Manila "Marianne's Coming of Age" Book - Marianne L'Heureux

The elementary school I attended in Manila, San Jose Abad Santos, was part of Philippine Women’s University, just down the street from the school. The University invited the students at my school to dance the Tinkling dance at the June 12th Independence Day celebration. 

The Tinkling is a traditional Philippine folk dance which involves two people tapping and sliding bamboo poles on the ground and against each other, in coordination with

dancers who step over and in between the poles. The boys and girls in my class had been practicing the Tinkling throughout the school year; we were nervous performing before a big audience, however. The First Lady of the Philippines was to attend on July 12th we were told.

The school generously provided our dance costumes styled after the Davao region in Mindanao, the southern Philippines. For us girls, we wore a long sleeve green satin top, a wide sash madras plaid sash over the left shoulder and down past the hips, and a long matching madras plaid pleated wraparound skirt. Hair was worn up and a string of white

carved beads were strung around the hair. The boys wore a matching green satin long sleeved shirt, long black pants, and a woven tribal sash. The Tinkling dance is danced barefoot.

At the celebration we performed the dance in groups of four in the big courtyard at the university; hundreds of people were in attendance. In my group I was one of the two dancers designated stepping over and in the bamboo poles in time with the music. Being barefoot, it was a challenge.

San Jose Abad Santos school was a diversified school. My classmates were Hindi (from India) and Muslim (from Mindanao in the southern Philippines). The only two foreigners in the class were me and a young blond Swedish girl named Amelia who was a year older than me. I was friends with Amelia and with a Hindi girl named Sarika. We girls wore white dresses with red ties for our uniforms; the boys wore white shirts, long pants and a red tie.

The classrooms and grounds of the elementary school were rustic. Classes were held in converted airplane hangars left over from the Second World War and furnished with old wooden student desks and chairs. It was a rough environment for children, the bathrooms were inadequate, but we children made the best of it though. The school curriculum focused on Filipino history going back to the Negritos, the first inhabitants of the Philippines. The Portuguese explorer Magellan arrived in 1521, the Spanish arrived in 1565, and the Philippines became independent from Spain in 1898. Having been occupied by Japan during World War II, the Philippines became a republic in 1946 with the Treaty of Manila. Since most of my classmates were Hindi or Muslim, we did not study Catholic catechism. Most Filipinos are Catholic, and the Philippines has the third largest Catholic population in the world. During Easter week religious shows were mostly shown on television, and churches were packed. After I moved to Tokyo, Japan, I was taught catechism at Sacred Heart International School.

During class recess my classmates and I played Jackstone, a game where five or more jacks are thrown on the ground. A ball is thrown in the air, and a jack is picked up one at a time. We played Jackstone with small bean bags. We had sewing kits at school, a bowl of dry beans, and some burlap with which we made our own bean bags. Lunch was served at school: rice, vegetables with fish or chicken, and small, sweet bananas on the side. This made up somewhat for the strict food rationing at home.

I attended San Jose Abad Santos School for a year and a half while living in Manila. I learned to speak Tagalong well back then, though I regrettably forgot most of it when I had to learn Japanese in Tokyo.