Hala Bira!

Greetings from the land of the Ati-Atihan. What a surprise that my cousin To Willie showed up on Friday morning! He and the Ureta cousins are so great and they have been taking such good care of us. And To Willie took us to sabong derby on Friday and we won $250! At first I felt so sad for the dead chickens. But as soon as we were on a winning streak, i was yelling "Kill him! Kill him!" to our roosters. When you win, you taste blood. I can see how addictive it can be. Old men were peeling P1000 peso bills from their wallets one right after the other.

My legs are all dirty from our drunken street dancing today (called sadsad) in the town plaza here in Kalibo. This is the mother of all festivals and that is an understatement. This festival, in which Aklanons cover themselves in black paint and elaborate and outlandish tribal costumes has been celebrated every year for about the last 800 years. It's the modern world's most unabashed blackface ritual, in which the fairer skinned Aklanon lowlanders pay homage to the indigenous, and much darker, residents of the mountains, who, in 1212, agreed to allow a bunch of Borneans to occupy the lowlands of Aklan, on an island eventually named Panay by the Spanish. So every year, hundreds of Aklanons black up, put on crazy and elaborate costumes, and make like the Atis and dance to addictive drumbeats and xylophones tinging out pop tunes for HOURS on end, beginning at 5am into the night. In the 1500s the scandalized priests injected Santo Nino into the whole thing to make it respectable so it's supposed to be a compromise, but really, this festival has indigenous roots and the Sto. Nino part is really appeasement to the priests. Today when riding a tricycle (cab attached to a motorcycle) I saw a Santo Nino on a bar surrounded by beers. I wish I had a pic, but you don't ask the driver to stop here.

SoiImagine dancing drunk in the streets, you're drinking a cold San Mig with thousands of your provincemates, and the drums and xylophone band are playing Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" to the Ati-Atihan beat. The aim is to drink as much as one possibly can AND try to make it to Mass. I love my province. Aklanons know how to party! My cousin in-law Manong Don laughingly said, "We drink until we're...swimming (in alcohol!). It's not social drinking. You don't stop until you fall down. And what is usually done around a table in the backyard is brought to the streets during Ati-Atihan...men and women bring bottles of rum, whisky, scotch, tequila and more on the streets with plastic cups.

Anyway, I'm a little drunk right now! We will post Ati-Atihan pics and will write more when we get back to Manila. I met a very distant Bohulano relative today. We had lechon in Tangalan on the beach Thursday, and met Manang Tere, one of our Mabalon cousins. Also, all the streets here are named after our relatives, but no Bohulano or Mabalon streets. That's what you get when you leave for America and petition everybody over.