Memory's Rags [d. jay]

Pablo was the first Filipino boy my age that I was friends with. I met him my second week in Cagayan De Oro when my dad, uncle Keith, and his son Greg (aunt and uncle is used for all missionary adults by missionary kids) took my family to see our new house in the far western part of the city down a long muddy road. Like all nicer houses in the Philippines our home was surrounded by a large concrete wall with shards of glass protruding out of the top to ward off thieves and Muslim extremist kidnappers. Squatting against the outside of the wall at the far end of our plot were two young boys about my age. Like most of the children I had seen in Cagayan they were dressed in rags and wearing thong sandals worn as thin as cardboard.

From the moment I saw Pablo I knew that I wanted him to like me. Having had no cross cultural experience, and knowing no Cebuano (the dialect spoken in Cagayan) I had no idea how to initiate contact. I looked over and nudged Greg (uncle Keith’s son who had grown up in Indonesia and the Philippines) and pointed out the two boys to him.

Greg grunted his acknowledgment and understanding. Turning to me he pulled a peso coin out of his pocket and told me to throw it at them. Trusting in Greg’s superior grasp of the situation I took the coin from him and flung it towards the boys, who had not stopped staring at us from the moment of our arrival. The boys started laughing, picked up the coin and ran off towards their homes.

From that magic moment onward, until I hit 7th grade, Pablo and I were inseparable. We did everything we could together. He taught me how to spear fish, kill chickens with my hands, steal mangoes, and millions of native games played with rocks, string, and sticks. I gave him basketball cards, taught him English, and brought him home for dinner every night.

In the middle of my 7th grade year my family moved to another neighborhood across the city. The last several months before we moved Pablo acted strangely, but I equated his behavior to our upcoming move. He didn’t stay for dinner as much and was much more moody than usual. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the move myself, so his testiness got under my skin quickly.

After we moved to the new house Pablo visited sporadically and then decreasingly over time. His family lived in a crude hut made of rotten planks of scrap wood with a roof of woven palm leaves. They didn’t have a phone, so communication was limited to Pablo’s surprise visits. Eventually our friendship faded to all but a memory.

The neighborhood we moved into was a bmx biker’s sweet dream land. For my birthday that fall my parents bought me the nicest bike I had ever seen. I spent as much time as I could riding through the streets and park of the neighborhood with my friends. One Saturday morning I walked out of my house to a shed in the back where I stored my bike. I opened the door but my bike was missing. I searched all over my yard and called my friends to see if I had left it at one of their houses. No one could find the bike but I had a vivid memory of putting it away for the night the evening before.

Several weeks after my bike went missing I came home and found my parents deep in conversation with a red eyed Pablo. My dad asked me to give them a few more minutes with Pablo alone and then he would call me back. As soon as the words came out of my dad’s mouth I knew what had happened.

After ten minutes of hell my parents called me back into the room and then quickly left. Pablo stared at the ground for a few minutes of silence. After the long silence he spilled out a confession of stealing my bike and selling it. He also confessed to stealing several hundred dollars from my parents.

One of the fiercest internal wars that I have ever experienced exploded in my chest. I wanted to kill him, I wanted to strangle his pathetic body to death. I wanted to hug him and tell him that I loved him. I had shared everything with him for four years. I would have given the bike to him if he would have asked for it.

Neither one of us had dared to look the other in the eye up till this point. I lifted my eyes and gazed into his. His eyes remained on my feet. I told him that I loved him and that I forgave him. He mumbled a thanks and left the house as quickly as he could. I never saw my friend again.

There are two things that I learned to love in the Philippines, basketball and guitar. Basketball is by far the most popular sport in the Philippines and nine out of ten Filipinos play guitar. After that I didn’t play an organized game of basketball for over five years. When my family moved back to St. Louis halfway through high school I smashed my Filipino hand made guitar on a pine tree.

Last year my mom went back to the Philippines for several weeks and asked if she could get me anything. I asked her to get me another native guitar. I have always regretted my burst of rage. My mom is not a musician and doesn’t understand the importance of the woods used in making guitars. She bought me a beautiful, but thin and weak, wooded guitar that dried out as soon as it left the tropics. The first time I played it a crack ripped through the face of the body.

I forgave Pablo and I still love him and our memories. Pablo is not the only reason I withdrew from the native culture but when our friendship broke I broke off my relationship with the land. I attended an international boarding school on a different island starting the next year for the rest of the time I lived in the Philippines.

Last year my fiancé Julie also bought me a guitar, a nicer guitar than I’ve ever had. It has not been smashed, or cracked, and plays beautifully. My friend Jay started dragging me out of bed at 5:00 am every Friday morning to play basketball with him and friends. I look forward to playing all week.

I’m learning to love the people, land, and culture of the Philippines again. I want to take Julie to those beautiful islands soon and share the wonder of their jungles and people with her. Maybe next summer we will be able to go.