SALAGUBANG

The road headed north along the sea, past a neighborhood of new buildings, and the docks, into a hinterland of palm and scrub. Occasionally we went by clusters of dwellings, ramshackle stilt-huts barely above the morass at the shadowed feet of hills. On the other side of the road we could see the ocean glinting beyond the palms.

The heat was oppressive until it rained, when briefly it would seem several degrees cooler. When the rain passed as quickly as it had come one would feel sticky and waterlogged, but only for a minute or so while the wetness in one's hair and clothing evaporated.


We should've taken the road to Balikuan, but ended up going into the hills. By the time we realized the error it was too late to turn back, the last ferry to the island had already left. So we stopped at a small group of houses to negotiate a place to stay for the night. While Ching and Noel went exploring the local children gathered around the jeep to stare from a safe distance. White people must have been mighty rare in these parts, and certainly something so disturbing in appearance as a beaky mukang puteh with a days worth of stubble was worth drinking in. To increase the effect and really give them something to remark about, I lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the flies.


Half an hour later Ching and Noel returned. They had struck a deal with the headman, who would let us camp out in the local school. Which, it was obvious, had not been used for several years - ever since the teacher had fled or been killed by the insurrectionists. It stank of mildew and rot. It may have been the only building in town without chicken crap underneath it - reason being that unlike the other buildings, which were on posts with an area underneath almost high enough for a grown man to walk, it had been built on a concrete plinth. The chicken crap was not underneath, but inside, on the covered veranda.


Before it turned dark we pushed several benches together to make a sleeping platform. One of the locals brought a large tin lid with leaves on it, and told us to let it smolder throughout the night - it would keep mosquitoes at a distance. We sat on the veranda to eat and drink whiskey.


Night falls fast. One moment it is still light, then there is a roar of beetles (Salagubang), like machinery nearby, and within minutes it is pitch-black. A kerosene lantern is a blessing at such a time, but the local insect life thinks so too. Three men can go through a tin of fifty cigarettes in one evening keeping the bugs away. Lights from other lamps in the settlement are visible through the bamboo, but the smoke from those other verandas does not reach this far.


Wind and rain in the night made the bamboo creak and moan. Tall wet pillars bent down lower and lower until the water on the leaves rolled off. The breeze pushed the trunks against each other, they punctuated the night with a woodsy eck-eck-eck. Sometimes it sounded like breaking timber or distant gunfire. It is said that the ghosts of stillborn children live in the hollow culms. But those were probably just wild rats scuffling through the leaves.


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NOTE

Salagubang: Tropical scarab beetles. I have been told that they are edible, and can be cooked with a little vinegar and soy. My auntie, who called them halibambang, recalled eating them as a young girl, but said that until the war only children and poor people did so. During the war even the adults would gladly consume them, but just plain cooked in water as there was neither soy nor vinegar to be had. I myself have never eaten them. They make an immense racket around nightfall that stops as suddenly as it starts.
When I first heard it, in the city, I thought the neighbors' air-conditioning had blown a gasket, or someone was breaking up the pavement with a heavy drill.


Know also that there are many South-East Asian insects which make noise - crickets, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and cicadas, in addition to a beetle that bores into resinous hardwood and makes a high-pitched peyeng peyeng sound.



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