Apo sweet Apo

Just got back from a few days of visiting with friends on la isla bonita of Apo. To get there from my grandma's house in Cebu you take a 4 hour "fast craft" ferry to the port city of Dumaguete where motorized petty-cabs fill the streets with their exhaust and incessant buzzing. From here you take a jeepney (adorned covered pick-up truck) 45 minutes south to Malatapay, a market where every Wednesday throngs of people from the rural surroundings gather to buy and sell their stuff including livestock. Malatapay is by the sea and from here you can take a pumpboat across shimmering blue and 45 minutes later you reach Apo Island.

It's a tiny little island of maybe 75 families. There’s no cars or bicycles for that matter—just a foot path that runs through the village. There’s a common well from which the people bathe and wash, and there is electricity but only from sunset to 10 pm. All of the folks there are poor, most being fishers, but it’s as an idyllic a place as I’ve been. Perhaps it’s the perspective of the colonizer finding such a setting a romantic utopia. I’m not sure. But the people despite their lack of “things” seem truly happy there—children playing their games together or doing their chores or searching for crawling things during low tide; grown-ups, pretty much the same thing.

(I remember sitting in front of Louis' house waiting for him to give me a lift back to the mainland in his fishing boat. A boy was working to repair his net in the soft morning light beneath a mango tree with a dog asleep at his feet. A girl was nearby washing clothes by the well. Words exchanged. Laughter. Glances back and forth. A courtship display? Ahhh the sublime blessedness of this life!)

There are a few bamboo “waiting sheds” throughout the village where people just hang out, not waiting for anything in particular, but just passing the time together. Maybe this is where “oral tradition” gets passed on to the younger generations, I don’t know. The big topic of discussion when I was there was about this guy Kiken who I know from the previous times I’ve visited Apo. He was in the hospital with a mutilated hand and severed pinky finger. Apparently a “killer” had moved to the island since I was last there, and Kiken had just enough time to use his hand to block the killer’s machete in an attempted mortal blow to the neck during dinner one night. What’s more, the killer was Kiken’s uncle…Drama! Always something to keep things exciting I guess.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to be able to celebrate St. Juan’s feast day on the Island. On June 24 each year everyone gathers at the beach with lots of food and drink, and a fiesta it is! I even observed the locals having “chicken fights” in the water…perhaps it originates here? There was a lot of pancit and beko and kinilaw (buckets of raw fish in vinegar- yum!)

Anyway that was my latest adventure. I’m in the south in Davao right now with my aunties and cousins here until Saturday. I’ll probably leave for my assignment in Biliran on Monday…probably. “Take your time!” Fr. Neil, my boss in Biliran tells me. “You need to bond with your family in a Filipino way!” Aye aye!