My Village

Contrary to popular notion that I have always been a city girl, my formative years were spent in rural Cebu. We live in an idyllic place that feels like ‘The Village’ village.

It is off the highway and a little skirting road leads to the foothills where we are situated. It has an atmosphere of a self sufficient tiny bed of civilization. Bordered on the north by great hills, on the south by a brook, and on the east and west by fruit bearing trees and corn fields.

There’s a tiny elementary school where I studied. Although it is no longer as tiny as I remembered it; because improvements were made. I embraced its quintessential barrio school touch that I was disheartened to see that they traded in our vegetables plots and school gardens for additional classrooms. In the 90’s we only had six classrooms all for grades 1 to 6, and the gardens were so vast I extended my gardening to our own home yard.

I used to sneak into the gardens during weekends and pick tomatoes, eggplants and okras. I ate the green tomatoes dipped in salt and spend the rest of the lazy afternoon playing with tadpoles in the stream.

The great hills, much to my dismay, had parts of it buldozed for a cement road. We used to visit relatives up the hills by foot. We hiked up the foot path made of rocks and tree roots. I thoroughly enjoyed these hikes, but it wasn’t so apparent because I was a lousy hiker.

As kids, we turned the ravine into a giant slide. We each got our own palm leaves and any giant leaves we can find and use it to slide against the steep hillside.

Cows and goats abound, I had an unforgettable immaculate sighting-for a seven year-old, at least-to witness the birth of a kid. It felt like the confirmation of animal books and nursery rhymes and sesame street episodes.

I can still sense the earthy smell of fruits, damp soil, cow manure and burning leaves. The frogs still come out in the early evening, some still hang out at the door. The big lizard, a.k.a. tuko is still making the tu-ko sound at night.

But my childhood brook is no longer pretty. Modern stone houses have sprung up in our quaint village. The mountains which provide a mystical backdrop to our smallness is now venue for expensive real estate. The moving fire lights at night, which we used to think as voodoo ceremonial lights are now gleaming halogen bulbs.