Sa Manggahan Festival, Sa Guimaras Makadto Ta!

As I said previously, April flew right by. After returning from China to Guimaras, the 2012 Manggahan Festival began the next day. Manggahan, or Mango Festival, is the provincial fiesta. Provincial fiestas tend to be huge (like Masskera in Bacolod City and Dinagyang in Iloilo City), but of course Guimaras being one of the smallest provinces in the Philippines, Manggahan is on a much smaller scale. Nonetheless, for the volunteers on Guimaras, Manggahan is hands down the best fiesta of the year and something we had been waiting for all year.

Having 5 volunteers on a tiny island is a lot to have in one place. We agreed that we should try to do something together to seize the opportunity of having so many volunteers in one place. We decided that Manggahan would be the perfect chance, and through lots of brainstorming, we came up with having a booth at the festival. The booth was mainly a brainchild of Stacey Dee, and the plan was to have a booth that educated the community about our sectors as well as share the work we do and who were are. Talking to people about our projects, our mission, and who we are is pretty much the core of what being a Peace Corps Volunteer is all about, and after an exhausting 7 days, the booth was everything we could have wanted it to be and more. I can’t even begin to count the number of people that came in and out of our booth during the fiesta, and we had a great chance to meet so many people, spread information about solid waste management, coastal resource management, HIV/AIDs (Stacey’s sector), America and the Peace Corps, and of course see so many of the people we’ve come to know over the past year and a half.

Of course, the fiesta was far from all work. Stef lives in the capital town, and her landlord let us stay virtually for free in the empty rooms in her boarding house. So, we could work at the fiesta all day, go back to Stef’s in the afternoon to rest up, and go back to party party at the festival. 

The highlight of the fiesta though (at least for me) had to be the Eat All You Can Mango Eating Contest. Look through my April 2011 blog entry and you’ll see lots of pictures as the volunteers stuffed ourselves with mangoes for 45 minutes. By one mango (a close 8 to 7), I beat out Rob to be the volunteer in on Guimaras group who ate the most mangoes. But Kevin, a volunteer from another region, had the most with 12. So this year, after agreeing that the t-shirt we made for the booth would be free to the winner, the competition was on. This year, due to last year's shortage of mangoes, the contest was shortened to 30 minutes. That didn’t stop us from tearing it up. All of us crushed our records from last year. Although we had some local competition (in the form of my counterpart Riro and Stacey’s Renz), the Kanos still dominated. This year, as soon as the whistle blew, I was devouring mangoes, taking no prisoners. After the 30 minutes we up, I had 13 pieces. That’s four kilos of mangoes! In thirty minutes less than 2011. Rob came in second with a respectable 10 - double digits, but the real competition was Kevin. I couldn't let a volunteer from another region hold the record in our batch for winning the the mango-eating contest. Especially since we had home field advantage! 

So enough about the Eat All You Can. Although I posted a lot of pictures from the week, considering Stacey and Stef took nearly 2,000 combined, cutting it down to 50 was no easy feat…

Manggahan kicked off with a parade featuring the LGU staff of Nueva Valencia. I'm further in the back but still looking great in my new yelow tshirt. Getting to the parade was my first time seeing everyone since returning from China, and although a little overwhelming having to change in front of the entire LGU, it immediately felt great to be back.

More pictures from the opening parade...

 

Playing the Decomposition Game with one of my coworker’s grandsons. This game demonstrated the different length of time it takes different types of waste will take to decompose. While an apple core can decompose within a couple weeks, a glass bottle will take more than 1 million years.

Our booth was shared by the LGU of Jordan. These soldiers were outside taking pictures all week and ended up helping us out a ton. Their costumes were from Pagtaltal, the annual crucifixion reenactment of Jesus done on Good Friday.

Dancing with this old guy on the first night of Manggahan.

The way we got people to come into the booth was through the "Wheel of Knowledge". Again, Stacey’s brainchild. We placed the wheel outside and would convince people to spin (libre lang!). Different colors indicated different types of questions. If they didn’t know the answers, they would be directed inside the booth to find them. There was also a special “dare” spot. It’s tough when “huya huya” (shy/ashamed) is a very common Filipino characteristic, but free prizes definitely made life easier. Here we are with the governor of Guimaras. He was the one who funded the booth.

Asking questions.

