My sister, April, and her husband are visiting the U.S. this fall. I can't believe how fast the time has flown. Can it be more than two years ago when my older sister, Merma, and I visited them in the Philippines? I have not even looked at all the photos I shot on that trip! Here is one image from several that I am downloading to my Flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/karuna71/) later today.
Our hosts had taken us along the coastal road running along the eastern shoreline of Panay Island. This road is new. It wasn't built when I lived there. We picked it up at Lopez Jaena Street where the street used to end in a dike. Beyond were farms planted to watermelon and peanuts and coconut groves. Fishermen went out in their boats from Baluarte. Old women carried the fish and shellfish, many still wriggling, the fish gills still pumping for air, in woven bamboo trays on their heads. They would pass by my grandmother's house. My lola had suki, fish vendors from she bought fish often. They knew what she liked and would come into the garden and up the walk to the kitchen door to show what they had. Those were times of innocence. Fish was poor people's food. Seafood was plentiful and I didn't appreciate the feast until now when the sea's bounty is no longer as plentiful. I heard much of the fish from the overfished surrounding waters were being exported to America where they sold for much wanted dollars. The locals have to content themselves with the rejects.
Sixty years later I bemoan the times long gone. Back then, the freshly caught deep-sea fish, crustaceans, and mollusks were so tasty they needed no sauce or other seasoning. The women would cook them over coconut husk embers or lightly simmer them in rain water with a few squeezes of native tomato and scallions.
My father owned land in Dumangas, about an hour north of the city. April has retained a small piece of the property where Arturo has planted mahogany trees he hopes to harvest in a dozen more years. They built a Lilliputian bamboo and nipa (a dwarf, swamp palm harvested for the leaves used for roofing) hut where my sister dreams someday she would retire to compose church music. Around the hut grew my brother-in-law's country garden, surrounded by irrigation ditches that overflow with water in the rainy season.
Dumangas used to be known for huge fishponds. A few has survived. We drove past this ramshackle restaurant by a small fishpond and decided to try our luck there for lunch. In the open air, the smell of the sea in the air, anything tastes good. When I came back to America I could hardly eat restaurant food here for several weeks. They tasted too rich. I missed the flavors of food that still tasted of the earth and sea, simply prepared, unadorned by herbs and spices and fatty sauces. We keep looking back at Paradise we didn't know we lived in until we have left it, of our own free will but uncomprehendingly. That we can live more conscious of the blessings we have when we still have them!
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