Gingoog Charter Day
The normally quiet city of
Practically the whole bureaucracy, schools and NGOs were represented at the day-long festival. Contingents from five schools — Christ the King College, Gingoog City Comprehensive High School, Gingoog City Junior College, Bal-ason National High School and Gingoog City Villafranca school — donned very colorful costumes, danced and sang.
The street dance competition was the highlight of the celebration, which included a night café and jamming by the bay, religious services in churches, a search for the Little Gingoog City Charter, a tribal rite at dawn, an eco-fun climb of Mt. Balatukan National Park, a search for the Miss & Mr. Gingoog Bay Alliance Tourism ’07, and a folk dance contest.
The Charter Day celebration is markedly more exciting than the town fiesta which falls in May. Reason? The fiesta is a religious celebration, marked by masses and processions, and feasts in the houses. But Charter has the whole town witnessing and participating in fun activities.
Gingoog became a chartered city on
Gingoognons said this year’s celebration was the best ever. The chair of the Gingoog City Tourism Council and chair of the festival committee (Judge) Potenciano R. de los Reyes, agreed. The celebrations in the past were simpler, he said, but this year drew enthusiastic participation from all sectors. The search for Miss and Mr. Gingoog Bay Alliance Tourism drew the participation for the first time of neighboring towns of Talisayan and Magsaysay.
The Kaliga festival, Judge de los Reyes said, begun 28 years ago, under the administration of former Mayor Mike Paderanga, who, in keeping with a directive from the Ministry of Tourism, encouraged all localities to conceive a festival that would promote their own culture and encourage people to visit them. At the time, there was a rave over local festivals such as the Kaumulan of Bukidnon, and the Sinulog of Cebu.
Gingoog chose to adopt the word “Kaliga,” emphasizing the culture and arts of the Higaonon tribe. What happened, said De los Reyes, was that the Higaonons insisted that they participate in the festival. Thus, the tribesmen perform at dawn rites. Even the costumes worn by street dancers and the ethnic garb of contestants in this year’s beauty pageant, were simply fabulous — and worth selling to the world.
De los Reyes hopes that the yearly Kaliga festival would draw more tourists to the city. That dream would not be long in coming, what with the dynamic leadership of Mayor Ruth de Lara Guingona, whose concerns include the development of the city’s tourist facilities. One of these is the improvement of the baywalk for the townsfolk’s promenades. And then the development of some of the city’s more than 30 waterfalls.
Judge De los Reyes said that with the building of more brigs and roads, the waterfalls can become accessible. He smiled when visitors perused promotional literature produced by the tourism council, describing the city’s largest forest cover, mountains, lakes, beaches, mangroves that serve as sanctuary for migratory birds, mollusks and crustaceans, coral reefs and dolphins dancing in
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Providing income for rural and urban women of Gingoog is the aim of the city’s agriculture office’s home extension section livelihood training program. The women are being taught to make banana chips, cassava polvoron and kropeck from cassava, sampaloc and camote candy, peanut roll, coated peanuts, special ampaw, peanut tarts, buko nuts and barquillos de mani. Raw materials come from locally grown crops, and the finished products are sold at the market and in neighboring areas. We proudly gave some of the sweet sampaloc and banana chips that Jojo Caballero Balsamo of the Mayor’s office gave us, to delighted officemates at the STAR and our neighbors. Jojo told us that more research will mean even better products.
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By the way, Jojo’s son, Jude (Jed) Edgerd, is without a doubt the most outstanding musical artist coming from Gingoog. He composed “Himno sa Gingoog,” which is sung at all Gingoog schools’ flag ceremonies. Jed received his first musical instruction from his mother Jojo, a piano graduate of St. Scholastica’s college. A multi-awarded composer, arranger, pianist, vocal coach and musical director, he has garnered many awards – for this he deserves a future “From the Stands” column. His new arrangement of the Ilocano folk song Dagiti Bitbituen Idiay Langit is one of the 15 outstanding choral settings in the “Mga Awiting Bayan Para sa Korong Pilipino,” a choral writing competition sponsored and published by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and NAMCYA. He currently teaches at the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde’s
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To celebrate Silliman University’s 106th Founders Day, the Silliman University Alumni Association in Metro Manila has lined up the following activities: Annual Golf Tournament at Villamor Golf Club on August 16 (tee-off time is 6:30 a.m.), Alumni dinner at the Manila Pavilion August 18, with Silliman President Dr. Ben Malayang and alumni who have been elected to Congress as special guests, and Worship Service at Cosmopolitan Church on August 19, 10 a.m. Chapter president is Grace A. Sumalpong. For tickets to the above activities, call Dolly or Linda at the Silliman Alummi Office, tel. 5232993.
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