Month of Fiestas

On May 25th, I joined members of the church in heading to Ligaya for their Fiesta. This was one of the many fiestas I accompanied friends in attending during this past month.

May is the busiest month for fiestas in our area. Six of the eleven barangays in our municipality hosted their fiestas during this time. A fiesta kicks off with ‘Vesper Night’, the night preceding the actual fiesta. This night involves a disco with plenty of ‘kuratsa’, a traditional Spanish dance adopted into the Filipino culture and used to raise money, oftentimes a beauty or popularity pagent, and protocols from local officials. The fiesta day itself kicks off with a mass at the local chapel, followed by a procession of the statue of the patron saint of the community. Then, the main event… lots and lots of food. Most houses prepare huge spreads of food, allowing one to go from house to house to eat as much as they can.

We were the first to attack this delectable spread of food at one of five houses we visited in Ligaya.  

Country Livin'

My friends and I recently went on a couple excursions to 2 different farms; one being my friend Aida's family farm, the other being the Vice Mayor's. The former is a very low-key shanty built upon a hillside overlooking the family's rice fields. The latter is more geared towards leisure, being a couple very nice cottages next to a fish pond adjacent to a quaint river. The Vice Mayor still harvests fish from the pond, but for the most part he seems to be gearing it up to be a small resort for locals looking to escape daily life.

Elpiyo balances on the narrow wall of a concrete irrigation channel as we make the 30 minute journey through muddy rice fields to Aida's farm.

This is one way to get a 'ceelote' (young coconut). Pollard is incredible adept at climbing trees, and even took the time to cut open a coconut and drink it on the spot! 

Disaster Preparedness Workshop

Workshop participants discuss and plan activities to be conducted through their various offices before, during, and after a natural disaster.

Ever since we finished our site assessment of the entire municipality at the end of March, my counterpart Bobi and I intended to hold a 'Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan Development Workshop' with members of the municipal staff and officials from all 11 barangays (districts). This workshop would serve as a forum for the leaders of our community to provide their input into the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan (MDRRMP) that we are tasked to develop.

Unfortunately, several circumstances beyond our control, including my resignation from Peace Corps and the multitude of fiestas at this time of year, delayed our plans. But after almost two months of planning, we were able to hold our two-day workshop this past Tuesday and Wednesday.

We designed the workshop to be as interactive as possible. Nearly all of the sessions involved group work, where individual communities and/or vocational teams worked together to assess current situations and plan for future activities which can not only render Rosario a more resilient community in the face of natural disaster, but maybe even prevent, or at least mitigate, future disasters from occurring.

Friends, Fiestas, and Fangs

The night before I left for Manila, my friends and I met some guys hunting fruit bats in the street. While their massive prey are feeding on banana trees, the young men use air rifles to stun them, then string their loot together on a stick ready to cook the following day.

Karaoke is huge here. Nary an event goes by without it, and most every house has their own karaoke unit through a DVD player in their house. This picture is from the 50th birthday party of Bebeth (singing), who works in the budget office at the municipality. Held at a nearby beach, we enjoyed a buffet featuring ‘lechon’ (rotisserie pig), the traditional holiday food before the party got started in earnest.

Biri with the Baraks, Round II

On Monday, April 28th, I took my second trip to Biri Island with my friends. As with the first, we had a great time amongst absolutely breathtaking scenery.

Most of our group within a sort of natural amphitheatre carved into the rocks at Biri.

The trip was quite different from the last. We again stayed at Jazel’s home in Bagong Silang, where she teaches at the local school. But this trip was planned around their community’s fiesta. It was a very low-key affair, but it did mean that we had countless invitations to eat with families in the village, and had no need to cook for ourselves.

So we enjoyed the company of each other and friends in the community all day Monday over plenty of food and drink and swam in the calm seas nearby at night. On Tuesday, we set off early to the rock formations at Bel-At. We had several more hours at the rocks this time, which allowed us to spend more time exploring.

Below are some of my favorite scenes from this trip:

Bounding through rocks and waters alike, we spent much of our time exploring this beautifully jagged coastline. 

When it rains, it pours...

This ferry took me and my bus from Luzon, the main island in the Philippines, to my island of Northern Samar. The 23 hour bus ride is a far cry from the quick 1 hour plane ride I had taken to site originally, but now everything is on my own dime.

Since I returned to Rosario sans Peace Corps, my daily life has changed significantly. Unfortunately, this mainly stems from a string of personal adversity. As the rain fell outside daily, despite this being the ‘dry season’ or ‘summer’ in the Philippines, my luck continued to fail me.

Less than a week after I returned from my resignation, I was the victim of a theft from my home. Sleeping on the second floor of my duplex apartment, I cracked the window due to the heat thinking that no one would scale a wall to enter in my sleep. I was wrong.

I had suspected theft three times within my first month here, each time a few 1,000 pesos would be missing from my wallet. I had assumed that the perpetrator entered through a vaulted entry into the adjacent family’s apartment not properly closed off, so I was trying to handle it internally with the landlord. But then, as I went to pay for transportation to the airport while heading into Manila as mandated by Peace Corps, I noticed that 5,000 pesos, the biggest hit yet, was missing from my wallet; money I absolutely needed just to get to Manila. Fortunately, my counterpart was able to assist me at the time.

Rosariohanon's Passion of the Christ

The cast and crew of Rosariohanon’s production of the Stations of the Cross.

The most entertaining part of Holy Week in Rosario, for me, had to be the choir group’s reenactment of the Stations of the Cross, popularly known even here as the “Passion of the Christ” thanks to Mel Gibson.

The group had been preparing costumes and practicing daily for several weeks, and the end result was indicative of that effort. The procession began 4AM Saturday at the church, winding throughout town before ending a couple of miles away at Rosario National High School.

Each station involved readings, with the youth acting out what was being said. The event lasted through sunrise, until about 6:30AM.

Below are pictures from their performance: