Veni, vidi , victus sum: my memories of BSU as evoked by its centennial year

VENI, vidi, victus sum. I came, I saw, I was conquered. This is how I can briefly describe, partly borrowing from Julius Caesar, my coming to Benguet State University (BSU) La Trinidad, and lasting therein for twentyfour years, nine months and three days, counting backward from my mandatory retirement on March 22, 2001, as I remember things during this centennial year of the founding of Benguet State University.

Regrets? None of the thing. True, my life since early childhood has been a life of opposites, but once I crossed into the portals of BSU, that was Mountain State Agricultural College (MSAC) at that time, I knew “I once was dead but now I am alive.” MSAC life would be, as it really proved to be, the life for me. Meditative analysis turned the Gobang Tinguian in me to versify succinctly and kept singing at heart the rationale of my leaving other institutions of learning to live and serve in my new venue of academic service: “Here, my people come to scale the mount To drink the cup of wisdom’s fount: Here science and active culture blend Transforming man to be a better friend. l: Oh, thank You then, and help me, Lord, I’ll hold it high the Triple Cord!”:l

Short but well-thought-of oath of office! MSAC’s envisioned jobs of Education, Research and Extension were the triple cord that caught my attention and handcuffed me to the new institution that invited me for assistance through its president Dr. Bruno M. Santos. Handcuffed? Not at all again. I was magnetized! The first time matters of the same pole attracted each other because my birthplace, Bangilo, now a component part of the Municipality of Malibcong, Abra, is located in a valley traversed by a living river and fenced in or, rather, nestled among the towering mountains between Abra and Kalinga. Pine and jungle trees could cause me nostalgia In La Trinidad Valley, especially in the ‘70s when people were still able to catch some fresh sanitarily edible fish in the Balili River. Fact is pungent tinge of sadness caused me to turn my face away from the felling of remnant sylvan trees by the bank of a diverted part of the Balili River, east of the Administration Area, to give way to the planting of orange fruit trees as instructed by noted developmental and production-minded President Fortunato “Kidlat” Battad. Evolusive development had to go on. The special project was put under the care of a pongkan orange enthusiast and producer, VoAg mentor “Fred” Tipayno, who would later get his Ph.D. in his line of agriculture from U.P. Los Banos. How I liked agricultural scientists who put their knowledge to action and be imitated by others. For, to my mind, the biblical garden of Eden as recounted in Genesis is not a thing of the past, it is still to come. In that future garden on planet Earth, man will just build the machine and the machine will work for him. Truly Adam-like and Eve-like life, touristic not back-breaking! A much advanced machine must come to supplant mere man’s back-breaking hoe (gabion) to till the soil for man’s food particularly in the highlands of Northern Luzon. That subconscious belief may have been the reason why I missed Prof. Silvestre of the Engineering Department when MSAC let go of him for DMMMSU where he got support to show his inventive mettle The same reason I felt worse when agricultural scientist Dr. William D. Dar from highland MSAC and premiere UP Los Banos, and, for me, a first class administrator, was blocked from becoming the DA Secretary in the national scene all because of politics.

Next came the camaraderie in MSAC. I felt right away I was not a stranger in paradise. Blood and tongue and mind-set were all to my taste. I could very naturally chant my thoughts out with them. Rudy Abastilla that man whose fingers could drive the Underwood or Olympia faster and more sensibly the more they were moistened with magical liquid from the beer bottle? Or Jun Monroe of the Kontad dance troupe fame? Or our Kalinga colleague whose “mark” was that silence was louder than words and therefore would never “bully yet” anybody? Or the member of our After-Five Club