Muningerzee

One of the Jessica Soho’s stories last Sunday reminded me of a conversation I had with a driver. He said, apart from working as a taxi service for grab, he also sidelines as driver for a bahay-ampunan (adoption-house)based somewhere in the outskirts of Manila. This NGO is kinda successful in a way, he said, because it helped a lot of kids get new parents. I asked him what exactly was his role in the NGO. Just a driver ma’am. I drive those couples from the airport to the bahay-ampunan (adoption house). If they need ride somewhere else, I do that, too. Then, I also drive them to the airport with their adopted kid. So I asked him, paano po ba muna nangyayari, bakit napupunta sa bahay ampuanan ang mga kids, iniwan ba ng magulang? May iba daw ganun ang kwento (what usually happens, why do they end up in the adoption house, did the parents leave them there?  There are kids with that kind of story he said). Similar to those tagalog old movies. Babies end up in churches. But most of...

He grew up in Samar...the driver of the taxi cab I rode to work proudly told me…Eastern Samar…here in Manila, he said, if you own half an hectare of land, you are filthy rich…but in our place in Samar, he continued, no matter how big a parcel of land we own, we were still poor…the place was beautiful though…It has a rice field and we planted vegetables… it’s at the foot of the mountain with a forest so beautiful…only, rebel groups, particularly the New People’s Army (NPA) of the Philippines made that forest their base… their leader’s name—Efren   Martirez… he was related to that basketball player and comedian Yoyoy or Yoyong Martirez…bright kid that Efren and he was a professor of the University of the Philippines, I think…but he was a wanted man in Eastern Samar because he started the NPA in our province…I heard he had a nasty record…he killed 200 soldiers maybe more…Then the taxi driver paused…this was Marcos time…he even tried recruiting my father…but my mother tol...