Manggahan and more!

Happy Manggahan Festival!

Manggahan is a week long festival in Guimaras celebrating the much loved Guimaras Mango! Guimaras is very proud of their mangos, and even is quarantined from the bringing of outside mangos to the island. It is rumored (on wikipedia so it must be true) that Guimaras mangos have been served in the White House and Buckingham Palace.

Yummy Guimaras Mangos!

The week started out as any other Filipino festival does, with a parade!

Mango tribe

Corn tribe

Indigenous tribe

Every day was a different event, including local band competition, Ms. Guimaras Competition, island talent show and more, all culminating into the famous and much anticipated Eat-all-you-can-mangos (for 60 pesos lang)!

However the eat-all-you-can-mangos were a little too popular as they quickly ran out of mangos! My friends and I were certainly not going to let that stop us from our eating contest, so we ran to buy the little bit of sweet mangos they had left (they had plenty of green/unripe mangos that Filipinos also love to eat... with soy sauce) and bought enough to have our own mango eating competition. In this case I think pictures really do describe more than words....

He is really into the competition

Finishing off another mango!

juicy and sweet!

Digging in to mangos!

And of course the garbage compactor that is Jensen ruled us all by eating 7 mangos (about a kilo and a half). Needless to say we had a pretty great time hanging out with other visiting PC and JICA volunteers. My roommate and I even wore kimonos to the festival one night! (I mean how many opportunities do you get to wear a kimono?)

Kimono time

The weekend following the Manggahan Festival was Easter weekend, which Filipinos like to celebrate by attending a Pagtaltal event. Pagtalal is a reenactment of the crucifiction of Jesus. Jordan has their own well known version of such an event, attracting visitors and tourist every year. It is quite a day since it starts out in the morning at the bottom of the the island and then you follow the actors as they act out the events leading up to the crucifixtion, at the top of one of the highest points of Jordan. It was a very hot and sunny 6 hour walk but quite the experience. The people who perform do it every year as volunteers for their church. Def not something you see in the states!

Pagtaltal

So as you can imagine with all of these events going on, there has not been much work to do, but I have my PC training going on for the next two weeks, followed by biophysical assessments, and my parents and brother visiting in June (yeah!).

I will keep you posted!
Halong gid!

P.S. Hope everyone had a Happy Earth Day! I know I did! I helped my Provincial Gov plant over 800 mangroves in one of my coastal barangays.

Celebrating Earth Day with my co-workers and community members

planting those mangroves!