| TRIP
MAGAZINE VOL. 4
Coming Home
My JVP year was a year of first’s.
I had never been to Mindanao and I honestly dreaded being
assigned there. But, thank God, I was. Otherwise, I would
have missed riding taplud or “topload”, i.e.,
on top of a jeepney, on the way to my area of assignment:
Anao-aon, Surigao del Norte. The view from the top of the
jeepney awed and refreshed me: panoramic shorelines, lush
green mountains, and the wide expanse of rice fields. Had
I not been assigned to Anao-aon, I would also not have learned
that I should not invite my students “na maglibang
sa baybay” because while in Filipino it means whiling
time away by the shore, it means moving one’s bowels
in Surigaonon. Nor would I have discovered that eating kinilaw
or uncooked fish is such a delight that I would miss it
when I went home to Bicol. And just as I arrived in Anao-aon
via topload for the first time, I travelled back to Bicol
by land for the first time at the end of my volunteer year.
On my JVP year, I was fortunate to take
and pass the Board Examination for Teachers in Surigao City.
But also for the first time, I felt like quitting as an
English teacher to all the students in San Nicolas High
School when I read my student’s composition that began
with: “Una sa tanan…” The whole composition
was in Surigaonon when it was submitted for my English class.
It was also in Anao-aon that I had my first inaanak, making
a kumare out of my partner, Jo Maribojoc, who was also a
ninang. I experienced God’s Providence in Anao-aon:
He gave me letters to read, memories to cherish, friends
to keep, students to learn with and from, lessons to live
by, and a family to come home to.
I had always wished to go home to Anao-aon
with my partner. Last October, I went to the JVP Annual
General Assembly upon prodding of Marge Felipe-Fajardo.
There, Jo and I were happily surprised to see each other
again. My wish of going back to Anao-aon with Jo (the Wonder
Jo of Batch 13 and the present JVP Executive Director) would
finally come true after more than ten long years.
There were no grand plans, just an instant and decisive
agreement between Jo and me to go back to Anao-aon. In that
sleepy town about a decade ago, we were once the slimmer
and younger Ma'am Jo and Ma'am Sarah to the students of
San Nicolas High School; daughters to Nanay Lalet and Tatay
Iti, and sisters to Neneng, Daydee, Gay-Gay, of the Seguises-our
foster family; co-teachers to Ma'am Mercy, Ma'am Delia,
Ma'am Emma, Ma'am Marile, Sir Efren, Sir Ricky, Sister Clara,
Sister Alda and Father Dits. It was for real: we were going
to back Anao-aon, a place that was our home more than ten
years ago.
The trip back to Anao-aon made it palpably
real to me that like the seasons, the essence of life is
change. Going around our area, we saw our "inaanak"
who had grown to be an adolescent. Gone were the few, rickety
jeepneys bound for Anao-aon from the Kaskag terminal in
Surigao City, toploaded and overloaded with passengers from
the front seats to the "baksit” (or backseat,
i.e., a piece of wood mounted across the railings of the
jeep’s back entrance to seat one more passenger).
The once dusty, unpaved roads had been cemented, and light
posts, concrete houses, and edifices now lined the streets
on both sides. The home of our foster family showed very
few traces of how it once looked. The church showed much
improvement, and the convent beside it, where the Daughters
of Charity nuns used to live, had been vacated. Seeing the
convent made me remember that on my JVP year, I found out
in one of our faculty outings to the beach that nuns swim
without their habits and veils. Fond memories came back
of how warm the nuns and the parish priest had been to us
during our volunteer year.
Most of our students now live in other
parts of Mindanao, Visayas and even in Luzon. Many of them
now have their own families and are starting their own careers.
But Jo and I were fortunate to see some of our students
who stayed in Anao-aon. I could hardly recognize them. What
warmed my heart the most was that some of them had become
teachers like Jo and me.
Going back to Anao-aon was for me not
only a wish granted, but a dream come true. It allowed me
to renew ties with my partner (whose letters I did not respond
to as often as I wanted since I have not been much of a
letter writer even during my JVP year) and to reunite with
the people God had given me to love. I have always appreciated
Anao-aon as home – a place where the people I worked,
grew, and lived with made God’s presence very real.
| Sarah Balane was
part of JVP Batch 13. She is presently a member of the
faculty of the English Department of Ateneo de Naga
University. She is also the newly elected Chairperson
of the JVP Naga Local Community. |
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Trip Vol 01
Trip Vol 02
Trip Vol 03
Trip Vol 04
Josephine G. Maribojoc, Batch 13
Tina Pineda
Fr. Jose Ramon “Jett” T. Villarin, SJ
Nathaniel "Nikki" Hipolito
Jesus Enrique "Jay" G. Saplala
Sarah S. Balane
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