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Fraternal ranking

8/22/2013

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If we were kana Manila Girls to our pinoy friends, we were mks to each other, the children of long-staying fraternal workers. We joked, cajoled, counseled, and competed. Our tight clan had its own pecking order, depending on who was the rooster. In our chicken coop, we rated fellow mks by their depth of exposure without losing American identity. Given our parents' political inclinations, we also classified by political astuteness (anti-American, pro-left). This intensified with the post-Qtr Storm ethos.

We had our favorites like the Millenburg boys, but of our generation, the A/B+ families lived in Cebu, Davao, Diliman, and Dumaguete. They were mostly blond for some reason. I adored the wave of American "Frontier Interns" --- church-related college grads who arrived to work in community centers, housing, assignments similar to the Peace Corps. Aunty Soli called the Peace Corps, "mga paa ng Americano" (American feet, but not in a nice way), so maybe they were the kamay (hands).

Johanna and I were closest to the M. girls though they lived far south in Mindanao and were more evangelical on the face of it. It was K (she told me I couldn't use her name) who updated us on the revolutionary shift from sanitary pads to tampons. 
“Something you stick Up There!” 
“Aray!”
“How do they look?” 
“White sticks, here, kita mo," She digs in her bag for show and tell. "And you can go swimming.”
We were nowhere near a pool. 

I admired their nonchalance about their bodies, which we attributed to their Norwegian mother raised in China. She was holy, a hedonist, and an unabashed socialist. Their father was lanky with a wry sense of humor.  I envied them their parents since ours were so modest. The fusion granted them high marks, and though Jo and I were hip Manila girls, K. got extra points for sending us into sheer silliness. 

We dealt the lowest ranking to those who attended Faith Academy, Brent, or American school. There were so many private parochial schools in the Philippines and medium of instruction was English. Why go to schools where American kids could cluster? The American school in Makati was geared to business kids and some military brats; few mks attended.  I was eventually one of the casualties, but ignored this contradiction. We never visited Faith Academy, and based our evidence on the mk girl who lived across from us on Basilan who was an emotional wreck. As far as we were concerned, this was a school for pious parents who didn't trust the country they’d come to convert. F. 

But you had to succeed in both places, the Philippines and the U.S. It was a trip wire.  
It went like this:
“Hey, Jo, remember the R. boys?”
“The guys who were Ifugao?” (raised in the Cordilleras mountains)
“Kinda, bakit?”
“I heard from dad that they got back to the U.S. and bottomed out.”
“Wow, angel angel down you go.” 

A for Ifugao, D for American disaster. We figured that Scott, now "Brother Love", was due for a C in the America face-off. Johanna would get an A because she was tall, leggy and matapang, fearless. Me maybe a B, bahala na. Margaret was in 4th grade, so maybe the US would be more kind. We weren't sure about that. 

That trip wire; would we make it?  Can you avoid the question, "why did you grow up there?" 
"Missionary kid" produced such an awkward silence.

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Scott graduates, goes to the prom, becomes Brother Love

8/21/2013

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Poethig girls with their brother at Basilan Rd. Shelly in the back is an mk from Dumaquete. She brought her friend. I am looking for more relevant photos.
In March after Margaret's Holy Week visions, my academically driven brother graduates from UP Prep, the first American to do so. He's Science Student of the Year, Social Science Student of the Year and first in Editorial Writing at the National Press Conference for Public High Schools. Recall that he is graduating at the edge of the First Quarter Storm and that UP Prep is the feeder for UP Dilliman, where heated demonstrations are brewing. So, though Scott's GPA would have designated him valedictorian, he isn't listed in the honor roll. There's an explanation: he was a junior during our purgatory year in the States. His beloved biology teacher is furious and compensates by donating a gold medal for Academic Excellence. I'm not following this closely,  so I don't know why Scott exhibits such equanimity. But when I consider his bluster and misery attending that Ohio high school and match it with the quirky, intense American pinoy boy jousting with congenial peers at UP Prep, perhaps he considers it a pay-off. Scott doesn't apply for Wooster college as expected. He enrolls at UP Dilliman. 

