Foot and Fire

Paradiso del Sur in Hinigaran, Negros Occidental may not have white sand and blue shores but it can surely provide some salty fix for Negrenses looking for a place to swim. They have pools but I prefer the saltwaters.  I recalled that when we were just kids, my parents would organize a beach picnic for the family. Paradiso was not yet born then. We enjoyed swimming in the old-timer beach properties just close to Paradiso like Bulubitoon beach, Balangigay, and Canonoy. But honestly, today I can't imagine why I really loved playing in the beach given the numbers of jellyfish and rocky areas.

I love my hometown. Small-bodied she may be, but the Mangkasanons (A native of La Carlota named after folk hero Mangkas or Mantas) live in her crown a million varied lives from OFWs to public servants to tillers of the land to sugarcane mill laborers to fruit-and-vegetable peddlers and more. From valleys to mountains, their last names may vary but their faces are almost always familiar regardless which part they come from: “Mangkasanon indi bugalon” (A Mangkasanon is not a snob). I love that her small body is landlocked (probably the reason why she has the Bureau of Plant Industry in her bosom) so unlike all other cities of Negros Occidental that stretch beside the seas. I love that her arteries are sugarcane fields plus the fields that produce the staples from rice to cassava to corn and sweet potatoes. For her seafoods – fish, oyster and seaweed – she has the nearby towns of Hinigaran and Valladolid. For her vegetables – cucumber, carrot, and cabbage – she ha...