Barrio Dita: My First & Only Home- Rodolfo Leyco

            What once was a quiet town now has busy streets of people. My uncle Rodolfo Bartolome Leyco, now sixty-three years old, still remembers the years he spent as a child in his hometown Dita. Time changes and with it, so does Dita now consisting over 180, 000 people. Now Uncle Rudy lives in Los Angeles, California along with his wife, in an apartment they have lived in since I was an infant. He spends his times these days fishing at a bayside beach and working hard in a real estate company, but the time for his retirement comes closer. Uncle Rudy can’t hear as well nor is he as strong as he used to be. The memories of his town, however, are still crystal clear. He tells me how living there since birth and moving to a busy city changed his life from a carefree child to a working adult. Although living in America has made his life easier for him, he misses his country but most of al his first home.

I was born on March 24, 1945. My home town is Santa Rosa Barrio, Dita in Laguna Philippines. I live there since birth until I was at the age of thirty-two. Then came over here in the United States. I work in a beer manufactory San Miguel beer which is famous that time. It is a very small town and that time very few people are living in that town. Mostly people whose living there are farmers which is the main business in that town.

  There were people everybody knew during the 1960s not particularly in Dita but in Santa Rosa. They are the Tiongco Brothers and they always appear on T.V., had concerts even abroad. I knew them personally because my father is a doctor. That time 1960s, 50s there are also notorious people. Their main business is prostitution. They get young women from different provinces and bring it along in our town. The regular customers are those truck drivers who pass by our town. The heroes in Dita are the people from the government employees, the mayor. They help the families that were devastated by the flats and move them. Our national hero is not really from Santa Rosa but in a close town is Doctor Jose Rizal. He fought the Spaniard through his pen, writings, books, and novels.

Our local town newspaper called “Santa Rosa Tribune” circulated only in our town.  There are also newspapers in Tagalog and bicycles where a boy delivers the newspaper. In store they drop it there and speak “buy the newspaper” which is a cheaper price than the national newspaper.

A majority like ninety percent of the city community are Catholics. In the Philippines we are Catholics the same religion and theres another religion who believes also in Christ. They call it Iglesia de Christo which means “Church of Christ” and then there’s another one they call Aglipayans which also believes in Jesus Christ. They are Catholics but their prayers are in Tagalog. In fiestas we got nine processions. Each barangay contributing for the town fiesta will have like floats, marching bands, and its uniforms very colorful. We have it every year and also during the month of May we have a reyna Elena and a lot of participants. My town is famous for sweets, candies, and rice cakes. Locally, they call it puto biñang.

We have one dialect spoken. Its Tagalog, but nowadays there are different people who came from different provinces who speak different dialects. They migrate because the town is so progressive and they need to find a job. We have a lot of factories in our place now so there are different people there who are living like a six dialects. One is Tagalog, Cebuano. That’s visayan dialog, three is a Ilocano, four Kapampangan, five Bicolanos. Number six is another kind of Visayan dialect call Ilongos.

My parents are telling me stories about Japanese occupation in the Philippines. They always said was during that time really life’s so hard. Everybody’s scared, nervous you don’t trust anybody because the one whom your talking to might be a spy from the Japanese government. They rape the women, kill young men, toss babies in the air and catching them with a bayonet knife. Only those who goes out are old people. They think these people are harmless so they don’t mind them. My uncle told us about the maltreatment they were getting from the Japanese and the worse part of it is when they knew they were losing in this battle what they did was to transport the all prisoners to a far place. They call it the Death March. Nine days without food and water.

Compared to today I think my town has changed a lot cause we got a factories like Coca Cola, Kraft Kraft Philippines makers of cheese, famous cheese. We have Kleenex, Johnson and Johnson Company, American farms and companies.

I miss when you are born to a place which you grew up. You gonna miss all childhood places that you went to like rivers which you catch fish, the rice field that you play when harvest time is over. You miss the people around, playmates, childhood friends. You miss the food. We don’t have it over here. We call it lansones, santol. When I was a kid, we go to house to house and we sing Christmas songs. We are kids and the owner of the house will open the door and give us some money and after that we to the next house again we sing and we go back to the same house and the owner will see us again. The last part of the song is “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Merry Christmas to you.” You sing like that and we coming back the following night. We change clothes again and you know the owner says “I remember you were here last night.” We’re gonna lie [hahaha].

My specific memories include carabao riding.  Over there you ride in carabao. I used to do kite flying, shooting birds with a sling shot- its not prohibited that time before- fishing in rivers. We got black fish, catfish, locally. I remember chickens fighting, taking care of chickens, pigs, and a lot of things you can do when you were a child because we don’t have like this McDonalds now, we don’t [hahaha] have Carls Jr. no no.

Working I like it here but life I like it there. My life I prefer if in my retirement. I’ll still go back in my hometown because big environment you don’t know them, but you know everybody in your community from young to old people. You know people who’s new and people who were there for a long time. When you get out of your house you say hello to everybody because you know everybody.

Interviewed by Kimberly Martinez