Emboldened by a sense of closure, Scott invites Cynthia Ortega to the prom. It's their first and last date. Following UP Prep practice both mom and dad accompany them and join other parents in a side room until the dance room closes at 3am. My mother finds this charming, and reports it to her mother. It won't happen again since the Poethig clan departs before my graduation. My parents meet Cynthia's mother and eventually her father, a colonel in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, who arrives late from a Quezon Blvd skirmish with students. He was "protecting buses from rock-throwers".   

Student demonstrations and jeepney strikes raged on and on. A general walkout is called by the unions to force action on raising minimum wage. Then, with much of the commuting city under ‘house arrest’, an intensity 6 earthquake shakes Manila, which is built over a fault and shifting sand. An elementary school collapses. One radio persona comments "well for once we were all united – united for a few minutes in panic!"

On Sunday a few weeks later, a second earthquake shakes the city. This time, the new wing of City Hall collapses and more than a dozen new school buildings contracted by the City of Manila are destroyed. The Department of Education declares all elementary schools to close immediately, but that high schools and colleges could continue with final exams. Margaret walks to JASMS to pick up her things. Johanna’s graduation from 7th grade is rescheduled to my 15th birthday, April 16. So we embark on the post-Qtr Storm 
summer with a spotty academic record.  

In the Poethig teen pantheon, Johanna and I are more sosyal than Scott, so we get him a radio gig to increase his cultural capital. Our new teen bodies are skinny if not curvaceous. We climb in our bikinis from the low fence to the roof of our one-story house. We think it's private.
“Hi.” 
“Huh? Uh-oh,” I murmur to Johanna as we nervously raise up on our elbows to look around for the voice. A brown version of John Lennon peers up from his leafy side of the fence. 
Our new hippy neighbor! We don't mind this form of intervention.
“Hi,” we giggle. 
"I'm your neighbor," 
We nod. We'd noticed their arrival.
“What’s your names?” 

“I’m Kerry, "Johanna...." 
“I'm Charlie Brown.”
“Huh?! “
“Yeah, you know, DZUW, DZRJ, the station that plays rock all day long.”
“Oh, uh huh.”  We don’t.
“I’m the DJ, Charlie Brown.”  

So we call him Charlie Brown. We come down and introduce him to Scott.  After he invites Scott to volunteer as a DJ, we don't really see him again. He's too cool for high school girls. To our surprise, Scott decides to join the station. He calls himself “Brother Love.” At first he’s so nervous he gets sick, but he gets on with it, and plays hours of music we can’t fathom. 

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Manila Girls and the First Qtr Storm, 1970

8/20/2013

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The 70's burst upon us as the “Congress of the Streets” when 50,000 students, peasants, and urban poor encamp in front of Congress to protest President Marcos's policies during his inaugural address. The brutal police response prompts rallies across Metro Manila. Five days later, tens of thousands of college and high school students march to Malacanang over Mendiola bridge. As students mill at the gates of the presidential palace, all lights are extinguished. In the dark, the Metrocom riot police are stealthily replaced by AFP troops with armalites. What follows is the "Battle of Mendiola" that leaves four students dead and hundreds wounded.

My father interprets the context for the “Battle of Mendiola” in an Easter letter to his network and extended family.

In front of Malacanang is a section of old two-story frame Spanish-style houses. The wide street, Mendiola, in front of Malacanang, leads to the university district of Manila. A few blocks from the palace over 200,000 students live and study in about a half-dozen universities…a crowded, sordid district of decaying boarded houses, and high-rise classroom buildings divided from each other by narrow sidewalks…Cement, smoke-belching buses, overloaded jeepneys, neon-lighted clothing stores, cubby-hole second-hand bookstores, and endless young people who attend school in shifts—these are the features of Sampaloc. Sampaloc—the student district—faces Malacanang with all the questions about why things are the way they are in the Philippines today.

