🇵🇭 TINGLAYAN • Chewed, Swallowed Frogs in Buscalan, Kalinga

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Edmar del Castillo Guquib at Sunday, January 26, 2014 4

Stories of town explorations.

"We talked with joy behind the darkness. That dinner unleashed the real us. The candlelight was a silent witness of our fears, happiness and life's perspectives."

That day, I defied the common belief that Buscalan is all about getting a tattoo from Fang-Od. In Buscalan. there's great joy from simple things; there are great experiences from a short moment; there is ample food from little amphibians, represented by frogs.

This set of frogs jumped to my stomach

Buscalan is a village where every visitor has no right to complain, even Justine Bieber. This is a village for resiliency. Residents here can survive with ease without the presence of continuous supply of water, power (to charge their cellphone battery) and Wi-Fi.

In terms of food, this is not a problem here. They till their fields with crops that supply them food. Sometimes, they get frogs and cook them. Yummm.

Preparing for the food

This piece you are reading now is a documentation of how I spent my first dinner and night in Buscalan. This is not the usual dinner I experience often in many restaurants. This dinner has a heart, a soul. It is very special that it is not easy to move this to the trash section of my memory.

My local host showed me what is our meal for that night. He showed me what's inside that silverware he is handling. I saw frogs.

Frogs, destined to be eaten

Frogs aren't new to me. I eat frogs in my hometown , actually. This is a childhood food. I grew up eating frogs.

As a frog-eater, I know where and when is the right time to capture them based on my childhood experiences. We get them from the pond at our backyard created by a heavy downpour of rain. We get them at night wherein they turn noisy and active because these frogs are nocturnal.

But here in Buscalan, there is a twist and it was not present in my childhood experiences. My thinking is that these frogs dwell in swamps, ponds or any stagnant temporary accumulation of water.

...my ignorance that these edible frogs are only present in the lowlands has ended.

Frogs on the plate

In Buscalan, never have I seen a pond, let alone a swamp. But since I saw flooded rice fields, my theory is that these frogs reside there. At least, my ignorance that these edible frogs are only present in the lowlands has ended. I just killed that kind of ignorance and buried it to the trash section of my memory.

No frogs here. They have jumped to our stomach.

This is my first night in Kalinga, indeed memorable. I spent dinner with my local host's family and some other strangers-turned-friends I met for the first time.

This was the best meal ever. It was not just about the frog but it was about the essence of the dinner. I ate the local way. We sat on the floor with the food therein. We created a circle with the food at the center. Until...

This is a moment where there is no room for complaining.

Blackout

The power supply wasn't able to wait for us to finish our dinner. We spent that moment with a candlelight and a chilly air. This is a moment where there is no room for complaining. This is the life here. It's simple, kind of deprived yet no one seems to complain.

It was that dinner where my heart is pumping joyously; not that I am lucky to have a continuous supply of power in my place but because I am learning to appreciate the little things.

Sometimes, we only get to appreciate the value of a thing when it's gone. We also tend to realize the good deeds of a person when he dies. In Buscalan, I learned the value of little things around that without these little things, there will be no big lessons in life that make us better persons. I always tell this, I travel to learn. I treat it as a form of education that our present curriculum can not teach.

We talked with joy behind the darkness. That dinner unleashed the real us. The candlelight was a silent witness of our fears, happiness and life's perspectives. All is well.

The talk went long, even longer than street conversations under street lights. The darkness cloistered us in one place. It bound us as one soul. It was a long night of exchanging stories of victories and heartaches. Then we called it a night. As the candlelight is about to be defeated by the darkness, I searched for that plate-of-frog. I should have picked another piece only to find out that the plate is already empty.

The next day I woke up and what happened was disappointing yet beautiful to the contrary. /to be continued...