More fun, excitement up for 4th Pandan Festival
By Eva C. Visperas

 

 

 

 

HERE’S to people who love to eat exotic foods.How would you like your salagubang, palaka, palikpik, bayawak, paniki, dagang bukid, hito, grasshopper and snake cooked?  Whether you prefer them fried, tinola style, or adobo, all can be prepared with pandan leaves to make them more appealing to your stomach’s delight!
 

This town, which will turn 104 years old on April 8, will showcase these exotic foods as it reminds Mapandanians of   their past through food, songs and dances when it celebrates its Pandan Festival.

Mayor Jose Ferdinand Calimlim told me (with friend Yolly) that pandan (screw pine), from which the town’s name was derived, will once again take the center-stage as another 20,000 people are expected to gather anew 20,000 people for this year’s festivities.
Calimlim said every year they present new concepts using pandan. “We’re trying to remind people of how things were before,” he said.
With the theme” Baley  Kon Mapandan, Inar arok Anggad Kapigan (My town Mapandan, I will love forever),” Calimlim said the food festival dubbed as “Hapag Pandan” will use pandan in a cooking competition for main dishes  like pork, beef, chicken, secondary food group like frogs, field mice, grasshoppers, etc., desserts and drinks.
School children will also display their dancing prowesses in street dancing and cultural presentation as they will be clad in pandan-inspired costumes and other indigenous materials like coconut shells, charcoal, twigs, dried leaves, scrap iron, plastic, glass, candy wrappers, softdrink straws, softdrink crowns, tetra packs, among others.
To reminisce the past, contestants will also depict during their customs and beliefs during wedding, courtship, pregnancy, giving birth, entertaining guests, building a house, adolescence, giving of names to children, family life, among others, through songs and dances of Mapandanians in a cultural presentation,.
Ten of the 15 barangays here are expected to join.

“We want to establish our own identity through pandan,” Calimlim said.

He added that since the holding of Pandan Festival three years already, the town has earned recognition having been listed in the Department of Tourism’s EZ Map 2005 edition among the endorsed tourism activities nationwide.

To sustain the pandan industry here, Calimlim said he provided initial funds for the planting of pandan which in turn guarantees buying the plants from the growers and plant these along the roads.

In the past, people have been indiscriminately cutting the plants until they realized that pandan has many uses, Calimlim said.

Some of the festival activities will be at the town’s Pandan Avenue.

 

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