We need not ask whose woods these are, these woods at Pamulaklakin Trail at the Forest Hills area of the Subic Bay Freeport. The Subic Man, Dominador Liwanag, 59, an Aeta from one of the Freeport’s indigenous communities, is the well-known guide of many Subic visitors who come to learn life on the trail. When we came to see him that misty morning, the Pamulaklakin river streams sing, gushing forth unseen behind the tall trees. He came up the hut where guests are briefed, all smiles, and ready to go.
Clad in an old olive green shirt and a tattered khaki shorts, he holds his bolo very confidently, as if it’s part of his body. He greets us giddily, with two aeta teens in g-strings, in tow. He introduces himself, makes fun of himself and us, his guests at times, and picks up cut bamboo wood placed at the entrance of the hut. Pamulaklakin is his woods, and certainly the very woods of his tribe since the birth of time.
"My name is Kasoy, they call me Mang Kasoy," tells the man in Tagalog, who is known to have mentored countless US servicemen and military staffers—during the US bases days, and even after—in surviving the jungles. He’s named after the cashew plant, which is, according to him, plenty where he came from.
The Aeta who walks to the tourism center of the trail for two hours from their community in the deep woods of the bases knows very well the pulse and beat of the greenery here. "If I were timid, I would not have gone places," he says, when one of us praised his astounding presence in front of us, his audience. And to think that he still had three other groups lined up. He really knows what he’s talking about. He’s been teaching jungle survival techniques for many, many years, and doing it has radically changed his family’s life.
Mang Kasoy has mastered the forest, learned its intricacies, and memorized its long and winding trails, having lived in it all his life. "And that two hours is Aeta time," one of our hosts chides. "If we try walking it, it may even be longer." With that reminder, we politely decline Mang Kasoy’s invitation to see his humble abode, where he says, "you will be surprised."
Before seeing Mang Kasoy in person, we had already seen him once, featured in a Danish TV feature of a European network over cable. The TV crew walked with him to visit his home, which they confirmed, took "a long time" to reach. We were surprised with the scenes—the humble home made of concrete, the spacious sala, the TV set, and the big refrigerator, which Mang Kasoy opens quite proudly, full of pitchers of drinking water and brimming with refrigerated goodies.
All these looked luxurious for the area filled mostly with huts and dirt roads, but Mang Kasoy’s hard work really pays. The Danish host comments that this is the ideal life, the life away from the city. In the English subtitle, the host also expresses her amazement at how life could be "this comfortable out here." Mang Kasoy in the end leaves the Europeans, and in general, all of us, with a nutty remark: "We’re not as backward as you think."
Mang Kasoy had a very long story to tell, aside from the jungle survival techniques he teaches all his guests, or whenever he gets invited anywhere. We had a strong feeling he’s always oblivious with time, especially when he is at his element. That morning was no exception. He cut bamboo, burned wood using bare hands and friction, and taught us how to cook all the imaginable meals in the middle of the jungle. He also joked a lot.
"You can cook your adobo using the bamboo, and you can make it really tasty with proper cooking," he says. He never put his bolo down, and kept on cutting, even putting designs in the body of the bamboo. "You can even draw flowers so it would look beautiful," he says in jest. But the food talk is just the tip of the iceberg.
This well known guide, who had also been featured in National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, has been the esteemed guide of Pamulaklakin woods ever since. Growing up in the tropical jungle of Subic, he has seen the area grow and transform. "I remember pretty well during the time when the Americans were still here," this member of his tribe’s justice council says, while he continued cutting bamboo, fashioning it into chopsticks. "We never went hungry. A truckload of food from the base always parked here and brought food. My favorite then was roast chicken. It was really good," he says, laughing out loud. "There was also fried rice, ham and turkey. It was lovely back then."
He lays the long bamboo with the imaginary adobo and the still imaginary hearth, and puts underneath it, the bamboo he was trying to burn but just could not catch flame. He set aside the utensils he made out of bamboo and also remembered the story of the coming of the Boat People, the refugees who had fled Indochina by sea during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, without food and drinking water for very long months. "There were a lot of them, and they were treated well here," he tells us.
Memory reminds us that a part of the bases had been turned into a refugee processing center, where the Boat People tried to live peacefully, away from their war-torn land, before they were taken to the United States. The processing center was later converted into what is known today as the Bataan Technological Park, where one of the wooden boats serves as a remembrance of a people who risked life and limb just to find peace. "I really pity them. We Aetas lived abundantly, our lives revolved around nature, wild pigs and deers. I became friends with some of them, and they really had a sad experience. But they’re a happy people, all in all."
Mang Kasoy is also a man of great oral history and primal inventiveness. Aside from his skillful handling of the bolo, and his knowledge of the jungle, he also keeps in mind and heart the stories of his land. The master tour guide of the Subic forests relates a popular legend of how the word "Subic" came along.
"This place had long been known to be full of wild pigs, the small ones we call biiks. When white men came, saw and conquered us, one of the natives was trying to send the biiks away. He was shouting "suuu, biik, suuu, biik!" While our host was quick to correct that it was just an invented story, we certainly valued this one version since it came from the mouth of the forest’s storyteller. It was something symptomatic, really and it sounded as if the natives were really bound on sending the conquerors away.
Mang Kasoy’s antics will never end and the host tells us he could last demonstrating making bamboo utensils for hours on end. He just never runs out of things to do, especially with his bolo on hand. His wit is something that hits rock bottom, and it made all of us laugh the whole time.
The wonder, we think, is in his natural glow, his faith in nature and the passing seasons. And he never forgets to share what he knows, this holy knowledge of the forest. "Never ever give up," he tells one of the boys who tried to help him make fire using soot and bamboo. He struck the bamboo with another piece, teaching the young one how to beget holy fire. He was really bent on showing us how it’s done.
"They’ll never give up doing that," our host tells us. "Everything’s a matter of life and death for them, and the real lesson is survival." Mang Kasoy is definitely a great mentor of that one skill all rangers of the forest must be imbued with. His generosity is also obvious when he helps fix the bamboo of the boy who looked really exhausted making fire. He guides them with the wisdom of tradition, the knowledge of the river, trees and all free creatures. Soon enough, the bamboo gives off smoke. Mang Kasoy blows it some more and a small flame finally emerges.
The last thing Mang Kasoy leaves us is making traps, and he teaches us how to catch wild chickens for a nice forest roast. He picks up two small bamboo sticks, plants them in soil and gets a thread from his pocket. He ties the thread with one of the bamboo stick and does a knotting trick that’s just too fast for the eyes, it would have to escape this description. He finishes the trap and tries if it works by throwing a pebble. The trap snaps, catches his finger as he tries imitating a chicken falling for the trap of imaginary scattered rice. He had probably done us the same thing, shaman-like, leaving us amazed at a wise man of the forest.
( Published March 17, 2010 in Asian Journal Los Angeles )
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