watching the setting sun

watching the setting sun is a big part of everyone's day in barrio hamoraon, a coastal paradise bounded by the blue-green sea in the west and by the verdant hills and mountains in the east. the sun peeps behind the misty mountains at dawn, slowly ascends, follows an arc over the barrio, then slowly descends amidst a huge blast of colors until it is swallowed by the sea.

watching the sun set is such a big event to the barrio folks, or so it seemed to me when i was young. there spending the first four years of my young life and all subsequent summers thereafter. but, on the contrary, sunset wasn't really a special time of the day for them.

it just happened that around this time, the farmers and workers who have stopped toiling, have made their downward trek to their nipa homes by the sea. the scorching heat of the sun gone, it was time for the raggamuffins, chasing dogs and cats, to take their play to the white pebbled beach, throwing and catching green balls that never bounced, balls made out of entwined palm. it was time for the lasses to whiten their faces with heavily perfumed chinese solid powder and to play seesaw on the narrow bancas with barefooted and barechested lads who laughed and cajoled with them. it was time for the fishermen to prepare their petromax or kolman ( brands of petroleum lamps, as in Coleman) and then to set out in their bancas for their nighttime vigil at sea.

so there at the beach they converge at sunset, the farmers and workers washing the mud off their feet in the salty water, children running and playing, the young blood flirting and laughing, the fishermen setting out to sea, the young mothers with babies on their hips and mucus-faced toddlers clinging to their skirts, old men squatting nearby, puffing on their homemade newspaper rolled tobacco, and red- mouthed women chewing on their nganga, or betel mix.

the beach has suddenly come to life, i take the scene, then i usually settle on the prow of a sibiran, a slim colorful boat, on its katigs, or bamboo floaters, and i watch intently at the sun and the sky ablazed with myriad hues of orange and purple and yellow and blue. sunset is God's gift of beauty to the people of barrio hamoraon. beauty so magnificent yet so free.

people in america would spend and travel to see such beauty. the barrio folks of hamoraon take it for granted.

i loved watching the setting sun in my father's barrio by the sea.

but i watch a different sun set now.