Philippines, Part One *Un-flocked by Request*
Okay so, literally YEARS ago, there was one of those 5 things memes going around and keenai asked me to post about my top five moments from my time overseas. I never did. This isn't exactly a proper five things post, but these are some pictures from one of the best days I spent in the Philippines, when we traveled to the village where my grandfather grew up.
At the very end of our trip we left Bacolod and returned to Manila to stay two weeks with a family we had met there during the GK Expo. While we were there, they helped us to get in touch with a GK worker named Noel in La Union, and our friend Mhel accompanied us on a five-hour bus trip north to meet him in San Fernando. San Fernando is about half-an-hour/forty-five minutes away from Agoo, which is the nearest town to Pop-pop's hometown of Tubao. So, we met Noel and a friend of his (whose name has escaped me) and drove down to Agoo. On the way we stopped at two GK villages: one near San Fernando that was easily the most beautiful GK village I visited the entire time we were there and another on the way to Agoo which was still in the construction stages at that point.
The first village was just thriving and full of gorgeous children who were all over us, and showing off for us, and being completely adorable. It was also decorated for Christmas, and every house had a well-tended little garden in front. And I really fell in love with the SIBOL schoolroom there (the doorway with the handprints) as my undergrad department has a tradition where graduating seniors make a handprint at our last department party, and these are all hanging in the hall of our department.
The construction site was neat as these were yet another style of GK home from what I'd seen before. As you can see, the San Fernando GK site had twin homes, and one of our sites in Bacolod had bamboo homes on stilts and yet another had single family cinder block dwellings. The construction site was all tiered rowhomes on the side of a hill, next to a landfill that was in the process of being moved.
When we left there, we headed south to Tubao. Noel took us to the town hall, where we found that all pre-WWII records had been lost when the old town hall was destroyed during the war, but they directed us to the church, which had not been touched in the war and still had old baptism and marriage records. (Pop-pop never talked much about his family except to say that the Japanese had killed them all in the war. I didn't have time to verify this claim, but the fact that the town hall was legit destroyed back then does support his claim.) At this point, our motley crew was joined by a lady who worked in the town hall and decided to accompany us to the church (which was not very far from the town hall). In the picture of the church (above) you can see the backs of (from left) Noel, Mhel, Noel's friend, Lady from the town hall, and me. This was church my Pop-pop was baptized in almost 100 years ago, so that was awesome. The other building is the school that he went to until he was in third-grade or so, when a Sister struck him with a ruler and HIS grandfather overruled his parents and said he didn't have to go back there. (Umm, wait. Maybe that's a Death Cab song. The part about the grandfather letting him drop out at 8 or whatever is true though, it just that now that I type that out and read it back the nun with a ruler part seems fake. A lot of Pop-Pop's stories were fake though. goobalicious, do you remember this story?)
This was the baptismal record we found, and the name on it (Casiano) isn't one of Pop-Pop's known siblings (Juan and Melinda) and the date listed isn't his known birthday, but we always thought that he just made up a birthday and stuck with it. The record does, however, state that Casiano was the child product of the legitimate marriage of Juan Estacio and Andrea Gago, who are definitely my great-parents, so Casiano Estacio is either a sibling Pop-Pop never talked about or it is my Pop-Pop's name which got bastardized into Anastacio Estacio during immigration. (Can't you just see someone missing the first syllable and hearing -ano Estacio and writing Anastacio. And then asking for the last name and my Pop-Pop not knowing that they'd already turned his last name into his first name? And then, all of the sudden, America thinks your name is Anastacio Estacio, like you're some character in a nursery rhyme, so why not roll with it? Yeah. Me too.) Regardless of who this way, it's family, and the priest there was kind enough to create and stamp a baptismal record that I took home to my mom.
At this point, the Lady from the town hall went back to work, but she made arrangements for another lady to join us later in the afternoon and help us look for potential relatives. In the interim, we headed back to Agoo to have lunch with Noel's grandmother at her 90th birthday party! When we went back to Tubao, we met the new lady and took off in sidecars attached to trikes where we hit a few different houses of people she knew who knew Estacios. Eventually, this led us to barangay Anduyan. The road to this baragay had a gorgeous view of Baguio.
At this point the trike dropped us off and we started heading down this dirt road, stopping at every house along the way. The first house, wasn't sure if there were any Estacios left in the neighborhood, but he knew he could take us to someone who did know. The same thing happened at that house. And at the next one. At this point, Josh looked at me and our growing crowd of helpers and said "I feel like we're in a Wes Anderson film." It was exactly like that. Eventually, we made it to the house of someone who DID know where the local Estacio household was! We went a little ways further down the dirt road and then we suddenly veered off through the woods down an increasingly steeper incline. And then suddenly...
... we came upon this little homestead. And this is where we found a man who, it was determined, was probably my Pop-pop's first cousin - his father's brother's son. He looked like he would be my Pop-pop's cousin, even if the father's brother's son thing isn't entirely accurate. We were working through multiple interpreters, after all. And every one who could speak Ilocano was a part of this conversation, and they only every once in a while remembered to interpret, or double-check with me the facts they were presenting. WHO CARES THOUGH! IT'S FAMILY!
