Island living

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Glasses of buko juice with spoonsful of the white meat inside that tasted awfully sentimental to me and Good Friend C, were served to us in Inampulugan. It was just how buko juice tasted in childhood, he in the summers on this island, and me, down in Hinigaran where we had what, two coconut trees in all of the 400 square-meter area where we lived. It was buko sans the modern culinary add-ons we have today, no milk, no sugar, not even ice. It was just a tad cold, not too much, like it had just been taken down from the tree, opened, and served right away.

And that is the inimitable charm and draw of island living in this country of 7,100 islands. Everything can be screamingly fresh and local, plucked just before consumption.

Lunch, for example, can be fish just caught and grilled. Here, we had mangagat, taken live from the fish cages, steamed crabs that were bought from the nearby cove, and squid, stuffed with onions and tomatoes, that had been caught earlier that morning.

Cooked very simply, these three turned out to be an inimitable feast, the likes of which you get only once in a very rare while. The mangagat tasted of the sea, allright, briny, earthy but sweetish, the flavors as delicate as the flesh that was soft but firm and almost melting in one's mouth. Mangagat, by the way, is one delicious fish that has surfaced regularly in recent years in the shores of Hinigaran, one of the seafood catch that is, in fact, being identified with the town now. Here in the pulu, which is politically a barrio of Guimaras, it is bred in captivity in the floating bamboo and net cages attached to the bridge.

The crabs and squid had the same unmistakable sweetish edge to them that only freshness can give you.

Like the food, the rest of the island is as nature intended it to be. The owners made sure they lived side by side and not subduing nature. Thus, trails were built without cutting down the trees. A pavilion was built around the bamboo grove, the barrio version of the atriums of city buildings, with the sun filtering through the bamboo trees, creating natural lighting in the middle.

The old house by the beach that had been converted to a school stands amid coconut trees. A bigger house had been built on top of a hill, its structure made so it adjusted to the terrain, and the feeling was one got in and got out of it but was still amid the forest, looking down to the sea.

Even the decors were made from what nature gave up on already – dried leaves and twigs, shells plucked from the shorelines, woods washed ashore. Thus, aged wood of interesting forms and shapes served as figurines, dried tree parts like twigs were turned into decors, shell mosaics framed into art pieces.

There are tabletops made of wood left for some time in sea and eaten by worms. Trophy stuffed fishes that are memories of fishing adventures hang by the walls. But one stunning piece of décor here is the chandelier made from clumps of dried bamboo roots that served as housing, with fish traps as lamp shades.

If for anything, these little pieces remind us not just of the joys and beauty of island living, which is really Pinoy living because we all live in islands, but of the fringe benefits of living side by side with nature without tampering with it.*

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