August 26, 2006

august 18, i, together with my parents and one of my sisters, drove to pangasinan in a town called "bani", to pay our last respects to my aunt (father's side) who died last august 12. the town of bani is the westernmost town in the island of luzon. it lies between two big bodies of water: tambac bay on the northeast and south china sea on the west, and is bounded by five towns: bolinao on the north, anda on the northeast, alaminos on the east, mabini on the southeast and agno on the south.


but before we went to the wake which was at my late aunt's house in barangay quinaoayanan, we first stayed in our other relative's house located just beside the main road. after we had lunch there, we set for the wake. the house lies in the center of rice fields. since the weather that day was rainy, we expect that the road will be quite muddy... until we got to the fields we then realized that "quite muddy" was an understatement. the road was impassable to vehicles because of the mud. so we had to get to my aunt's house by foot. we didn't have boots with us, instead, we wrapped plastic bags to our feet (including our slippers). we didn't do that to keep our skin from the wet earth, but because we didn't want to remove our slippers to protect our feet from thorns (unlike what farmers do, they walk the fields barefoot). unfortunately, i left our digicam in our car. wala tuloy kami'ng souvenir ng experience naming yun. so this is what it's like to be a farmer, i told my self. there were some parts where our feet would sink in the mud at almost up to knee level. that's why when we got to my aunt's house, we stayed there for about two hours only then went back to our other relative's house before night fall, where we spent the night. we went to bed as early as 8:00 pm...

the next day came with the rain pouring really hard. the funeral was set in the morning. when we got to the church, the rain was hammering the roof. there were even times when the chandeliers would flicker synchronized with the thunders and lightnings. parang horror movie. after the funeral service, we went back to our relative's house to have lunch, and prepared for our journey home to olongapo. but the rain hasn't stopped pouring. when we were approaching agno, we found out we wouldn’t be able to pass because the road was already flooded. meaning, we had to spend another night to be able to get back home.

but despite the rain and being stranded for a day, i'm still glad we went there. i even get to see again the masinloc bridge, where we used to have lunch under it when i was still a kid whenever we go to bani. it was really nice even for a short time to get away from the polluted metro manila and from the stress my work gives me. it still pays to get back to basics sometimes.