Photographs by Sarah Chong and Lestari Hairul
A day of churches
The day started out pretty late today as we had no special sessions in the morning, so most had taken the opportunity to sleep in while Sarah and I got up bright and early to make the trip to the various churches of Iloilo with one of the student guides, Noraisa. This is a record of our short adventure.
I’d made a list of churches to visit based on the Iloilo tourism website, and after running the list down with the other student guides based on travel distance and transportation logistics, we cut the list down to the Guimbal, Miagao, Tigbauan and Molo churches.
We took a jeepney to the jeepney terminal and because of the road-blocks for the Dinagyang Festival, the driver took several detours, swiftly navigating the back roads and alleys to reach our destination. Another ride took us towards Miagao and along the way, the jeepney made a pitstop to ‘check-in’ at a little shack made of bamboo. Noraisa told us that this was to ensure that the jeepneys were on schedule and I couldn’t help but wonder if Malaysia could implement a similar system if a city as crowded as Iloilo could do it. All it took was a man in a tiny bamboo shack with a stack of papers as his colleague dozed his siesta away on a bench behind him.
Guimbal Church in late morning
The streets were quiet in Guimbal, the sole sound being the church bell tolling to mark the mid-day prayer. We decided to photograph the areas outside of the church first and that was when we found a strange structure; an archway made of red bricks with a faded and barely visible sign in white lettering that marked it as a “Children’s Castle”.
A dedication..
..for the abandoned, dilapidated Children's Castle
A bunch of punctured, flat tires embedded in the ground; broken moss-covered slides; a giant fountain bowl; two tethered kids (as in goats) and a few chickens were all that was left of what we assumed was a playground. It would have been eerie if not for the peaceful day and the fact that we were still a little bit sleepy from the long ride out of Iloilo City.
We traipsed about the area photographing material for our next blog article before we left to catch another jeepney ride to Miagao proper. It was a good start to a day full of church and holy paraphernalia, our timing was good and we were even energized by a delicious mango shake that’s cleverly bottled with a straw punctured through the bottle cap.
Sarah and her delicious shake
A bullock ride
The jeepney rides, as they tend to be, were full of interesting sights as we passed people preparing for the Dinagyang Festival. A full-grown, fatted pig in a cage; bullocks riding on a platform connected to a motorcycle; we rode in a jeepney full of sacks of Ajinomoto and whipped the other passengers’ faces with our long unruly hair..
Hold your breath and wish
Along the way to Miagao, Noraisa told us of a local belief that if we passed through a particular bridge to Miagao, we should hold our breath through the entire length of the bridge and then make a wish on the other side. It is said that the wish will come true if one holds their breath till the other side.
The gorgeous Spanish-Baroque
We reached Miagao Church, a Baroque church that was declared a UNESCO world heritage site. The church is known as ‘a very Filipino’ church as it has specific tropical motifs to its architecture particularly the prevalence of palm tree imagery all over its façade. We were fortunate enough to encounter the caretaker of the church who was more than willing to give us a short history of the church. A comment he made about the Spanish attitude towards the native Filipinos got us thinking about the kinds of justifications made in the name of religion or collective national good.
“Labour of love or forced labour?”
Sure the results are these wonderfully beautiful buildings, but they were all constructed at the price of human liberty and suffering. That an ideology could galvanise entire groups of people to give away their paltry possessions speaks volumes about the power of faith or perhaps more possibly, the power of the threat of violence. 25 whiplashes or a block of limestone and egg from each parishioner. The church is massive; the limestones were carted 20-30 kilometres from the mountains on the backs of the faithful. The symbols of the colonisers are everywhere and the syncretic culture here is beautiful but as it is with many other things, they came with dark backgrounds.
First tricycle ride
The Miagao campus
We made a pit-stop at the UPV Miagao campus as Noraisa has a friend who goes to school there and it was cheaper to have lunch at the school cafeteria. We were given a short tour of the campus facilities by Daniel, a fisheries student as Sarah collected material for her story on the Miagao campus.
