FILIPINOS always have a clever, highly interesting way of solving problems. Consider some smart transport ideas. The jeepney is anywhere in the Filipino’s day, the habal-habal motorcycle too (mostly in the Visayas and Mindanao, that is.).

There was a vehicle called Willys, during World War II, which could seat six riders---one out front with the driver, two behind facing forward and one each on the sides. Of its look, it was set for work---light, earthy olive, open--- known as the Jeep.

The Jeep was the military vehicle, with the Americans bringing in perhaps quite a number of them, and leaving a surplus.

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But the drab Jeep after the war didn’t look so attractive when the economy shaped up and people could afford cars, like a Ford or a Chevy.

And yet, some clever fellows knew they could use the Jeep’s mobility to earn money. Thus was born the “jeepney” which is a Jeep that can carry more than ten passengers in urban routes anywhere in the Philippines. Two passengers now can sit with the driver and more passengers at the back are seated in line in both sides, extending to an entrance at the rear.

Thus, the jeepney is comfortably part of the day of the Filipino.

But up the mountains to home in the rural places, no jeepneys can go. The vehicles can’t climb, and there are steep mountain sides with only trails to get by, no roads.

The problem gave way to another bright idea---the “habal-habal’, or the motorcycle used as public transport, which is illegal unless there’s a sidecar.

If you ask anyone from the mountain sitios and barangays, the habal-habal is the solution to the inaccessibility of their homes, in the Visayas and Mindanao. As an article on it goes, it is “karaniwang matatagpuan sa mga bulubundukin at liblib na lugar sa Visayas at Mindanao.” But some are said to be criss-crossing traffic in Manila, although the Metro Manila Development Authority is on the lookout for them.

Before the habal-habal rides came to the Visayas and Mindanao, the rural folk walked up the mountain trails. A houseboy from Tabogon in Cebu province remembers the past as a long walk home from the Poblacion to sitio Lucot. With his Lolo, he would walk for nearly an hour down to the Poblacion and much longer back up, with a few minutes’ rests here and there along the way.

Now the habal-habal is described as “a ‘single’ motorcycle without sidecar carrying two, three, sometimes four passengers on its pillion seat used as a form of public transportation especially in places that jeepneys or tricycles cannot reach and where roads are mostly narrow and unpaved.”

“Habal-habal” in the Visayan dialect means a sexual act between animals during an intercourse. The term describes the position of a habal-habal ride between the driver and the passenger, both in animal position, so to say.

A poem with such naughty insinuations by Cebuano poet Adonis Durado is entitled “Balaki ko Day samtang gasakay tag habal-habal.”

The ride’s name was probably used first as a joke, a bad word that no decent girl would ever say. Now habal-habal is a day-to-day term anywhere in the mountain barangays of Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar and Mindanao.

Anyone on mornings would get up from sleep, wash and rush to catch a habal-habal for the trip down to the Poblacion, for work.

In city streets, watch that habal-habal as it swings past the window of the cab you’re riding, even while you take note that only the driver is wearing a helmet, out of the four passengers one is a 5-year-old kid and there are no safety iron bars for passengers to hold on to.

“Mag habal-habal ka ron?”

(ecuizon@gmail.com)