The following article is by Imelda N. Nicolas. This is part of the book BEHIND THE WALLS: LIFE OF CONVENT GIRLS, a collection of personal essays by graduates of Philippine Convent Schools. The collection includes writings by Gemma Cruz, Neni Sta Romana Cruz, Herminia Menez Coben, and others.
For more information about the book, visit https://ceciliabrainard.com/book/behind-the-walls/ . The online store of the publisher Anvil Philippines may have a few copies.
BIO: Imelda M. Nicolas was former Cabinet-rank Secretary at Commission on Filipinos Overseas. Commission on Filipinos Overseas. She was chair of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) from 1993 to 1998, where she institutionalized the Gender and Development (GAD) budget in the government’s Appropriations Act. She also served as Secretary-General of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) from 2004 to 2005. She is presently the cabinet-rank Secretary of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) under the office of the President of the Philippines. The CFO uses migration and development as its framework with the end of view of responding to its challenges. It envisions to establish itself as the premier institution in the Philippines vis-à-vis migration and development and overseas Filipinos’ diaspora engagement.
CONFESSIONS OF AN “INTERNA”
by Imelda M. Nicolas
Copyright 2005 & 2023 by Imelda M. Nicolas
It was June of 1955. I was entering the fourth grade and without knowing why I found myself, together with my older sister Loida (who was a sixth grader), being enrolled by my mother in St. Agnes’ Academy, a convent school run by German Benedictine sisters in Legaspi, some 50 kilometers away from Sorsogon, the town where I grew up in.
Because of the school’s distance from my hometown, it was taken as a matter of course that both Loida and I would be internas in St Agnes. We would live with the nuns, sharing a dormitory with 80-odd other girls who hailed from places in the Bicol region, many of which I heard for the first time: Masbate, Guinobatan, Pilar, Daet, Iriga — the list seemed endless.
Looking back, I am not surprised that my first days at St. Agnes’ were a haze. I am sure I suffered from sensory overload — there was just too much to take. There was the majestic, ever-changing but ever-present Mayon Volcano looming over the school. There was the school building itself, elegant in a timeless way, seemingly embracing all who strayed into its portals. There were the nuns, in their traditional black-and-white habits, clucking over the children, like mother hens with their chicks.
Legaspi, which the more metropolitan Manileños may consider the backwater, the boonies, was to me THE Big, Bad City, compared to my bucolic, idyllic, more-countryside-than-cosmopolitan hometown of Sorsogon.
In my mind’s eye, I can see the dormitory as one large hall full of uniform beds and drawers, overflowing with my soon-to-be fellow boarders, who came in all sizes and shapes -- from the youngest, teeny-weeny grade-oner, to the most senior graduating high school students, who, to my ten-year-old eyes and perspective then, towered over me like giants. As I got to know the girls I would be living with for the next 300 schooldays, I found out soon enough that their characters, quirks and upbringing were even more varied than their sizes and shapes.
To a newcomer there seemed no rhyme nor reason in the arrangement of our beds — you took that small piece of real estate in the dorm that was assigned to you, period. The little privacy that you could enjoy was provided by a thin piece of white curtain that you drew. The written instructions on what bedding you needed were simple and stark — white linens, a blanket, pillowcases for your two pillows, a mosquito net. Uniforms and underwear went into the small drawers between the beds.
Before I knew it, it was time for my mother to leave my sister and me in this strange and unfamiliar place. That was the first time I was going to live away from my parents and I knew inadvertently that I was going to be miserable.
Sorsogon may be not be the most exciting place in the world but my father, a self-made businessman, a quintessential entrepreneur forever churning out new businesses, had seen to it that our home was at the same time a place of commerce. We owned one of the three movie houses in town, we had the town’s only bowling alley and billiard hall, complete with a bar serving beers and soft drinks . My mother had her own share of entrepreneurial blood flowing in her veins and being a licensed pharmacist, she had a drugstore on the ground floor of our building as well. We lived on the second floor of this “entertainment center” cum pharmacy.
Although my two older brothers, Kuya Danny and Kuya Jay had already been dispatched by my parents to out-of-town schools (Ateneo de Naga and Ateneo de Manila, respectively), our youngest brother, Francis, was still running around with the town’s street urchins and having a great time. I had a similar set of free-wheeling barkadas in the neighborhood and among my schoolmates from the nearby public school where I studied from grade one to grade three. I couldn’t understand how all of a sudden I was replacing all my friends with a bunch of people I was meeting for the first time, in a place, that from all appearances, was joyless, regimented, and terribly far from home.
But the deed was done — I had been registered both as a grade four student and a boarder in St. Agnes. Loida and I had to stay. Again, I can’t remember if I cried in front of my mother and made a scene — but I must have, for even now, there is still a lingering memory of how heavy my heart felt then and my great sense of foreboding.
My first nights as an interna were precursors of things to come. In Sorsogon, after doing our homework, we would run to our movie house (which incidentally was named after my sister, “Loida Theater”) for a quick preview of what movies were scheduled to be shown in the next few weeks and had a repeat viewing of our favorite scenes of what was currently showing. That was our pre-TV nightly entertainment break. Then off to bed in a room I shared with my sister.
