1) Introduction.

My name is Lonnie Johnston. Let me give you a little bit of my background. At the time of this writing, late 2005, I am 43 years old. I am not a farmer but I live on the family farm in the northern part of the state of Indiana, USA and have done so most of my life. Prior to May 22, 2000 I had never been married. My cook stove was shut off at the fuse box and was being used as a storage shelf. The freezer was full of TV dinners, (a TV dinner is a ready made meal that you heat up and eat), and frozen burritos, (burritos look like a large egg roll). I had stacks of old magazines sitting around and two sawhorses with a piece of plywood on them in the kitchen, which made for a nice little workbench. I was bachelor. At that point in my life I was starting to think that I would be growing old by myself.  My life changed when I met Irish and here is how it happened.

2) In the Beginning.

I have always enjoyed the outdoors, hunting, camping, fishing and backpacking.   In the early 1980’s I began going to gun shows. It was in the late 80’s or early 90’s I noticed an exhibitor that would frequent these shows, a petite Asian girl with a pet rabbit. She would keep her furry little friend on one of the tables in a low-sided box where people would sometimes stop to pet the rabbit. I saw the girl with her husband and rabbit at shows about 3 or 4 times a year, for the next few years. In late summer of 1998, while at a gun show in Fort Wayne, Indiana with my friend, Albert, I stopped by her table and I asked about the rabbit, as I hadn’t seen it for a few shows. The rabbit had died. I then asked her where she was from. “Muncie” she said with a smile. (Authors note: Muncie is a city in Indiana, USA)  “I mean what country”, I added. “The Philippines”, she said, again with a smile. I asked to hear more about her homeland, and with a noticeable enthusiasm she obliged. Her eyes sparkled as she began to tell me about her life in the Philippines and her family back home. It was obvious the people and places she was telling me about were held near, and dear to her. That was the first day of our friendship that still endures. Oh yes, Albert was finished looking at all of the exhibits and had been waiting on me for about 20 minutes. (I had no idea how long we had been talking) I had to go.

A month or two later I went to a gun show in Indianapolis, and about half way through the show I came to my new friend’s table. After a short greeting, we formally introduced our selves. My friend gave me her name, Angie. We pretty much picked up where left off in Ft. Wayne, only this time she was armed with a ring back notebook full of pictures… and then another notebook and another.

After that, when I went to a show she would have a chair waiting for me and she would bring more pictures and tell me more about her home. During one of our visits she told me that if I ever went to the Philippines, I would be welcome to stay at the house they had there. At first I was kind of skeptical about the invitation but the better I got to know Angie and Wally the more I realized that, quite simply, they are kind and generous people.

At some point one of our conversations turned to the fact that I was a bachelor and the fact that she had a cousin that was a bachelorette. The next time I saw her she had, you guessed it, more pictures. But these pictures had a common theme. Each photo contained a certain individual… person that was cute, sweet and petite. A girl named Irish.

(Authors note: I got goose bumps while proofreading this paragraph.)

Irish sent me a letter and some pictures in November of 1998. They never arrived. She sent another letter, which arrived in January 1999. What was to become a long distance courtship had begun. Over the next few months our only contact with each other was through these letters, but I knew a phone call was in our future.

In April of 1999 Angie called me and told me that they were going to move to the Philippines and asked if I would like to go with them and stay for a while. I told her I would have to think about it. After I hung up the phone, I immediately called my sister, Brenda and said, “GUESS WHAT!!  I’M GOING TO THE PHILIPPINES!!” It seems it didn’t me take very long to make up my mind. I few weeks later Angie sent me the plane tickets and said I could pay her and Wally back later. Wally himself told me to wait to pay them back after Irish and I had gotten married because there would be more expenses with the wedding and all of the paper work for immigration. I took it as a joke, but Wally was serious. He had confidence in his wife’s matchmaking abilities.

Our first phone conversation was on June 20, 1999, Irish’s birthday. I have never heard a sweeter voice. The call lasted about twenty minutes. It was to be our shortest for a long time. After that, most calls were an hour or two and some three hours long.

At first we talked about our families and day-to-day lives. It didn’t take long for me to recognize that the heart of Irish was kind and pure. What a wonderful discovery in today’s world! Soon we were discussing moral and religious beliefs, common values and personal convictions, and probing each other’s inner souls to find out of what the other person was made. These are truly some of the most memorable conversations of my life.

3) The Flight.

I soon had a passport, luggage, a new camera with lots of film and other miscellaneous items for my trip.  On November 18, 1999 Angie, Wally and I met at the airport in Indianapolis, Indiana where we all boarded a plane and began our trip to Manila, Philippines. This was to be only my second time in an airplane. My first, at about 6 years old, was in a small four seater at the Peru Airport, a local airport that was giving rides. The pilot helped my two sisters and me in the plane and got us buckled in. It wasn’t much different than being in a car except it was kind of noisy. Things were going okay until all of a sudden the whole plane started to shake and then bounce around. It got worse and worse. I grabbed on to what ever I could get a hold of. “Oh my gosh!! We’re moving!!” The faster we went down the runway the more the plane bounced, but when we lifted off the ground, the ride was smooth and easy. The plane climbed up and up. It wasn’t until then that I realized just how fond I had become of dirt.

