Mati, the place where I spent the first nine years of my life. I was born in Davao City, the biggest city in the island of Mindanao, but because of my father’s job as a Red Cross Administrator, we moved to a region down south, Davao Oriental, with Mati as its capital town.

I have rich childhood memories in Mati that keep coming back every time there’s a trigger. Like one day, when my husband and I were talking about our last trip to the Philippines, when we met this very cool taxi driver who coincidentally we had a ride two times within our ten-day vacation. He’s a good taxi driver who kept us entertained during the ride with his talk about many things and one of them, bananas. Bananas in the Philippines sometimes just pop out from nowhere and you can see them everywhere even in a big city like Davao. Much more in the countryside, like Mati, and that banana topic opened a stocked memories of my very precious childhood in Mati.

BANANAS, BANANAS

I remember how my siblings and I played outside of our backyard pinching and poking holes on the banana trunks with sticks and watching the sap flow out from it upon pulling out the sticks. We used to say that banana trees are peeing or crying. I know it’s not very nice poking banana trunks but we were kids and we didn’t see it like that. We enjoyed watching the water flow like it’s magic. And of course, our parents scolded us for doing that. That we should not ‘hurt’ the banana trees.

We used banana trunks to feed our pigs we raised in our backyard. We call banana trunks ‘bani’ in our local language. We sliced bani thinly and mix it with ‘tahop’, grounded husk of rice grain. It’s too expensive feeding pigs with commercial feed in the market so we settled with bani. My mother used to ask us to cut the bani when it’s feeding time for the pigs. We of my siblings took turns doing it . Sometimes we liked it, most of the time we didn’t. It’s a menial job. We did it in our backyard, where we had a small pigpen and a small duck’s pool.

THE DUCK’S SWIMMING POOL

That backyard in our house in Mati is mostly where are precious childhood memories happened. That small duck’s pool, I can never forget. One day, my sister Dhaday and my cousin Dodong decided to ‘sail’ our big plastic basin across the green dirty duck’s pool. We put Dodong in the middle of the basin for balance and pushed it to start ‘sailing’. When the basin was already half-way in the duck’s pool, my uncle William, Dodong’s father, came and the sight of Dodong in the basin in the middle of the green dirty duck’s pool infuriated him because for him it was dangerous. But for us, it was fun. We were like aged 7 or 8 at that time. When uncle William told Dodong to get out of the pool, my sister Dhaday and I ran quickly and hid and left Dodong in the middle of the pool. Dodong was crying of fear of his father and said ‘mudunggo na lagi ko pa, mudunggo na lagi ko pa’ meaning ‘I’m gonna land dad, I’m gonna land.” That was just one of the funny childhood memories.

THE MANZANITAS TREE

Near the duck’s pool is a Manzanitas tree. Manzanitas tree bear fruits like cherries. Birds love it and we, kids, love it, too. The fruits are green at first but when they ripe, they’re red. Very red, very many and very attractive to the eyes. I used to climb that Manzanitas tree and pick all the red, ripe fruits. We used to call them apples. Apples don’t grow in the Philippines and the idea of having mini apples is very heart-warming for us. One afternoon, siesta time, when my older sister made us take a nap, my sister Lea and I sneaked to the backyard and I climbed the Manzanitas tree. She was too little, at maybe age 6 or 7 to climb the tree and I was thinking I was big enough I could do it. I was about age 8 or 9. I told Lea to stay by the foot of the tree and wait for me while I get the red ripe fruits. I was enjoying picking fruits when I heard my mother’s voice coming. I was screwed. I will be punished for sure, I thought. So, I suddenly gestured my sister Lea to not look up the tree and to pretend she doesn’t know where I was. But of course she was too little to know how to lie. She panicked when Mama asked her where I was and looked up the tree and that’s how my mother caught me climbing the Manzanitas tree. I was scolded, yeah. But that stayed as a precious childhood memory I always love to look back.

THE MANGOE TREES

I loved climbing trees. I remember we had two mango trees in our house in Mati. One big “Carabao” mango tree in the front yard and one small “Cebu” mango tree in the backyard. (These are variant of trees we call in the local language.) We used to climb that small mango tree with salt in a saucer and a kabo (small bucket)filled with water. We picked the fresh budding leaves, wash them with water, dip in salt and eat them. All of that we did up in the tree. Yeah, that sounds crazy but I don’t know where we got that idea. Somebody just started saying ‘You can eat the young leaves…oh it’s good’ and we did it and it became one of our past time activities. Of course we also eat the fruit. We like the green ones. Oh, just thinking about it makes me droll. Sister Dhaday and I used to sneak out our window in the second floor up to the rooftop where we used a dughit (catcher) to pick the mango fruits. Of course we had our salt in saucer and small knife with us to peel the mangoes. We were careful not to drop the mangoes and hit the roof to avoid any sound that alarm our family downstairs that were up on the roof getting mangoes. We’d be screwed if we’d be caught doing that and it happened many times. Papa caught us one time because while he was walking in the front of the house with Lea, Lea saw us on the rooftop and pointed to us. I remembered we hurried back inside the house and hid but of course we couldn’t escape Papa. Papa got so angry and we were scolded.

