Baguio Holy Week, then and now
MY SPECIAL birthday greeting to my first grandchild, now a full teenager grandson, Donyell B. Sison, who celebrated his natal day same day with his grandpa, that’s me, last March. Only that he was there by the Mississippi River while I was here by the Balili River. God bless you and guide your steps, Donny!
-o0oLast Tuesday, I accommodated a colleague to hitchhike with me to free her from the stress of traffic on way from the Capital Town of La Trinidad, Benguet, to the City of Baguio, particularly from Km. 5 to Km. 4. After she alighted and then upon my reaching the upper portion of historic Session Road, I heard the sound of church bells. The sound led me to a decision of attending late day Holy Mass at the old Baguio Cathedral. What transpired brought me to comparative thoughts about Baguio half a century ago and the Baguio of this very day.
I could not help coming to smile upon recalling a definition of analogous term in logic class where analogous term was defined by one line of philosophical thought as a term that signifies something partly the same and partly different. That was the Baguio that presented itself to my consciousness that afternoon. More than fifty years ago, the six o’clock p.m. tolling of cathedral bells was joined by the insistent sound of the City Hall siren. The conjoined sounds stopped all other man-made sounds and motion. Vehicles and pedestrians stopped where they happened to be, led by those at main thoroughfares like Session Road and Harrison Road. I came to know they were praying the evening angelus, the prayer among Roman Catholic Christians to remind people of the God’s coming to effect their redemption from sin. The practice gave Baguio a Christian religious hue aside from its being a place of respite from the sweltering heat of the summer lowlands.
That evening last Tuesday, I was in about the same place. Cars no more stopped, people went on walking, talking, and doing their usual business. The same with cars except at crossings by force of the red and green of traffic lights. Where before, traffic enforcers halted moving machines and people, they themselves kept on whistling and giving signals.
The same happenings took place at other sections at the Burnham Park, whether at the lake, bicycling areas, playing grounds, swimming pools or the Rose Garden, as so named by BARP and BEA, and worse at the Public Market. Six p.m. was just like any other hour, except as a time to shift to another mundane activity. Speaking of traffic, the present Baguio seems no to recall anymore with importance that Baguio was designed by the American for fifty thousand inhabitants. Today, that was a dream unfulfilled forcing us to dream of a monorail overtopping the Balili stream from Baguio to La Trinidad. That is surely a very welcome dream. We hope that it will push through, and soon. We are graduating lots of engineers every year. Many of them are toppers. They can do wonders if tapped. Hand workers are aplenty. First class riprappers hail from the hinterlands of Cordillera. Masons and carpenters swear they can build houses anywhere “basta saan matinnag ti kalding”.
But overpopulating Baguio is not to the taste of Mayor Mauricio Domogan. He wants development to be spread throughout the Region. Many agree with him. The Church, influential that it is, can help in bringing about a Baguio that is fit for human habitation. Sheer number should bow to that.