In-between place

The City of Pines is an in-between place where people, specifically university students, travel through and where they do not linger — kind of like an airport.

A place that exists as a means to an end: to be traveled through, and not lingered in. Just like a movie theater hallway where people pace through after a late-night watch. An isolated highway rest stop filled with good-for-nothing chewing gums and frozen-cold hotdog buns. Or that sketchy waiting shed in a dark alleyway filled with obscene graffiti.

Baguio is that kind of town that you go through, not to. It is a place you need to go, to get to where you are really headed. One can see an endless parade of young people wandering around the university belt, but only a few of them live there. Students dwell in that city for a while, and that city exists only to briefly shelter them.

“No one settles in Baguio. Maybe two or three will stay, but most will leave and that’s the sad and cold reality of it,” one of my college friends once said. True enough, my batchmates and I hopped on the first available bus after earning our sablay. We all hope to carve a career in the concrete jungle that is Manila.

“Nag-aaral kang Baguio, eh di taga-bundok ka pala? Anong pakiramdam maging isang Igorot,” a security guard in an AM radio station in Makati, where I had my internship, would always ask whenever he would sign my timesheet. Spanish colonizers used “Igorot” and “Moro” to describe tribes they failed to subjugate. For them, “Igorot” meant “savage headhunting and a backward tribe of Luzon,” as quoted from renowned scholar William Henry Scott’s “The Word Igorot.”

Beyond the guard’s pesky and unprofessional attitude, what prompted me to take action was the guard’s condescending tone against people living in the Cordillera. It is as if being an Igorot is a strange and otherworldly entity that needs to be unraveled. At that time, I thought to myself that if there were more opportunities in Baguio, I would have stayed. It still rings true to this day.

What Baguio lacks in bright and good-for-growing palay crop kind of weather, it more than makes up for in the warmth of its people. Just like that middle-aged man, who gave me his gray jacket at the drop of a hat, after my t-shirt got stained with vomit in the cathedral. Or those courteous manong taxi drivers who never overcharge and are not picky with their customers. In no other city have I seen taxi drivers returning even one peso as a change, but the ones in Baguio do that.

I may have left Baguio almost three years ago, but the city still holds memories of happy and sad experiences that continue to shape who I am today. The type of laughter that makes one’s stomach hurt and the seemingly endless chika that my friends and I shared while walking down Cabinet Hill. The euphoria of seeing fog came out of my mouth for the first time. The awe of seeing a manong donning full cowboy gear, with studs and all, casually strolling in lower Session Road. The joy of listening to twangy, country tracks when riding taxis and jeepneys. Cliché as it may seem, half of me will always be the City of Pines.

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Chelsea Joy B. Serezo, 24, is a journalist and dog parent of four dogs. She lived in Baguio for more than four years.

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