It’s so easy to forget that Cebu is an ancient city. 500 years old and that’s only what we know from the colonizers.
When Cebu is empty, like today, it shows its age. You see how the old trees grow, roots breaking through asphalt, canopies covering entire streets. When downtown is empty in the wee hours of the morning, you see not the bustling heart of a global city but a relic from older, slower times: Art Deco buildings, grime that doesn’t come off, Chinese signs on old stores, alleys that go nowhere and everywhere.
Cebu is an old girl. On these islands, people walked around covered in nothing but tattoos. The bravest, most cunning were covered from sole to eyebrow and they earned each one. People dyed their teeth black and inlaid them with gold because they believed only wild animals had white teeth. Imagine what they’d think if they saw a toothpaste commercial.
In these old islands, people didn’t worship the Sto Nino as the Child Jesus but as a little water deity — the diwata of the Spanish — a tao-tao they put in a little raft to pray for rain during droughts.
We forget that Cebu is old — that she’d been here for hundreds of years — and that perhaps she’d stand for a hundred more, long after we are gone.
Island people have short memories and fickle hearts and maybe even feet that can’t wait to sail away. But I think it’s important to remember that we’re not the first ones on this ancient island…and that maybe saving some of Cebu’s old-world magic is worth the trouble after all.
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