By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
That is the main gateway to Baguio City from Metro Manila. In the morning, these past days, there would be a lot of vehicles lining up to get through. The traffic could be long as others had to be asked so many questions by the policemen, some in full Covid battle gear—PPE. They have to endure the heat in that garb.
Yesterday, the checkpoint minders have become better at it. Those whose travel papers or circumstances have to be verified or scrutinized line up in one lane while the rest like Tuba residents who just breeze through after showing some IDs have a lane for themselves so they need not be unnecessarily held up.
When OFWs are expected there, OWWA personnel are very visible. Of late, most of the vehicles that had been lining up appear to be RBRs (returning Baguio residents). A lot of scrutinizing of their travel documents and other verifications about them appear to be always happening. Later, they, in their vehicles which are mostly passenger vans, would be escorted by police officers in motorcycles with flashing lights and horns ablaring to the designated triage or quarantine place for them. in This process might even become more stringent as two of the latest three of the positive Covid cases in Baguio came from the La Union or from the lowlands.
It was heartening the “tsimis” in social media that a councilor in the lowlands with his seven companions tried to barge their way through but were not allowed at the checkpoint.
Several weeks ago, it was here that Mayor Magalong and other policemen caught an empty returning vegetable truck that tried to smuggle two people he picked up somewhere in Pangasinan. From the mayor’s questioning, he found out that the driver just pitied those two people so he allowed them into his truck. Good thing the driver did not collect money or anything from them. So the driver was let go after being admonished but the two whom he tried to smuggle in were required to go into a 14-day quarantine.
Beside that checkpoint is a gas station which is “very strategically located,” right smack at that part of Marcos Highway with roads that branch out to Green Valley, Sto. Tomas and another towards Balacbac which is actually a part of the circumferential road that goes all the way to Camp 7 and then to Pacdal, passing by Country Club.
It was there at that gas station where, 17 years ago, I accidentally met Elfred Dalang (‘Kano”), now a DepEd official,, a childhood friend, fraternity brod, and a neighbor at the barangay– Besao West, Mtn. Province—where we trace our roots. I gassed up there in an old battered Scout II pick up loaded with construction materials to start building my house or what would later pass as one. He also had a vehicle loaded with construction materials and he said that he will go and build a “bawi” in his ‘squat’ (a land claim which can be legal or brazenly not) at Green Valley. Then he volunteered the supposed English translation of a “bawi” – “farm house” according to him— and we immediately had a good laugh. A lot of things were added in that translation. A “farmhouse” conjures a big nice house in the middle of a sprawling farm or ranch. It might appropriately describe what the late President Bush or his family have over in Texas, or what hacienderos have in the lowlands.
Well, my relatives and officials in Besao, Mtn. Prov. must have been gotten by their sense of humor when they also translated a “bawi” — where some returning residents will spend their quarantine period of 14 days as– a ‘farm house.’ It is our version of a farm house. But actually a “bawi” is just a shed on the middle of farms usually owned by different people where to seek shelter when it rains or when the sun is too hot to endure. It usually does not even have a floor to speak of, just the mud. No C.R., no plumbing, not even a sink. Just a very small shed of some wood and G.I. sheets.
Looking at the pictures of the returning residents of Besao, just in slippers and their belongings might just have been in cellophane bags, reminds me of the reason why some barangays there are in the process of having diminishing populations. We can live with the barest of resources, or that we can be comfortable with just those, such that when we go anywhere we can survive or even thrive so many of us don’t go back home anymore.
But is this still true with the younger generation from that town?**
