Filipinas Mag

Baguio’s sunflower fields are being steadily wiped out by urban sprawl.

Crouched behind a sunflower bush, I clutched an imaginary caliber .45 fashioned from sunflower roots. The sunflower foliage around me was so thick I couldn’t see my war-game playmates. I was aware though that everyone was creeping, crouching to find where the “enemies” could be holed up.

Suddenly, twigs snapped behind me. I turned. It was too late. An “enemy” pointed his stick at me and whispered “Bang! Natay kan” (Bang! You are dead). His “gun” had a shorter stick tied with a lanot (stringy vine of Morning Glory) onto the “barrel.” Pointing at the extension, he said, “Silencer datoy” (This is a silencer).

My “enemy” got the idea for a “silencer” from a pre-James Bond movie that was then showing at the local movie theaters. He then went on to stealthily stalk all my squad members, “shooting” them with a whisper so the others would not hear him coming.

That innovation caused me my “life.” It was only one of many innovative lessons I would learn about life on hills full of sunflowers.

I grew up in Strike and Spare Lanes on Mabini Street off Session Road in Baguio City. The bowling alley used to dominate the street, margined only by two hills with acres of what we called jungles of sunflowers.

Everything about the sunflower plant—roots, stalks, leaves, vines and flowers—are called marapait which, literally, means like-bitter. They towered to over ten feet and their branches could be as thick as two inches in diameter. With leaves spread like open palms, the sunflowers were like one-eyed pancakes with yellow petals following the position of the sun from sunrise to dusk.

During a visit to the Philippines in 2004, I met a former playmate, Henry. I was not at all surprised when he told me he was now a barangay (village) captain. When we played “Follow the Leader” as children, he was always at the forefront and was the innovator of the “silencer.” Another playmate, Pigol, is now in Long Beach, California, a thriving businessman. Paling joined the U.S. Navy and retired as a warrant officer of the highest rating. Timbong is a very successful engineer. My brother became a consultant with the United Nations. I don’t know what became of the others but I would like to think that whatever vocations my playmates and I pursued, those hills of marapaits played a role in our lives.

Games We Played
Back then, playing, we were marines with marapait sticks as our carbines.
When the original “Three Hundred Spartans” came to town, we were Greeks slashing Persians with marapait swords and spears.

Tying sunflower sticks together also made them frames of balay-balays (playhouses). Marapait leaves and dried grass topped our “ceilings” and “walls.” Here, we acted out the ideal roles of family members. Lily was always the good mother. My brother was always the baby.

During cowboy vs. Indian games, the houses became wigwams protected by the braves but were literally torched when the cavalry won.

Sometimes, we were literally wounded. When we got nicks or gushing wounds, we would apply sunflower leaves that were pounded into a pulp and spat on, on the affected area.

We also learned how to fight for our turf when bands of marauding kids from neighboring streets would harass our girls and disturb our games. Often, disputes were settled with our leader in mortal combat with another group’s commander in a kab-bo or no-holds-barred wrestling on the grass.

Sometimes conflicts with these intruders turned into full scale “wars.” We became trained in accurate far-distance hurling of stones. Later on, we began to use slingshots that proved to be lethal weapons of mass destruction. We heard about those panas (arrows) used by the OXO and Sigue-sigue gangs of far-away Manila but decided they were too nuclear and we were not going to be involved in humanity’s annihilation.

Only the rains would stop us from going to the sunflower hills, but as soon as the sun came back, we too would be back in full force. The clearings would then be swathed with thicker and greener carpets of grass. The foliage, still dripping with the monsoon’s leftover, would again be a full arsenal of our pistols, lances and swords.

Again, we would have our captains, generals, centurions, kings, and damsels in distress. We learned how to lead and how to follow, to set rules and abide by them, to treat one like a pariah if one disregards the rules. We also learned power brokering—to make friends with those most influential in organizing games and avoid those who would throw tantrums, who wrongly believed that the games couldn’t be played without them. We also learned how to ask for forgiveness and to forgive.

When I entered high school, other kids took over the hills. By then, I was no longer involved in the Vietnam war-games but I, like those ahead of us, would still return to the clearings. My friends and I had bonfires with dried marapait sticks as our sungrod (firewood). As the flames leaped toward the starry skies, we roasted camote (sweet potatoes) in the bosom of the fire for a sumptuous snack. In between songs accompanied by a guitar, we swapped stories on how to kiss or say good-bye.

Then I entered college, worked for the Philippine Government, taught in Africa and settled in America.

Now, the clearings are gone along with our marapait jungles, quashed into oblivion by the commercial buildings that have sprouted in their place.

The kids along Mabini Street now have colored TVs and computer-generated war games to enact their heroism in individualist mortal combat without regard for team honor in victory or defeat. I believe that with the hills of marapaits gone, so too are the venues to role-play family life within the confines of balay-balays. Gone too are the war games where one could hone the virtues of service, comradeship, leadership, and be-coming a stalwart team player. Likewise, the childhood social “vines” (i.e. networks) through which we learned how to care, sympathize and fight for our rights no longer exist.

The death of Baguio’s sunflowers is really a bitter story.

Author’s credit: Rudy D. Liporada is a native of Baguio City who now lives in San Diego, California.

Send us your Hometown stories: mail@filipinasmag.com