By Brad Newsham
Can I Help You? THE GIVE AND TAKE OF A 20-YEAR FRIENDSHIP By Brad Newsham Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.—buddha nfolding behind me, completely ignored in this bewil- trek through these mountains, part of the hulking Cordillera range, and dering moment, is an isolated Philippine valley—a certified 13 years later I invited him to the United States and drove him coast-to- world-heritage site complete with world-class views. If I turn coast—a soaring, life-changing experience for both of us. around I will see brimming rice terraces, thousands of them, Now, in April 2009, I stare at this rubble and don’t know whether to shining like sequins and rising step-by-step from the river- bawl or howl. In the States, Tony had cracked open a fortune cookie and bed all the way to the green valley’s rim. found a message we both loved, predicting, “You will become the richest But in front of me, stealing all my attention, lies a thigh-high pile of man in your community.” But the dream did not materialize. Tony has a U charred timbers and twisted tin roofing, the work of a midnight arsonist houseful of kids and no steady income, and he owes his increasingly at- in 2006. This is what remains of a handicrafts shop that once belonged tentive moneylenders $1,500. He’s standing a few yards away, studying to my friend Timango (“Tony”) Tocdaan, a rice farmer—and for 20 years me as I study the detritus of his shop.
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