PALO, Leyte -- The topnotcher in the medical board exams last February might have decided to leave his strife-torn town of Lamitan, Basilan to work as a nurse in the United States. But the fifth placer in the same exams, also a nurse, has no plan of working abroad and is determined to hack out a public health career in his similarly strife-torn home island of Samar.

Francis Langi Jr., 29, a native of Barangay Calapi in Motiong town, Samar, is a very unlikely board placer. A very unassuming person, he was neither prominent in academics nor active in extra-curricular activities during his student days at the School of Health Sciences, the distant unit of the University of the Philippines Manila in Palo town, Leyte province.

The SHS was founded in 1976 as an experimental school with a "ladder-type" curriculum aimed at producing midwives, nurses and physicians who are fit for rural health work in depressed and deprived communities of the country.

Only a patient probing of Francis' hardy village and personal background could explain his board exam feat, the first for Samar in recent memory.

The town of Motiong, which faces the red tide-prone Maqueda Bay in Samar, is 90 km north of Tacloban City and 20 km east of the capital town of Catbalogan. It landed in the news in the wake of a raid on the local police station by New People's Army guerrillas in November 2002.

Francis was born and raised in Barangay Calapi, which was named after the tiny fruit of a rattan species that has a sweet-sour taste and a pineapple-looking shell.

Although it is the town's biggest barangay, Calapi is 17 km from the nearest cemented highway. It is figuratively close to the moon. It is traversed by a narrow provincial dirt road, mostly overlooking steep cliffs and spanned by wooden bridges in several areas, that ends in the very interior town of San Jose de Buan in central Samar, some 25 km north.

The barangay itself is characterized by low rolling hills mainly planted to rice and some corn. It does not have a piped water system. The residents fetch water for drinking and other uses from springs and dug wells.

Electricity reached the area only recently.

Francis completed his elementary and high school education in Barangay Calapi.

The village high school, the second in town, is as deprived as its elementary school. While Francis graduated as its high school valedictorian in 1991, he was also the only one in his class of nearly 30 to have passed the now-defunct National College Entrance Examination (NCEE).

Francis' feat paralleled the growth of his family.

His father and namesake, Francis Sr., who had two years of college, started out as a rice farmer. His mother, Agripina, a high school graduate, is home bound. The couple raised four children, all boys.

Francis Sr. was appointed OIC-councilor after the first Edsa revolution in 1986, but lost the position in the 1988 elections. In an ensuing election, he won as No. 2 barangay councilman of Calapi, from which he carved out a political career.

In 1992, Francis Sr. ran for the position of vice mayor and won. In 1995, he ran for the higher position of mayor and won. He will complete his last and third term as mayor this year.

His three other sons have completed their college education. Aldwin, 31, a civil engineer, now works as general manager of a local water district in Palawan. Ricky, 24, an electrical engineer, works with the Samar Electric Cooperative in Catbalogan. Rey, 22, graduate of a commerce course, operates an eatery in Motiong.

Francis, the second child, now resides in his hometown with a family of his own.

He is married to Rizza Padayao from Daram town, Samar, an island town at the mouth of Maqueda Bay. She works in Motiong as rural health midwife assigned to the barangay health station at Barangay Bunga.

They have a five-year-old son, Keith Francis.

For his feat in the medical board exams, Francis has received offers for better-paying and urban-based hospital jobs. But he is determined to serve his people in Samar.

He said he became a physician as a UP "Iskolar ng Bayan" on the endorsement of the very same people he now intends to serve as a professional.

He has served his town as volunteer health worker during his various "service leaves" from the university -- as a licensed midwife, and as a nurse. He also joined medical missions of the military and served the health and medical needs of rebels.

Francis hopes for goodwill from opposing parties in the ideological war in the Samar hinterlands and respect for the neutrality of the medical profession.

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