I Will Be the One

by Larry Farmer

  The music was exotic. Usually a simple guitar was the only accompaniment. Chords played in tune with the song, but the commotion on the guitar seemed more like a drum the way it was pounded on. One song had the singer blaring out words, in Iranon, to the melody of “Oh My Darling, Clementine.” The worst part was I liked it and longed to know what it said.

  But there was a song that knocked me down, the melody hypnotic. Was the song about mundane life in Mindanao or was it about the Quran or perhaps Muhammad? But it carried no rephrase or chorus. And it needed one. As much as I liked the melody, the singer sang one verse after another, perhaps four or five verses in all.

  I grabbed my guitar from the chair next to where I sat and searched for the chord. A-minor. I loved that progression. When the song completed, I hummed out the melody as I strummed the guitar trying to learn all the chord requirements. I found them. I continued to hum the melody until I got enough feel of it to derive a rephrase melody. I found one. That excited me. What if I found the author and gave this rephrase melody to him, I pondered. But I knew he wouldn’t want an American chromosome in his song, especially that of a Jew. Such is the world, I decided.

  And why wasn’t Lois here to share this? Surely no other Peace Corps Volunteer thought things like I just did. Or so I liked believing. And I was sure Lois would be all the more taken by me because of it, which made me long for her all the more.

  Chapter 8

  Mt. Carmel was a Southern Baptist missionary group. They were just off the main highway to Digos, approximately three-fourths of the way there from Cotabato City. This meant Lois and I could take a regular, full-sized bus. In good faith we brought supplies and the beehive for Margaret. We had to get it to her even if we didn’t get treated to a free transport by our missionary friends. Mt. Carmel was on the lower edge of Mt. Apo, even on her side of the mountain. Convenient for us either way.

  Once we arrived at the provincial capital, we prepared to board a jeepney for the last leg up to the mission itself.

  “Mississippi,” someone from a van called out exuberantly. There were several Filipinos in the van with the man who called out to me. All were looking in my direction.

  “The driver is the one from Tennessee,” Lois said.

  “They’re all from Tennessee,” I replied.

  “One’s from Alabama,” she corrected, “and there’s one from Kentucky.”

  “Hey,” I replied to the driver, not remembering anyone’s name.

  “Were you coming to see us?” the driver asked.

  “That’s exactly where we were headed,” I answered. “Do you have room for us?”

  “We’ll find room for Mississippi,” he said with a laugh. “You’ll have to leave the Yankee behind, though,” he said with a wink. “Just joshing with you, ma’am. We’re always happy to see someone from home.”

  I pulled our backpacks and bee supplies off the jeepney we had prepared to board.

  “Is all that yours?” the van’s driver asked as he came to help us load. “It might be a squeeze. Where you headed with that?”

  “That’s what I was coming to talk to y’all about,” I explained. “I was hoping you could get us to Mt. Apo. Not the top of it, though.”

  He thought for a moment as he raised the back door, exposing the luggage area.

  “Let me talk it over with Reverend,” he said in his Southern drawl, “but I’m sure we can help you out. These good folk in the van, here, came to us from Cebu. There’s a mission near there, and we exchange personnel and resources sometimes. Let me get them settled, if you don’t mind, and we’ll see what the Reverend says.”

  He had to unpack most of the luggage area to get the beehive box in securely. Lois and I kept our backpacks with us, because the hive and bagged supplies barely found space with all the luggage for the people from Cebu.

  “You’re Lois, aren’t you?” the driver asked us as he drove toward the mission.

  “Why, yes, I am,” she said, showing approval of his memory.

  “I remember you because you’re the only Quaker I ever met.”

  “Is that good?” she asked.

  “We serve the same Master,” he said.

  “That we do,” she replied. She then turned toward me and mouthed, and what about you? Meaning me.

  I nodded facetiously, feeling rather like a childish cut-up.

  “Do y’all like your sites?” the driver asked further, momentarily turning his head back toward Lois and me. We were riding in the back seat. “We see Mississippi here every once in a while, but what about you, Lois? Is it what you expected?”

  “It’s never quite what you expect,” she answered, “but it’s in the realm, I suppose. I’m happy. Feeling productive.”

  “That’s good. And you, Mississippi? You were starting beehives before. And training bank personnel on the computer. You held some classes in household bookkeeping. What else you got going? Besides that beehive you’re ready to install, which speaks for itself.”

  “That’s about it,” I answered. “I get involved in some cottage industry, too, but nothing ever comes from it. But a couple of months ago, when I was at my bi-monthly Central Bank meeting in Manila, I saw a presentation about the worst rat infestation in the Philippines. In Midsayap, on the island of Mindanao. I couldn’t believe it. That’s just up the road from Cotabato City. An hour away on the national highway, in fact.”

  “That area has great farm land,” the driver said. “Maybe that’s it. They have some plush, well-irrigated rice land there. I guess the rats thrive.”

  “Anyway,” I continued, “as soon as I got back from Manila I went there. I met with the Agricultural office and with the Rotary Club there. They have a couple of universities there, too. I went to the mayor’s office and arranged a town meeting. We got sponsors and bought rat poison and killed twenty thousand rats. We cut off the tail of each dead rat and bundled them by fifties. Twenty thousand fewer vermin there now in Midsayap. Ha.”

