply a people to exploit like everyone else. The Moslems at their peak, right after Mohammed died, and with their empire expanded—man, those were glorious days for them, and often times even for their second-class citizens. The early Moslems were into science, the arts, math, philosophy. They revived Aristotle. And the Jews often thrived. But now there is hostility. If Jews had gone to Madagascar or South America or Uganda to start a Jewish state, there would have been trouble there, too. We still would have been intruding on someone. May as well intrude where things are historical and sacred to us. I don’t know. I’m just talking, like I said.”

  “You know your history,” a voice behind me said. I turned around and smiled at a bearded, graying man standing near us at the edge of the plaza. “It is refreshing to hear a Westerner talk so kindly about Islam.”

  I nodded at him shyly.

  “Oil wealth is all that is glamorous about Muslim countries anymore,” the man explained. “There is so much to our history, and no one knows it. There is no oil here in the Philippines, so nothing seems glamorous. I suppose it is just hard times. But it is hard to be optimistic. Especially with Marcos in power. Are you American?”

  “Yes, we are,” Lois answered.

  He nodded his head as if it explained something to him.

  “Most Americans don’t know anything about us,” he said. “Just that we are backward and barbaric and uneducated. Perhaps I understand why others think that about us, but it is still not true. But it was good to hear your analysis, young man.”

  I nodded again in appreciation of the praise.

  “What brings you here?” he asked further.

  “We’re in the Peace Corps,” Lois answered. “Have you heard of it?”

  “President Kennedy,” he said. “Correct? Didn’t he begin this organization? I knew there was Peace Corps in the Philippines, but I never met anyone before that was a part of it.”

  The waiter brought us our coffee, and I immediately paid him so that we could leave when we chose.

  “What do you think of America supporting such a strong man as Marcos?” he asked, seemingly more from curiosity than to start a confrontation.

  “We’re not supposed to talk politics,” I explained. “The world is complicated. Everything doesn’t work out. I understand why you might be irritated with us.”

  The man stared off at nothing for a few minutes. “It is encouraging to me,” he finally said, “that I met someone who knows something about us. I am appreciative of that.”

  He held out his hand in a friendly manner, and I shook it.

  “I wish you well in our country. I have not met many Americans, and it makes me hopeful that we can work out our problems. Salaam Aleikum. I wish you well.”

  He turned to leave. Lois smiled at me approvingly. She instinctively reached over to touch my hand affectionately, but remembered my earlier warning, and withdrew it. It seemed worth our trip to Basilan to experience even this one conversation. It helped define why we had joined the Peace Corps, and it left us satisfied. We looked forward to becoming volunteers now. This felt like a graduation event toward that end.

  Chapter 5

  After our training was completed and we were designated full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteers, or PCVs, I was sent to my site in the capital of Region IX, Cotabato City, to begin my work out of the offices of the regional bank. The bank, as I’d learned while still in Manila, during processing, was small, owned cooperatively by local farmers, and included a marketing arm for their produce.

  It was significant that I was assigned to this bank in this town, Cotabato City. It was also significant that I was trained, in the last three months, along with several other Peace Corps Volunteer prospects, in Zamboanga. Both of these cities were regional capitals of what had been, until now, no-man’s land to foreigners.

  Since the civil war between the Philippines and Filipino Muslim separatists, which began in 1971, almost all of Mindanao had a constant travel ban. No foreigners were allowed in. Our group was made up of the first foreigners officially allowed into these two semi-autonomous regions in over fourteen years. These so-called neutral areas were given a long leash, you might say, in running their own affairs, as part of a peace treaty. There were harsh restrictions beyond these neutral zones because the MNLF, Moro National Liberation Front, and the NPA, or New Peoples Army, which was a Communist-oriented revolutionary militia, still fought in this no-man’s land.

  Being a banker might sound important, but the word “Volunteer” that applied to the Peace Corps experience meant I didn’t get paid much. Just enough to live at a middle-class level on the local economy, as was the case for all PCVs, including Lois, who as a high school English teacher made what I made. Middle class in a third-world country means meager, bordering on poor. This, in real terms, meant the equivalent of just under a hundred US dollars a month at the legal currency exchange rates at that time.

  I liked Cotabato City. Everything’s relative, of course. I’m sure if I’d been in Mississippi, which is not considered the bastion of modernity and prosperity in America, I would wonder what I was doing in a place that looked like pictures of the Great Depression. But Cotabato City was, by Philippine standards, a hub. The population was eighty thousand, so I was told. It had several universities, good transportation, supermarkets, restaurants, and even radio stations. It also had several banks besides the one I was assigned to. It had government agencies, which was important to me for projects to help out certain members of our bank clientele-ownership. And it had an airport. I could fly to Manila and a few other regional hubs on other islands. The major highway in Mindanao ran from Cotabato City, on one coast, east to Digos on the other coast. And being a coastal city, Cotabato City had access to several beaches, as well as a port from which I could access other port cities through oceanic transport.

  I had never considered working in a city when I joined the Peace Corps, nor working for a bank. I’d wanted to work in the boondocks, which is a Filipino word meaning hillbilly country. But work is work, and there was work to be done, so I was game. In the Marine Corps we were taught to be riflemen first, no matter what our military job specialty was. In the Peace Corps we were to be good-will ambassadors first. So there was good will to exude and culture to share in a city environment. Rich and poor alike, city and barangay alike, all had an environment amenable to Peace Corps objectives.

  Though I was the spoiled br
at of my Peace Corps group, and just about everyone else’s Peace Corps group, I was living a real Peace Corps experience. Living in a city, I had more expenses than the others, but the same salary. And I had skills to use with a larger clientele. I also had to learn how to use a personal computer so I could modernize part of the bank’s operations and then teach the staff. I was on a different mission even if also the same mission.

  My supervisor, the manager of the bank, was a Mr. Rancon, a middle-aged man with a degree in finance from a local university. He was friendly and seemed to welcome the idea of an American in his midst with a master’s degree in economics. And a skill in computers, even though I didn’t really have that.

  Filipinos were short. At six foot, I was a head taller than almost every man I met, and the men weren’t much taller than the women. In general, their hair was coarse and black and well kept. Their clothes were neatly pressed. I felt like a freak at times, not just from my height and skin color but from how my faded blue jeans and T-shirt were not pressed.

  The one thing all PCVs were warned about concerned appearance. Besides the common sense of wearing clean, presentable clothes, we were told our T-shirts had to have a picture of some sort on the front, or at least some writing. Plain T-shirts were not culturally acceptable and were considered in poor taste. I wore flip-flops, what Filipinos called tsinelas. Foot attire wasn’t covered, that I could remember, in the etiquette rules. Being American, white-skinned, and big, somehow lax clothing added to my mystique. I sure hoped so, anyway. Because I hated formal dress. Even semi-formal dress.

  “This is James.” Mr. Rancon introduced me to the bank staff during a special meeting upon my arrival. I felt almost human again, being called by my real name. “He is from Mississippi. The place in America with the strange-sounding name and spelling. He is an economist in America and will help us with our new computer that was given us by a US government agency. He will show us how to do stenography.” Mr. Rancon looked toward, with a smile for emphasis, an attractive young girl, his secretary. He then looked at several other female staff and continued, “As well as how to store our bank records on a database. And also how to use this data on a spreadsheet. All these are new concepts to us, but it will help our bank keep track of our accounts better, and faster too.”