Redoble Family

Its 11:00AM here in Madrid, Spain, and I’m just sitting infront of my laptop doing nothing. Its summer and almost everyone is out on holidays, hoping to escape the burning hot climate and head on to nearby provinces to catch the sea breeze. As for me, I am totally bored, having done and ocmpleted 3 projects recently, im now back to the usual waiting-and-doing-nothing game. but boredom has its good part, it makes me think and remember my past.

At a very young age, I was already old enough to see the hard life our family was living. My mother, a grade one teacher, had to make and sell coconut candies to have enough money to bring food on the table for the daily survival. As a young boy, and the only one left among the 10 children (most of them are doing their studies in other cities, living or working with some relatives), my daily task was to go to the market, buy the fish, clean it up and have it ready to be cooked by my mother after she’s done with her daily church routine right after her class, and help out in grating the coconut (sakto ba ni nga term sa magkagud ug lubi? hahaha) to be used for the coconut candies. My Father, was a frustrated politician, more than once he tried his luck in politics and more than once he lost and failed. Adding insult to injury, his good friend, whom he helped to be elected to the mayor’s office abandoned him after the election. This devastated the once idealistic and pro-people person I have known. But it was impossible to win against the marcos guys during that time although he had the support of the people but he didnt have the money and the guts to cheat his way to success. The marcos guy however, had all the money coming from God knows where and cheated all the way causing the number of votes to be more than the number of registered voters. For years I watched this man coming home drunk (really drunk) almost every night and engage in a verbal argument with his wife.

Then one day, he just stopped drinking and stopped smoking. For months, he didn’t go out of the house aside from going to the market to buy food. Everyday, he sat on his favorite chair on the terrace for the whole day…I didnt know why but I think he just couldnt stand the humiliation anymore, and I think he became the laughingstock to his political opponents and to the people he once considered friends. Not even his relatives showed support to his political bid as they were supporting openly his opponent.

On the side, I was having fun, enjoying my childhood to the max. Going to the forest with Nong dodong and nong Roger to hunt for whatever we could find. Being a loyal assistant of these guys duing their drinking session every sunday (tig-tagay ug tig-palit ug tuba/tanduay ug uban pa hehehe), listening to their funny jokes, eating adobong kabog (big bats) everytime we catch one during fruit season, playing domino, playing basketball and playing the dangerous homemade toy guns using bottle crowns as bullets (or sometimes using nails..we call them sputnik), making and flying kites during summer. Going to kabigaan and walking 8kms carrying a bag of mongo or grains of rice and sometimes corn. And my favorite sparring partner Gilber Buaya, this guy, we engage into fist fight almost all the time. THere were times when the older guys in our neighborhood would setup a boxing session and there were no boxing gloves that time so we had to use socks to buffer the punches..a little bit. But this guy Gilbert, though we fought most of the time in our area, we fought side-by-side in school.

Then came college, this time, things have changed for the better a little bit. My older brothers having jobs and helping out the other siblings to college, my mother retired from teaching and moved back to moalboal for good, and my father became the OIC GM of the local water district of moalboal.

I spent my first year of college in Dagupan, Pangasinan, in a school named Luzon Colleges. I was gonna go to UP diliman, but I didnt pass the aptitude test so I had to take up few minor units and try to get the average grade UP requires to get into one of their non-quota courses. So after dagupan, with the help of my brother didi (he was the vice-dean of engg dept of LC that time) I was ready to join the elite (kuno)..the UP guys. Summer, I lived with my brother roland, and eventually left without saying goodbye due to my imaturity hehe. To be ready for UP, he wanted me to summarize a chapter of a reader’s digest collection item everyday and that he would check on it eveytime he arrives home from work. But I was an idiot specially with english during that time (karon gamay na lang)..and obviously when he arrives home I get the scolding from the big brother..and this guy is not the diplomatic type of guy..he will talk you in the meanest possible way..but not to humiliate you (although it was too late before i realized this hehehe) but to challenge you, but i was too moron to understand that. I often heard him say ¨you dont use a smooth surface to make the best diamond, but rather you rub it agains a hard and rough surface¨..which became my motto also. So I left and went back to dagupan and lived with one of my college classmates. In return of his hospitality, I do the cleaning in their big house, inside and out and after doing my chores i work as a ¨konductor¨ of a dagupan-calasiao¨ route jeepney to earn a few bucks. I was determined that time not to go back home, just work and try to finish college myself ( I was young and stupid). But my brothers were more determined in finding me and I went back to cebu and forgot everything about UP hehe.

College days in cebu was great. I hooked up with the Redobles of Sibunga in the south (Kin, ritchie, risa, yeyeth, banjing, kenneth and more) and for a few weekends we go fishing there. With 3 bangkas, 2 or 3 for each bangka we row towards the farther part of the sea, throw down the fish net and 2 bankas will hold both ends of the net and spread it to cover a bigger area and hoping for more fish to catch while the 3rd bangka will cross from one end of the net to the other and dive into the water to see if enough fish have already been caught. We stay there for the whole day, from sunrise to sundown, eating kinilaw with suka ang bahaw during lunch, sometimes we raise to the river that runs from the mountain to the sea, navigating through the narrow river was impossible to overtake the first banka, but with style, techniques and determination..it was doable and really fun. Then in the evening we cook our catch and with few bottles of tanduay or añejo rum…we party……

and then now….

In a few months the 1st son of the 10th son is scheduled to arrive in this world…and another life is surely to begin…I can not tell how he’s gonna live his life but surely I can tell him that his father had one heck of a life…and hoping that someday he will also have his own ¨heck of a life¨ story to tell to the generation next to him.

Growing up in a small town called Ipil, life was not a walk in the park and definitely was not a bed of roses, but it was the kind of life that will make a man out of you, the kind of life that will turn a weak person into a strong and determined one, its the kind of life that will make you dream and drive you hard to realize those dreams…It was a Life I Love Living.

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