In a small place where I grew up, almost everybody knows everybody else. In the eighties when the country was mired in political turmoil, we were sort of shielded from the maelstrom brewing in Manila and the big cities, tucked away in our corner in the Bukidnon plateau. The company where my father worked during those times dominated the pineapple global export market. Thus, corporate financial stability provided families working for the company a semblance of security during those troubled times. Not exactly Amish-like, but more like those German immigrants deep in the mountains of Venezuela.
I don't know how it is nowadays, but I always thought we were the lucky ones. We had our own hospital, dairy farm, schools, school buses to pick us up. We were even living in company-owned housing communities, with its own security force.
Since PLDT did not have a presence in the area, we had our own operator-assisted telephone system wherein if you pick up the phone, you speak directly to the operator to transfer your call. There were no assigned phone numbers. Also, in determining which call goes to who, we were assigned various combinations of short and long rings (such as beep beep beeeeep, beeeep). In fact, once the telephone starts ringing, everybody else in the whole neighborhood, or perhaps the entire community, would be paying attention should their assigned rings play out.
My family left Bukidnon for Bohol in the mid-nineties. I often wonder about what has happened to the place since then. Last time I was there, my grade school got bigger, and the Church now resembles a huge warehouse. I think the population has grown bigger as well.
Maybe next year, I'll probably visit Bukidnon. I haven't been there in like, ten years.
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