The students fight police at Mendiola all night long. Lacaba recounts in Days of Quiet, Nights of Rage,
About seven times the cops attacked; about seven times they retreated, often on the run, an army routed by a band of children. Each time they attacked, the cops grew more frenzied, maddened and bewildered by a defiance they had not expected and could not understand.


Demonstrators also surge on the American Embassy on Roxas Boulevard across from Luneta Park, shouting “Yankee go home!” They rip off the US seal from the wall and toss Molotov cocktails over the fence. When the US Marines arrive, the crowd retreats, burning cars and smashing windows. One newspaper notes ironically that students destroy a restaurant called The Front, with posters of Marx and Mao, but don’t touch The American restaurant.

In the next three months, jeepney drivers stage a series of wildcat strikes when Marcos devalues the peso and the gasoline prices rise. Cycles of rallies-to-riots spice up our commute to Padre Faura since Quiapo is a hub of action.  At UP Prep, Scott's radical classmates accuse our father of CIA affiliation. It's the “First Quarter Storm.” Mirroring student uprisings globally, we are caught up in a protracted rage of things as they are: American militarism in the Pacific and its stranglehold on Philippine politics, peaking oil prices, Marcos's staged comeback and the increasing militarism of everything.

Johanna's Marxist history teacher at JASMS invites the class to a "mass action." 

"No," says mom firmly and shakes her head, "No, you can't." 
"But dad is working with those Maryknoll guys and they have demonstrations against housing demolitions!" 
"No. You're American girls. It's too dangerous."  
So, with school cancelled again, we take to the privacy of the roof, listening for updates. A few friends are at the rally. We are silly in a stupid way.
“What’s dis pers quarter storm, tawad sa isang piso storm?”
“Bakit kaya wala kaming notification? Not even “we regret to inform you that due to di fak dat you are a running dog imperialista and your fadder is a CIA, you are not invited to di mass aksyion.” 
“CIA kaya ang fadder namin?”
Tanga! Ip so, why no PX? Bakit walang Seventeen Magazine? Belib in me mare, our fadder is BIA – Balding in Action, pero no CIA.”
"Stupida!"”
I turn up the radio for more news.

Manila is roiling. We roil with it. 


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Sosyal: The burden of a Kana Manila Girl

8/19/2013

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Showing off our new halter tops on Basilan Road. Erika loves it.
Party at the Palms - Kenny Villanueva with a nose flute, George Padolina looking at the camera, Nene and others.
Marilee B and me making lakwatcha at her house.
Erlyn and Nene Bernardez with a former boyfriend, then Butch and Luna Grino and me
Johanna's barkada and extras
Our room, a photo moment
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After year-long purgatory as gawky American pre-teens, Johanna and I are ready to be sosyal. It's a short shelf life. We indulge: long phone calls, birthday blow outs, movies in Cubao. We make pasyal to the new Greenhills shopping center on Ortegas Ave, or take a bus to Divisoria for ethnic clothing adaptations. Like a Marawi malong knotted over a bare shoulder at the posh new Cultural Center of the Philippines, or a gown from cotton rice sacks at PhilAm Auditiorium.

When you are a Taglish-speaking missionary kid Manila girl, you are not tisoy or kana. You are not diplomat kid Americans, not Faith Academy evangelical mks who don’t get out much, nor American business kids confined to country club Makati. You are definitely not the part-timer Vietnam-surge military brats who live in the JUSMAG compound. You’re not a Fil-Am from the U.S. who can't tismis in Tagalog, or an unavailable gorgeous 
mestiza with an authoritarian father. Which means you can stay out longer at the dance parties, since everyone knows where you are anyway. You can say ‘yes’ when a boy ask you to slow dance, even if he’s high on qualudes. And everyone knows you won't take them.

