The Color of My Fears [COMPLETE]

Chapter 1 - Dare to Race [#2]

It happened during one lazy summer month when sugar canes (tubo) had barely grown tall, standing on endless rows in the cane fields (kampo). The cane stalks are full of innumerable tiny white needle-sharp bristles (gilok) that sting and itch anyone who is unfortunate enough to get scratched.

One day during that one month of the hot season, young boys in our hacienda village trooped to the nipa hut by the creek (sapa) where Uncle (Tio) Berto, the shaman, lived. (Tio Berto was not really my blood relative. We call old male folks in the village Tio as a sign of reverence.) During this month of the year, Tio Berto performed for free the rite of circumcision on a promontory by the creek as some sort of a solemn promise (panaad) made a long time ago. Not that our parents were reluctant to bring us to a doctor. There simply was no doctor to go to in the village in those days. 

Being the village cirujano, Tio Berto seemed to be knowledgeable in all things under the sun, from being able to perform acts of healing to becoming the village barber on Sundays. Parents in the hacienda considered him a healer (quack healing was not in vogue back then), an expert in the ways of herbal medicine but old folks looked at him with awe, a person who had the strange ability to do unnatural things, like walking dry under the rain. It might be considered some kind of folk magic, but it's not the kind of magic that was performed for show by some roving 'magicians' who went from village to village to delight folks with their kind of tricks, like transforming a piece of paper cut from an old newspaper into a five-peso bill. In my puerile imagination, I wondered why couldn't they just make money out of old newspapers instead of collecting the pitiful amount of coins that their gullible but obviously delighted audience threw around a small, rusty tin.

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