The diary of a man on a wheelchair

This is a story based on the diary of our friend Jose Rogelio Cabaltera, a Eurasian of Ilocano/German lineage whom we met while he was in Manila on a special mission about six years ago. It’s a similar story of many Filipinos with mixed heritage who find themselves in our country just to visit yet stay on and on and on.

Jose’s mission was to simply “get to know his father’s country.” His father, Jose Supnet Cabaltera, came from Ilocos. Presently, Jose lives in San Juan, works at FEU, and he has a keen passion for travel, especially in these islands.

We asked him how and when all this began. Two months after he moved to Manila in October 2008, his attention was caught by a photo in someone’s news feed. It was of a most peculiar church bell tower. “It looked like it belonged to a fortress and not a traditional House of God.” The church in question is Baclayon Church in Bohol, an island province he had never heard of before. Jose flew to Bohol to see it and returned to Manila knowing in his heart he needed to know more about his father’s country. So, he quit his job in the US and has been here ever since.

There is no better place to get to know “his father’s country” than in the province where the elder Jose was born. The following June, he and a friend jumped on a bus and headed up to Vigan. He called his aunt in the US to see if there was anyone left. She said that the only ones alive are all in the States. Jose was disappointed. Yet, she gave him an address, a home that she keeps in the town center that his second cousin and wife maintain. He asked a lady in the hotel for directions to his aunt’s home and as serendipity would have it, her gate was just outside the hotel’s.

“My cousin brought me to see a house my family once rented,” Jose relates. “It was made of wood, was plain, not one of the heritage homes that Vigan is known for. I remember being amazed that the house was still standing.”

We reminded him of his early experience with a taxi driver in Manila who had asked for his name. Upon being told it was Jose Cabaltera, the driver got excited and wondered, “Ano mo si Nora Aunor?” Rushing home to Wikipedia, Jose found out that Nora Cabaltera Villamayor, Guy, or Ate Guy is a famous actress in the Philippines.

Since then, Jose has been to dozens of places in the Philippines, many of them spots we have never ourselves visited. “I really love traveling and discovering,” Jose shared. We asked him if he has kept track of these locations and he gave us a list of places that stretched from Baggao to Siquijor. We were stunned to say the least.

Jose’s latest adventure took him to the Bicol Region, the birthplace of Nora. At one point in his trip, Jose expected to get a closer view of the Mayon Volcano, dubbed the Perfect Cone. However, the terrain was too treacherous for his vehicle to pass and, what more, to get to the area required an 80-foot climb up a steep lava wall. One of the tour guides approached him, told him to ride on his back and carried him up the precarious trail that opened up into a magnificent, flawless view.

At this point, it would interest the reader to know that Jose is a disabled person who brings his wheelchair everywhere he goes. You could say Jose and his wheelchair are inseparable. He brings it on tricycles, buses, the MRT, trains and on ferries. And, of course, on planes which he will board in December to visit relatives for his first Christmas since moving to the Philippines.

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