Compared to the Iloilo City campus, UPV Miagao seemed like a resort with its many winding roads hedged by gigantic trees with branches that sway with the breeze. The air was clean and the birds were chirping; even the hot sun wasn’t as relentless as in the city. We visited the facilities for the fisheries faculty and did a tour of a natural science museum, school labs and their hatcheries.
The campus was large enough that tricycles were needed to get around but to save money, most of the students walked. I don’t think I would mind walking all the time if I were a student there as the surroundings are beautiful and just downright inspiring.
Rules to live by
We bid farewell to Daniel and made our way to Tigbauan to visit another church. The heat was sweltering by then and we were still a little drowsy from our long ride out of Miagao. But our moods were buoyed the moment we entered the Parish of St. John of Sahagun. The walls and ceilings were covered with beautiful mosaic depictions of various Biblical stories. An exceptionally large concave ceiling behind the main altar contained a gigantic mosaic of heaven, a church gathering and hell.
But the star of the show here was a tiny section dedicated to the infant Jesus; St. Nino. Picture this, the smell of flowers greet you as you enter the cool cavern, and the focal point of the worship area is an altar of the infant Jesus decked out in red ceremonial robes and framed by fresh bouquets and garlands. The muted sounds from outside; the music from a boombox playing kitschy pop, the sounds of Dinagyang practice rehearsals and the hustle and bustle of a day winding down further reminds you that this is a sacred space. The chapel was a peace haven of granite and limestone and I was literally floored by the awesome atmosphere, conceding to kneel on the rests in front of the pews to reflect for a moment.
The lady of the Church
Perhaps the heat of the day coupled with the sudden entrance into a cooler locale messed with my head, maybe it was the scent of the flowers or the overload of holy paraphernalia encountered throughout our day so far. But whatever it was, I found myself in front of the Church’s souvenir store calling out to Sarah and Noraisa claiming that I “just [had] to get a few items”.
Y'know, for demon-hunting purposes.
Soon enough, I found my wallet slightly lighter and Noraisa was holding on to an odd collection of a statuary of San Miguel; a glow-in-the-dark Mother Mary; a religious pendant; a glow-in-the-dark rosary and of course, a bottle of holy water. I’d considered sneaking a few drops from the bottle we found sitting on the altar of the very first church we visited but didn’t want to be sacrilegious so when I saw that the souvenir shop had it on sale, I just had to buy one.
The gorgeous St. Anne's at early evening
We made another visit to the ‘Feminist’ Church in Molo which was actually one of the main reasons I signed up for this trip. While the architecture geek in me was delighted, I was actually slightly disappointed that there just wasn’t more to the title ‘feminist’ church aside from the existence of 16 statuaries of female saints in its interior. Nonetheless, we got some very good pictures for the article.
As the day wound down, we made our way back to the Gender building, encountering our inteprid pathfinder Dr Yeoh after his regular solo walkabout who proclaimed that we should get to the Ms Dinagying Pageant soon as the line for spectators was extremely long.
Ms Dinagyang Pageant
We found out too late that tickets were needed to enter and though Noraisa managed to rustle up one ticket, we ended up munching on some street food as we waited for the other travellers to arrive.In the meantime, we listened to San Agustin's gymnasium blaring the music of an extremely good top 40’s cover band.
With Peter’s aid, we managed to get PHP150 seats in the gym when the rest arrived, but while the atmosphere was festive and the spectacle of the pageant was grand, all of us pretty much concluded that pageants are only fun to watch in front of the television as there is a lot of waiting involved and we could hardly see the contestants as they strutted down the catwalk and danced/swayed to the music.
We left as they were starting the swimsuit round, that was how bored we were of waiting though later we were delighted to find out that the fan-favourite, a Nigerian-Filipino had won the pageant. The evening concluded with a supper at Chowking amidst much laughter and conversation over a day well spent.
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Just completed her first year and is determined to make her second year even more exciting and interesting. Lestari also likes reading, writing and 'rithmetic. Blogger Profile
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