I have a recurring dream that I am in Jolo in the southern Philippines, navigating through the town’s fetid streets trying to find a way out. I’ve been told that men with guns are going to kidnap me, and that I’d better hide. Everybody I meet seems to know my predicament, and offer incomprehensible advice on how to avoid the bad guys. Then the chase continues, and I often wake up before I ever slip away from the island.
Jolo’s dark side always seems to first appear in dreams. In my first days of filming Gun Culture, I was woken up three nights in a row with terrible nightmares. The third time it happened, I thought I heard a very loud rattling noise, as if someone was trying to break open the door. At the same time, a voice whispered something close to my ear, waking me up in a fright.
When I told the housekeeper the next morning, he gave me a long, curved kris with an elegantly carved silver and buffalo-horn hilt. “This belongs to my grandfather and it has killed 8 people in battle,” he said. “Keep it under your bed and the ghosts will stop bothering you.” He then instructed me to pull it out of its scabbard and show its blade around the room before going to sleep.
Even for a Filipino who grew up hearing about goblins and spirits – from the half-horse, half-man beast called the ‘tikbalang’ that plays mind-tricks on its victims in the jungle, to the ‘manananggal’ that specializes in eating children’s entrails while they’re sleeping – I have always been firmly skeptical of the underworld. But with the previous night’s scare, and my rising paranoia in Jolo, I decided it was maybe a good idea to take the kris.
“If this technique doesn’t work, don’t worry about the ghost too much if it comes again. The ghosts here can’t kill you. You should worry more about the people.”
On another night, I was woken up by automatic gunfire followed by screams. A domestic fight, I was told the next morning. No one was hurt, and no one seemed bothered about it. The neighbor spent an entire magazine just to let off some steam.
I finally slept well after my friend insisted he stayed in my room, a loaded .45 caliber pistol tucked under his pillow.
Copyright © Orlando de Guzman
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