Another Rainbow

Though my birthday was yesterday, I had my birthday leave today. It was supposed to be free from any client calls or the boss’s reminders or deadlines of reports. Yet I spent half of the day in front of the computer with a mobile phone in one hand and the other tapping the qwerty. As much as I wanted to detach myself from work, it’s the work itself that kept on connecting to me. And I should have taken my birthday leave yesterday.

I went to work on my birthday, thinking that my boss was in town for my scheduled evaluation, only to be told at lunch time that it’s going to be done in Manila. I should have not made any last minute preparation for the meeting that never happened.

I wanted to free myself for a while. I just turned 30 and I needed to do some meditation and to escape from the things that were tearing me apart. I needed a chance to relax and to condition myself that the year 2008 has come and there would be tough times ahead. I needed to go somewhere. I needed to relax my mind. I needed to meditate.

And so I drove to Danao City after lunch. I had been thinking about that certain church that we visited when I was in the second grade. It had a yard with the concrete busts of the parish priests and the station of the cross. I was not so sure where that church is now. I decided to stop at this church.

This is the Church of Sto. Tomas de Villanueva. It looked old in the exterior but just like the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Oslob, the interior is very plain and modern. The parish was established in 1595, but only the façade and the tiled roof remained to validate its antiquity. It may have been a fortress church considering that it faces the sea, like almost all the old churches in Cebu.

As I took pictures of the church, an old woman with a green cap approached me. She was selling candles on a very hot afternoon. I looked around. Only a few people were in the churchyard. I was an easy target. I needed to pray.

So I bought eight candles from the peddler and told her my intentions. The woman began to move back and forth, in a typical Sinulog movement as she prayed for me and my family in front of the Church of Sto. Tomas de Villanueva. I watched her dance. I listened to her pleas (which were my intentions by the way).

 

She raised the eight candles up and swung them along with her Sinulog. I lit the candles in front of St. Thomas. I bowed my head in gratitude to the heavens for my 30^th birthday.

  

Soon after, I left Danao and drove a little further. I stopped at the town of Carmen to check on my tires. Part of my intentions was a hassle free long drive to the North of Cebu. I hit the road again and drove for about an hour and arrived at this place a little past 3pm.

I finally reached Bogo City. Relatively new, Bogo became the sixth component city of the province of Cebu last year. From my house to this city, I traveled about 95 kilometers.

I thought I could not get there at all. I’d driven through hectares and hectares of sugarcanes; I had coursed my way through the zigzagging road network and passed by a lot of hills. I kept thinking whether or not I should look for a hotel and stay for a night. I was not so sure if I should spend the night in Bogo or should I drive back to my base before nightfall. I wasn’t sure if I like Bogo at all.

I left the house without ever taking my lunch. And I was very hungry when I got there. I had been counting the Jollibee sign from Danao to Bogo. The signs on metal posts were my guide on how far I was to the fast food joint. I gobbled up a burger meal with TLC and upsized les pommes frittes and diet Coke.

After my tummy was satisfied, I went around the city and took some pictures. I was quite fascinated that there were period structure still standing. Some are even comparable to the old buildings of Carcar.

  

 

Bogo also has a lot of schools, mostly Catholic. There I saw St. Louis de Marillac College, a sister school of CIC Mandaue run by the sisters of the Daughters of Charity. I went to CIC in my elementary years. Most of the schools were clustered near the city park. The schools were also old.

 

Bogo is rather small. Most of the activities are centered near the park. Almost all of streets were made into one-way. Going around, I realized that the local government made significant effort to decongest the old district by putting up commercial buildings far from the existing mall. There may be projects up for implementation, now that Bogo is already a city.

To my surprise, I saw a rainbow in Bogo.

It caught my eye when I was about to return to Metro Cebu. I saw this arch on a hill and I turned Zeewee towards this colorful arch and went underneath it. I realized that I got inside the complex of the Church of San Vicente Ferrer.

The church seemed newly-painted. The tint is similar to the Simala Church in Sibonga. It may be old. The church was also facing the sea, and was on an elevated spot. A pair of bell tower at its sides which may be used as a watchtower. Some details of the façade may have Moro influences. But just like Danao, the interiors were already modernized.

 

I am not quite sure though how and why the rainbow arc was erected. Why is it that I had been seeing rainbows lately? Why?

 

Maybe it was a sign of calmness, of inner peace, or of acceptance of oneself. I don’t know. Je ne sais pas. I think the rainbow was the sign for me to hit the road again.