Reminiscing the Past

Earlier this afternoon I've read ate Ramona's article about living in country side. I remember that we are neighboring province I think her province is in Leyte while in in Iloilo which had little similarities in dialect. I really miss my home province. It was the place where I was born and I learn lots of things during my childhood days.

A months ago I've already wrote about my life in province and now I'm gonna reminisce it again. My home province is Iloilo it's faraway from the city but rich in different things, we are home of different agricultural products that exported within the locality. I lived in my Tiyo and tiya which I considered as my second mother and father since my biological parents died when I'm just an infant. I didn't see their faces actually.

I was raised by my Tiyo and tiya and we are 3 siblings living in their house. They treat us family and give us the care we need. We are living in a land which they don't own hopefully the owner of the land let us live there and use the concrete house. I witness different kind of things in life and I experienced lots of stuff.

As we all know provinces are not modernized just like in rural areas that's why every works are done manual. I am the youngest that's why heavy works are not given to me before, I just help my siblings gathering branches of dried woods then help them fetch the water.

My Lola is the one who cook for us, sometimes I'm the one who gather ingredients found in our surrounding like malunggay, Sayote which is a green leaf but I don't know what it's name in English. Our place is located near the ocean and mountain and there's a civilization around that's why electricity is installed, we just need to save since electricity is expensive. We have no faucet that's why we manually pumped the poso or fetch water in deepwells just to get a bucket of water.

This photo was taken way back 2018 and it was cousin in the photo. It's the way we get water in deepwell that sometimes scary cause you might get drowned once you fell from it. That's why before I was trying to hold into something everytime I pull the bucket with the water so that I won't feel but now I don't hold anymore cause I just let myself fall for the person that I like, just kidding.

Our life is also simple, my tiyo and tiya are farmers that despite their age they can still do some heavy task. My Lola really loves to plant crops and seeds that's why I always accompany her and helping her plant the seed also. My Lolo is the one who gather grasses for his carabao and cows that's why I also accompany him and I'm the one who lifting the sack.

At the very young age I've already learn how to earn money, the plastic bottles, cans and metals that I saw on the roads or in garbage dump I put it inside the sack and bring it home. That's how I get money by lying those scraps to person who's collecting it and sometimes I get 10 to 20 pesos for few kilos of scraps and being a child having that kind of money feels like I can buy anything.

I use the money in playing taxi before, it was a gambling game which you need to hit the coin inside the box using the coin you are holding, once you hit the coin out of the box it's already yours. I'm not good at it that's why I only play with my classmates which is also not good in playing. We have keypad phone that time it was Nokia which considered to be the strongest brand of phone in the world cause it can lost for decades and cannot be destroyed easily.

We are like idiots before when we try to insert earphone on it then we use the radio and it finds a station and we are so happy to hear music in radio. We climb on trees just to find a good signal for the radio. We are also like monkeys before that really loves to climb trees to gather fruits such as mangoes, star apples, black berries and Samapaloc.

Which is the most hard to climb it's tree due to ants that is so huge and painful once you get bite but the fruit of it is so delicious since there's a combination of sourness and sweetness once it got ripped already. I have such beautiful childhood, I can say that I've enjoyed my childhood life since I have lots of marks on my feet because my Lola hits me since I'm so hard headed when I was a child but my Lola truly loves me. I really miss my home province, I am planning to save money for us to have a vacation there.