Exploring My Own Cebu

While the rest of the Filipinos are celebrating the conclusion of Ramadan, I made a little exploration of my own about my faith. It’s not a pilgrimage of sort nor it was a promise I made early on but then I am always fascinated by the physical representation of the Catholic religion. I am of course referring to the old Spanish churches that are still standing today perhaps to serve as living reminders of our colonial past and our conversion from animism to the Christian belief.

I left the house early and drove 60 kilometers down south. I’ve passed by the southern towns Cebu before but I have never ever stopped to visit any of the churches there. My dad was born in Samboan and he grew up in Badian. Back when I was younger, we made a few trips to the south to visit our relatives and dad’s friends.

Cebu is one of the oldest provinces in the country. With its deep historical, cultural and religious past, Cebu still has some of the old colonial structures worthy to be included as a heritage.

A little past 9am, I reached the old town of Argao, turning towards the pueblo’s coast and into its newly restored complex. There was an arch erected at the town boundary with a slogan welcoming everyone to the ’heritage’ town. Argao is one of the oldest towns in Cebu having been founded as a pueblo in 1608. It started as an encomienda and thus prospered with the erection of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel and the construction of a commercial port and the railway station that stretches all the way to Danao.

The Church of St. Michael the Archangel

I entered the town plaza through an entrance at the back of the church. Half of the gate was swung open and I walked through it towards the plaza. At the center of the old block, I looked around and was a bit drawn back to the Spanish era. I imagined myself being transported to the 18th century wearing my rayadillo uniform of light blue and white with my bayonet-tipped gun.

I made a brief 360 and saw La Iglesia de San Miguel Arcangel with its bell tower standing few meters away though its connected by a small structure that served as quarters of the bell ringers before. The church is facing the coast, just like any other Spanish church so that villagers could always check for any danger of attacks from the open sea.

The church has its own perimeter wall, though rather low but then its a demarcation that I also noticed at the Baclayon Chruch in Bohol. The walls have interesting details, some reliefs depicting stations of the cross and some spanish emblems.

Outside of these walls is the town plaza. This, along with Argao’s Hall of Justice and the Municipio were restored through the efforts of the local government and the then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. who hails from the place. The municipio still has its old form. It’s the typical stone house of the 18th century.

Municipio de Argao

The Hall of Justice

The Town Plaza

I imagined how it was back then when Spanish friars used to be the rulers of the land and that our ancestors rendered ‘polo’ to build structures like this. Cebu has more than a dozen old churches made of stones and hard wood. There must have been thousands and thousands of Cebuanos who toiled under the sun for several years just to build the pueblo’s municipio, plaza y iglesia. The fruits of their ‘forced labor’ had at least survived the test of time.

I left Argao after checking the details of the church interiors. I wont be using any architectural parlance but in my knowledge, the Baroque-Rococo church is but comparable to the Baclayon church with its painted ceilings, elaborate retablos, choir loft and pulpit and all. The icons in this church’s retablo were painted with gold, much to the dismay of the historians and the preservationists. I was surprised too as to why the parish priest decided to paint the old images with gilt.

I drove a little further to the south, passing through the laid-back towns of Dalaguete and Alcoy. These two towns have old Spanish Churches too but I decided to go to Boljoon and visit their stone church. Boljoon is but 40 kilometers south of Argao. It used to be part of Carcar but with the establishment of the town in the 17th century, Boljoon prospered and grew. It has become important to the Augustinian missionaries that a church was then decided to be built at the time when the pueblo was created.

With its location, Boljoon was often attacked by Muslim raiders. It scared the settlers away. The church was handed to Jesuits but was later on returned to the Augustinians. One particular priest however decided to fortify the town by building dozens and dozens of watchtowers to warn the villagers of any attack and to protect the town as a whole.

When I arrived at the Iglesia de Nuesta Senora de Patrocinio, I was a bit disappointed of the condition of the heritage site. Compared to what I’ve seen in Argao, the church of Boljoon is in dire need of preservation. I saw some restoration projects on the belfry. But when I looked at the church facade, the entire section was white and it seemed like it was painted with nalcrete. I could not find the real surface of the stone church.

I went inside the iglesia to look at it’s interiors. It’s a bit eery and queer. The nave is quite longer than the church in Argao, the paintings at ceiling were quite similar to that of Baclayon but only of different color theme. But I was relieved that the icons and the retablos were not painted with gold. However, the icons looked deteriorated. Just like in any other churches, the Patrocinio has a choir loft, a pulpit, and retablos at both ends of the transept.

