Foot and Fire

Beside the Boljoon Church called "Patrocino de Maria Parish" located in the coastal and southern part of Cebu lives a small museum filled with religious pieces from the church. Aside from the old paintings and wooden Christian images, the museum keeps some church records beautifully written in longhand and in Spanish language, among them is Julian Evangelista's parochial notebook dated 1831. The museum can be accessed virtually here . The Boljoon Studies Center introduces this museum stating, "The Museum displays more than one hundred exhibits, items used by our local ancestors for household, cooking, spinning, weaving, farming, writing, playing and many other aspects of their daily life. The exhibits are completed by numerous information panels. It is an excellent visual documentation of how our local society gradually changed from using natural (biodegradable) materials taken from the environment to plastic, from music instruments and phonograph to down...

Bolhoon -- A Cultural Sketch By Paul Gerschwiler 2009, 172 pages including annexes For five hundred pesos, this coffee table book authored by a Swiss Paul Gerschwiler who is married to a Filipina and published in 2009 by The Boljoon Heritage Foundation, Inc. went home with me. It is sold in the Museum annexed to the Church of Boljoon.   The book has ten chapters that revolves on the cultural development in the quiet southern part of Cebu; they are the pre-Spanish settlement, the pueblo of Bolhoon, the Moro defence, Nuestra Senora del Patrocinio - the church, saints, of houses and men, livelihood, education, customs and traditions, roads and transportation and the 11th part are the annexes. I have yet to progress to chapter three on Moro defense because I lavished on the quoted portions from the diary of Antonio Pigafetta and Antonio de Morga. Our world history in high school mentioned them but only in passing and I have yet to read the full translated versions....