Playing The Cure's In Between Days at a Relocation Camp

Nueva Ecija, Philippines

I learned to play In Between Days on the guitar long before I heard The Cure sing it, in the last days of a military dictatorship in the Philippines. 

I was in Manila with my father one weekend in January 1986, and that Saturday evening, I was asked to keep my cousin M. company while her parents had an evening out. My cousin was a little younger but we were friends so I didn’t mind. We spent most of the evening talking and then she asked me if I knew how to play In Between Days by the Cure on the guitar. I didn’t know the song, but she knew the chords, told me what they were, described how the song was supposed to sound, humming a stanza or two. As I played it clumsily on the guitar, M. sang along. The chords were basic, just mostly four chords (A D Bm E) played over and over again, but I thought the melody was lovely.

The following day, Sunday, my father and I drove back to Solano, my hometown, in time for classes that Monday. I was in sophomore year high school. But the Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos, suddenly declared Monday a holiday. There had been growing civil unrest, and that, I think, was his way of keeping people from coming together. It was too late; a movement was underway. A few weeks later, some two million people assembled in Metro Manila, the nonviolent People Power Revolution that removed Marcos from office. I remember when my favorite teacher, Ms. M., and I heard the news of the beginning of the peaceful assembly. We were backstage in school one evening as my classmates performed a play. Ms. M. and I were overjoyed by the news but because of the play, we just jumped around quietly for a while, not saying a word, grinning.

Several years later, around September 1991, in college, I found myself on a hill in Nueva Ecija where the new government had built a relocation camp. It was for an indigenous community that had been displaced in a nearby province by a volcanic eruption and the massive mudflows that followed. I was at the camp with four other young people—three men, E., P., and R., and one woman, V.

We were there for an immersion program, a college requirement to spend a couple of days among groups considered marginalized. It was for our class on Liberation Theology, the radical idea that, despite the promise of a happy afterlife, it was still wrong for people to live in poverty and misery here in this life. In the years right after the revolution, life was yet to change for many people, made worse by a major earthquake and then a volcanic eruption.

We figured out where the camp was and somehow managed to get an invitation from the social workers to spend the night there. (This was of course a time before cell phones, the internet, and email and it was something of a small miracle how everything was arranged.) We rode a bus for about four hours, from the city to a town nearest the camp. We then rode a jeepney to the base of a hill. From there we hiked uphill for another hour to the camp.

When we got there, we found terrible living conditions. The camp was crowded. There was no electricity, no sewage system, and no source of clean water. We were told that three kids had died from food poisoning just before we arrived. A few others were seriously ill. I think one or two more people died during our stay.

I was unprepared. We were supposed to stay for two days and one night and I had brought with me all the wrong things. I had one bottled water, a can of sardines, and a couple of slices of bread. By the end of our stay, I was so hungry and dehydrated. No one took a bath. There was a muddy river nearby and a water buffalo was bathing in it. I think we named him Billy.

At the camp later that night we were invited to stay with host families. (Looking back now, it was completely odd and inappropriate to have been hosted by displaced families in the middle of their dreadful living conditions. But they themselves seemed to think nothing of it. They were, astonishingly, so welcoming.) I was asked to accompany V. and I agreed. We were then told that a man and a woman couldn’t stay together (in their culture) unless they were married, so…we said we were married. That night, I laid next to V. in a tiny wooden bed in a tiny hut in a relocation camp, pretending to be husband and wife. I remember looking at V.’s face by the light of a small candle in the next room. I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I felt my arms ache. 

Earlier that evening, one of the three men, P., asked me to join a small campfire with some children and their parents. P. was a poet and in the darkness by the light of the campfire he told the children stories, which they loved. Then the children said they wanted to dance. Someone handed me an old guitar. P. and I looked at each other. I couldn’t think of anything else to play, so I played In Between Days, as the children danced and jumped around us.

Yesterday I got so scared
I shivered like a child 
Yesterday away from you
It froze me deep inside

The following day, we left the camp. We hiked downhill for an hour, rode a jeepney, and then waited for a bus back to the city. When we got on the bus—five unwashed people caked in mud, clouded by a powerful stench—all the other passengers looked at us, but mercifully said nothing.

Several hours later, we were back in the city. From the bus station, it was another hour-long commute to my place. I ran to the bathroom as soon as I got home and immediately turned on the shower. I stood there for what felt like an hour, letting the water wash over me, as the grime melted away. It was glorious. I looked down and watched a small puddle of mud gather slowly at my feet.