  “You do good work, Mississippi,” the driver complimented. “There’s a lot of good Peace Corps Volunteers, but you really get involved. You would have made a good missionary. Too bad you’re not Baptist.”

  “I’ll settle to be a chosen,” I said, smiling.

  “God’s chosen.” He returned the smile. “That you are.”

  Lois grabbed my hand and squeezed it in celebration.

  “So, how are you doing with those bees, then?” he asked. “Is anyone making money off of them?”

  “Not yet,” I replied. “We haven’t really gotten that far. You really need two hives, at least, so you have enough honey and bees and all. I only have one hive each in two places, and will have only one where I’m going. I’m just trying to get things going and see if it kicks in, and I’ll try to expand to two hives from the one eventually. I’d have to get a second queen for that, of course, but I want to see if the first hive expands well and we can split it. But I’m just not having luck. It’s more than luck, actually. I’m not getting response. There’s some real good farmers, but with all these starving, destitute farmers I work with, I thought I’d find more that wanted to improve their lot. One of my new hives is with a rich accountant. I didn’t come here to make the rich richer, but if this guy is interested and puts forth the effort, it still helps Filipinos, and even the small farmers will benefit from the pollination.”

  “That’s just human nature,” the driver explained. “Everywhere you go it’s like that. Some places more than others, but it’s a human trait. There’s limited resources in the world, Mississippi, and you have to pick your winners. When this mission was opened, we were interested in saving souls for the Lord. We still are. But we learned when someone is struggling—and it’s often more than struggling here, so many are fighting to stay alive—we found they weren’t much listening to us about their souls. It’s already a religious country. They didn’t need any more preaching or liturgies. They needed a full belly, a roof over their head, and someone to show them kindness. Well, if
you love the Lord, you do want to work to enrich their souls, but we found it better to start by enriching their lives. Jesus fed the five thousand. With His help we’ll feed who we can. But our resources are limited, and we have to start with those that respond to us, and even then the most competent. Those who can learn from us and pass it on to the rest of their community. So, I hear what you’re saying, Mississippi, but it becomes a science and an art how to get it done.”

  “That’s for sure,” I seconded.

  “Some of the people we work with,” he continued, “are so destitute, and the malnutrition so severe, we have to find a way to improve things at all. There are some local berries from bushes we grow, they grow wild, but of course we enhance their growth, and we make snow cones out of the juice and give it to them. It’s rich in vitamin C. And there is just no protein available for the worst off of these people. But just giving them food is a dead-end street. Some of that is okay in the short run, and at times resources need to be spared for some in the short run. But what happens when we leave? Plus, it makes them dependent. We gave a village leader an Anglo-Nubian goat once. These are big goats, much bigger than the native goat. They produce a good bit of milk. If you start giving the milk to young Filipino children, they develop the ability to digest it. So, we gave the village leader one of our nanny goats, hoping he would breed it with a native goat and produce a herd for milk. Instead, on the very first weekend, he slaughtered the goat and had a barrio fiesta. It was more for status than to feed his friends, too. It really is a science, Mississippi. Even an art, like I said. How to do any good. The desperation is so overwhelming, and resources must be used to turn it around somehow. So don’t get disheartened. You’re doing a great job.”

  When we arrived at the mission, Lois and I waited as the others unpacked and found their way. Lois and I walked around to reminisce from previous visits. Happily, it was approved that we could go further in the mission van. All the way to Margaret’s.

  “You mean to say you walked all the way here the last time you visited her?” Lois asked, marveling, as we stopped in front of the Nipa Hut that was Margaret’s.

  “It beats waiting on a jeepney,” I said.

  “You’d have been in a fix had I not brought you this time,” the mission driver commented. “I clocked twelve miles since we turned off the main road. Twelve miles uphill. The incline surely was thirty degrees.”

  “You always walk this?” Lois asked, still seemingly agape at the idea.

  “I’ve only been here twice,” I said.

  “That’s forty-eight miles in all,” the driver said.

  I nodded, wallowing in the heroics made of my endeavors.

  Margaret appeared by the time we got the van unloaded.

  “Where did you just come from?” I asked her. “I brought your bee supplies. And listen, I was given free a hive box for you. And I have instructions on how to make two different kinds of hive boxes so that you don’t have to depend on me. I have three slats of worker bees, too, and wax foundations for twenty more. You’ll need these. There’s a ridge on these wax foundations for every honeycomb cell. If we leave it to the bees, for some reason I’ve had problems with them making the cells too big. That ends up producing drones. Drones don’t work, or fight, they just fertilize the eggs.”

  Margaret’s eyes lit up as she scoped out all the things I brought her.

  “Look at you, Mississippi!” She gleamed my way. “Wow, I hit the jackpot today. Where did I come from just now, you asked? I just came from my vegetable garden. I created a small terraced garden like your mission showed us for SALT,” Margaret explained turning toward the driver. Then she looked at Lois and me and explained, “SALT stands for sloped agricultural land technology, in case you two have forgotten. That’s where I was when I saw you drive up. In my SALT garden.”

