Land of Promise
Shopping for potting soil at the Home Depot one Sunday, another Filipino shopper runs into me, pleasantly surprised. “I was hoping I’d find you here,” she says. “You gave me ampalaya last year and I’d like to ask for some seeds.”
Of course, I said. I’m just now getting some seedlings started in peat pots. She goes on to say that her husband just lost his job. “Life is getting hard,” she adds. “Maybe we can cut down on grocery bills by raising a vegetable garden.”
I nod approvingly. A bountiful harvest could mean substantial savings in groceries. One upside to this economic downturn.
That brief conversation is yet another reflection of our country’s current ailments. Like most people, I’ve been wondering how this deepening recession is manifesting itself in our daily habits and routines.
Theologian N. T. Wright says that even when you are in the Promised Land, you are never far from the wilderness. Commenting on Wright’s insight, Christian Century Editor John Buchanan describes “how our nation has gone so quickly from the promised land of abundance to a wilderness of economic uncertainty.” This recession is a new place for us, he points out. “We had come to assume uninterrupted economic growth and the safety and stability of our investments and of the institutions we treasure and support churches, seminaries, colleges, hospitals.”
This “new place” reminds me of another place in time: a barrio called Magatos in the province of Davao, in the island of Mindanao. Back in the 1950s, Mindanao was touted as the “Land of Promise” by then Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay, who in his zeal to defeat the communists launched a “land for the landless” program during his presidency.
My father, a soldier and a farmer, admired Magsaysay, “the Man of the Masses.” Inspired by the president’s call to go to Mindanao, my father availed of the land titles that were being given away by the government and moved our family from our hometown in Guimba, Nueva Ecija to barrio Magatos.
I was nine years old then. The land of promise turned out to be a wilderness. There were no roads from Tagum, the closest town, to the barrio. The only means of transportation was a motor boat. It was a two-hour banca
When we got to Magatos, we were temporarily housed in a bahay kubo owned by the teniente del barrio. I remember my father organizing a group of workers to make a clearing in the forest where they built our own house made of bamboo, cogon grass, tree barks. We settled in that house in the next four years before moving yet again, this time to Cotabato. My parents also built and opened a vocational school in that same clearing, and taught the barrio folks basic English, Math and Science.
Life was hard in barrio Magatos. But I didn’t know it then. We had a rice and corn farm and a vegetable garden. A poultry house supplied us with eggs and chickens. A dozen pigs, a few goats, and a tilapia fishpond. After a heavy rain, we’d get up early in the morning and catch frogs. I learned how to hunt birds with a sling shot. Fruit trees, like lanzones and durian, were all around.
Tropical storms and floods were part of that forlorn landscape. Somehow we survived. Food seemed sufficient. For snacks, my sisters, brother and I would grill ampalaya on an open fire. We never starved as there were always fruit trees to climb and peanut plants to dig up. For toys, we would make our own kites and tarampo (tops).
The wilderness taught us to be resourceful. There was a time when the chickens stopped hatching. This affected my younger brother, David, profoundly. He loved eggs and chicks. One day he decided to sit on the nest himself. We didn’t know where he was until my mother noticed that he was missing at the dinner able. My father located him in the poultry house. He had been there all day. Good thing we found him because, as you know, it takes a broody mother hen 21 days of vacant staring into space to bring off her chicks.
Mindanao may have been more wilderness than land of promise, but when I think about that place and what it taught me, I am thankful that my father heeded Magsaysay’s call despite the economic uncertainty.
If there is anything redemptive about today’s crisis, it is the possibility to learn again those virtues, instilled by our parents even as we struggled to survive: modesty, frugality, responsibility, hard work, respect for the land and all creatures great and small, and the true value of what we treasure the most: Who we are.
I wish I still live in a farm, but raising a garden will suffice.
Kneeling with my hands in the earth as I prepare the soil for the seeds that will grow into bitter melons, I feel like I’m back in the clearing in the forest, the land of promise, the promise of home.
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