Balamban museum

LAST Monday, I was asked to eat lunch with Msgr. Achilles Dakay, one of our mainstays in the Cebu Archdiocese. The week before, he had asked me to attend the groundbreaking for the construction of a museum building.

It was later on when I realized what he was intending to do with the Dakay ancestral home. He is converting it into a museum that would be a repository of all the best “things” that the citizens of Balamban have produced, and will later produce. During the meeting at the Casino Español, I noticed that all of the invited guests were able to trace their ancestry to Balamban. And they were there because what is being constructed is a town museum to be called “Museo De Balamban.”

It is a rather ambitious project, if I may so, but it is one that could be done. The site is on the northwestern part of the poblacion, but only about 700 meters from the parish church.

The municipality of Balamban shares a boundary with Cebu City. Some years back, then Cebu City mayor Tommy Osmeña had asked a number of Balamban residents to consider merging the town with the city so the merged area would cut across the center of the island province. The two local government units lie almost in the middle of the north and south of our oblong-shaped island.

The town's residents did not warm up to the proposal, though, because they were worried that they might just be considered as minor citizens and the town a dumping ground of the city's squatters. Besides, in terms of size, Balamban is bigger in area than Cebu City.

And so it was that the “Museo de Balamban” became a welcome proposal. Besides, Balamban has been a town with a good history behind it. It is being industrially developed with the Aboitiz enterprises and the Tsuneishi investment of Japan. From the two firms, Balamban is getting quite a generous share of the economic growth of the province.

The Museo de Balamban, which is expected to be formally opened in April when its building would be finished, would probably be the first to be set up in a Cebu town. It will house not only a library where old books and research materials would be gathered but also copies of written works of former town residents. These would form part of the museums exhibits.

There will also be a museum curator who will oversee the museum properties, from a mere donation of books and magazines to whatever material would be given to it by anyone and everyone who traces their ancestry to the town.

There, one could consult a list of the first lawyer, the first engineer, the first doctor, or the first priest of the town. In Cebu, it is said that Argao and Balamban towns produced the most number of priests.

I hope that soon, other towns of the province would also have facilities similar to the “Museo de Balamban.