Dumaguete

D

Passing through the national highway that connects “Junction One” and the San Pedro area in Puerto Princesa, I often remember another city. The portion of the road that passes the western edge of the airport is so uncannily similar to the national highway that passes the edge of the airport of another city located some 400 nautical miles southeast of P. However, the sensation of fast moving tricycles and multicabs passing through this primary artery that connects the city to the barrios seems to be the only thing that gives similarity to the two cities I am imagining. As I pass through this strip of national highway in barangay San Miguel of P, much as the two cities of my imaginings are both located at the edge of land, bordering the sea, I am temporarily split in space and time. Differences abound, but I could not immediately place myself in the correct Cartesian map at the precise moment.

I first came to Dumaguete during the summer of 1997. D was the terminal point of a three-day trip I was taking to reach the summer Mecca for the country’s best literary greenhorns; it was to be my home for three weeks. The first leg of my trip was an overnight boat ride from P. Our boat berthed in Manila North at 10 in the morning the following day. I only had ample time to pick-up some clothes in my rented room in Quezon City and hit the mall for some last-minute shopping. At four in the afternoon I flagged a cab and braved the midsummer Friday afternoon traffic to the old Manila Domestic Terminal 2 for my flight south, the second leg of my trip.

The red-eye flight to Cebu was a clunker. There were perhaps only 20 passengers on that day’s last flight to the “Queen City of the South” that I could only see five passengers in my section of the widebodied Airbus. An hour’s flight and I was in Mactan International. After an uncomfortable overnight stay in a stolid area of the terminal building (This was when I learned firsthand that having an overnight flight connection can be a bummer specially when the airport you are in shuts down at midnight. Connecting-flights can save you money, though. Back in 1997, the direct flight between Manila and D was almost a thousand bucks more expensive than a flight plan that passes through Cebu.), I boarded the next day’s third commuter flight out of Cebu 20 minutes before seven in the morning. The twin-engine turboprop climbed out over the eastern edge of Mactan island before banking right towards what was my first glimpse of Cebu in clear daylight. All I could see of the city the night before were orange blips that have been randomly scattered on a pitch-gray veldt. That morning I saw the patchwork of man-made structures and greens sprawled out on a coastal plain going up to a gently sloping inner land that abruptly stopped at towering mountain cliffs in a not so distant background. Such a place: from one single spot you can have a lucid view of the sea, the coastal plain, and the mountains. But this was not yet my destination. I was still on my way to D.

I was back in D in 2000. This time it was nothing out of literary whim. My brother and I were flying to D for another lofty purpose. Hard before the track of a tropical typhoon that eventually caused the death of my province’s most popular long-time political father-figure, we were making a paperwork swing through northern Luzon, Busuanga Island, and Negros Oriental in a back-breaking two-week road trip. Manoy D was laying out the groundwork for his cross-country field survey of an endangered crocodilian species. He needed to coordinate with local field scientists (of whom, the most famous is Dr. Angel Alcala of the Silliman Marine Laboratory in D).

My latest trip to D was in June of 2001. Of all the trips, this was the most unconventional as this was really an unscheduled one. I hitched on at moments notice. My brother woke me up at seven that Saturday morning. They were to fly to Cebu in the afternoon on their way to Negros Oriental for their continuing fieldwork. And suddenly he wanted me to be on the trip! They were carrying electronic instruments that needed to be hooked up to a computer before being deployed in the field, but he didn’t want to lug his computer to the mountains of Negros Oriental. (Battery guzzling equipment are practically not suited for a month’s work in the mountains, and expensive general-purpose electronic gadgetry like a notebook computer is an enticement for unlawful elements in the bush. It is better to take down field notes with pencil and weatherproof paper and reorganize later with a word processor. Even a palmtop PDA is impractical for this purpose because of so much dust and moisture out in the tropical jungle.) Kuya asked me to go with him as far as their jump-off point in the town of Basay southwest of D. That was where I was to set up their field instruments with the laptop which I would then take back to P for safekeeping while they do their fieldwork.

I didn’t learn actual science in graduate school seminars. It was my two elder brothers (two, because another brother was also involved in environmental field work before becoming a white collar public policy analyst) who confirmed to me my long-held beliefs about the vicissitudes of real scientific fieldwork: Days in the field are devoid of melodramatic scenes, of fashion panache and techno savvy. Nubuck-hide hiking boots eventually get soaked in water and crusted with mud. In time one decides to walk barefooted in mud swamps. A sixteen-satellite precision GPS unit reaches its maximum load of waypoint markers. Soon you have to recourse to writing down each dead-reckoning waypoint on paraffin-coated paper lest you get lost and go on an infinitely circular path in the jungle. On my way back to D from Basay, the expensive top-of-the-line laptop I was ferrying was resting on its canvass satchel safely tucked inside a decrepit black garbage bag.

At half past two in the afternoon of the following day, I was back in P. The searing afternoon heat off the tarmac was pushing me in quick strides to the familiar air terminal building, erasing from my thoughts my recent views of another island across the Sulu Sea.