July 13, 2019 Saturday
The Love and I decided to go to Carbon Market a couple of hours before midnight to buy fresh vegetables and spices. If you’re from Cebu, you know the levels of adventure and truth Carbon holds and you know these are adventures and truths only Carbon can provide.
We walked through many streets checking and comparing prices, as you would in Carbon. It wasn’t as chaotic as I was expecting which was a beautiful surprise. There was just this calm hum and rhythm of people going about their business of selling and buying and haggling amidst the cold winds brought about by the it-will-surely-rain-soon-like-it-did-a-few-hours-ago atmosphere.
We passed by couples with one sleeping and the other holding down the fort and doing the selling. We saw kids helping out their parents and breaking their backs just like any adult would while learning the art of trade. We saw old people hunched over by the years but with a sincerity to provide great service and trading abilities to outmatch everyone else around them.
I found myself in awe of how everyone was essentially competing with everyone – they’re all selling the same things – but there was never an air of ‘I have to outsell the person next to me’ or of any envy. Everyone was looking out for everyone. There was a sense of community and a sense of ‘we’re all the same – we’re all trying to make a living’.
We filled our bags, slowly getting weighed down with all freshness we needed, checking off things from our To Buy List. Then we got down to the last one – eggs.
The Love decided to let me wait near where we were meant to get a ride home as he walked down to the other end of the block to get the eggs. I stood there near where the ukay-ukays were, guarding our immense haul like a bouncer at some badass club.
Minutes ticked by, I suppressed all the urges I felt of trying to get on to the awesome e-tricycles driving by, when the Love returned with the tray of eggs and with an odd grin on his face. With a giggle, he said, ‘Manang just made my day’. We divided the haul and I asked him what he meant.
He said the stall he’d gone to for the eggs were owned by a couple in their 50s. With more giggles, the Love said, ‘Nikanta si manang… Iya gikantahan iya bana… Ana siya, “Ay si’g pina-ma’y! / Mura ka’g na’y oten dah! / Puro lang lagay!’ to the tune of Cookie$’ ‘Bogo’. She was teasing her husband in a manner only old couples can tease each other.
‘Nya iyang bana kay naghiwa ug mga lamas’, The Love continued, ‘Niana nalang si Manong, “Saba dra, targetun tika’g kutsilyo ron”’ with a laugh.
After much laughing from The Love and I, I told him, ‘That’s what’s kilig – that level of love. That’s the thing you can only get once you’ve been together for so long’. The Love agreed, ‘Oo, kanang you know how to push each other’s buttons na pero it’s all good fun’. I then added, ‘Yeah, it’s all inside jokes’.
The Love and I didn’t stop laughing and talking about it. Not in the ride home. Not when we’d gotten home and taken care of our purchases. Not until we’d gone to sleep.
Not only did we get a great haul of fresh food, we had roughly two hours’ worth of walking around people-watching and paying attention to human activity – the unspoken stories each human being holds. We fed our bellies with fresh food and fed our souls with fresh stories.
The best story of all was the one we got at the end of the journey.
Manong got #ThugLife by Manang so bad and so effortlessly. And with a very modern song.
This be the tale of the The Savagery of Manang.
From This Suok 