FRESCO Fresh Mango Stand

Adrian and Devine sipping on mango shakes, compliments of Stef. These kids were a huge presence of our Manggahan. From Iloilo, they came with their approximately 10 siblings to sell popcorn and other snacks at the fiesta. They hung out at our booth multiple times every day.

Another part of our work was collecting the plastics from the food vendors. Unfortunately for us, before it can be stuffed into bottles and made into “bottle bricks” that can be used to build things like a bench or school room, the trash must be cleaned. This was the most tedious part of the week. I never really got used to walking around the fiesta and picking up garbage either. It's not like I don’t get enough attention as is.

The Manggahan Carnvial from the top of the ferris wheel. Check out the octopus on the left...

It was definitely crazier than it looked. Here's Stef and her friend Cindy.

People were screaming as the train went through the dark tunnel with people jumping out at us...

...and I was too when our train derailed. Here are the guys putting it back. Meanwhile, the whole train chanted “Balik beinte. Balik beinte” (meaning, give us our twenty pesos back!)

Eat All You Can 2012

Here’s Stacey Dee and her host mom, Mama

Most of our dares were related to the booth. But this one, having someone put on the extra Roman guard outfit and walk around the whole agri-trades fair, was just for kicks. This kid was a real trooper!

There were special “questions” for kids, including “take a whaaaaacky picture with the ____ volunteer.” In this case, it was the shortest.

Mangoes!

Riro helped us out at the booth as well. Here he is taking a very shy group of girls back from the MPA map of Guimaras.

 

One of "dares" was to bring a stranger into the booth and teach them about one of our topics. Here is one girl teaching another about HIV/AIDS and other types of STIs. The prize for completing this dare was a t-shirt!

Stef and I with Stef’s supervisor, Ma’am Mildred.

Dan, Andrew, Sean and a couple other volunteers from neighboring provinces came to the fiesta. And even helped us clean trash!

Hanging out at Stef’s after a long day. Damo visita!

Back on the dance floor for another long night. I wish I could say with more certainty that my tongue usually isn’t out like that

Grabe saot

Nanay Elsa, my host mom, came by the booth

And here with are with my host sister Patriz.

The volunteers on Guimaras in our t-shirts (mine was free!)

Doing our rain dance. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Here’s Chie, our JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) volunteer friend who works in Iloilo spinning the wheel. I gave her a dare. She won a tshirt. Good deal for her.

A family answering one of the questions

Especially on the weekend, we accrued quite the crowd.

Spent a lot of time during the week talking about HIV/AIDs. It’s pretty amazing how little people here know, but considering it’s not talked about at all in the schools, it’s really not too surprising

At the wheel with Tita Sun and Tita Juliet, two of my OMAS coworkers, and their families. Empress, the girl is pink, is one of the handful of kids I know too "huya" to look at me and not hide.

Our favorite chant to get people to spin the wheel went something like this: Bata. Tigulang. Bana. Asawa. Soltero, Dalaga. Gwapo, gwapa. Niwang, Tambok. Spin the wheel! (meaning, young and old. Husbands and wives. Single guys and single ladies. Good looking boys and good looking girls. Skinny people, fat people. Spin the wheel). All our good sayings we got from Stacey’s counterpart Renz

Mayor Gaitan of Nueva Valencia came and spun the wheel

Taking a whacky picture with Frank AKA Rayno, one of the kids from my barangay

Stef answering questions at the wheel

By the last day, for our final t-shirt prize, we had this guy present to the whole crowd about HIV/AIDs. We were ready to close after a long week in the sun and talking to so many people

Our whole crew. Whacky style

Watching the fireworks show on the final night of Manggahan. Here’s Stacey Dee, Renz and some of her youth

Most likely trying to translate a Filipino text message. You’d think people would go easy on us with the abbreviations, Ilonggo being our second language and all. If we were only so lucky…

If this isn’t cultural integration, I don’t know what is

Me, Stef, Rob Denise and Lisa, a friend of another volunteer, currently on summer break from her teaching job in Seoul

Me, Renz and Rob

Stacey and I did some serious disco discoing with some her youth the last night of the festival…

…for probably longer than we should have

Only time will tell, but I’m not sure if I’ll have a better week than Manggahan 2012 during my Peace Corps service. It was a great combination of doing our jobs (well), spending time with other volunteers and our Filipino friends, and sharing our work and experiences here with so many others, both strangers and people we know well. There was a lot of anticipation, but this Manggahan was definitely worth the hype!