Surviving the Dark Ages

I am a survivor of the dark ages.

I was born in the 60’s… grew up in the 70’s….was an adult in the 80’s, in a third world tropical country in southeast of Asia.

First of all I survived being born to a mother who didn’t have an OB-Gyne, and so did all the other children I grew up and played with. We came to this world with the help of a “hilot”, someone who functions as a midwife  but with no medical schooling nor a license to boot. While pregnant, our mothers  took cold or cough medicines,  drank beer, ate all kinds of sweet or fatty foods and didn’t worry about diabetes nor gaining weight.

After being born with no symptoms of any harm done, we spent the next sleeping hours of our lives on our baby cribs made of hard wood covered with lead-based paints.

We had no soft cushy cribs,  just a woven native mat over an undergirding net of strong firm rattan. There were no cuddly stuffed toy animals  around us.. no colorful mobile canopy that played music…that would have made us cross-eyed before we were put to sleep.

Our strollers and walking trainers are also made of rattan… shaped like our mother’s full blown skirt with a hole in the middle just big enough for her baby to snugly fit in and learn to walk by itself.

As we grew up bigger, we learned to ride our bikes… no helmets, no kneepads sometimes no brakes for the bikes.. doesnt matter.. all we need to do is jump out of it before it hits the wall , the fence or the tree.

Accompanied by adults, we would ride in hot un-airconditioned buses with wooden seats or  the ubiquitous bumpy jeepneys or cars with no air conditioning and no seat belts.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle purchased from 711, sometimes direct from the well bucket or the faucet itself.

We shared one soft drink bottle with three more of our friends, and not one actually died from this.

We ate boiled rice with Star margarine, ate raw eggs straight from the shell, and drank soda pops with real sugar in it (no light coke nor diet pepsi) but we seldom got sick nor became overweight.

Why? Because…

we were always outside playing!

If it is a non-school day, we would leave home in the morning and play all day 
in the neighborhood … get back home to eat lunch ….. and play outside again, then head for home only when the streetlights came on.

We played hide and seek, tagged, run and jump; race, skipping rope, “suot lungga” (inside the cave!) or “piko” a hop and step game, bending the body, touching ball,  break the chain, “sipa”, capture the flag, pass the handkerchief, open the house, open the basket.. “habulan estatuwa” ( statue chase ), etc. We played until everyone was exhausted.

Some summer days the girls would be catching giant orange dragonflies in the backyard of the town’s  rice mill ..standing on top of the mountains of rice husks using broomsticks more effective than butterfly nets.

Then we kept our catch in big glass bottles with the tin covers punched with holes to keep them dragonflies alive and breathing.

When it seemed the dragonflies were getting weak, we would release them out of pity,  to be caught again on another day.

That’s how we learned to love animals and mother nature.

The boys would be busy hunting for spiders, kept them in perforated match boxes, criss-crossed  with small strips of cardboard inside to form compartments and to keep the spiders from eating each other. The spiders are then fed with young guava leaves to make them strong and  ready for the “spider kickboxing”  tournament. This kickboxing match would be  held on an agreed day, time and place.. usually on weekends.

Its the equivalent of “cockfighting” among boys, but instead used spiders that fought along the length  a very thin stick  the size of an uncooked spaghetti.

The stick comes from the midrib of a coconut leaf… the same stick the brooms were made of… that we girls used to catch dragonflies with.

The stick is held on each end by the opposing “spider trainers”, raised at least a foot above the table where everyone is gathered around, after which, the spiders are released on a starting point just after the thumb and finger that hold the stick on each end and then the spiders would knowingly crawl towards each other, meeting in the middle of the stick to fight.

They were trained. They knew what to do.

The spider who managed to wrap completely his opponent with its sticky web wins and becomes the reigning champion, to be challenged by another  spider fighter.

That’s how the boys learned their first lessons in martial arts and boxing.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes….no Fallout, no Metal Gear, no Grand Theft Auto, no Guitar Hero.. no video games at all.

We had no 100 channels on cable TV, nor DVD movies on surround stereo.

we played outside

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no stupid lawsuits from these accidents . The only rubbing we get is from our friends with the words.. are you okay?

We played marbles  on the ground,  washed our hands just a little , and ate ice cream in cones or fish balls on a stick  with our dirty hands. We were not afraid of getting germs in our stomachs.

We had  homemade toys …  guns made of wood,  held together with rubber bands. We  had  y-sling shots, and blowguns from bamboos with mongo beans as pellets. We made up games with sticks “syatong” and cans “tumbang preso “. And although we were told they were dangerous, nobody had ever been blinded nor died from them.. although sometimes an occasional swelling or lump on somebody’s head cannot be avoided. But even then, everybody is happy after each game..

Our parents are there just to check if everything is okay.  Give advice
or guidance but never to interfere nor to quarrel with other parents.

Undisturbed in our worlds and free…no one was able to reach us ..

We had no beepers, no cellphones, no IPods, IPhones  nor Blackberry’s…..

We walked,  biked, or took tricycles to a friend’s house, no prior appointments made… we would knock on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them to jump out the window!

No computers, no internet, no chat rooms.. no Friendster, no Facebook nor Twitter.

But we had real friends.. and we went outside to actually talk and be with them!

And yes, we were  okay. We were happy.

We hurdled  the “toughest university entrance exam” together.  Some didn’t make it. Those who didn’t pass had to learn to deal with the disappointment.

“The elevator is full, use the stairs… There are other colleges, no problem.”
The words “childhood depression” or  “damaged self-esteem” are not in our vocabularies.

That generation of ours had produced some of the best risk-takers,
problem solvers, creative thinkers and successful professionals ever! They had become the CEO’s, engineers, architects, economists, doctors, political leaders and military generals of the society.

We had challenges and obstacles made more difficult with the absence of  modern technologies.

And in less perfect conditions, we had failures… but we had learnt early in life how to deal with them.

They didn’t deter us…instead …. they made us more determined to succeed the next time.

Our characters had been hammered and forged to withstand any adverse circumstances.

We were fighters. We were survivors. We got through the dark ages….the age before computers, cellphones, and the Web

We were lucky indeed!

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Tagged as: dark ages, filipino, humour, street games, surviving