Dinner with a Filipino Family (61)

Gene's letter from February 25, 1945, to Beth continues:

     What a time I'm having with my civilians!  They don't want to be moved to the civilian hospital and to be taken care of by the Filipino doctors.  That is flattering to us, but hardly possible to grant.  Most of them will be moved tomorrow except my two sickest ones - the thyrotoxic woman [her thyroid is producing too much hormone due to a tumor, Graves disease, or something else] and the little girl with osteo [osteolysis or degeneration of the bone due to bone cancer, TB, or something else].  The woman is so much better this evening that I'm encouraged.  The little girl is some better.  Then I also received a woman with tetanus [also called "lockjaw", it is an infection by a type of bacteria that often enters through puncture wounds and causes prolonged muscle contractions, usually starting with the jaw, and often without treatment ends in death ].  She had her foot amputated somewhere else.  After the antitoxin yesterday and today she is practically over the tetanus.  Amazing!  This evening after supper, I was surprised when the one nurse, Mrs. Vigilian who gave me the fan, invited me to supper at her house - and to see her mother!  Her brother in the guerrillas is coming home today and they are having a roast pig.  Darn if I know if I'll be able to eat very much.  Anyway, it's an opportunity I don't want to miss.  Her mother has ulcers but since she's 51 and this started in 1941 with vomiting of blood, I'm afraid it may be a malignancy.  But I'll be glad to "sing for my supper" [and examine her].


Street in Guimba, with a thatch-roofed, bamboo house (and pigs!)

     This will be the first time I've "dressed up" for a long time.  When I went to the fancy tea, I had no other clothes to which to change.  Dress up will consist of putting on clean pants and shirt and my other pair of shoes! 
     Later - Well, that was very interesting.  They called for me at 6 instead of 7 in a guerrilla command car.  Her husband is a fine clean cut chap.  He had finished two years of Law Prep School when the war started.  Since then he's been a Sgt. in the guerrillas.  He saluted me before he shook hands!  They live only a few blocks from the hospital.  It is a typical F. [Filipino] house - bamboo and thatch, bare floor but plenty of chairs and seats.  There must have been a couple of dozen there, not counting children, about half GI's.  They said that before they invited me they hadn't known there would be so many!  I met her father, mother, uncle (who is head of the local high school), brother-in-law who commands a guerrilla squadron and some others.  It was quite noisy, but I talked to the husband about various items. 
     Pretty soon they asked me to come into the next room and eat.  There was a long bare table set with large platters of rice and other food.  They said most of the others had eaten, so there were only about 6 eating.  I was placed at the head of the table!  They asked if I cared for wine so I said certainly.  But by golly I'd call it brandy!  It is made from sugar cane juice and distilled.  I was the only one to get some and they said it was pre-war.  I felt the honored guest.  The main dish was plates of barbecued pig!  He explained how they split it and put rice in the body cavity and roasted it over a fire.  It was quite good.  Sure was a good sauce, not too hot - of what, I don't know.  Then there was some stewed goat meat.  There was hard rice and soft rice.  They eat with a fork in the left hand and a large spoon in the right and no knife.      
     Then she brought up her mother and we went into another room to talk.  All I can determine is that she has an atonic type of constipation [atonic constipation occurs when the muscles of the large intestine become weakened, but the muscles don't spasm].  She was quite dark in color.  I told them to bring her to the hospital tomorrow for further examination. 
     The nurse and her husband are Methodists!  We talked a while longer and they gave me some "turnips" to eat raw.  But they are a lot better than ours, being quite sweet and succulent [it was probably jicama, which is called a turnip in the Philippines].  They gave me some to bring back and brought me home about 8 o'clock so it was an interesting experience.  Their law, medical and nursing courses are quite comparable to ours in length of time, etc.  Among themselves they habitually speak the local dialect.  They have quite an accent when they speak English.  The girls all seemed rather shy around the soldiers and were rather quiet.  Maybe that is just when their elders are around.  It is easy to see that the people are quite poor, but everything seemed to be very clean.  For lamps, they had small bottles of kerosene and a round wick up through the cap and no chimney.  I had no qualms about eating their food.  But golly, that shot they poured for me was a stiff one.
     ...  All my love, Eugene