It was this “memorable ride” that prompted me to investigate the bigger planes that I would be riding on during my travels. I discovered things like, “how well these big planes are built”. In fact they are over engineered with a substantial safety margin. I also discovered that the wings are going to move up and down during flight. In the smaller planes like the 727’s, the movement is short and quick, while with the bigger planes like the 747 wide bodies, the movement of the wings in slower and kind of a flowing motion. This flexibility is to keep the wings from breaking off during rough weather. It’s kind of like a dry twig on a tree that is ridged and snaps easily, while a green twig is flexible and bends, but doesn’t readily break.

Now let’s see… November… Indianapolis… Oh yes! We boarded the plane and soon were on our way to the Philippines. Our first stop was Detroit, Michigan where we switched planes and headed for Nagoya (na-goy’-u), Japan. A striking feature of the Japanese airport was the cleanliness of the place. Another was that it was not uncommon to see an employee pick up a ticket or other document and run to their destination. Sometimes the women would slip off their shoes before dashing away on their errand. The final leg of the international flight was to Manila. After we went through customs and exited the airport, we met up with Angie’s brother, Erwin and cousin, Helen who were both going back to the island of Negros (n!Ægr$s), which was our final destination. We spent what was left of the night in the lobby of the domestic airport in Manila and the next morning we checked our bags and waited for the plane. I heard an unusual sound coming from inside the airport. It was the sound of roosters crowing. They were kept in boxes with air holes. I later found out that these were some of the birds that are used in the cockfights that are so popular in the Philippines. After our stay in the waaay too cold airport, (I never thought I wound be wishing for a jacket in the tropics), we boarded the plane bound for the Dumaguete (domÆ u gĕt ē) airport on the island of Negros. The plane flew at a much lower altitude than the previous flights, which gave us a good view of the beautiful islands below. As the twin-engine jet started its final approach, it dropped closer and closer to the water. At the point I thought I could reach out and touch the ocean, finally I saw the runway and almost immediately, we touched down. The pilot stood on the breaks, reversed the engines, and opened them up again to help slow the plane. We were still going kind of fast when we reached the other end of the runway when the pilot made a hard left ‘U’ turn and finished stopping the plane. Even after extending the runway out into the ocean some, it was still a little short for a plane this size. I wondered if the landing gear would get wet during take off. I wouldn’t find out for more that two years as I left the island by other means. Welcome to flying in the Philippines.

The baggage claim at Dumaguete is a small two-room building with a fence on either side separating the tarmac and parking lot. While waiting for our luggage to be unloaded, I noticed the fence was lined with people. Most were taxi drivers trying to get a fair. Angie told me to never mind them, she would take care of our transportation to Obogon (ō΄bō gôn). She procured a van for hire and off we went.

4) First Experience.

The drive from the Dumaguete airport to Obogon lasted just under an hour. This was my first good look at the Philippines as our taxi ride in Manila was at night. The sites I saw while on the way to Obogon were quite unfamiliar for a country boy from Indiana.

The streets of Dumaguete City were filed with Pedicabs, which are simply a motorcycle having an engine size of 100cc to 125cc, with a covered side car that holds three or four people, though at one time I saw as many as nine people crammed inside and hanging onto the sides. A load like that going up a hill is challenging for the small motorcycles. Sometimes a few of the passengers will hop off and push to make it up and over a steep hill.

We passed some man-made bodies of water that I first thought were fish farms. I later discovered that these ponds were for salt production. The ponds were only about one to two feet deep and had a flat bottom. They would be flooded with water from the ocean and as the water evaporated over time a thin layer of salt would be left on the flat bottom. This process was repeated over and over until the salt was about ¼” to ½” thick. It then would be broken into small pieces or ground into table salt and sold, sometimes at the open-air market.

(Passing on curves.)

Traveling on the streets and highways of the Philippines is an experience in itself. The highway between Dumaguete City and Tanjay (tan hiÆ) was very winding as it followed the shoreline of the ocean part of the way, and the base of the mountains the rest of the way. The traffic not only included cars, pickups, buses and big trucks like here in the USA, but also people walking, bicycles, carabao (kärÅà bäÆ$) pulling carts, motorcycle, and Pedicabs. And not just a few, they were everywhere. When our van came upon a slower vehicle, we would pass. I don’t mean we would wait for an opening and then pass. I mean pass right now. The slower traffic would move to the right and oncoming traffic would move to our left and the van would drive down the center of the two-lane road to pass. If I tried this in the US I would lose my drivers license and probably end up in the hospital. In the Philippines passing this way, even on curves, is expected. Welcome to driving in the Philippines.

As we got farther away from Dumaguete city, the traffic thinned out somewhat and I spent more time taking in the scenery. Most of the houses I saw were either made of cement or bamboo. The bamboo houses were quite often built with the floor three or four feet off of the ground. They looked as if they were ready for some high water. The roofs were painted metal or made of nipa (n"ÆpÃ). Nipa looks kind of like a thatch roof like what you would see on a hut on Gilligan’s Island. I saw a few tile roofs but no asphalt shingle roofs at all.

The farm animals that I saw, for the most part, were similar to what could be seen back home such as pigs, goats and lots of chickens. The cows, on the other hand, looked a bit different. Trees lined the highway for part of the journey and after a short time the landscape opened up to fields of sugar cane and corn, and beyond the fields stood the breathtaking mountains of Negros.

We soon entered Tanjay and made our way to the barangay, (a suburb or neighborhood), of Obogon. It was about 1:00 pm when the van stopped in front of a nice two-story house with a balcony. I immediately recognized it as Wally’s and Angie’s house from the many photos that Angie had shown me. It would be my home for the next three weeks.