  “Good for you, Margaret,” the driver praised. “Good for you that you’re using SALT. That’s exactly what we need. Learn the local skills needed, and spread the knowledge, and set an example as you do. That’ll make everyone at the mission happy. That’s why we like working with the Peace Corps.”

  “Isn’t a drone a male bee?” Margaret asked. “Back to the subject at hand. Maybe it was your queen’s idea to create so many drones,” Margaret said with a grin, “where that so-called problem occurred. She obviously likes her eggs fertilized, catch my drift.”

  “Whatever,” I said, managing a chuckle for the fun of it. “I brought you glue, hammer, nails, wood, a level. I don’t know what you have. You just get started, and next time I see you, let me know what else you need.”

  “I really appreciate this,” Margaret said. “You do more for me than any agency around. Not complaining, but it’s nice to have Peace Corps around me. They understand better what another PCV needs. All the Filipinos think we’re with the CIA anyway.”

  “You’re joking,” the driver said with a laugh.

  “I wish she was,” Lois said. “Who gives up America and a career to come here and live like this? No one, they decide, so we must all be CIA, not PCVs. That’s the way the locals see it.”

  “Missionaries give up all the luxuries of America to come here,” the driver said.

  “But you’re religious, and it’s a career of sorts,” I added. “We barely get paid. Somehow it just doesn’t compute with Filipinos. Actually, I prefer being considered CIA rather than lazy or not ready to find a job. That’s what people back home lay on you if you make a career of the military. You can’t win. If you serve, if you mean it—ha, you’re worthless. Better to be a spy for the evil Central Intelligence Agency of America.”

  “I suppose.” Margaret sighed. “I took a sabbatical as a college professor to do this. I resent being considered a spy, myself. I came to help, to learn, and to teach. ‘If you don’t appreciate it, it’s your problem’ is how I feel about it.”

  “So, do you have everything you need?” the driver asked as he closed the back of the van.

  “We’re set,” I replied.

  He stuck out his hand, and we all bid him farewell.

  “So, what brings you here, Lois?” Margaret asked. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “I knew Mississippi needed help with all this,” Lois answered. “He brought some things for me, too, and it’s my way of paying him back.”

  “Well, I’m happy to have you here. It’s nice to have company. Rhonda and Jennifer make it up here occasionally. Sometimes we meet in town, in the provincial capital, usually—it’s the most convenient place to meet between the three of us. But sometimes we go to Davao. We’d all go crazy if we didn’t get away now and then.”

  “I know what you mean,” Lois said sympathetically. “Mississippi gets to visit us at our sites, but also, he goes around his province with his bank. Then he gets expenses paid to and from Manila every two months, put up by the Central Bank. So, the rest of us need what we can get now and then.”

  “How’s the little goat?” I asked Margaret, to change the subject.

  “He died three days after you brought him here,” Margaret replied. “I don’t know what that rash was, but he didn’t make it. I gave him milk, leaves, and water. He seemed to be recovering, but didn’t. More death in the Philippines.” Margaret looked at Lois for emphasis. “Mississippi carried that sick goat up this incline for eight of the twelve-mile walk, Lois. He found him abandoned in one of the villages toward the base of the mountain. Isn’t he a champion? And the goat died anyway.”

  “Speaking of death,” Lois broke in, “you heard about the mayor, right?”

  “Of Zamboanga?” Margaret asked sadly.

  Lois and I nodded yes.

  “Is there going to be a revolution?” Margaret shook her head. “Come on inside,” she said leading the way to her Nipa Hut. “We’ll have coffee while we talk. There’s so much to talk about these days. We still have a year to go here. Are we going to be allowed to stay? When me and the girls go to Davao, there’s security check points on the highway. The NPA seems more a t
hreat every day. I understand why. I’m not advocating a revolution, and I’m no advocate of Chairman Mao’s little red book. But I understand why people are angry and why, in that anger, communism seems a solution.”

  She studied me to see my reaction.

  “I’m no commie pinko, Mississippi, hear me out,” she continued. “Even though I’m a liberal from Massachusetts, and a feminist. I’m just saying I understand how it looks to these people in their rice paddies, with nothing, and no future, because of a despotic puppet of American policy.”

  “Actually, me too, Margaret,” I said to the surprise of both her and Lois. “I’m more of a capitalist than I ever was, as far as economic policy is concerned, and I still believe in all I did when I joined the Marines trying to go to Vietnam. It wasn’t open and shut for me then, and it sure is complex here. But I agree. What is the guy in the rice paddy supposed to think? He can’t see that a communist tyranny is going to be even worse than Marcos. He’s desperate for anything different. And different to him means better than status quo somehow. He feels radicalized enough to want something better, even if it turns out worse. Until he’s stuck with that worse. I hope it comes to some kind of a head soon. I want answers this time. This time I did get sent to Vietnam, so to speak, and I am fighting for freedom in my own way now, too. But it’s so complicated.”

  “And the MNLF is right there where Mississippi lives,” Lois added. “The Muslims are a proud people anyway, and lost a civil war. They’re just as angry. It’s ugly everywhere you go.”