Roots
Celebrating the sea
By Marifi Jara
I rode my bike to the beach last May 1, day of the Pista’y Dayat (Sea Festival), to pay my homage to the sea.
Some of my most enchanting childhood memories are holidays spent here, at the San Fabian beach.
Our family’s summer sojourns to the north was something that never failed to thrill me. We always started our journey before the break of dawn. And so as we cruised along the highways and byways, the sun slowly nudged up the eastern horizon, past farms, open fields, mountains, intermittent houses, haunting lines of trees, and awakening town centers.
I would know we were close to my Lola’s house as soon as the road turned rough. There would be one last left turn to take and near the end of that pebbled street, past a few houses, grassy vacant spaces, a school and the cemetery, we would come to the red wire fence of Lola’s property and stop in front of the usually open wooden gate.
After an entire morning spent frolicking at the beach and swimming in the sea – totally famished and sunburned to the bone but absolutely blissful – we would trek back to the house just in time for lunch where a bounty would be waiting – huge crabs, shrimps, bangus (milkfish), tiny green grape-like seaweeds called ar-arosip, juicy tomatoes, steamed rice that had a distinct flavor for having been cooked in a clay pot under wood fire, and the sweetest mangoes.
Back then, our barangay was called Sabangan, a name I find lyrical and charmingly romantic for it means the place where the river meets the sea. It has since been changed to Nibaliw Narvarte, a name I find utterly unexciting.
Many other things have changed in this fishing village over the last three decades — the interior streets are now paved (albeit the construction work is substandard), the population has shot up by (I estimate) threefold, and there’s now a privately-owned bangus processing plant providing an alternative livelihood to the people apart from a small and informal tuyo (sun-dried fish) industry in the area near the coast.
The bangus and what they make into tuyo are not harvests from the sea here. The truth is, the marine catch here has tremendously dwindled over the years because of the unrelenting practice of dynamite fishing. There are efforts to put a stop to it, but there is still no solid and concerted coastal resource management project that will rectify the damage and set up a long-term, sustainable marine district.
No wonder there was no celebration going on last May 1 at the beach. There is no real deep devotion here for the dayat.
The stretch of the Sabangan beach, even all the way up to Nibaliw Magliba and the more commercial Nibaliw Vidal area, was relatively quiet save for a small crowd of vacationers and locals taking a much-needed respite from the heat. As I watched the lovely sunset, I indulged in the silent magic of my childhood summer playground. And I shed a tear for her.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/roots/)
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