Our sosyality is an exception to the rule. We don't have a storied past, or any extended family, or a clear class location. We're church girls with an attitude. We don't have syotas, any of us, which is both a concern and relief. But barkadas have syota-friends. I join Johanna's JASMS barkada which includes guys from la Salle. When Luna sails into town from Silliman U in D'guete, I make sabit. Or we get together with our SS Wright clan whose boys, Butch, Clyde, Leslie, Lyncir, Glenn, George, dismiss us as the uncoordinated kanas they've known since kindergarten.

So we're not real Manila girls, either. 


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Margaret meets Easter

8/18/2013

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Holy Week 1970, Margaret and the resurrection

PictureMargaret, skirt lifted
On Basilan Road, 8-year-old Margaret and 14-year-old me share a bunk in our hippy paisley room. She has the top,  I take the bottom and drape a blanket over the opening to make a cave. 

Despite the Black Nazarene’s intervention in Quiapo, I’m more interested in levitation and monads at this point in my spiritual journey.  We’ve had enough of the Life of Jesus. God tries Margaret on Holy Week, who suffers our teenage whims like a saint.  

But Margaret is not a pious kind of saint. She calls the Sunday drive to Ellinwood “the day to be endured” because she gets carsick. This chaotic year, mom hatches an Easter plan that involves a simple breakfast at our house, an Easter “sing-in” and the 10:00 service at Ellinwood. Margaret, much to our surprise, receives parental permission to stay home. 

“Aba, pa-bor-a-tism!” wails Johanna who now hates organized religion. 
But mom, who is not by nature dictatorial, is General Franco when it comes to Easter and Christmas. Concerned that we hadn’t really absorbed the Easter Story after ten years of Life of Jesus vignettes, she subjects us to a two hour read-aloud from the Bible, from the raising of Lazarus in John through the resurrection. Johanna and I roll our eyes at each other, but we listen obediently. 

Eight-year-old Margaret, on the other hand, can’t get her fill of the Passion. On Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, she sits alone through four hours of hokey Passion Week TV movies sponsored by Family Rosary. She watches the whole series again on Saturday. 

On Holy Saturday afternoon, a tearful, solemn Margaret comes to mom on the lanai.
“I just saw Jesus going to heaven. Wake me up in the dark so that I don’t miss the Sunrise Service, OK, mom?”
Since our Sunrise Service begins at 6am Mom comes into our room at 5:30 and rustles her.
“Margaret, Margaret, wake up honey. It’s Easter!”
I groan from the bottom bunk, “is it Easter already?”
Margaret leans on one elbow and peers out the window at the light.  

“Mom,” she says reproachfully, “It's morning already. I’ve been waiting all night for the morning.”
Margaret’s reproach is hard to bear.


We leave for Ellinwood without her. The rest of the day’s quiet and so is Margaret. At bedtime, I hear mom quietly ask Margaret in the top bunk, “So, Margaret, did you have a nice Easter?”
“Well, to tell the truth, no.”
“Why?”
“It was so simple.” Then she looks away as if ashamed. 

“I thought the world would end today.”

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Margaret and the Communion of Saints

Maybe because the world didn’t end, Margaret begins to commune with the dead. I understand; it’s a predictable path, but Margaret isn’t divulging this to me, even though we’re bunkmates. Teen-dom is such a self-obsessed condition and I am contemplating my own death, so there's no space for anyone else's.
 
Margaret commits mom to secrecy (which obviously mom betrays because I’m writing about it).
"Can the dead can see and hear us?"  
Of course, we know the answer is yes, but mom hedges.