OUR GUAVA TREES

We also had our own guava trees. Lea’s guava tree in the backyard was the most fruitful of all guava trees. Maybe because there was like a bunch of compost by its foot. It bears big, oval guava fruits. But, the fruit, they’re not tasty. It tasted bland. So, even if it bears a lot of fruits, we didn’t care that much. Ate Dhaday (ate is how we address our older sisters) had the best guava tree. The fruit are tiny and green but they tasted so sweet. I think they are the native kind. My guava tree outside the backyard fence bears fruit like once or twice a year. And when it bears fruit, only the biggest, most delicious fruit you can ever have. But, yeah. What good does it make when you have to wait for months. We were kids and we were impatient like that. We love ate Dhaday’s guava tree. During siesta time, when I get to sneak, I would climb ate Dhay’s guava tree and pick guavas and enjoy them while whistling and rocking on a branch. She would get angry at me the next day because the fruits she’s been waiting to ripe are already gone. Who else is the ‘thief’ but me. Lea couldn’t climb trees. And our older siblings already lost interest in them. They did their own ‘teenager’ things.

SUGAR CANE

My older siblings, on the other hand, they did have their own sugar cane plant. We call it tubo. Cutting and munching tubo is one of the happiest thing in our childhood. We cut and share tubo equally among us like we had to measure them in equal length for if one is bigger than the other, it could start a fight. We munched tubo and enjoyed it’s very sweet, juicy taste. If you don’t know, sugar is made from sugar cane.

PLAY HOUSE, PLAY STORE

My sisters Dhaday and Lea, we used to play houses a lot. We played house in our living room where we move chairs and use cardboard boxes and blankets to design our own spaces and define territories. We also played outside in the front yard where we used the bench as our ‘store’. We sell make-believe ginanggang. Ginanggang is roasted bananas glazed with margarine and white sugar. We picked leaves for bananas skewed in silhig tukog (coconut broomsticks) glazed with gumamela oil (we mashed gumamela leaves to make the oil) and sprinkled it with bukbuk (wood particles) as sugar coating for our ginanggang. We used candy wrappers as our money to buy. The blue wrapper is valued at two pesos and green wrappers are five. Our coins were flattened soft drinks’ cap. I miss those times. Those are the real play. No touch of technology or whatsoever digital.

PLAY FIGHT

We also have memories of playing fight where we use banana trunk to make our guns and armalites. We were so creative we could make them look like real guns. Kuyang, as we call our older brother, liked playing gunfights. And we of my sisters play with him. We used the seed of plant called buyangyang as our bullets. Buyangyang seeds are red and black in color. I’ve never seen that plant since we left Mati. I don’t know if they still exist up to now. When we play gunfight, we go all over the house, to the backyard and beyond that. We hid behind banana trees and our guava trees. It was so much fun running and hitting each other with our improvised weapons.

WATCHING AND CATCHING BIRDS

When I was young. I was crazy about birds. I so loved birds to the point where I was kind of obsessed about them. I remember I would stay near the bushes in our backyard. I don’t know what they’re called. Those bushes bear tiny fruits that the birds love to eat. I used to stay near them and tweet like I was talking to the birds. One time, I hid inside the big rubber water container near the bushes and called the birds. Of course, not a single bird came to play with me. I was also almost bitten by a snake just because I always stay near the grasses and bushes to watch and talk to the birds.

There was one bird I found outside the backyard. It had a broken wing and it couldn’t fly and it kept chirping. That’s how I found it. I was so happy and kept the bird as my pet. I put him under a big wooden food cover and tried to feed him with all kinds of food I can grab and water to drink. I was hoping he would get well someday and become my best friend. Until one day, a horrible accident happened. As I stood to pick up something and went back near the bird’s improvised cage, i didn’t notice it came out of the cage and I accidentally stepped on the bird. I could hear the sound of the bone cracking as I stepped on it. It died right away. It wouldn’t move. It wouldn’t chirp. Limp. I was so so sad and I cried so hard. I gave my pet bird a ‘funeral’ in our garden and I put a cross on its mound.

Looking back, now I realized why I really don’t have many close friends outside the family. Because I grew up playing with my sisters. We had a big house and a big lot in Mati and we explored and played every corner of it. Just us of my siblings and sometimes the visiting cousins. That moment of my life is very precious I will treasure it forever.

We did many other things in my childhood like playing with makahiya leaves. Makahiya is derived from the word “hiya” which means shy. It is a plant that when you touch it, it closes its leaves. We also listened to AM radio drama programs like Ramine ang Batang Bronse..lol. We went to the nearby stream to bathe and swim with our older siblings` pet dogs. Haha.. We joined Flores de Mayo where we would go pick flowers together with other children in the neighborhood. Life in the countryside is much different in the city. We moved back to Davao after fourth grade and it is a totally different experience. No more trees. No more streams. It is a big city. A new life. But the memories in Mati will never fade away.