FOOD TRIP 4: Pista sa Baryo

Guess I’d been a city rat too long. I made the mistake of pigging out at the first house we went to and didn’t have room anymore for more food and lots more food on the second and third houses. Aaaargh! Welcome to the pinoy fiesta, the ultimate show of celebration and lavishness.

I am currently working in one of the most impoverished provinces in the country (think of rows and rows of old, dilapidated nipa houses everywhere!) and yet today, this remote fishing village looks like a washed-up whore in full garish make-up. Banderitas and streamers and flags all compete for color, along with deafening sound systems and drum and bugle corps and fireworks. And the food… wow, you wouldn’t think majority of the people in the village actually go hungry the rest of the year!

People here certainly take their fiesta seriously. Balikbayans sporting blond hair and dripping with outsize jewels come home specifically for the occasion. Long lines of hungry visitors lead to the Hermana Mayor’s house who have to feed everyone! And I mean anyone who comes through their door! And this lasts for three days minimum! I wonder how much they actually spend for the entire circus.

And how much debt they rack up.


Mawawala ba ang lechon?

SIDE TRIP 35: For whom the bell tolls

A few years back, ask me where Balangiga is and you would most probably get a blank look. But a hundred years ago, this little-known coastal town in Eastern Samar was the site of one the United States’ worst single defeats in its entire history. In one of the bravest maneuvers in the Philippine-American War in the early 1900s, Balangiga guerillas armed only with bolos attacked the garrison and killed more than 50 of the 78 American soldiers stationed there. The church bells were used to signal the start of the attack which has since been dubbed the “Balangiga Massacre”.

Of course the real massacre was not the attack itself but the subsequent brutal retaliation by American troops that resulted in the killing of thousands of Filipinos in Samar. Perhaps one of the most famous quotes in war history was the order by an American general to “Kill everyone over ten!” The same general was said to have ordered his men “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the better it will please me.”

After the burning of Samar, the American soldiers took the bells from the Church and brought them back to the US as war trophy. To this day, the Balangiga Bells remain at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. The calls for their return to the Philippines have fallen largely on deaf ears.

Today Balangiga town is as sleepy as it must have been a hundred years back. Decrepit nipa houses line the river bank, mute testaments to the poverty that is pervasive in the province. A huge covered court overshadows the monument in the plaza depicting the historic event. Other than that, a casual passerby will not have any inkling of the town’s significance in Philippine history.