SOTANGHON CON CALDO AND HOMETOWN FIESTAS

In the Island of Rapu-Rapu, Albay

Jaime E. Masagca

 

From the port, one of the most beautiful sunsets

Reminiscing fiesta breakfasts in my maternal grandfather’s house. The food waiting for us after the 6:00 o'clock mass is sotanghon con caldo, marca sotes, ibos, suman latik, and a hot cup of hot tablea (native chocolate). 

 

Suman, Ibos, and Latik

My great aunt, Paulina, aunts, close kins, and us visiting nephews will be in the first table or “Primera Lamesa” while distant relatives and tenants would be busy serving other fares or busy cooking food for lunch a few hours after when other visitors would arrive. 

Latik and Tablea

I miss those days when we attend mass with our great aunt Paulina and her husband Aurelio, we in our crisp white long-sleeved shirt and dark long pants and our aunt in her delicately ironed Sunday dress. 

 

Sotanghon con Caldo

From that, I got the habit of occupying the front pew, though later I also have to be up front as an acolyte and as a member of the boy's choir and later in the 80s as an organist in another church.

 

Parish Church of St. Florentina

Going home for my mother's hometown fiestas was something we look forward to, in our younger years to just romp and play in my grandfather's stack of Manila hemp, but as we grew up to be with other relatives and childhood friends with whom we spent more time with than in the ancestral house.

 

From the pier a porter would take my bags to my grandfather's house, just mentioning the name of "Ms. Ecal", who is well known in the community being a school teacher, or "Tata Dadoy na Pilay", my grandfather, while I would walk and along the way, I would drop by at several houses of relatives and friends and be home much much later to the worry of our Aunt Goly as the bags are there but not the children.

 

My late cousin Salvador was still called then by old folks as "Empon" while me as "Bondying", after the movie title that was popular at the time I was born. It was my older cousins in Tabaco City that gave me that name says, my mother.

 

I remember going home to my mother's hometown every election to support my grandfather and other relatives running for public office but going home for the fiestas is best.

 

Sta. Florentina, Patron Saint of Rapu-Rapu, Albay

On May 27 will again be the town's fiesta but sadly we can't be home.