Sitting on a Bench

This past Wednesday, between an excruciatingly mind numbing meeting with the local clergy (long story) and a brief period of nausea dealing with ineptitude at the Municipal Hall, I walked down to watch the ocean. Babatngon, if I haven't mentioned it enough, is a gorgeous place, like much of the Philippines. The islands are riddled with jagged rocks coming out of beautiful aquamarine water, all this with a mountainous backdrop of lush green cogon (tall grass) strewn hills, and from the shore of district 1, where I chose to sit, you can see the peaks of Volcanoes on the nearby island of Biliran. I count 5 nearby islands that you can see while just sitting there.

I sat down on a wooden coconut lumber bench with 6 other men, the oldest men in town, hanging out, as they do every day, on the bench, watching the tides relentlessly rise and fall. The group of old men, their white hair and laxidasical conversation remind me of similar groups I've seen, old guys sitting outside country gas stations in Briery Branch or Keezletown or Woodstock back at home in Virginia. The way they just sit, in a hurry for nothing, and seemingly content to sit the day away, talking with old friends. Two of the guys are pensioners who used to work at the municipal hall, one of them was a politician back in the day, and the other three guys are fishermen, guys with money attained from their children who support them financially. To be sure, these guys wouldn't have been in the same social or economic circles when they were younger but these six guys now spend most of their days talking together, as time, the great equalizer, has brought them full circle.

The old fellow closest to me, a man who sometimes makes crab traps in his spare time, asked me a few questions, about what I'm doing here and when I'll be going home. I told him a little bit about Peace Corps and what we hope to be helping with here in the Philippines. Then he asked me if I read the Bible, if I had ever heard of the 'Babelli.' I didn't know at all what he was talking about, so I asked him to repeat a few times until he finally said, 'The story of the tower of Babelli. Everyone understood each other before that, and then masina hi God (God was mad))' I told him that yes, I had heard of the Tower of Babel, and we talked some more about it. Then he asked me if I am Catholic, I said no, and I explained some of the differences between the Protestants and Catholics, and the different protestant denominations. He seemed relieved because then, under his breath, so the others couldn't hear, he told me that the town is full of Catholics, but they are sinners, are on a very dangerous road. Sure that he was talking about the excesses of alcohol, or the propensity of people here to be less than honest, I asked which commandment the Catholics are breaking. He turned to me, and in the same low voice, with eyes wide and vehement, said 'Engraven images, many many engraven images!' I put on my best serious/consoling face and agreed 'Yes, many many engraven images indeed.'

We continued to sit for a few minutes, and then I left for my afternoon class at the high school, the six old men still talking away with one another, about the weather, or their wives, or the latest news, or something else, and I just wondered if the old men sitting in front of 257 grocery in Briery Branch, Virginia, might have been doing the exact same thing.