Written on May 6
11:55 PM
I write this on the 6th as we went to bed at 2:00 PM last night after a futile hunt for wild boar until 11:30 PM. We had decided to postpone our trip by twelve hours as we could hunt only in the evening.
Father Andrew Chalkey, (Sibutu Notre Dame School) has done a fine job. When I landed on the airstrip there in 1965 I landed in the Aero-Commander the Irene on 450 meters of rough corral. Now it is 840 meters planted to Bermuda grass which was brought by Father Chalkey from Jolo in 1968. A Queenaire could land there easily. The campus is all lovely Bermuda grass.
There was a program given by the people of the island led by Deputy Gov. Bandon and Acting Mayor Inna Carlos formerly 1st Councilor as Mayor Mansur was suspended by Judge Bidui (from Sibutu) of the Jolo CFI [Court of First Instance] for anti-graft charges. I congratulated the people for their helping themselves. There is no doctor or nurse, only a midwife so I have directed Sec. [Amadeo] Cruz to appoint a rural health doctor for the municipality of Sitangkai of which Sibutu is a part.
Official Gazette for May 5, 1970: President Marcos surveyed conditions in Sibutu Island, and consulted with local officials on the problems in the locality. The President found this remote island in southernmost Philippines a tranquil place, and the islanders hardworking.
Apart from inquiring into island conditions, the President also took note of official matters which needed his attention, as relayed to him from Manila.
Among others, the President: 1. Ordered a study by a special committee of the GSIS Hospital, to determine how to use it more fully, in the face of its apparent under-utilization. 2. Asked Acting Secretary of Public Works and Communications Manuel B. Syquio to form the committee created under R. A. 5279, which will oversee vital economic development projects, particularly the pace of implementation. 3. Directed the secretary of health to rush rural health officers to Sitangkay and Sibutu islands in the Sulu group, after discovering that there were no doctors on the islands. 4. Asked Immigration Commissioner Edmundo Reyes to inform him on how the deportation of Rizal and Quintin Yuyitung, Chinese nationals, was carried out.
In a message issued on the eve of Census 1970, the President said that since the last census was taken about a decade ago, “there have been vast changes in the character and content of our country, as well as a phenomenal growth in population.” The President pointed out that the Philippines u at a stage in its history when it is compelled to make extraordinary efforts toward making a significant leap forward in national development. “The census we are .taking, therefore, in 1970 is crucial to the effort of accelerating development,” he said. “We must ascertain exactly the conditions in our country today so that we may know our problems and therefore the essentials of meeting them.”
Continuing, the President added: “In the next decade, our plan for development will be based on the knowledge and data gathered from this year’s census.” He concluded: “I urge every Filipino citizen to cooperate fully with the census takers, such that we shall succeed in truly knowing what our country and people need and demand.”
We were to leave at 12:00 noon to give Ambassador [Henry] Byroade some time to fish but as he had not been able to get any and we wanted to hunt so I could get Bongbong to kill his first boar with me, we decided to leave at night after the hunt.
We were prepared to be in place at 5:00 PM but we were at the father’s place at 4:00 PM. He brought us to the Pool of the Eleven Thousand Virgins which was a deep dark pool under a balete tree and in a deep cavern with an overhanging limestone ledge over it. Small (probably ten meters by ten) but cool and lovely. By the time we returned to the Notre Dame school, it was 5:30 PM (4 kilometers) and Imelda and Ambassador Byroade (who had gone fishing in the afternoon) were waiting for the only jeep in the island then at our disposal, so that it was six o’clock when we went to the hunting place which was to the eastern side of the island by a narrow path which the jeep could hardly negotiate (about five kilometers) and another two or three kilometers in the dark to the perches for us. These are rickety platforms ten meters up a coconut tree where we were to wait for the boar.
I was with Bongbong and Aquil our guide. We had gone out the farthest from the road, passing through the seashore which was white sand typical of the islands in these seas. Bongbong was armed with the Steyr-Marlicher .223, I had a Remington 12 gauge shotgun which scope I took off and for which I had to borrow three shotgun shells (buckshot double 0) because the men had brought number 4 shots for the magnum 3 inch and no. 8 trap loads for the regular 12 gauge 2 3/4 inch shotgun; Aquil was holding the .22 Martin magnum.
We waited for four hours. We could hear the soughing of the surf and fish falling back on the water like a rifle shot. I could smell the jungle again. And even if we had used OFF repellant, I still got beaten by some insects.
Bongbong was excited when we climbed up those wobbly steps nailed uncertainly to the coconut trunk and he whispered to me “We are really here, Daddy.”
In a way I am glad we got nothing as it will teach the boy patience. He was quite self-restrained for his age.
My feet hurt from the long hike as my shoes were too thin-soled for it. And it reminded me of the many marches in the jungles long, long ago as I smelled the jungle again.
But I must bring him to Cagayan to shoot his first boar and duck.
We did hear one of the boars rooting around in the bushes and crack a coconut or two but he did not come out in the open as Aquil did not turn on the flashlight he was holding for the occasion.