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Pardo
There are places that do not merely exist in memory, they breathe there. Pardo is such a place for me. Its sea, its hills, and its open fields once formed a childhood world so complete that I believed it would last forever. But time does not preserve landscapes. They will soon be replaced in the name of progress.
Pardo, in Cebu, is the place where my childhood truly lived. From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, it shaped me in ways I am still discovering quietly, the way a river shapes stone. Situated about ten kilometers from the city proper, Pardo moved at its own unhurried pace, governed by seasons and tides rather than clocks and calendars. In those days, life there was slow, rooted, and woven through with folk beliefs that had been passed down from generations.
The neighborhood had that rare quality of genuine community. No matter how far apart people lived, they were still neighbors in the fullest sense of the word, keeping an eye on each other's children, sharing food without occasion, gathering without needing a reason to. Children roamed freely. There was no particular worry about where they were going, because wherever they went, someone who knew them would eventually be watching.
The geography of Pardo was generous to children. A short walk in one direction led to the hills; in the other, the sea awaited. Both were vast playgrounds, mostly without fences, shaped only by nature and creativity. In the hills, we searched the undergrowth for spiders, following them with the patience and curiosity only children seem to possess. Toward the shore, we swam and laughed at the waves during a high tide. We waded into the shallow waters at low tide, gathering clams, shrimps, small fish, and crabs from the exposed seabed, a quiet kind of harvest that demanded only sharp eyes, quick reflexes, and, in my case, an improvised catching tool fashioned from whatever I could find.
The path to the mountains was lined with coconut palms and fruit-bearing trees, punctuated by the occasional scattered houses. The path seaward led through rice paddies that turned brilliant green in the wet season, through groves of coconut trees and banana plants, and eventually into the mangroves, those salt-rooted trees standing guards alongside the brackish river banks, their tangled roots catching everything in ways that seemed almost deliberate.
At times, the breeze picked up reliably, carrying with it the rustling of leaves and the company of wild birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and bees drifting past in no particular hurry. My father would sometimes take me to fly kites in the open fields on his days off, the string humming under the wind's pressure, the kite climbing until it became a bright speck against the blue.
Other times, we took his boat out with my two older brothers, who never missed a chance to tease me. They'd toss me into the deep water to "test" my swimming, laughing as I flailed. Those mornings felt more like a special day.
The air in the open field had its own kind of medicine. The scent of damp earth in the rice fields and the smell of the mud mixed with salt off the sea, are the kind of aroma I still can locate in my memory. It wasn't really happiness, it was a feeling of being complete, as if everything in the world fit perfectly and nothing was missing.
The sea gave generously, and we received everything it offered. At high tide, we swam among the mangroves and along the riverbanks, the water warm and slightly murky, full of small life. At low tide, the seabed opened itself up like a pantry, and families would come out to collect what it had left behind, shells, crabs, shrimps, fish no bigger than a thumb.
People brought cooked rice and shared their food on the shore, sitting together in the uncomplicated way that people did when meals were not yet events to be photographed.
My usual meal on those outings was simple: cooked corn grits or cooked unripe bananas paired with ginamos, a sharp, fermented fish paste that seemed to carry the scent of the sea more intensely than the sea itself. Every so often, though, I would make something a little more unconventional.
When I came across a jellyfish stranded on the exposed flats, I would scrub its slick surface with sand until the sliminess was gone, then rinse it in seawater before soaking it in vinegar. The result was surprisingly good, tender, and delicious. It was the kind of dish that I always craved for when in the sea.
I consider myself fortunate to have known this version of Pardo, to have been a child during a decade when such landscapes still existed within easy walking distance of a growing city. Scenes like these were once common all over the Philippines, and I lived inside one of them. That is not something I take for granted.
But time changes everything, and even the places we once knew will eventually change.. They always do, often faster than we expect.
In 1991, a plan was approved to reclaim the coastline. The open sea that had once been my playground, the horizon that defined my world, the source for food and livelihood for many, and a sanctuary for countless marine creatures, would soon disappear beneath layers of earth and stone. What have been a vast stretch of natural shoreline would be transformed into man-made land, reshaping the coast into something entirely different. Where waves once met the shore, investors would later build commercial centers and business infrastructures, symbols of progress by some definitions, yet also quiet reminders of what lay buried beneath them.
Those beautiful mangroves would be gone. The tidelands would vanish. The riverbanks where we once swam would be covered and lost, no longer existing as they did in my childhood.
Since the 1960s, Cebu has steadily moved toward reclaiming land from the sea. Given its limited geographic space, the city has long relied on land expansion to support growth, creating room for businesses, infrastructure, and new sources of income.
My mother would often show me old photographs from the 1950s of her family swimming along the shoreline of what is now the North Reclamation Area. Back then, it was an open sea, alive and unbounded. The intention behind reclaiming was to provide more space for businesses to thrive in Cebu. Yet, over time, there is an irony in how some of these reclaimed areas have instead become home to informal settlements, reflecting challenges that development alone could not resolve.
Just as how the landscape of my mother's childhood was transformed, the place I once knew is now on the same path. The familiar shores of my youth will give way to modern structures, expanding road networks, and growing business districts, developments that promise jobs and economic progress for the city. Still, I carry a quiet hope that this transformation will not repeat the fate of earlier reclamation projects that lingered in stagnation for years, but instead become something truly beneficial for both the city and its people.
I do not say this with bitterness, or at least I try not to. Cities grow. Coastlines are renegotiated. What I feel is less resentment than a particular sadness, the kind that belongs to people who have been witnesses.
I was there for a version of this place that will no longer exist, and I carry it in a part of memory that does not fade easily: the vast expanse of rice fields, the dancing coconut trees, the birds and the insects that hovered around freely, the excitement of low tides and high tides, and the aromatic scents of both fresh water and sea water muds, will no longer be there, quite sad.
Nevertheless, that is what Pardo gave me, something that no amount of reclamation project can take back.
✦ to be continued in the next chapter ✦
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