I didn’t stay long inside the church. There’s a lot of preservation works to do. Much must have to be done to restore this structure to its old form. A lot of tourists and pilgrims may be dismayed if the church would be left to rot with time.

I roamed around the church yard and saw a wood and stone structure detached from the church. It used to be a catholic school in the 1900’s.

The Watch Tower with Bells

Opposite the school, at a corner fronting the open sea is the watch tower. A priest, Father Bermejo had ordered dozens of these structures to be built, especially along the Ilihan Rock to fortify the town. Only one of these bulwarks remained today. Church bells were placed on top of the remaining tower. The door was half open and I went inside to see if there’s anything worth taking pictures of.

Inside, the structure was rather empty except for the wooden flight of stairs leading to the bells on the second floor.

But the tower was rotting away. The walls were filled with graffiti and bearing greek symbols and dates and names. While inside, I felt like there’s a force that wanted me to rush to the door and ran away from it. The tower was neglected.

In all honesty, I felt the sadness when I left the church complex. I was expecting something more breath-taking and fascinating. But I was disappointed with Boljoon. Seeing the church is like seeing it after a Muslim raid. The church had seen a lot of raids, a lot of attacks and destructions. The Patrocinio knows that it is rapidly decaying. I hope people will not leave it in ruins.

I left Boljoon. I passed by Argao again. I returned to the city hoping for another exploration anytime soon.   

I Let Her Down

ZeeWee got hurt once again and I am to be blamed totally for the scratches and dents that I caused her. It was not even a month since I carelessly pushed her back against a parking wall and ripped her silver skin. And now, she got some more bruises in her right behind.

I am equally hurt as her. Damage has been done and I felt sorry for everything. I wasn’t even thinking. We were together several Sundays ago when I just got back from Boracay. From that time on, we went to a lot of places. She brought me and my officemates to several restaurants, malls, factories and client offices.

ZeeWee always made sure that I’m protected from the rain. She gave me comfort. She’s my faithful friend. She would always offer her service to bring me to wherever I want to go. I appreciate her so much that I could not even imagine how my life would be without her.

Almost every morning, I would check on her and know if she needed anything. I would automatically give her early morning shower without her asking her because I would want to make her feel special. I want to let her know that I truly care for her.

But I let her down. She’s still suffering from the pain I’ve caused her last month. I could not forgive myself. I felt really really bad.

Interior Motives

There’s a great desire in me to do something about the terrible interiors in the house. In spite of the stark reality that our humble abode had accumulated a lot of things worth disposing, we still allowed these things to occupy space. They just gather dust. From worn-out furniture to malfunctioning appliances and to the old thingamajigs in almost all sections of the house, I had this great urge to throw them all away and to start the interior arrangement out of nothing.

There’s panic in the house right now because the town fiesta is fast approaching and we have not started cleaning the rooms much more with the re-arrangement of things. I could not even think of where and how to start the rearrangement, given the fact that it is barely 3 weeks before the celebration.

Now my mom had asked me to buy her some yards of cloth for her curtains. She planned on hanging those hideous light blue lace curtains in the living room. Mom had already agreed with my sister Ellen to make additional white curtains to give the windows some layers. I didn’t join in their discourse on how to hang the curtains of blue and white because I know that there wouldn’t be any other time to make new draperies in time for the fiesta.

I am more worried instead that the house would not be ready for the guests by October 29. If I scan the house right now, I would say that the furniture and the home decorations are not in sync. I do not like our wooden sofa set and our huge dining table. The sofa occupies a lot of space and it hasn’t given me any comfort at all. It’s very rigid and hard, like wooden pews or the garden benches. That sofa has been with us for almost 20 years.

Now there’s the dining set. It’s huge. 3 x 6 feet that occupies one third of the dining room. Years back, my sisters and I used this as a ping-pong table. At some point we even moved it out of the house and on to the lawn and played table tennis with the rays of the sun on our scalps. It is also made of hardwood: Narra to be exact and this table has always been a problem every year. How I wish that I could break this table to bits and pieces and use it as fuel to cook food for the fiesta.

And there are more wooden furniture like the cabinet that served as divider for the living room and the dining area, the ‘palo-china’ cabinets, the corner racks and the overhead kitchen cupboard. I haven’t mentioned yet the several outdated appliances which are still being displayed in the corners of the house. The betamax, the VCD player, a couple of stereo-cassette players, the karaoke set, component player, gas range and stand fans.

