I have a treasure trove of memories of Bonifacio. The Cebu City street, not the national hero.
My sister and I lived in a small room of an old two-storey house in the corner with Sikatuna during the first semester of my freshman year in 1967.
I was 15 years old and a complete stranger to the city and its way of life. On my first day, I ran down the stairs like a frightened kitten when I heard an unfamiliar sound blasting from nearby. It turned out to be the 5 p.m. siren emanating from the Parian station of the fire department.
There were four rooms on our floor, two on our side, another two on the other. The one immediately across us was occupied by two women who gave me fits very early in the morning when they came home from work, and discomfiture on late weekday afternoons when I returned from school.
They were hostesses (now GROs or guest relations officers) in a nightclub on Martires (now M.J. Cuenco), my sister’s husband told me, and they fought often over a customer, with one accusing the other of poaching. The verbal exchange was loud and no-holds-barred and the language explicit and, I must admit, colorful.
Late weekday afternoons, I would catch them bathing from a faucet near the base of the stairs with only their birthday clothes on, and it embarrassed me. I’d clamber up the stairs without glancing at their direction, afraid that they would catch me staring at their naked bodies.
Eventually, my shyness proved to be no match to their experience and guile. As soon as I entered the door one afternoon, I heard someone asking me to hand her her towel. I obliged and hurriedly left. I swear I heard them giggling as soon as I left.
Similar requests followed in the succeeding days; if not the towel, it was the soap or the pail. Anything to tease me.
Mercifully, the semester ended, and because my sister quit school, I moved into a new address with some townmates nearer the school.
The building on Bonifacio-Sikatuna still stands to this day and everytime I pass by, I wonder if the women were still living, what became of their lives and what secrets the old house now keeps behind its walls.
In the early seventies, I returned to Bonifacio, on the second floor of a house owned by the Susons not very far from Sikatuna. Across the house was a machine shop, beside it was the office of a shipping company, and behind it was a garden cultivated by Flavia Suson Muaña, a former city librarian.
The garden was one of the three highlights of my second relationship with Bonifacio because I occasionally helped Mrs. Muaña till it because doing it reminded me of my father and his garden.
The second was the declaration of martial law. I was in law school, was editor of our school paper and had hobnobbed with some student activists, a number of whom told me (the late Leo Enriquez III was one) after their release from detention that they were asked by their captors to identify my picture.
The third was the flood. It already flooded in Bonifacio then and the one that I remember most was that which had the unsuspecting helper of our neighbors from Leyte falling into a manhole. Fortunately, the local “istambays,” two of whom eventually became policemen, were quick to rescue her from drowning.
I passed by Bonifacio last week and was horrified to see mounds of drying mud lining both sides of the road. I shouldn’t have. It’s the same scene unfolding in many areas in the city everytime it rained. It’s nothing new or peculiar to Bonifacio.
“All the mayors are to blame for flooding, from my father Serging Osmeña, yes including me,” Vice Mayor Tommy Osmeña said in a recent text message to me.
“When a neighborhood complains about flooding, the mayor builds a nice drainage so the water rushes to the lower area which now gets flooded.
“New drainage in Maria Luisa floods Banilad. Drainage in Cebu Business Park development floods Mabolo. Capitol’s drainage drowns Sambag and Sambag, Colon. Tisa floods Mambaling and the golf course in Pardo overwhelms Tabucanal.
“At least, we are now aware of the problem. That’s the first to solving the problem. We now know and we will solve it.”
Good news for Bonifacio.