By COOPER RESABAL JR.
TORIL, Maribojoc – On the eve of their fiesta, residents of this scenic barangay buried on Thursday a mother and a teenage girl who were casualties in a landslide triggered by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that hit the island province of Bohol early morning on October 15.
Ten days after the tremor that claimed at least 180 lives mostly from this tourist island, a large section of the population of this barangay is still camping out in makeshift tents beside an open ground near the village hall. Most of the 114 houses here were damaged by the quake.
Toril was getting ready to celebrate its fiesta when the earthquake struck. Preparations were being made by various groups for the October 25 feast of the Virgen de los Remedios, their patron saint. Now, its art deco chapel that was just recently renovated is a pile of rubble. Its convent had also collapsed at the height of the tremor.
The barangay, in the fourth class municipality of Maribojoc, is populated mainly by farmers, fisherfolk, service workers, drivers, merchandisers, and small entrepreneurs. Copra, ubi , rice and handicrafts are its products.
Toril was the setting for the 2011 movie ‘Amigo,’ a period film on the Philippine-American War produced and directed by American independent filmmaker John Sayles.
On October 13, Barangay Kagawad Nino Talinda and Bingbing Paderog were busy rehearsing candidates for the Miss Teen World Toril, complete with a pictorial, a scripted show on a stage with a catwalk just beside the 1927 chapel. They also announced the revival of the “basaw sa Birhen” (dance beat for the virgin), a traditional thanksgiving dance for promises granted using percussion instruments, such as gongs, drums and the “bajug,” a hallowed out wooden instrument.
“There is a message in this whole thing: that whatever we have are only transient things. So we simply have to move on. Where else are we going to go? We are thankful that we survived,” Fructuosa Hibaya, 70, a businesswoman whose face was bruised as a result of the quake, said in Boholano.
“This (earthquake) has been a social equalizer. We’re staying together here, whatever our status in life. We have lost our houses, some of us have been hurt and bruised. Now, we talk, cook and sleep together in this camp,” noted Felipa Paderog, barangay treasurer, in Cebuano. “Even our illustrious businessmen also line up for relief distribution, and (stand in line) at the old water pump for a bath,” she said.
Father Flor Camacho, in his homily during the mass on Thursday for Teodora Talinda, 54, and Cristine Joy V. Rezon, 13, who were buried under rampaging rocks and soil, exhorted, “We must be prepared because we never know when we will be taken.”
Nino Talinda, son of Teodora, was almost buried alive, but survived as well as youngest son John who was trapped in a room but managed to escape.
“I struggled from out of a massive pile of soil and rocks. I must survive, I told myself,” narrated Nino Talinda, who just graduated from an information technology course at the Holy Name University in the capital Tagbilaran.
Emblazoned in white paint on the ground where the makeshift tents are, are the words: “HELP TORIL.” Beside it, an old man is drying newly harvested palay on buri mats while children play around them.
Local officials, meanwhile, have distributed meat and other provisions good for a week to each household. Relief support has finally come to the place which was once a meadow for cows, goats and horses, thus the name “Toril” (ranch).
Founded in 1960, Toril still has unpaved roads, and a water system that needs upgrading, but it has a primary school. Unlike most structures, it remains standing. Close to it is an all-wood, pre-World War II art deco house that withstood the 7.2 tremor.
“We will still mark our fiesta but probably in a quiet way. After all, we still have aftershocks, and we’re still picking up the pieces of our lives,” Paderog said.
Now, the fiesta mass will be held in the Barangay Hall where the statue of the Virgen de los Remedios has been moved, just near the makeshift tents of the residents, and the activities would be a bit subdued with the cancellation of the teen contest, the talent show and the dancing.
The fiesta will now have a different thrust, that of “re-examination” and “renewal” of ways, said Fr Camacho, the parish priest of San Isidro in Busao.
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