My debt to the people of barangays Kansulay and Sabay is boundless. This book stands as only a small piece of evidence of their affection and disclosure over the last seven years, their generosity of spirit which to a large extent has reshaped my life.
The convention holds that in such circumstances it would be invidious to single out individuals for special mention. Of course this is true. Of course, also, there have been certain people with whom I have spent appreciably more time, people who have withstood for far longer the foreign habits and linguistic fumblings of an alien who is also a writer. I should like to think that if ever I had adopted an interrogative mode with any of them I had not done so for anything so unmannerly and banal as mere information.
This being said I would like to extend all love and thanks to Noel Historillo and his family, to Siyo and Josefina Mabato and their family, to ‘Ding’ Pampola and his family. For their help at barangay council level as well as for their friendship I thank Clodualdo and Julie Lauresta and also Nick Malvar. Finally I owe an especial debt of gratitude to Maria Historillo whose late husband Embing I, too, affectionately mourn.
A word of warning to them all: ‘Kansulay’ and ‘Sabay’ are real places only in the sense that Ronald Blythe’s ‘Akenfield’ was real. Neither they nor the people in them are imaginary, but all have been passed through an imagination. Locations, characters and events are often composites. The originals of the ‘Sorianos’, for example, live in another province altogether and have no connection with Kansulay. So those who think they infallibly recognise people, places or even the author in this book will be mistaken. On the other hand there is nothing in these pages which is not as true as I am able to make it.