sitangkay

I couldn’t be happier when Magnolia Fragrance finally landed on the dock of Sitangkay. If you look at the Philippine map, you could see that Sitangkay is at the tip most of Tawi-Tawi. It was quite a quaint place, with only a pier in the middle of the sea, without any surrounding houses whatsoever. The water was very clear, hinting of a white sandy bottom. My bladder has been aching to explode but I hardly noticed when we got there because of a certain tingling in the air that told me, you’re in a different but beautiful world now.

People rushed out of the ship and immediately rode smaller boat they call ‘temper’ (which they pronounce tempel as they can’t say their R’s). There were at least ten such boats that really just waited for Magnolia Fragrance to come.

When Fr. Celoy (a new addition to our troop, the Bishop went to a different place), Sr. Betty and I finally settled on our temper, I immediately took out Tasha to document as much as I can. An obvious sign that I was new, but at that point I didn’t care. The DOM has been forgotten, the loss of my Smart sim forgotten. What mattered was I was finally out of the dull, dreary and dirty world of Magnolia Fragrance and into the freedom of the sea.

The temper proceeded to the main town of Sitangkay. It was like regular traffic, but instead of cars you had boats. Since it was low tide, there were only portions of the sea of which the sea grass has been ‘weeded’ so boats could pass. There were huge portions of land that were exposed with the low tide. Storks and herons flocked to these areas, searching for their dinner.

While on the boat, Sr. Betty already told me that Sitangkay was the Venice of the south. I really couldn’t imagine what she meant by that as she did not elaborate. Finally as we approached Sitangkay, I finally understood. There was no land at all. Well, there were, but it appeared only on certain times of the day. So the houses were all on stilts or concrete columns, depending on your societal status. The business establishments were placed on streets made from rocks cemented together. There was an alley for the boats, so on either side of us were Sitangkay stores. They were connected with each other through foot bridges.

Unfortunately, there was no such thing as waste management there. Sitangkay was not only a little Venice, it was also a mini-Payatas. Trash were just strewn everywhere. On the streets and in the water. It hardly stank, but it didn’t smell pleasant either. I could feel my heart almost twisting in pain with the imagery of turtles choking on plastic bags and fish getting caught in wires. Agh. But then I couldn’t blame these people either. There was barely any land for them to build their houses on. Much less, land to bury trash in.

I took my mind off that thought for a while and went back to admiring this particular world. It was just your regular provincial poblacion, with people singing “Pinoy Ako” in the videoke house, girls clad in their malong pants taking a nice walking while giggling about the cute boy manning one stall, mothers carrying their babies to the neighbor while chatting about the latest gossip. There were call centers (the place where you call), pawn shops, bakeries, grocery stores, dry goods, and whatever sort of business you can think off. More interesting was the floating market. There were boats carrying varied merchandise of panggi (dried cassava shaped in bond paper size rectangles), fresh vegetables, fish and crustaceans.

Our temper would have proceeded all the way to the parish convent but the water was too low for us to go any further. So we had to get down and walk the rest of the way. Fortunately, I didn’t get as many stares as I did from Magnolia Fragrance because the people were already familiar with Fr. Celoy, so with hardly any question, I was a Christian guest.

We finally got to the kumbento for a bit of rest. I was a bit alarmed at the idea of sleepin in the place. It was like building a house on top of a trash heap. Since it was at the farthest end of the ‘island,’ the tides deposited most of the trash there. That would have ruined the joy of being on the ocean, when instead of a white sandy beach, I’d be seeing garbage-ridden coast (covering the white sandy beach).

I didn’t know what to expect when they told me that we were proceeding to Halusugbu, a pondohan, farther out in the sea. Simply because I never imagined Sitangkay to be so corrupted by waste. For all I know, Halusugbu may just be the same.

We couldn’t go anywhere yet though since the water was still too shallow. And so I just sat down (I peed first, though), enjoyed a cup of milo and looked around.

Kids were running on the foot bridges like it was your ordinary paved road. They skipped through missing planks, without much thought. Kites flew in abundance, looking like sea birds hunting for their next meal. The coconut trees standing on the little bit of land danced to the sea breeze. The water was finally coming in, carrying along with it what looked like to be a battalion of colored jelly fish, as if they were on a mission, only to discover that they were colored plastic bags.

And I mused, days may just be lonesome there, especially life is dictated by the water. Time is spent waiting. Waiting for the breeze to fly your kite. Waiting for the high tide so you can travel. Waiting for the next ship so you can go someplace else.

I smiled at the thought. After being rushed the weeks before that, it was nice to have to surrender control to something as fickle as nature.

That was a time when I rediscovered what “go with the flow”meant.