Mack* met met at home early in the morning so that I would accompany him to the National Statistics Office in Baguio City. I had suggested last week that we go to apply for a birth certificate copy because I would likely not have a copy in my mail box on Wednesday. Mack had Nick* with him, so I asked him if he wanted to go to the city. He said yes, so I picked up my backpack and keys and locked the front door, wondering why Dominic hadn’t come home yet. And away we went.  

*names changed

We boarded a jeepney on Tuding Road to ride to its last stop on Mabini Street in Baguio. We ambled down General Luna Road to get another jeepney ride to the Juniper Building on the north side of Bonifacio Street. By the time we arrived, a hundred Filipinos were already queued. Soon after we joined the end of the line, someone decided that the line must be moved from the sidewalk to the parking lot, so we snaked around and between the vehicles.

Soon I saw that queue leading into the unlit, filthy building soon had two ends. People who’d come to the parking lot a quarter hour after us had begun queuing somewhere else amidst the vans rather than joining the end of the line that Mack and I and more than a dozens people behind us were in. They were trying to merge ahead of us.

Well, I remedied that, then, satisfied that Mack was on his way for hours of drudgery in the dingy, dim building, I proposed that I take Nick to a pediatrician in the meantime. This is Memorial Day in the United States, but not in the Republic of the Philippines. Nick limped along behind me, obviously in discomfort, but upbeat, as usual.

He had some stiffness in his left leg, a swollen lymph node and an infection from a wound of his left ankle. Yesterday I gave him some antibacterial ointment and plastic bandage strips, and he dressed his wound. Today he wore no bandage, and I think that the hem of his blue jeans rubbed his ankle with each stride.

I was thirsty and hadn’t had breakfast, so I asked Nick if he’d eaten breakfast. He said no, so we went to a restaurant to chow down. The kids of Baguio Gold should not miss a meal. They are ‘way behind,’ nutritionally. They need far more vitamins, minerals and protein than they get. The simple carbohydrates -starches- that they eat at home aren’t sufficient for their physical growth.

I thought that we certainly have ample time while Mack struggles to chug through ‘the system’ in the Juniper Building, and I didn’t think that the downtown physicians go to work too early. I was correct there. Nick and I struggled through the hundreds of people clogging sidewalks and gutters, going to workplaces, schools, restaurants and homes, feeling like fish swimming against a current.

I had thought initially of returning to Andy’s pediatrician in the Patria de Baguio building, but I realized that Nick wouldn’t enjoy walking that far up Session Road. So we instead looked into a few buildings bordering Magsaysay Avenue.

Clinics -or floors of buildings- have Obstetricians, OB/GYNs, general surgeons, dentists, family practices and pediatricians. The clinics or cooperatives advertise with signs at street level-sidewalk level. I was enthused to see one clinic advertising office hours beginning at 9:00. I ran upstairs, two-at-a-time then found that it’s closed today. I don’t know why. Some clinics and some pediatricians don’t open doors until 10:00.

Success! I found one clinic boasting three pediatricians that was open, so I beckoned Nick to come upstairs. We were warmly greeted by a receptionist who subsequently told us that none of the physicians was working. I asked why the pediatric medicine clinic was open for business without doctors. The lady replied that one of the physicians was “on-call.”

I still didn’t understand why no physician was there to treat patients. The receptionist said that she would call the doctor. So Nick and I sat where she gestured to await the doc. The smiling lady soon told us that the doc that she’d called would arrive at 10:30. In retrospect, we could’ve gone to one of the clinics that opened at 10:00. Several other patients arrived and checked-in after us. So the doc would have other kids to examine even if Nick and I departed. But we had time to spend while waiting for Mack to deal with N.S.O., so we read a thick Sunday newspaper and a magazine that I’d brought.

The on-call pediatrician arrived at exactly 10:30, then Nick was ushered in. After his examination and diagnoses, I got a lengthy prescription for taking four medicines. I asked about applicable childhood immunizations for Nick and his siblings, then I paid for the office visit and for bottles of medicines for treatment of Nick’s infection and his (and Mack’s) persistent, hacking coughs. Dominic had intended to escort Nick to Baguio City to see a doc in the afternoon. But we’d saved Dominic the time. I sent messages to Mack and Dominic.

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Nick and I returned to the stinking streets of Baguio City. I was thirsty again by then, so I thought that I’d get for us cups of mango juice or pineapple juice around the corner. With two cups of fresh juice in hand, we ducked-into an open-air café so that I could pull out the medicines for Nick and start him on his thrice-daily regimen. What a hassle trying to get Nick to take only the two medicines for his infection and pain and swelling. He said that the medicines tasted so horrible.

After a long while of goading him to take the medicines with both cups of juice, I didn’t have the nerve to make him take the two medicines for the head and chest cold that he was getting over. Mack could better use those, as he’s been suffering much worse since Saturday. He should have gone to a doc then started taking those two meds on Friday or Saturday.

I was still thirsty, so I got some water and we sat in Malcolm Park to chill. What an odd assortment of people were killing time there, sitting, squatting, chatting, repairing cheap umbrellas, shining shoes, selling snacks, spitting, tossing trash, hawking vegetables and eyeing the freckled guy chatting with a Pinoy boy.

I was amazed to see a nearby guy squatting and eating raw carrots that he had laid on the dirty, pebbled pavement. Yuck! There’s no place that he could put them other than on the filthy sidewalk?! People-watching in the Philippines yields some astounding sights.

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I saw a jeepney slow to a stop on Magsaysay Avenue. Then a tiny child was lowered from the passenger door to the curb, the kid shoved his pants down, then defecated on the curb, in broad daylight, in front of a hundred people, a half mile from the mayor’s office! What the heck?! †