After graduating from college in 1965, I felt that I needed to take a respite. For a year I just relax, read a lot (newspapers, Weekly Graphic, and Philippines Free Press). I was quite skinny at the time that I tried the correspondence course of Charles Atlas' Dynamic Tension. Gradually my physique improved and I gained weight.
In the middle of 1966 I learned through a cousin Bert Carganilla that the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement(PRRM), a non-stock, non-profit organization engaged in rural development were recruiting rural development workers. PRRM was based in Nieves, San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija. Qualifications for rural development workers were college graduates with any 4 year course degrees.
Bert Carganilla, Temyong Cablayan (another cousin from Guimba), and I went to the PRRM headquarters in Nieves and took the entrance examination and panel interviews.
Manong Bert and I passed both the examination and interview and moved on the next phase of qualification trials which is the "barrio test".
The barrio test is a one month test of endurance whether one candidate can endure the rigors of life in a far away barrio. The candidate had to stay and live one whole month with a family in a barrio assisted by PRRM.
I was assigned in the far-flung barrio of Balutu, Concepcion, Tarlac. I was just given directions on how to go to the place and went by myself. From the town of Concepcion, Tarlac the barrio could be reached by weapon-carrier converted type of transportation through a very rough road along a winding course of river crossing. Just by this kind of road would be enough for a less determined candidate to quit on the first day!
But I moved on! From day one to day 30. The barrio had no electricity, no water supply. I had to wash my clothes in the river. It was really a test...if one could be a rural development worker! But as one of the titles of Fernando Poe, Jr.'s movies aptly described, "Umpisahan mo...Tatapusin ko", I passed the rigorous one month barrio test with fying colors.
The next phase of the PRRM recruitment was the 6 months pre-service training. This involved 6 months of training on the four-fold program of PRRM in livelihood, health, education and self-government.
The 6 months training ended with our graduation on the anniversary of PRRM on July 17, 1967. We were now full-fledged Rural Reconstruction Workers (RRWs)!
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