THE last time I slept in Dipolog, the country was still under martial rule. We took a boat and it almost cost us, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Cebu basketball team, our first game in the IBP mini-Olympics because the boat's engine conked out after a brief call in Dumaguete City.
It was a rough ride made rougher by the fact that we didn't bring lunch and the vessel had no provisions for such an emergency save for a plateful of pancit canton meant to be shared by 12 grouchy lawyers. Darkness had set in by the time we arrived at the city's only gymnasium and our scheduled game was already twelve minutes old, played in our absence by our tennis team members who had arrived a day earlier. The game itself was played in darkness because of a power outage.
Anyway, whatever bitterness we harbored from the boat ride quickly dissipated during the fellowship dinner. The Zamboanga del Norte IBP were perfect hosts to starving guests although I must confess to still feeling embarrassed when I remember how quickly they served another lechon on our table after the first one disappeared even more quickly.
Dipolog, the city, was less than ten years old at the time of my first visit and it showed. It still had the looks--and smell--of life in a sleepy town: narrow roads, noisy smoke-belching tricycles and no nightlife. It had an airport but it looked forlorn and abandoned on the day we went home (having learned our lesson, we decided to fly out of Dipolog and sequestered an Air Force Nomad for the purpose).
It was a different scene that met us, 14 members of the Walk and Talk Friendship Club that had decided to spend the weekend in Dipolog, when our plane landed Friday afternoon. The airport was not exactly bustling with activity but when we arrived, another plane was leaving for Manila. And when we left last Sunday, another was preparing to take off, also for Manila.
Thirty seven years after my last visit, the city's inner roads are still narrow in much the same way that most inner roads in Cebu City, Mandaue, Lapulapu and Talisay are narrow. They will probably stay that way forever, destined to be more keepers and tellers of history than a representation of the present.
Otherwise, the strides that the city has taken are immediately discernible: banks, shopping centers, hotels, a classy seaside restaurant appropriately named Baybay (said to be owned by former Sun.Star Cebu publisher Sonny and Armie Garcia) and flashy cars and SUVs. However, the city's greatest pride could only be that five-kilometer promenade by the sea that the locals call the "Boulevard."
Sunday morning, we walked along the Boulevard and the air was so fresh and the sea so clean that, if we haven't been told the night before, we wouldn't have known that once upon a time, it was known as the city's longest public toilet.
The description came from no less than the architect behind the giant transformation, Zamboanga del Norte Gov. Roberto Yu Uy. A cousin of Walk and Talk godfather, Benjamin Sun, Governor Berto served as city mayor for nine years before being replaced by his wife and later, their son.
"The process was not easy," the governor told us during the dinner that he hosted in his office at the province's temporary Capitol. "I had to relocate almost a thousand families and there was a lot of resistance."
Eventually, all the informal settlers were persuaded to move out. Political will, someone at our table remarked. It helped, Berto said proudly, that the relocation site was configured in a way that allowed its residents to build a community.
So many things, aside from the narrow roads, remain the same in Dipolog as they were a little less than four decades ago. The hospitality, for one (before I forget, thank you, Cebu City Prosecutor Cutie Ratilla), the noisy smoke-belching tricycles and the old buildings downtown.
And yet so many things have changed at the same time: the airport, the boulevard and modern edifices on the plus side and, on the other, emerging peace and security issues such as kidnapping.
All these issues will be dealt with and all threats defeated decisively, the Bible-quoting Gov. Berto promised. Considering how he succeded with the Boulevard, it is not difficult to believe him.
(frankotherside@gmail.com)