The Guinayangan Republic

Boñon 4 bags,Carandang 2 bags, Canoy 3 bags, Cenizal 2 bags and 3 sacks of pebbles. .. And names had been calling and assemble everyone by my teacher till it ended with names in Z. What were those for, you may be puzzled… An inch a day that’s our mission! During the mid 80s at Manlayo-Calimpac Elementary School now Don Guillermo Elementary School. A month ago of that day, I had been overhearing the voice of our principal thru PA system the late Generosa Lomarquez addressing the problem before that mission came to fruition.



I remember her on a PTA meeting calling for cooperation of the parents and students who were coastal settlers of Manlayo. During those days, we still lived at the adjacent fences of our school, coastal side facing east. During high tide our classrooms were always deluge by sea water overflowing from creek through the swamp nearby. Ebbing of such magnitude our school suffered from salt water flooding, destroyed some of our books including our artworks stored in less elevated cabinets. We locally called that inundation “Taib” as in high tide. Mrs. Josefina Arca and Mrs. Lita Maghirang rooms, my teachers at that time, where the one initially affected by the flooding. Weeks after the whole school submerge by the sea water, and it’s like the whole school grounds were estuaries of Ragay gulf. Every student gets wet so that they could come to school.

"Taib" has never been a hassle for me. I make the salt marsh's brackish water as a play pool. There were times I just stripped and dived right there besides classrooms building, where water were almost neck-deep. During those days, we test our toy sail boats (cut and shaped from Styro foam with canvas or plastic cellophane as sails) and we raced like in America’s Cup. That was hasty fun.

The faculties suddenly have noticed that it was not good for us. We were left behind by other school who had already been overtaken us with some lessons we were supposed to be in.
I recalled one day when a memo came. I read it loudly in front of the school with my uniform soaking wet from salt water flood. Overall, the school mission was to cover the low level sections particularly the ground beside our classroom where we play a lot. The goal was an inch a day of sand fillings above the current height. Mr.Capule our Agriculture teacher measures it with a deficiency of 1 yard high. So if we could make an inch a day we would have finished it in 2 to 3 months excluding the day without classes.



Manlayo Elementary School inundation overlay

Day one, everybody was impressed with the progress. We almost reached 2 inches mark. By the way I forgot to mention an attachment of that memo, there will be additional extracurricular merits for the section class with the most number of sand and pebbles (rock on!) .Most of the time, we had weekly citations of the most number of sand bags donated. More often than not I was always top of the lists. No I wasn't cheating. It’s just that I lived nearby, about 2 minute walk from the school. So you already have an idea how I got the most sands to dump. Weeks passed, it seems we all endured the chores with the smiles and burst on the hands of course. Ms. Generosa Lomarquez, with her willingness to turn that daunting ordeal to educational one, she genially advised her teachers to do something coherent with the chores –Mathematics (brilliant idea!). She even revised the verbal problem solving by making number of bags as examples on mathematics lessons. Making it fun and educational so as ignoring the sweating we had. The ground we are reclaiming became our giant math board. Pebbles became our imaginary tally marks. After all mathematical concept came from our old ancestors using as such as basic tools for counting. It became extracurricular competition. My classmate Nestor Ervas with the revered dream to make it at top of the merits' list. He was taking up the Ante’ by filling up his pocket with sand and pebble and had it made to be counted.


Back two weeks ago to the present while I was cooking for dinner and watching news at the same time. I faintly heard words like teachers and student story over the news. So I walked to the living room and heed to the story. SECS are now abolishing teacher’s use of light corporal punishment likes “caning” shouting or yelling to students, categorizing it now as unlawful. My reaction to news is simply not overwhelming since I grew up witnessing and experienced some of it. But I do agree in some point, in reality it has to be, considering it’s painful and humiliating for the punished one. But neither had I condemned teachers. Human whatever his age do perform willingly under pressure. Continuing my watching over the news, the chores like “sand and pebbles“we did those days are no longer allowed. On the contrary, I do understand the Faculty of those days. Instead of waiting for the Ministry of Education to act (considering the corruption during Marcos days). We did it by ourselves and so proud of what we have learned in arithmetic, better than just reading the books. What's more, we prevented the flooding, thinking it could never be done. School superintendent came and cited our efforts, though I missed my toy-sailboat racing and the swimming of course. But I said to myself "its better now at least I don’t have to walk thru the flood just to attend class".


Manlayo Today, without the flooding

Two years after construction of the new school classrooms finally facilitated. DECS had reclaimed the muddy area with a new ground level. The contribution we had for 3 months were done by the Pay Loaders and Bulldozer for almost just a day. (Sigh) I had myself been watching it on our window day after day when I was a kid. Though new graded soil over-topped the sand and pebbles we sweated, it became the foundation of the initial reclamation. Looking back those days we really have to laugh but mostly being proud of ourselves. I realized how desperate we were despite the fact we’re so fortunate in having such intuitive arithmetic class session. You may comment and ask if it is true? Yes it happened ladies and gentlemen we were like Dutch people saving Netherlands from sinking.

This article has been in my blog's draft page for quite a while, as my habit of choosing the right words and grammar before publishing it (what a shame). Strangely though, two weeks before the Ondoy tragedy(I can provide the draft's time stamp if needed).It's very untimely that I have made flooding improperly discussed as auspiciously funny, since typhoon Ondoy(Ketsana) brought enormous tears to most of our "kababayan" . Lately, I was contemplating that publishing it could alleviate the depressed feeling of those who were affected (I hoped). First of all I would like to stress out in my story that everybody can be a part of collective team efforts to overcome things as huge as flooding. We were toddlers but we overcome such inundations without problem. Secondly, as people we can overcome desperation and spin it to our advantage (like what our principal did, coherently making fun of our task to educational one). Recollecting such teamwork we did with my schoolmates, it was an "esprit de corp" (-that older people could have shamelessly done). It's ironic that people are trying to be helpful when tragedy has already happened, yet you couldn't oblige them to help you when you were preparing against it. It’s a shameful human nature to show affection to others when people are in suffering yet he cannot show helpful attitude to others when his fellow actually needing one. We feel sorry for their lost but we never sorry when we throw things to drainage and clogged them. We pray for ourselves but we never pray for others. We joyfully rejoice when we are not affected but we feel sorry for victims when we are watching them over the news. We people haven't figured it out; God is trying to make us united on avoiding it much more than tackling the aftermath. Don't be so naive with your sorry feeling watching them. Next time plan ahead and work us a team and overcome the next "Taib" of our life.

-by Cornelio Cenizal

Map Courtesy of Google Earth