How My Uncle Leon Brought Home A Wife

(With apologies to Manuel E. Arguilla)

The farming village of Masondong is situated on the lower midwestern slope of Mount Hilong-hilong in the island of Mindanao. Almost all of the people living here are my mother’s relatives in varying degrees of affinity and consanguinity. As a kid, I have visited this place countless times together with my parents and every visit was always looked forward to with anticipation, eager to meet and play with my cousins.

 Masondong is a geopolitical sub-unit of barrio Calamba, which, in turn is a political sub-unit of the municipality of Cabadbaran. The village has no decent road for motorized vehicles to reach it. The road network of Mindanao ends at the barrio proper of Calamba and the village is connected to the barrio through a circuitous 7-kilometer footpath which is also used by the farmers’ carabaos pulling the sledge.

I say “circuitous” because although both the village and the barrio proper lie on the same side of the Calibunan River, a direct route is not possible because of a steep, forested mountain that separates them up to the river’s waterline. The end of the mountain facing the river is a vertical wall of barren rock and some loose topsoil constantly eroded by the water current beneath it. The other side of the river is a wide plain having been leveled through years or centuries of seasonal flooding.

This geographical barrier dictates that the route to Masondong crosses the river at a point nearest to the barrio, then follow the river upstream on the other side, then crosses the river again once they pass by the rock wall. I have to emphasize here that there is no bridge. So to cross the river is to literally wade in the water which is knee-deep on some predetermined locations.

Life in Masondong is relatively comfortable except during rainy season when the river swells up to 3 or 4 times its usual size, making it doubly unpassable, isolating the village from the rest of the world. But as long as every family has enough supply of salt and kerosene, these temporary isolations are livable since they are self-sufficient in food that they themselves produced.

But remote as it is, the village has a rich cultural life. It was the home of a well-known musical group called the Dagohoy String Band. All the musicians handling the different instruments are my uncles and cousins. Tatay Lucing, my mother’s eldest brother seemed to be the leader of the group being the oldest. His favorite instrument was the tenor banjo. There was also the banjo, guitar, bass guitar, violin and cello. (They even had a makeshift bass instrument consisting of a metal container as a base with a long wooden arm protruding upward. A small rope made of abaca is fixed at the base and wound at the top of the wooden arm that when strummed produces a soothing sound with a very low frequency akin to that of a bass drum.) Neighboring barrios invite them to play especially during fiesta celebrations.

Then came Uncle Leon. I don’t know where he came from, probably from some Cebuano-speaking islands in the Visayas like Leyte. Actually, he is not related to us and I only started calling him Uncle Leon after he married Yaya Barsing, my mother’s first cousin. But that’s going ahead of the story.

Their romance was a typical story of a stranger who falls in love with a local lass. The courtship and the rituals which, usually involve the whole clan are quite elaborate but I will not dwell on those. I would rather fast forward to the time when their wedding was scheduled to be held in our small chapel in Calamba.

Just like any other barrio, we do not have a resident priest. A priest from Cabadbaran only comes one Sunday in a month to say mass. At other Sundays, we only hold a novena led by the chapel patriarch named Esteban. He was a nice, likeable fellow but as kids, we were afraid to come near him. He even looked like a priest. We heard that Esteban was a pensionado of the American government. We were told that during the war he enlisted in the US Navy and was assigned as a cook in one of the American warships. After his retirement, he bought a big piece of land in our barrio, settled down comfortably and serving religiously in our chapel in the absence of a priest.

Their wedding was a grand event in our barrio. Our small chapel was jampacked with worshippers. Even the courtyard was filled with friends and relatives eager to witness the ceremony.  The priest from the town was there in his immaculately white priestly robe. And of course, the Dagohoy String Band was there accompanying the congregation in the singing.

Meanwhile, back at the bride’s parents’ house in Masondong, the bride’s family and her immediate relatives were busy preparing the food for the wedding banquet. The bride’s family had already anticipated that the whole village and the many friends and relatives in the barrio proper were coming to share a meal with the newly wed. No invitation was necessary. Since I was just a kid at the time, I was not privy to the food preparation but in retrospect, I could estimate that at least one carabao, and a couple of pigs and goats were butchered to feed the community of well-wishers

After the ceremony, everyone, young and old were getting ready to invade the bride’s house for the wedding feast. The seven-kilometer procession started at the chapel’s courtyard led by the bride and groom followed by the string band followed by the crowd. Uncle Leon was holding his bride while the bride was partially lifting her long white skirt to prevent it from touching the ground. That was the scene that left a lasting imprint in my memory. I was part of the crowd and I was very near the string band. As we continued walking the band continued playing familiar songs which synched with our every footstep so that we did not feel tired.