Purok Masingyahon
Purok Masingyahon
Driving south on the Negros National Highway, right after the bridge over the Bago River is the left turn towards the Maao Township and the Kanlaoon Volcano National Park. As mostly on Negros Island and especially in the province of Negros Occidental, the countryside is predominantly covered by Sugar cane or Tubo as it is called in the local language. The roads are often clogged by the slow moving “Tubo Trucks” that move day and night from the sugar cane fields and haciendas to the sugar mills that are located all over the island. Often the trucks move in convoys at night and are halted on the side of the road before dawn in order not to move through the rush hour traffic in Bacolod.
Once you take the turn from the Negros National Highway South on to the road to Maao, after a few hundred meters, one comes to the locality of “Crossing Bago”. Until the 1970, this was the point where the old highway crossed the Bago River and a bridge had been built before World War II and hence this hamlet was called Crossing Bago. The bridge was decomishend in the late 1980 and completely destroyed in one of the violent Taifuns in the early 2000’s and Crossing Bago has hence descended into a little known locality on the road side to Maao and Kanlaon Volcano National Park. Today it consists of a few dozen small houses and a church of the local parish. The road to Maao is dotted all the way with similar locations, small villages that house the people and families of the workers that labour on the various ‘Haciendas’ along the road. Sugar Cane is the predominant crop with rice now also making a larger appearance. If one drives along any of these country roads on the island, there is always some Tubo harvesting going on.
Purok Masingyahon is located in one of these Tubo plantations, off to the side of the Bago-Maao road. One reaches it via a rough dirt road, with turn off from the main road nearly invisible. Only people in the know see where the turn off is, marked by a light pole and a stick with an empty ‘sprite can’. At night, often a light is burning on that light pole so the people who get off their Jeepneys or buses know where to go. There is no road sign or other to point in the direction of the hamlet. The rough road leads into another world. On both sides usually high grass and sugar cane grows, and at night it is advisable to have a flashlight handy to shine in front of you on the track as there are snakes and monitor lizards crossing sometime from the water canal to the sugar cane or vice-versa. Purok Masingyahon consists of rather well built traditional houses, i.e. a combination of stones, bamboo and other wood or of stone bungalows. Many of the inhabitants of the Purok work either on the Hacienda, with the dominant haciendero being, for now, still the Javellana family. Others have progressed and work in the capital manila in various occupations or as Overseas Foreign Workers (OFW). Many of them have lived all their lives in this location, gone away and have come back, to settle on their ancestral land and live with their extended family. Many are interrelated to one another, which makes them one, mostly happy, big family.
There are many things that are plenty in the Purok, like plenty of dogs, plenty of children, plenty of chicken and often also plenty of happiness, which by the way is the meaning of Masingyahon. I, have been travelling to visit Purok Masingyahon for more than 20 years and have enjoyed each and every stay with the friendly people of 'my family' and in extension the larger ‘family’ in general. Known to each and many as ‘Tito Achim’ I have been running around and taking photos with my cameras all these years. Initially with my analog cameras and later with my digital cameras, all of various makes. To my disgrace I have shared very little of those images and will now try to make up for this through creating various forms of publications that I will distribute to my family for keepsake. I am starting with this one, wholy in black and white as this is a photography field I feel strongly connected to. Hopefully people will enjoy watching these images of real life in Purok Masingyahon as much as I enjoyed photographing them. Thank you to all for accepting me into your life and let me run around and take photos of you guys all the time. I love you all!!!!
Tito Achim :)