And now, as in interna in St. Agnes, I was introduced to the very spartan, silence-laden, disciplined nighttime of the nuns. By 5:30 in the afternoon when all the students who were not boarders had gone home, seemingly bringing with them the sound of laughter, small talks and girlish what-have-you’s , all the boarders were herded to the “study room” where complete silence was to be observed while we were doing our assignments. No one was allowed to leave the room and if one had a reasonable excuse to go to the dorm which was several classrooms away, she still was subjected to the withering and suspicious look of the nun-in-charge.
At 6:45 pm, a bell would be rung (and very soon, I found out that my entire life as a boarder would be run by bells). In double file, we were herded to the “refectory” where dinner was served. Needless to say, our meals would never make it to Zagat’s book of recommended cuisine and eating places. The nuns’ food was our standard fare and unfortunately for us, they have taken the vow of poverty, together with chastity and obedience. The only concession the sisters gave us for dinner was that we could talk among ourselves, perhaps to distract us from the measly plate before us.
At 8:00 pm, with dinner over, the bells rang again and off we went to the campus ground for a 30-minute walk or games, for those who were more athletically inclined. By 8:30 pm, we were done with our evening “entertainment” and we started with our bedtime ablutions, again, in deep silence. At 9:30 pm it was lights out, signaled with the now part-of-our-lives ringing of bells.
Every night became a nightmare for me, literally and figuratively. Having been exposed to all kinds of horror movies in our Sorsogon movie house, my imagination worked overtime the moment darkness enveloped our dorm. I heard all kinds of noises, from the rattling of chains to the haunting hooting of an owl, from the annoying, incessant chirping of the cicadas who lived in the open field beside the school’s campus, to scratches of mice and other unknown creatures in the attic.
My fear would reach a boiling point so that I had to creep to the bed of my sister Loida to still the tremors and the rapid palpitation of my heart, and to fall asleep in her arms. This was a no-no to Sister Jovita, the bosomy and huge Teutonic nun who was in charge of the boarders and who struck fear with her booming voice and her crisp German accent. If caught, a boarder’s punishment from Sister. Jovita ranged from being thrown into the broom closet to ponder on your “sin,” to not being allowed to go home for the week-end. But my nightmare was stronger than any penalty I could face so there were more nights that I spent in my sister’s bed than in mine.
Early morning brought relief with the coming of the light and the singing of the sisters in the chapel. Sometimes, in between sleep and waking up, I easily imagined that I had died and gone to heaven, mistaking the angelic voices of the nuns as God’s welcome to one of His straying flocks. But the inevitable bells would rudely bring me back to reality as the boarders were obliged to attend the early morning mass with the nuns. After mass, another unexciting breakfast awaited us, and off we were to our respective classrooms.
And so went my days and nights. Once in a while, my nights would be interrupted by my attempts to read books under the blanket with a flashlight after lights out, or by one of the boarders asking me to join her in the dorm’s shower room with “smuggled” food from the nearby panciteria, known far and wide for its pancit canton.
In my fourth grade class, I was the new girl in town, the oddity of the year. Thank God that while in the campus all of us had to speak English and not Bicol, since it seems there are as many variations of the dialect as there are provinces in the region. Those from Naga claimed that theirs was the purest while those from Sorsogon spoke more Waray or Samareno than Bicol. To complicate my language problem further, since my mother was a Tagala (from Atimonan, Quezon) and my father was a Pampango (from Moncada, Tarlac), we all spoke Tagalog at home. So it came to pass that every time I attempted to say a few Bicol words, my classmates would be rolling in the aisle laughing their hearts out with my awkward Bicol and my strange mélange of Waray and Bicol words.
When it came to academics, while in the past I had not put extra effort to earn honors in school, this time I felt I had to prove myself to my new classmates. It came as an epiphany during one of those spelling contests where I got a perfect score and led the winning team. It was one of those “Aha!!” moments, when I realized that I had what it took to be first in my class if I put my mind to it.
One other incident during that memorable year of my fourth grade in St. Agnes was the very strong earthquake that sent all of us scampering out of the classrooms in the middle of the morning, terrified that Judgment Day had come, true to the ominous warnings of the sister who taught us Religion. But our Science teacher straightened us out with the explanation that Mayon Volcano was showing signs of eruption, and earthquakes were part of the phenomenon. The continuing after-shocks and the possible paroxysm of the volcano put everyone in the school on the state of constant and nervous alert, prepared to dig and dive into our figurative foxholes at a moment’s notice. But Mt. Mayon changed its mind, decided not to go through with its threat and eventually settled down to its past serene grandeur. Things returned to normal but I never forgot that behind all that beauty lurks danger and even death. I never again looked at the Volcano with the same eyes.
I don’t know how, but I did survive my grade 4 in St. Agnes. But my sister Loida must have told our mom how miserable I was and that I was too young to be weaned away from her and home.
So, again, without my knowing exactly why, I was back in Sorsogon on my fifth grade — back to my barefooted and bakya-clad barkadas and classmates, to my nightly joyous respite from assignments via our movie house, the hurly-burly of our home serving as the town’s entertainment center, the warm presence of my mom and the antics of my youngest brother, Francis.
I stayed in Sorsogon to finish my elementary grades. As I entered my first year in high school, I was back in St. Agnes . . . but then that would be another story.
READ ALSO
Neni Sta Romana Cruz's Growing up St. Scholastican
Herminia Menez Coben's Behind the Walls of St Scholastica College
Gemma Cruz-Araneta's Benevolent Assimilation
Tags: #Philippineeducation #Filipinoschools #Catholicschools
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