We didn’t have running water in our house, not many people did in our province, so we had to go down to the river with buckets and get our water, this is commonly called pitching water in the Philippines. Kids being kids I thought that my mother was picking on me because it seemed to me that I was the only one in our family who was told to pitch water. I complained to my father, and not long after that complaint he decided to dig a well next to our house. I remember fondly sitting at the top while he dug the well talking to him for hours at a time. I thought that I was helping him; sometimes I would pass him something or help him pull the bucket of soil up to the surface. Once the well was finished all of our neighbours, most of whom were relatives, came to our house to get their water. I would stand at the gate and threaten the kids who were pitching the water. I told them that they couldn’t have the water because none of their family helped my father and I dig the well. Once again, I got belted by my mother for this, she told me that I have to be more giving and charitable. It didn’t stop me, I still wouldn’t let them take water from our well if my mother wasn’t there and as well I threatened to bash them if they told. Remember I was only 7 or 8 years old.
We lived approximately an hours quick walk from school and I have always hated walking, so when I started school I walked the first day, but I noticed that there were trucks, carrying logs to the sawmill in town, driving past every few minutes. On my second day of school I took my time leaving home, so my sister and brothers were well ahead of me, I did this on purpose. My plan was to flag down a truck and ask the driver if he would take me to school. The first truck to come along went past without even slowing down so when the next one came along I jumped out onto the road and waved my arms, it was either stop or run me over, thank god he stopped. I gave him a sob story about me being to little to walk to school alone and that I was scared, he told me that if I was at this spot at this time every day he would stop and take me into town. I was rapt. My sister and brothers couldn’t work out how I managed to get to school before them, and I didn’t tell them for a long time, when the truck would pass them while they were walking I would crouch down so that they couldn’t see me. When I did tell them they told my mother who forbade me to get in the truck anymore.
When I was in Grade 4 my father got a job as a Nestle representative, sounds impressive, but it wasn’t by today’s standards, it entailed pushing a delivery cart around his designated area, so he had to move from Nabuntaran to Davao City, I missed him so much that I didn’t eat properly and lost a lot of weight. I was a real daddy’s girl. When my father came home to Nabuntaran on weekends I would sneak out of the house and go down the mountain to my uncle’s home, there I would wait for my father to arrive on the bus and walk home with him. The problem was that he didn’t arrive until about midnight and it was a 4hr walk home. Mum wasn’t happy with me when I did this, but my father was. I would only walk for a few minutes then my father would hoist me up onto his shoulders and carry me the rest of the way.
Sometimes when she would chastise me he would stick up for me, telling her that it was good that I was different to all the others, and that one day I might be rich like I always told them, then I could look after them. He really believed that I would be the one child of his that would make a success of my life. I used to tell them that I was going to be rich, not knowing what rich was, I just wanted to be rich because my mother told me that if I wanted to own a car I would have to marry a rich man. I don’t want to be rich, I just want to have enough to be able to do what my mother taught me, share my good fortune. If Elvira’s Paradise is successful I fully intend to help the deserving people.
I nagged my mother to let me go and live in Davao with my father, telling her that I didn’t belong in the jungle, I wanted to see the world, and at that time the world was just somewhere bigger than Nabuntaran. How things have changed, back then i nearly starved myself to death to get out of the jungle, and now i am developing a Tourist Park, Elvira’s Paradise, in what i refer to as the Jungle or in the bush. It’s not as bad as it sounds; it’s only 10 klms from Katherine in the Northern Territory of Australia. My cousins who lived nearby used to run away and climb up trees to hide if a stranger came to their house, that is how remote and shy the people were, I didn’t want to be like them. Finally mum agreed to let me go to Davao, she was concerned that I was losing so much weight that I might get sick. Once in a while she would visit in Davao, but it was a tough task, with my older sister and 3 brothers, at that time, and no vehicle, so she didn’t come much.
My Father would finish his rounds and then go to the park to play the Filipino version of checkers, for money of course, staying there until very late into the night. I had to fend for myself; I did my own cooking and washing, for myself and for him. Even though I love my father very much I have to admit that he is a very selfish man, a bad gambler and sometimes a heavy drinker, he has always put himself before anyone else. I lost more weight than I was losing in Nabuntaran; this made my mother decide to move the family to Davao.
Once the whole family were united in Davao my father didn’t go out as much, but he started bringing his friends and neighbours home. He would buy the alcohol for them and make my mother feed all of them, she didn’t mind doing this because in her mind we were better off than they were, and it is good to share your good fortune. We had several cousins from Nabuntaran staying with us because once we moved to the city their parents sent them to school in the city, the education standards were better there than in the province. They of course stayed for free but they were expected to do the housework, cooking and other menial chores. Once again I started to get belted by my mother. My fault was that being a child I tended to look at things with a simplistic viewpoint. Because these cousins worked in our house and didn’t get paid for their work I referred to them as slaves. My mother tried to get me out of this habit by belting me, but it didn’t work, if she told me to do something I would say “tell one of the slaves to do it, it’s their job”, bang, I would get hit. My theory was that if you worked and didn’t get paid that was slavery.
One of the cousins was Wilson, I loved him very much and still do, when I look at a picture of him that was taken on our last visit to the Philippines I get all emotional, I miss him above all of my other cousins, sometimes even more than my sister and brothers. Wilson is now a Pentecostal minister in Nabuntaran, unpaid, and he has a small cocoa plantation. His annual income is only about $2,000 Australian, but has still managed to put 4 of his children through university.
My father eventually became the manager of the factory, he then proceeded to employ as many family members as he could, giving them jobs to lessen his workload, to the point where he had nothing to do so he could spend all of his time in the park playing checkers and gambling all of his pay away. If my mother didn’t get to him before he lost his pay packet we would have very little to eat for the week.
My older brother Bulloy started to shine shoes in the park after school, just to earn some pocket money. He would put all of his earnings in a tin moneybox, one that you couldn’t get your money out of unless you destroyed the tin. He thought that his money would be safe that way, WRONG. He would shine a mans shoes for a few centavos, so it took a long time to save up an amount that he could use to buy whatever he wanted to buy. I worked out how do get the money out of the tin without damaging it, this was quite and achievement for an 8 year old. But I had to work out how to do this without him finding out. I knew that he wouldn’t open it until it was full, this would waste the money that he spent on the tin box if he opened it before it was full. My brother was very frugal. I came up with the idea of putting steel washers in that were about the same size as the coins that I took out, and when the tin got close to being full I kept it just short of filling to prolong the act of opening up the tin. Finally he opened up the tin to reap the rewards of his months of hard work, imagine the look on his face when all he got was a tin full of washers. He went to my mother crying that someone had stolen his money. She lined all of the children up and asked each one if they had stolen Bulloy’s money. I was at the end of the line. The first in line denied the theft, and got a belting just in case he was lying, straight away, not wanting any more of my brothers or sister to get belted because of me, I owned up to the theft. My mother gave me a whack and my father stepped in to prevent more severe punishment. My mother and father had a huge argument over his intervention, and all he said to me when we were alone was that I was a naughty, naughty little girl.
Tags: Accomodation, Australia, Northern Territory, Tourism, Tourist Park
