High School is a rare privilege for us. My cousin, elder and more mature, volunteered to enroll me at the only high school in Kalibo, a town about 20 kilometers away. Travel is difficult due to the rough roads, and sometimes we cannot get a ride in one of the very few auto bus to Kalibo.
We stayed together in one small bamboo house paying a rent of P1.50 per month. The water comes from a hand water pump. Our evenings were spent all reading, sleeping and doing home chores like what we do at home. We were always eager to go home on Friday afternoons, arriving in our barrio about eight o’clock in the evening, if we were lucky to get a ride on the bus.
Oftentimes, my mother visited me in Kalibo. She would ride on a balsa or bamboo raft going to Kalibo, and walked home “upstream” by Aklan River.
From first to fourth year high school, I excelled in all subjects mostly in Math, Physics and English. One time my Physics teacher, Mr. Eddie Azarraga from Capiz surprised me with a grade of 98%. I was so happy that my father brought me a new pair of shoes and socks. Our uniform then was “pinokpuk” sinamay cloth, dyed blue and white blouse. Mrs. Pilar Tumbokon gave me the highest mark in English. So life in our high school days was mostly spent studying. My mother came to see me get so many medals on my graduation day.
So many beautiful things came to me in my high school days. There were admirers from different towns, who used to go with me and my cousins, to our barrio on Friday afternoon and stay until Sunday morning, when we go back to Kalibo. It never bothered me a lot, since my father dreamed of me to be a teacher. They worked so hard to put me in a higher social and financial security. I really cannot thank them more, and I want them to see their dream for me come true.
I graduated class Salutatorian in high school. What a big honor it was to my family, mostly to my father and mother. To make this graduation memorable, we had a thanksgiving party in our new home in Bueabud. There, my father and mother and us – seven children, celebrated one of the fruits of our parents struggle to live comfortably both in resources and our studies.
My parents slowly built a big stone house of bricks, a big two-storey house -and a rice mill and sugar mill. They carefully stored our produce in another adjacent building wherein we kept our dried rice grains in big “paraka” or containers, which hold fifty to one hundred sacks of rice.
I was very confused and sad when my elder sister Corazon decided to forego her opportunity to go to a higher schooling. I knew she is smarter than me. She is more industrious and more sociable than our cousins and friends. She gets extra money by her farm projects aside from the family rice and sugar farming.