Adopting buro

By Glaiza Bernadeth Pinto

It was April 1997… I still remember that month as if it was only yesterday. We arrived in the town of Alcala from Mambusao, Roxas City in the Visayas.

It was summertime then but it seemed to be the beginning of the season of rains, when water from the heaven brings forth nourishment upon the earth, removing the thirst of the soil.  But my ten-year old heart remained dry; the rains failed to bring new life into my heart for I was a stranger in a strange, new land.

Our family — my mother, two brothers and myself — tried to accustom ourselves to this new place, to fulfill my father’s wish that we also learn to love the place that holds his roots.
Read more

Uprooting

By Marifi Jara

This time last year, I wrote a melancholy piece about celebrating the sea. This year, there is a happy note. Our barangay, Nibaliw Narvarte (though it will always be Sabangan in my heart), just celebrated its first Tuyo Festival, timed with the province-wide Pista’y Dayat.

Activities were aplenty and though there was hardly anything related to highlight the sea and its bounty, it was an excellent beginning for hopefully more environment-focused festivities in the coming years. To begin with, it bears thinking the irony that our coastal community does not actually source its fish for making tuyo from its own waters.
Read more

Happy 100 Islands thoughts

By Marifi Jara

IT was a good day to visit the Hundred Islands.

The staff manning Quezon Island, the biggest and most popular stop among the developed islands, said Wednesdays are usually the slowest during the week. They, of course, are not too happy about that because it means business is sluggish. But from my tourist’s point of view, I could not have planned a trip at a better time as I am not a big fan of big holiday crowds.

I went there, with my younger brother Francis, to bring our older brother’s teen children, Bryan and Thea, who are spending a week’s holiday here at their lolo and lola’s house.
Read more

Arts scene

By Marifi Jara

AT a time when we are bombarded everyday by news of rising prices, rice shortage, political bickering arising from deep-seated corruption, and crimes both petty and grave, it is difficult to think about the arts.

The arts, after all, is traditionally associated with the elite and customarily thought of as a luxury — something that can be indulged in only if you have plenty of time and money to burn.
Read more

Summer heat

By Marifi Jara

Summer seems to have come so suddenly this year.

One day on the second week of March, it was still quite chilly in the late afternoon until early morning and nicely cool during the daytime, then the next day, as if from nowhere, the heat came to signal that summer has definitely arrived.

And it has been hot, hot, hot since.

It is this heat, shooting up to the human fever level of 38 degrees (and feels even higher at noontime!), that so many people have to bear when lining up at outlets selling NFA rice, priced at almost half now compared with the more high-end commercial rice.
Read more

People of the rice

By Marifi Jara

My 63-year old dad is an archetype bitukang pinoy.

That simply means he does not feel full after a main meal without rice.

I myself who can go without rice for a day or two, feeling a bit homesick while in a foreign land once, cried and could only justify it by saying, “I miss rice.”

Our national language, true to being a tongue that reflects the soul of its people, actually captures our deep rice culture.

While the English language basically refers to rice as rice, we have a whole gamut of terms that encompass the many levels of our rice cycle, something that is crucial in translation endeavors.
Read more

Pro-life

By Marifi Jara

(I am writing this week’s column with reports from The PUNCH student trainees Charmaine Dizon, Wilna Memorial and Jahwela Ocay from UP Baguio.)

In Manaoag, home of the shrine of Our Lady of Manaoag, also known as Nuestra Señora del Rosario, a popular pilgrimage site for Catholics, family planning is aggressively being pushed by the local government.

Local officials know that the Catholic Church is against the government’s family planning program as a whole, and they do admit that there is strong opposition from the local Catholic clergy against their efforts.
Read more

Holy Week adventure

By Marifi Jara

Back in the 1980s, I particularly looked forward to family holidays in San Fabian, or elsewhere, timed during the Holy Week because that was an era before the advent of the smorgasbord of viewing pleasures offered by cable and satellite television.

With school out and most time spent at home just reading Nancy Drew books and watching television, Holy Week then meant a deprivation of my favorite local shows, especially the Filipino pop culture-pioneering Eat Bulaga (and looking at Joey de Leon and Vic Sotto now, why does it seem that they never age, physically and the sense of humor? Amazing, ‘di ba!).
Read more