Coming from Iloilo visiting Dumaguete to see my nephews in Silliman (the elder having just graduated cum laude), I was surprised to see a St. Paul University there; this revelation initiated by the monument on the boulevard to the 7 nuns from Chartres, France who came in at the start of the 20th Century (yes, that’s last century) to found the school. Iloilo has its own St Paul University and interestingly enough, it was the archbishop of Jaro who assigned the nuns here. However, further browsing on the web revealed that SP Duma predated SP Ilo by a good 7 years (1904 vs 1911) so I can surmise the nuns probably came straight from somewhere but Iloilo. (See separate site for pics)
The speculation is stoked, the curiosity aroused. Here are seven nuns in French convent habits, pointing this way and that, and as they landed on the beach, “joyously welcomed” by the locals (though I suspect this had more to do with the prospect of good French wine and cheese than on better NCLEX scores). I don’t know about you, but I am not inclined to joyously welcome the education of my kids by nuns who should know better than to wear black, close-necked, long-sleeved habits, and go island-hopping in the tropics. And with hats like those, the small rickety wooden boat probably didn’t need any sails. As a matter of fact, the good Archbishop of Jaro probably intended them to come to Iloilo, not Dumaguete. It was those darn hats that got them caught in some intertropical convergence zone and blew them south to this “Land of Gentle People.”
And gentle the people the Dumagueteños are. And welcoming of tourists and strangers. Such is the usual case of simple decent provincial folks on the throes of urban sophistication. We can only hope this balance is maintained at least in my lifetime (hey, everyone has the right to have an ipod and a pair of avayanas at some point down the road, in due time, in due time). But I digress.
It wasn’t exactly a very smooth journey (roro sched mixup, road repairs, road slips and landslides in belatedly discovered overinflated tires), all i wanted to do upon arriving was to lie down for a good nap, which is what i actually did for two hours after i dropped my luggage.
Rizal Blvd with the prerequisite Chow King.
I only stayed for 2 nights and one whole day, not enough for the sites outside town but just right to take in what the city has to offer. Duma does what the rest of the Philippine cities should be doing: preserve old buildings and make them self-supporting and viable operations. It has done so very well in Rizal Boulevard (1914) by the bay. Admittedly some have been turned into bars where, to paraphrase DWF writer Jane Austen, “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a retired white man man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a local brown wife.” But still.
Thursday. After breakfast at MacDo (sige, smirk ka dyan), we went to the city plaza to visit the Tourism Office and to do some household shopping at the ubiquitous Unitop. Across the other side of the plaza, the cathedral has gone through several reconstructions since it was established in 1811, a full two and a half generations 
before Jose Rizal (my constant 19th century chronological benchmarks, thanks to Yoyoy Villame). The campanario or belfry started even earlier (1760), as one of four watchtowers used to warn locals of marauding pirates coming to plunder and pillage, or in the local dialect, “dumagit.” Geddit, geddit?!?! With a well-visited grotto at the foot of the belfry where the pious and the faithful light candles, adjacent to it on the church grounds is an FRT (Foot Reflexology Therapy) center manned by volunteers. With some trepidation and hesitation, my nephew and I tried it. They say in Eastern culture, if it hurts, it’s good for you. If so, what we had then was probably very good for us. As nice as Ms. Emily was, she was also quite a chatterbox, punctuating each painful stab of her evil stick with a declaration of the corresponding body part that she allegedly just stimulated. It took a lot of courage and restraint to keep an expression of calm indifference especially when she attacked the “testicular” and “genital” meridiens on my sole, though I must admit I wasn’t so sure how to react when she got to the part for the, um, “vas deferens.”
After that and a good lunch at the local student population’s favorite chicken barbeque place, we went back home to 
rest and play some more with the dogs and the day-old calf (see pics). Then, we were off to Silliman Univ to check my nephews’ school. A pretty pleasant place to walk around in, especially the area around the Library and the Henry Luce Auditorium (yes, he who found Time Magazine). Frisbee seems to have taken a good hold in here, with some students taking a year off just to throw it. Wanted to have some coffee at the campus’ own cafe’ fronting the bay. Evidently a lot of <fingers doing the quote unquote> cool people go there for their lattes, but my nephews begged to disagree. They say the really cool people in Silliman don’t go for wimpy coffee. They take Red Horse. At 10 A.M. With their professor.
Next stop was Centrop, the zoo by the uni where the two main residents are the white spotted deer and the warty hog – both endangered species (with names like that, they could use a really big tube of Canesten). What they also need is more funding, though the very spare staff do a very good job of keeping the place going. The partly unkempt grounds though is part of its charm – this is a forest as it should be, impressively old and stately trees with the grounds full of fallen leaves and outgrowth. It was baking hot in the parking area but 15 meters away, it felt cool and pleasant under the canopy of the trees.
Rolling towards dinner had us at another sugba place. But before doing so, we had to get some of the famous sans rival before it closed at 7, dining customers be damned. I need not tell you, the joint is named, um, San Rival, but I’d understand if they imposed a sin tax on that thing, it’s that good. One other thing I note is that a lot of locals do patronize the food joints for their regular meals, unlike Iloilo where the general rule has been you had to have an excuse or a good reason to eat out. Iloilo might be more of the exception here, but this probably explains the good number of good value lutong-bahay (home cooked) places around. Last stop, the Spanish coffee shop that started out simply as a catering business but had the good sense to convert the old wooden house into an open dining cafe’ complete with wooden swinging seats. A mysterious white lady floating about would not look out of place in this joint, and it wouldn’t surprise me if those 3 coeds seated on the next table were never really there.
The next morning, with foreboding clouds and with the Cebu leg of the trip cancelled, we packed up and headed back. We did make another stop at the Chan estate, a short but stop-on-your-driving-tracks stretch framed by moss-covered trees that arch over the road. Formerly owned by the Tabacalera group, the estate has ten 19th century style mansions spread out all over the grounds on both sides of the street. Yes, it’s the Chan family as in Jose Marie Chan, he of the unforgivably sappy songs they use at Guantanamo Bay as and “enhanced interrogation technique,” he who is a regular in the alumni fundraising circuit, thereby ensuring the continuance of this vicious cycle. The Janet Basco Suite at the Hotel Hades awaits him.
And so my blog entry on Duma ends. My second nephew still has two years to go; I shall be back this time hopefully with my nieces in tow, and with enough time and planning to visit the lakes, the falls, the caves and other wonders Duma has kept for me to visit and explore. (blurby enough for a tourism ad?)
For the pics and the captions, please check my photo link. (Work in progress. Anybody recommends a good photo site?)
