It is really amazing how people can adjust themselves for survival.
Without electricity, running water, telephone, TV, radio, stores, vehicles, police, government officials running the community, schools, churches, libraries, hospitals, dispensaries, clinics, doctors, dentists, medicine, matches, spices, soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, barber shop, etc., etc., that are found in modern communities, people can still survive like us in the evacuation site of Barrio Apad.
I picked up a sack of dried bat manure, or “guano,” from the demolished kioske in the plaza and used it as fertilizer in my little garden, where I planted spinach, white squash, pichay, and beans.
With the advent of the rainy season starting in May, I was able to grow those vegetables and was thinking of being a farmer when the war ended.
Our neighbors were surprised to see my spinach growing big leaves like tobacco, when ordinarily the leaves were supposed to be as big as a spoon only. My “opo” (white squash) plants started climbing my trellis and had flowers already. My beans and eggplants also started to have flowers. We had a hen and a rooster to start with. I was resigned to my fate!
God had been very good to us for letting me buy a lot of rice, palay, which we pounded at night-time under the moonlight because most of the time we were inside our dugout during day time. We stored our rice inside a drum buried underground for fear of confiscation by the hungry retreating Japs.
Our kitchen was on the ground. We kept a log burning with smoldering coal all the time, to which I touched a piece of cine film attached to a piece of pine driftwood, which was easily set on fire by the ignited film touched to the smoldering embers. Then pieces of paper started the sticks burning to cook our rice and roast our dried meat or frogs.
Our toilet was separate, ‘way back of our home. It also served as our bathroom with Pat. We enjoyed our life together. For love overcometh all things, as God is LOVE!
Leave a Reply