Chapter 10 - Mothers' Day Musings: My Mother's Ordeal

 The year was nineteen eighty-four. It was a typical day in our farming village in Calaitan. The sun was just peeping over the eastern horizon and the sky was crystal blue interspersed with wisplike strands of cirrus clouds. My mother and our youngest sister, Lilet, who was then 12 years old, rose up early to make the necessary preparations in going to the market to sell their vegetables.

 

Our village is situated along the route of a timber company that cut forest trees into logs and haul them to the lowlands for processing and export. In those days, no public transport reached our place for the road was owned by the timber company and only company vehicles were allowed to use it. But the mobility problem of the farmer residents was somehow eased by the generosity of the company drivers who gave rides to people they pass by hiking on the side of the road or waiting at some designated areas. On many instances you can see a comical but scary sight of dozens of people sitting on top of logs or on top of mounds of gravel of trucks racing at breakneck speed along the unpaved winding road risking lives and limbs. Seat belts were unheard of in our village.

 

By this time, planting season of major crops was over and while waiting for harvest, my father worked in the city some 50 kilometers away as a security guard to augment the family income. My mother was also tending a vegetable plot which she harvested regularly to be sold in town some 10 kilometers away. I was in Manila by this time striving to gain mastery of the professional field I was in. My two brothers were away in college. And with my father going home only on weekends, the only man in the house giving company to my mother and our three younger sisters was our youngest brother, Joseph who was just nineteen.

 

On this day, my mother had a different plan. Instead of going to town, she and Lilet would go up some 20 kilometers away to the village where the families of the timber company workers were residing. My mother found them a much better buyer of her vegetables than the middlemen in town who would haggle to buy her products to the lowest ---almost giveaway prices.

 

They did not wait for long at a designated place. An empty company dump truck was passing by on its way to the cutting area. Everyone who waited there was able to get a ride---around thirty of them, from the youngest child to the oldest man. There were also some six army soldiers who rode with them.

 

To anyone experiencing this kind of travel, comfort is farthest from your mind. With the vehicle not designed for people transport, you just have to stand, holding on to anything that you can hold on. Some sit when there is something to sit on. My mother found herself in the middle of the cargo bay. Lilet was standing a few feet away from her on the forward direction. The soldiers were also standing around Lilet.

 

Then suddenly, as the truck was negotiating an uphill climb, the constant hum of the engine was disrupted by bursts of gunfire. Ambush. From among the cogon grasses and the trees on both sides of the road were around a hundred communist rebels aiming their guns at them. The first ones to get hit were the soldiers. Riders on the periphery of the vehicle fell down on the roadside while those on the middle slumped on the floor. There was blood everywhere. The driver got hit, too, but managed to continue driving to escape from the scene of the ambush. My mother saw Lilet covered with blood but still moving and she thought her daughter was dying. She felt a dull pain in her hip and she came to the realization that she was wounded, too.

 

After running for some few kilometers, the truck came to a stop and the driver collapsed. Everybody who was left on the truck was either wounded or dead. There were a few houses by the roadside and around the vicinity, and these local residents came to help them in whatever capacity. One soldier was barely alive and when they came to assist him, he pointed his gun at them. In his feverish state he was thinking that these were the people who ambushed him, and he said to them, “Don’t come near, or I’ll shoot. “Then he got down from the truck, wobbling, and crawled under a small house whose elevated floor was just around one foot above the dirt ground. In a matter of minutes, he was dead.

 

Although bleeding herself, my mother’s first concern was Lilet. But when she checked on her, her only wound was on her leg just below the knee. Lilet was lucky because it was just a flesh wound. And she was luckier that the bullet did not shatter her kneecap or she would be crippled for the rest of her life. So, the blood that was all over her body was not her own. They were the soldiers’.

 

It was my mother who was in a more precarious situation. The nearest medical facility was in our town which was 25 kilometers away. A considerable distance when there is no available transport. The local residents were not much of help. Some gathered herbal leaves and barks of trees. My mother was offered a filthy rug to be used as a tourniquet.

 

Although there were no communication facilities, news about the ambush spread within an hour. When my brother learned of the ambush, he left our farm immediately and rushed to the place to look for our mother and sister and was relieved to see them still alive. By some ingenious luck, he was able to get a vehicle that would bring my mother and sister to town. He brought them to the clinic of the only surgeon in town who happened to be our relative. Dr. Lorna Peteros-Amora is my father’s first cousin. She performed a surgical operation on my mother and sister right away. My mother stayed in her clinic for a couple of weeks.

 

Today, Lilet is married with three kids. The scar below her knee is still visible. During the last local election, being the number one councilor in our place, she ran for barangay captain but lost to the incumbent. My mother, now 75, is still active and healthy. My father passed away three years ago, and she is now the one managing our farm while tending half a dozen grandchildren who are staying in her house.

Seven months after that incident, Joseph met his tragic end in Davao City. But that will be a subject of another story yet to be written. At our brother’s funeral, our mother, who could not forget that that she owed him her life, cried the loudest.