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PHOTO
ESSAY
A
Wondrous World
On
this site are images of places a beat-up ‘80s Mitsubishi Galant brought us
to. Places that are largely ignored but managed to rescue wandering souls like
us, even for just three days, from the depressing pall of wars and diseases here
and far away.
TEXT
and PHOTOS BY CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat.com Mindanao Bureau
 
CAGAYAN
DE ORO CITY -- The Mitsubishi Galant was a constant threat to our lives -- the
five of us crammed in it -- not only because it was vintage ‘80s and had,
obviously, seen better days, but also because the highway from Cagayan de Oro
City to Gingoog City is dangerously narrow and we had a driver in BenCy whose
superb skill in driving a motorcycle was inversely proportional to his skill in
driving a beat-up car.
 
 We
were not complaining, of course. How could we when, in all those three days in
Balingoan, Talisayan, Medina and Gingoog City, the province of Misamis Oriental
offset whatever danger was on the road and cured, at least for a while, whatever
urban malaise forced us to set out in the first place? In a sense, we were on a
trip of salvation – from the tensions and tribulations we had created for
ourselves.
The
20-year-old Galant, as Froilan would joke every now and then, could have been a
perfect car bomb, only because a bomber wouldn’t feel sorry blowing it up. But
regardless of how it looked beside the shiny and unbelievably clean CRVs and
Revos that negotiated the Misamis Oriental highway that week (its paint was
literally the color of dirt; its bumper was threatening to fall off any moment;
it didn’t even have seatbelts), it provided a refuge of sorts: we would get
out of it and discover a world so wondrous we would forget that we were, in
fact, in a world so wretched. And each time we stepped back into the car so we
would discover another wondrous world, we were pulled back, in a way, into the
reality of chaos and filth and insanity that we, as journalists, are forced to
witness every day.
 
The
car, therefore, kept us on the ground. It reminded us that beyond the
tranquility we enjoyed so fleetingly is a land wracked by so much conflict. As
such, one could say it spoiled our brief vacation. I would say, though, that it
reminded us constantly of the incongruity, if not absurdity, of life in
Mindanao, where we could spend the day on the beach making out rabbits and
flowers from the clouds that hugged the blue sky but still end up in a rickety,
two-decades old Mitsubishi Galant.
 In
other words, the car made us enjoy Misamis Oriental all the more.
Here,
on this site, are images of places the beat-up car brought us to. Places that
are largely ignored but managed to rescue wandering souls like us, even for just
three days, from the depressing pall of wars and diseases here and far away.
Bulatlat.com
Mindanao Bureau
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