They had a Cock Fight for Me by Craig Sundberg
They Were So Excited – They had a Cock Fight for Me
(Mayon Volcano, Philippines)
By Craig Sundberg
It has been sixty years since the last white person visited us during world war 2 - that was what I was told in the spring of 2007, by the village elders. I was traveling in the Philippines and found myself in a small village at the base of the Mayon Volcano. The village people were friendly. They shared smiles and stories which really made this part of my trip stand out. The children looked at me like I was an alien, while elders happily tried out their English and told quick stories about times shared with the American GIs. The villagers were so excited about my visit that they had a Cock fight just for me.
My first hint of how truly amazing this visit was going to be came at dawn as the grey replaced the darkness and the brightness of the jungle exploded before my eyes. The smells tingled my nose. Behind the house stood the Mayon Volcano, the most perfectly conical volcano in the world. Just a few feet away was a creek made from the flow of the lava and intensified from Typhoon flooding - a true reminder of nature’s power.
While hiking the base of the volcano, the perspective looking down on the village and the ocean was amazing. This view revealed the jungle ripped and torn from a Typhoon months earlier. Sometimes my guides would point through the foliage and tell me there was a village, but I could not see one. The faint sound of music and laughter filtered through the trees and soon after figures could be seen moving about the little town.
On my second day in the village we took a motorcycle cab to a waterfall. Not counting the rider, crammed third-world style on the cab, there were four of us. About halfway the cab could not carry all of us so I paid the driver and let him go. This was a bad thing as there were obviously no other cabs in the jungle. The guide gave me a choice: we could hike back through a neighboring village (eight kilometers) or cut across the rice paddies to make the trip much shorter. Looking at my feet rubbed raw from sandals I was unused to, cross country sounded best. I thought I could just walk on the dikes. Wrong. The dikes ended and we had to wade through the sewage-irrigated paddies. I was convinced that all kinds of strange things would grow from the rubbed-raw spots on my feet.
Astonishingly, the locals lived in the middle of the lagoons with their families, no walls, just a coconut roof and rooms separated only by blankets, but all still waving and friendly.
An amazing trip. Seeing the sunrise in the Jungle, an active volcano poking through the clouds touching the sky and puffing smoke over my shoulder just a short jaunt away, made my soul stir. Remembering, I can smell the dried fish and salt sauce surrounded by fruits so plump from the juices, each provided from the life of the jungle….mmmmmmmm.