If I had my way, I want to get rid of these items so that I could do something about the space that would be vacated. But for now, I do not have the luxury of time. And I couldn’t just devote all of my free moment to think of ways to improve the layout of the house. One could not even proceed with the re-organization without the needed resources like money. There’s always money involved in re-decorating and transforming some sections of the house.

I just bought a magazine today, an October issue that contains some pictures of wonderfully designed philippine houses. I simply wanted to get some ideas from the mag so that I could check if it’s applicable for our 200 sq. m house. I feel sad when I flipped the pages of the magazine because I realized that our house was built without good planning for the layout and interiors. The house was built just because it was needed to be built. Mom and Dad just want to have a house made so that they could call it their own. And because it was built to fulfill their dreams, I realized now that the house has become a living nightmare.

It’s just difficult to decide which part of the house to start re-organizing. The living room is basically a pain in the neck: gray leather couch, television rack, the center table bearing a huge vase with plastic flowers placed at the corner of the room and some cheap sets of clay pots at the side. Cross-stitched works hang loosely at the center wall. The living room has no character.

The house has a high ceiling. In other words the walls are twice my height and they’re wide and barren and empty. Walls are white with uneven surfaces and are adorned with framed cross-stitched artworks. There’s nothing much to see on the walls other than the needle works. Our walls seemed rather cold and lifeless.

But for now, my focus is on how to provide more free space in the house. If I could get rid of the hardwood sofa set and the dining table and some appliances, the house may just be able to accommodate more visitors for the fiesta.       

Delayed and Stranded

Stranded in an air transport terminal building, I let the minutes fly by. For  I didn’t have any other choice but to let it pass me by.

My flight was delayed for at least 3 hours and I have decided to wait for the boarding time. I didn’t bring any book or newspaper with me. I only had my lappy and some back issues of my company bulletin. The day was like one of the many occasions when flights got delayed and the officers at the check-in counter would just smile back at you and mock you for checking too early for the flight.

Normally there’s no traffic on the streets on Sundays. But surprisingly today, the main thoroughfares of Metro Manila were deserted because people were glued to their tubes and radios for the Pacquiao-Barrera boxing match. The taxicab just glided through EDSA and onto the Airport Road in just 20 minutes.

I arrived at the centennial airport two hours before my scheduled flight. The officer at the check-in counter informed me that my flight was delayed and I had come 4 hours early for my flight. I didn’t have any room to argue with the officer.

But had I known, I could have stayed longer at the North Park Restaurant with my partner and have spent more time with him . Or I could have spent the morning sleeping while the rest of the Filipinos glued their eyes on the Pacquiao-Barrera fight. Or even yet, I could have just go to Binondo at Ongpin St. and buy some hopia for my family.

Point was I could have done something productive with my time rather than just spend it sitting and waiting in the cold centennial terminal 2. I asked the check-in officer if I could get in on the 5.30 pm flight. He said that it couldn’t be possible. He informed me that mine was a promo ticket and that I may have to shell out cash just to have me on the earlier flight. I made it clear to him that his suggestion was unacceptable.

Without a choice, I checked in my bags, paid the terminal fee, took off my shoes and breezed through the airport metal scanner and detector. It was a hostage situation. I was a hostage of circumstance and I blamed the airline for making me wait for hours.

But I knew that I was not the only one who felt that way. Other passengers of PR 849 were just as mad and pissed of the situation. I just hate the idea of being stranded in a transport terminal. I also hate the thought of coming in early only to be told that my trip is delayed or cancelled. I hate the notion of waiting. I do not have the patience to wait for someone or something for so long.

I had the most terrible experience in Ormoc last month. I was supposed to travel back to Cebu en route to my flight to Iloilo the following day. But luck was on my side that time because the fast craft company decided to cancel its night trip. I never saw it coming. It never crossed my mind to double-check the status of the trip before I went to the terminal. It was the only option I got and it got ‘pfffffffed’.  The only option I got had vanished in thin air.

I really got scared because I didn’t want to sleep in Ormoc. It was raining like crazy in Leyte and I got scared of the thought that another flashflood may happen. But again, I didn’t have any other option. The ferry boat’s already overloaded. Another one’s still at the dry dock. The other fast craft had no schedule at night.

Without a choice, I spent the night in an eerie hotel. I forced myself to sleep so that I could wake up early and catch the first trip out of that island.

And so, back at the centennial airport, I had no choice but to wait. The airline company began to serve late after snacks. I waited on. I waited until 6pm when the ground crew announced that it’s time to board the plane.