"Why, do you think so?"
Margaret confides, “After I say my prayers with you at night I talk to dead people.” 
A chill runs down mom’s spine. “Who?”
“Grandmother Henrietta, and your daddy, and Auntie Eva (she met her in Hawaii last June). Other people too.”  
She hesitates; here’s the question she’s wanted to ask.  
“Do dead people hear only us or do they hear everyone at the same time, like God?”
“I don’t know, Margaret.”
Later, mom asks Rev. Dario Alampay, the pastor of Ellinwood and a good friend.   
He muses, “Lots of people today don’t like to talk about ‘unseen’ life. It’s supposed to be superstitious. But what does the ‘Communion of the Saints’ mean and what does it mean when we say Christ is Lord of the living and the dead, if we don’t mean what Margaret is talking about.” 

My little sister talks with the spirits in the bunk above, and I am consoled by them in the bunk below.

"We should be free"

In July, Margaret has a vision. 
She steals quietly into the sala and declares in an 8-year-old shy, matter of fact voice,
“I just saw Jesus in white lines.” 
Mom tries to hide her surprise (of the mind that God doesn’t actually visit).

“Where were you?”
“On the lanai.”
“What were you doing?”
“Playing Barbie dolls. I saw Jesus in white lines.”  She draws the outline of a figure in the air.
“How do you know it was Jesus?”

Margaret eyes mom with incredulity.
“Who else would come down from heaven?”
“Were the white lines like a drawing or a photograph?” 

“Like a photograph. Does it mean the world is coming to an end?”
“No... I don’t think so.”
“It would be better if it did. Then I wouldn’t have to die.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I would be with God right away. I wouldn’t have to suffer and all that." 

She hesitates. "I would be free. We’d all be free.” 

Some time later, mom wakes from a siesta with a picture laid neatly on her stomach.  Margaret’s rendition of a family: dad fishing, mom carrying a basket (of laundry?), children playing under the trees. It might have been a log cabin in the woods. She'd written, “Why can’t we live the way we want to live, like this.” 

The next day, mom asks her about the picture. 
“I wish we didn’t have rules. We should be free.” 

I wonder what Margaret in the middle of her life as a creative, trouble-shooter, rule-abiding agnostic makes of this now, her religious year burdened by God and longing to be "free."  
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Part III:  Days of Rage   1969-1972

8/18/2013

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Balik (bayan?) 

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We didn't return to our beloved Malate house, six blocks from Manila Bay. Our Poethig family encamped on Basilan Road in the PhilAm Subdivision. In Quezon City off Hiway 54, it was close to the UCCP offices so dad could walk to work. JASMS had moved nearby. Johanna and Margaret strolled to class. Hiway 54 met Quezon Boulevard at the rotunda. You go left to UP Diliman or turn right to Quiapo. Since Scott and I attended UP Prep, we took the dusty red Philippine Rabbit bus down to Quiapo and a jeepney to Padre Faura back in Malate.

These are our last years in the Philippines. We recombine (Erika Christy Peter Poethig arrives in 1971), then dissolve as a family unit. We smile into despedita cameras, terrified and relieved to finally make the last journey "Stateside."  Not balik, not bayan.  

In clusters, we disappear into the American fog. Scott's the first. He wants to go. It’s agony here, it’s agony there. But he wants to go. He leaves with dad in July 1971 to attend the College of Wooster. Dad returns and takes Margaret back with him early in 1972, then in the summer Johanna, mom, and Erika sell or pack up everything left in the house. I stay to finish high school and leave in December. It will be years before we gather as a family without distress.  

So, let's return to Cosmic 1969: 
We arrive in Manila in time for the Moon Walk. Neil Armstrong plants the Stars and Stripes in grainy b&w on our TV. More thrilling for the Philippines, Gloria Diaz is crowned Miss Universe. Tisoy (short for mestizo) comics summed it up, “The US has captured the moon, but the Philippines has captured the Universe!”

