accept the teaching job in our barrio that, if I may be forgiven for saying, God Himself has forsaken. Dicamay is about 35 ki- lometers away from the town proper and could only be reached by six to eight hours’ walk at that time. There was no road that was navigable by any vehicle during rainy days; the barrio was connected to the neighboring communities by trails suited only for hiking. The heavy rains could easily turn these trails into thigh-deep mud. To reach Dicamay you had to plod through the mud on horseback or on a cart pulled by a carabao. During the summer months the logging concessions would clear the roads using huge bulldozers and resume their operations. She did not show any fear of the widespread and threatening presence of the New People’s Army in our area. Even the entreaties of her parents could not persuade her to leave Dicamay. Ignorant of, resigned to or not fully understanding the environmental destruction the loggers were inflicting upon their barrio, the simple folk would take advantage of the loggers’ six-wheeler trucks bound for the sawmills in Jones. Hitching rides on them, they balanced themselves on top of the logs (as many as six thick and long tree trunks) clutching their baskets and sacks filled with their produce and these they sold in the town market. With their earnings they purchased food supplies to store away for rainy days: cartons of sardines, sacks of sugar and salt, and crates of dried fish.
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