In the late afternoon we left Tubao, and took a bus back to San Fernando, so that Noel could stay and visit with his grandmother some more. That night we were on the bus back to Manila, and I hope with all of my heart that I'll get to return to La Union for an extended stay sometime soon.
And that was my favorite day.
At the very end of our trip we left Bacolod and returned to Manila to stay two weeks with a family we had met there during the GK Expo. While we were there, they helped us to get in touch with a GK worker named Noel in La Union, and our friend Mhel accompanied us on a five-hour bus trip north to meet him in San Fernando. San Fernando is about half-an-hour/forty-five minutes away from Agoo, which is the nearest town to Pop-pop's hometown of Tubao. So, we met Noel and a friend of his (whose name has escaped me) and drove down to Agoo. On the way we stopped at two GK villages: one near San Fernando that was easily the most beautiful GK village I visited the entire time we were there and another on the way to Agoo which was still in the construction stages at that point.
The first village was just thriving and full of gorgeous children who were all over us, and showing off for us, and being completely adorable. It was also decorated for Christmas, and every house had a well-tended little garden in front. And I really fell in love with the SIBOL schoolroom there (the doorway with the handprints) as my undergrad department has a tradition where graduating seniors make a handprint at our last department party, and these are all hanging in the hall of our department.
The construction site was neat as these were yet another style of GK home from what I'd seen before. As you can see, the San Fernando GK site had twin homes, and one of our sites in Bacolod had bamboo homes on stilts and yet another had single family cinder block dwellings. The construction site was all tiered rowhomes on the side of a hill, next to a landfill that was in the process of being moved.
When we left there, we headed south to Tubao. Noel took us to the town hall, where we found that all pre-WWII records had been lost when the old town hall was destroyed during the war, but they directed us to the church, which had not been touched in the war and still had old baptism and marriage records. (Pop-pop never talked much about his family except to say that the Japanese had killed them all in the war. I didn't have time to verify this claim, but the fact that the town hall was legit destroyed back then does support his claim.) At this point, our motley crew was joined by a lady who worked in the town hall and decided to accompany us to the church (which was not very far from the town hall). In the picture of the church (above) you can see the backs of (from left) Noel, Mhel, Noel's friend, Lady from the town hall, and me. This was church my Pop-pop was baptized in almost 100 years ago, so that was awesome. The other building is the school that he went to until he was in third-grade or so, when a Sister struck him with a ruler and HIS grandfather overruled his parents and said he didn't have to go back there. (Umm, wait. Maybe that's a Death Cab song. The part about the grandfather letting him drop out at 8 or whatever is true though, it just that now that I type that out and read it back the nun with a ruler part seems fake. A lot of Pop-Pop's stories were fake though. goobalicious, do you remember this story?)
This was the baptismal record we found, and the name on it (Casiano) isn't one of Pop-Pop's known siblings (Juan and Melinda) and the date listed isn't his known birthday, but we always thought that he just made up a birthday and stuck with it. The record does, however, state that Casiano was the child product of the legitimate marriage of Juan Estacio and Andrea Gago, who are definitely my great-parents, so Casiano Estacio is either a sibling Pop-Pop never talked about or it is my Pop-Pop's name which got bastardized into Anastacio Estacio during immigration. (Can't you just see someone missing the first syllable and hearing -ano Estacio and writing Anastacio. And then asking for the last name and my Pop-Pop not knowing that they'd already turned his last name into his first name? And then, all of the sudden, America thinks your name is Anastacio Estacio, like you're some character in a nursery rhyme, so why not roll with it? Yeah. Me too.) Regardless of who this way, it's family, and the priest there was kind enough to create and stamp a baptismal record that I took home to my mom.
At this point, the Lady from the town hall went back to work, but she made arrangements for another lady to join us later in the afternoon and help us look for potential relatives. In the interim, we headed back to Agoo to have lunch with Noel's grandmother at her 90th birthday party! When we went back to Tubao, we met the new lady and took off in sidecars attached to trikes where we hit a few different houses of people she knew who knew Estacios. Eventually, this led us to barangay Anduyan. The road to this baragay had a gorgeous view of Baguio.
At this point the trike dropped us off and we started heading down this dirt road, stopping at every house along the way. The first house, wasn't sure if there were any Estacios left in the neighborhood, but he knew he could take us to someone who did know. The same thing happened at that house. And at the next one. At this point, Josh looked at me and our growing crowd of helpers and said "I feel like we're in a Wes Anderson film." It was exactly like that. Eventually, we made it to the house of someone who DID know where the local Estacio household was! We went a little ways further down the dirt road and then we suddenly veered off through the woods down an increasingly steeper incline. And then suddenly...
... we came upon this little homestead. And this is where we found a man who, it was determined, was probably my Pop-pop's first cousin - his father's brother's son. He looked like he would be my Pop-pop's cousin, even if the father's brother's son thing isn't entirely accurate. We were working through multiple interpreters, after all. And every one who could speak Ilocano was a part of this conversation, and they only every once in a while remembered to interpret, or double-check with me the facts they were presenting. WHO CARES THOUGH! IT'S FAMILY!
In the late afternoon we left Tubao, and took a bus back to San Fernando, so that Noel could stay and visit with his grandmother some more. That night we were on the bus back to Manila, and I hope with all of my heart that I'll get to return to La Union for an extended stay sometime soon.
And that was my favorite day.