GUIUAN, OUR GUIUAN “Guiuan, Our Guiuan” is the title of my blog, the initial and ensuing pieces of which, I started posting on Friendster and continued on Facebook. Now, the blog has morphed into a book, “A Garland of Heartbeats for Guiuan.” While mulling over my choices of what blog title to use, I remembered having invited a certain Mr. Tom Billis of Salt Lake City, Utah, to visit Guiuan. In my initial email, I had written “My Guiuan, Your Guiuan” as email subject. Then, in the ensuing exchange, the subject became “Guiuan, Our Guiuan.” Little did I know that one day, I would decide to use it as my blog title. I came to know of Mr. Billis when he wrote to a Guiuan website to tell of his having been in Guiuan from 1944 to 1945, as part of the Seabees team that constructed Fleet Hospital 114, between Guiuan and Mercedes, among others. In his reply to my initial email, and in our subsequent exchange of letters, he intimated of the Guiuan he still remembers and of his time there, of his having befriended the old parish priest at that time, (surely, Guiuan’s beloved Padre Atoy) whose name he could no longer remember, and of a certain Rene, the present Filipino priest of his town in Utah, whom he has not yet met, plus others more. And his stories have not only made it to my blog but also to my book. Aside from his stories, he sent me some pictures as proofs, one of which is an aerial 1944 photograph of the Guiuan Plaza and its environs, with points and landmarks that many Guiuananon of today can still easily pinpoint, remember, and identify. When I got the picture, posthaste, I wrote Tom Billis this: “That aerial picture of Guiuan you sent, clearly shows the Guiuan Church, its belfry, and the town plaza in front of the church, with the monument of the Philippines’ national hero, and the kiosk. Beside the plaza, towards the bottom of the picture is the Guiuan Central Elementary School. Behind it was the old Guiuan cemetery now a housing project. The area of the Guiuan Central School is still the same. One of the old school buildings in the picture is still standing.” “The area of the plaza is still the same, but is now fenced and much improved. The kiosk is now gone. Behind the former kiosk is a big stage, and behind the stage is the present police precinct. The area near the sea beside the plaza is now the public market. A big part of the sea has been reclaimed to widen the market area, part of which is now the bus terminal.” “You can also see the wharf, in line with the belfry, jutting out to sea. It has not been used by ships plying the Guiuan-Tacloban route ever since the opening of the coastal road from Guiuan to Tacloban. It takes just four hours to get from Guiuan to Tacloban by bus (there’s a bridge - the San Juanico Bridge - connecting Samar and Leyte), compared with the 8-10 hours boat ride in the past.” “You will no longer find potholes as big as that in the picture you sent. The Guiuan-Mercedes road and the road from Mercedes way up north are now cemented.” “There have been a lot of changes in Guiuan since your time there, but many have remained the same. Surely, you will still find the Guiuan Airport still intact and recently refurbished, so with the cemented roads made by your fellow Americans leading to and out of it. Ah, yes. The church is still standing so with the belfry. Behind the belfry is the statue and monument of the old priest you befriended, whose name is Msgr. Donato Guimbaolibot, whom we Guiuananons still lovingly yet simply call ‘Padre Atoy.’” “As regards that picture of the old woman with the umbrella in front of a nipa thatched house, definitely you will no longer find her there nor that house and the friendly people you passed by and talked to. The houses are different now in my Guiuan, but you will still find people who are just as warm and as friendly as those you have met and known in your Guiuan then.” “When will you come back to Guiuan with me? It is waiting for you, with open arms, as it did your group in your time. And when you do, there will surely be a lot of warm remembering, punctuated, perhaps, with the falling of a tear or two.” “Please come back with me to Guiuan, our Guiuan,” I wrote Tom Billis then. And that was how “Guiuan, Our Guiuan,” as my blog title, came to be. And as I write this bit of an addendum, tears could not but well up at the thought that it was Tom Billis who first got in touch with me right after Typhoon Yolanda left a swathe of heart-breaking, Hiroshima-like devastation to Guiuan – the Guiuan he and I have known.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:49:41 +0000
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