And lest we forget, Ferdinand Marcos won a second term as president. Two weeks after this, mom writes her mother about the "Exposé of US subsidy of Philcag troops in Vietnam" 

The man on the street favored sending the troops to 'help a neighbor whose house is on fire' but the exposé of Fulbright shames the Philippines in the eyes of the world and attributes base motives to what the average Filipino did in good faith. This hurt is so deep I’m not sure it will really be able to be expressed in words. Instead I predict there will now be a hard coldness where once there was always a warm friendliness even when Filipinos had differences of opinion with the US. There is no fight more vicious in the Philippines than that between brothers. The sad part is that Americans will never know what goodwill and love they have lost because few ever loved the Philippines in the first place. As I have said before, Americans despise the meek.

Love, Eunice



UP Beloved...

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“Hoy, Katoy, WAIT!”  I yell as the Rabbit bus careens on Highway 54 towards the PhilAm Subdivision gate, a tail of diesel fuel wags behind, ready for the race. 
“Hur-ry!”  

At 5:30am, my hair is limp from the shower. I kick a loose shoelace and shift the bag of books. For once, Scott and I are going to school together: UP Prepatory High School. Scott's a senior and I’m starting first year.  Since I had 8th grade in the States, I’m a year behind my UES classmates who transferred to UP Prep and are now sophomores. It’s awkward.
The bus slows down but doesn't stop so we catch the rail and swing up. Two white kids in uniforms. People look. We find an empty wood plank and settle in. The ticketer shakes her tin canister full of coins. “Quiapo, dalawa.” Scott hands her a peso to make up for me. She blandly whisks out two tickets, rips them and hands them with the change, with quick disapproval at my wet head. 

Here's a Flickr link for those Rabbit buses.

“This is TANG-GA - racing Ephren to school,” I grumble. Ephren, Scott's funniest buddy, always gets to school first and Scott is determined to beat him. 
Scott ignores me. 
I don’t really mind going so early. The thick diesel-fumy congestion of jeepneys, buses, and cars hasn’t yet congealed on Quezon Avenue. In Quiapo, near Plaza Miranda, the bus disgorges us into a river of oncoming jeepneys with signs in their windshields: Taft, Espana, Mabini, then Padre Faura, that’s us. Scott flips his hand, and since we’re so visible (white kids in uniforms), several jeepneys swerve to us. We swing up and bend into the low cavern. I swipe my pleated blue skirt to keep the folds neat. The Padre Faura jeepney cruises over the Quiapo bridge, past the US faux Greek Post Office, the town hall, down Taft, past UN Avenue, swinging right onto Padre Faura. “Ssst, para.”  The driver stops as our coins travel up to him hand by hand.

This is my brother's kingdom, University of the Philippines Preparatory High School, the kalaban of UP High in Diliman. We trudge up three flights of drab marble that used to be the Philippine Supreme Court.  Our high school is on the decrepit third floor where night classes have left their dunked cigarette butts and coffee cups scattered around the rooms. No matter, I pull out a notebook, find an old chair and write out the homework for Philippine History. I love this place with a proleptic nostalgia.


Quiapo convergence

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Liberated to travel by jeepney and bus, the city is a great bazaar. When Scott doesn’t accompany me though the smoky diesel-clouded downtown, I move through the traffic like the White Lady. Quiapo church at Plaza Miranda the big transfer point is a favorite sanctuary. 

This is the "Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene" and known for its overwhelming processions.

But I am there for the anting antings cluttering Evangelista street behind the church. Albularyo stalls are piled with mysterious potions in small bottles, mandrake root, tawis, other herbal remedies. Sometimes I squat beside a lola who tells my fortune with her cards on a small table on the back patio of the church. Before you enter the old cathedral, you buy red, black, or white candles in human shapes for different intentions. I choose a white one for purity of thought. Over the church threshold, in the quivering light of votive candles, wizened women shuffle towards the altar on their knees. Others mumble through the stations of the cross. 


The Orange Jesus’ famous brother, the Black Nazarene, lies enshrined in glass at the back of the church, as if snoozing between processions. I don’t begrudge him the rest. He looks old and worn with the loving, needful touch of so many followers. You could imagine those two, their backs to me, making tsismis about their churches. Actually, I wasn't conversing much with Orange Jesus per se. Or, let's say, I was conversing with more versions: Mary, acacia trees, the bulol rice gods of the Ifugao. 

But when it come to interventions, you take whoever’s available.

My UP Prep barkada go to Ideal (I-dee-al) Theater, the old art deco building on Avenida Rizal, once the Broadway of Manila. At the credits, the screen goes dark. Another brownout.
We cram to the exit. Someone jams their elbow into my back.“
Hoy! Ano ba?" Swept up in the panicking crowd, we edge our way out the Exit, and gasp.
“Susmarijoseph!”  The entire block is ablaze! Wild flames lick the blackened sky. Fire engines can’t find enough water to dampen the inferno. It’s pandemonium as the fire leaps buildings. 
We have to get out of here!
Someone tells us public transport has detoured due to the fire.
“Sige, Kerry, ayos na, OK?”
“OK lang, ingat, ha.”  We separate. I wend through the confusion back to the Quiapo intersection. But when I get to Quiapo, it is crammed with people. Thousands of devotees are gathering for the largest procession of the season – the feast of the Black Nazarene. How did I miss this?

“Nasaan po ang mga bus ng pagpunta sa Diliman?” The man at the edge of the procession turns to me, startled. He didn’t expect a skinny white girl. 

“Ay nakareroute nila, hanapin mo yon sa Quezon Bld.” He points vaguely towards Sampaloc. Smoke wafts into Quiapo as the Avenida fire travels deeper into the city. The Black Nazarene procession moves forward undeterred, his image jostling in the thick crowd. Black Nazarene devotees are unfazed by bombscares, demonstrations, or fire. The pandemoniums converge, and I am swept into them.  
“Do you nid help?” I glance back to see a young man coming up behind me.I pick up my pace. 
“Excuse me, mum, do you nid help?”  
He’s running a little behind me. I don’t know why, since he probably is only trying to help the one American girl in Quiapo, but I panic and duck down a crowded street. Oh Jesus, where am I? Disoriented, walking, walking. 

Then the ribbon of Quezon Boulevard appears ahead. I arrive across from the rambling campus of University of Santo Tomas about the same time as the UST students across the boulevard.  They're pouring out of the campus gate, fists pumping upwards, in call and response,
“Ma-ki-baka!!" 
"Hwag ma-takot!”  
"Ma-ki-baka!" 
"Hwag ma-takot!”
Their gathering is spiky with jubilation and tension. 

Our side of Quezon Boulevard is pooling with commuters who have hiked from Quiapo. Jeepneys and busses are crammed so full that men hang by one arm out the doorways. The UST student crowd builds and someone starts shouting into a bullhorn. Wailing sirens indicate the arrival of the police. Our group of commuters is skittish. 
Since First Quarter Storm, we know the regimen: Molotov cocktails, police gunfire, general melee, pickpockets. Should I begin walking home at twilight? It will take hours. Nobody knows where I am.

I send out a desperate prayer to the Black Nazarene since His procession is on the prowl. A hand reaches out and pulls me onto the only crowded bus that slows down. 

PhilAm subdivision is dark and ghostly after the maelstrom. In a dazed calm, I find everyone at the dinner table. Mom and dad jump up when I arrive.
 “Where WERE you!” Scott calls out, angry and anxious, “The radio says crazy UST students are throwing rocks and molotovs at the police!”  

Police battled the students up and down Quezon Blvd across from UST all night. The fire, procession, and battle caused the worst traffic jam in Manila’s history until that point.  

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    Kerry (Kathryn) Poethig

    We were "fraternal kids", Americans in the Philippines from Magsaysay to Marcos. I thought our story needed elaboration.

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