Treading Light on Black Saturday

In the Lenten Season that passed, I was able to get a week off from work. I spent the early days of the Holy Week with my family, with me mostly staying at home in Bacolod City. With my feet yearning to take long walks and travels and my palms etching to hold my lenses and camera, I decided to venture out on Black Saturday.

Black Saturday is often regarded as a key day of reflection, rest and avoiding travel or any heavy work simply because “God is still dead” and “He has not yet resurrected”. Providential Guidance is said to be “weak” for this day thus any wound incurred would take a longer than normal time to heal, and accidents are almost always prone to happen as older devotees tend to point out.

Despite the stern warnings, I packed my gear early Saturday morning and headed to the North Bus Terminal for my “sole” itinerary: the dome “houses” of Escalante City.

Escalante City is located in the northeastern tip of the Negros island approximately about 95 kilometers away from Bacolod City. With its close proximity to the island of Cebu, the language of the locals is mixed Cebuano and Hiligaynon with the majority on the former.

In 2005, the city enjoyed some limelight in national and local papers as well as in many travel and general interest television programs. It became host to the first earth bag shelter system in the country. This is the “sole” purpose of my proverbial travel itch: to finally see the dome “houses”.

A House and Not Houses
The 95 km bus ride took me about 1.5 hours and PhP85.00 to finally step on the official city streets of Escalante. I took some time to look around before going to my destination. I went into their public market. The market impressed me. It was the cleanest public market I’ve been into in all of my documented and undocumented travels.
After buying some bottled water, I hailed a tricycle and asked to be taken to the site where the dome “houses” are situated. I opted to speak Cebuano because all personnel in the store where I bought water and the persons I have overheard in the public market were conversing in Cebuano. The driver looked confused and asked me for further description in halting Cebuano. I discovered he speaks Hiligaynon. And so I switched language and asked him again, this time giving description of the “houses” – with domes as roof rather that the usual galvanized iron. With the spark of recognition, he said he knew of only one house that fitted my description. I insisted that I am referring to a number of houses, a village even, with such dome structures. He responded that he knows of the recent housing projects but knew nothing of what I am referring to aside from the single house he knew. In order not to keep the debate any longer, I asked him to take me to the house he is referring to.

Much to my chagrin, the driver was indeed correct in saying that there is only one structure with a dome in Escalante. The house stood with its faded paint and with ferns sprouting in its now parched dome near the hall of Barangay Fe, just beside the national highway leading to the city proper. I instantly recognized it from the television shows I’ve seen where Illac Diaz (the proponent of the dome house) was shown coming out of its door unto the gravel yard.

“House of the Future” Becomes “House with Structural Failures”
With the hype it was into in 2005, in my mind I assumed that the project of the earth bag shelter or dome house was successful and was eventually proliferated into a village of dome houses. I was embarrassingly wrong. The house now is a picture of a structure crying out with impending structural failure.

The domes are parched, with layers of cement slowly flaking off and the exposed layers becoming brittle through weathering. Cracks in its walls are visible even at a distance with signs of water ingress reaching its iron structural frame due to the presence of rust stains outside of the walls. Add to the demise these factors brought is the rich presence of ferns growing on top of its domes. The natural acids in the roots of these pteridophytans may contribute to the progressive cement disintegration of the dome structure.

After the media hype for this dome house, I wondered what could have gone wrong. I could sense that the intent was good but it seemed that this project lacked the proper follow through and no proper maintenance procedures were set. This is after all, a prototype (refer to this article: First Earth Bag Shelter) whose failure or success could spell out proliferation or termination.

Back and Forth
After inspecting the area and having confirmed that it is indeed the only dome house in Escalante, I decided to visit other spots in the other towns and cities as I make my way back home to Bacolod. I opted to visit the Chapel of the Cartwheels and the Church of the Angry Christ. I went back to the city proper and surfed the net to look for directions on how to reach those spots. Munching on rice cakes in banana leaf liners, I took the bus to head for my next stop: the Chapel of the Cartwheels in Manapla.

Rice Cakes and Cartwheels
Manapla is a coastal town in northern tip of the Negros Island (I passed by this town on my way to Escalante).
For travelers going to the northeastern parts or to the island of Cebu, Manapla is always associated with delicious rice cakes. The town's main road intersecting the national highway is always filled with rice cake vendors waiting for buses to pass by. Despite knowing the part of Manapla where the Chapel of the Cartwheels is located, I opted to disembark in the heart of the town and take a motorcycle ride to Hacienda Rosalia. It was searing hot that day and there are no available rides in the direct road from the national highway to Hacienda Rosalia. I am not sure of the distance that I’ll be treading on, so the motorcycle ride was a safe choice.

It cost me PhP37.00 from Escalante to Manapla. The motorcycle fare is negotiable.

It was a 20 minute motorcycle ride from the town proper to the chapel through a dirt road snaking by the sea side into fruit orchards and sugarcane plantations.

The Chapel of the Cartwheels is within Hacienda Rosalia which is founded by a Frenchman (Ives Germain Gaston) in the 1800’s. The chapel is an addition to the Gaston estate in the late 1960’s. It looks like a “salakot” (wide brimmed reed or rattan hat) in far distance due to its nearly conical apse. The apse looks conical but close examination will show that it has sharp edges. I failed to count the sides so I could not tell the regular polygon its base assumes.
The roofing is made of wooden tiles crowned by a “glassed” cartwheel. Wooden wheels from carabao-pulled carts (characteristic of the short distance sugarcane transport in haciendas) form part of the chapel’s walls.
The main “crucifix” presents Christ supported by a cartwheel. The stone wall behind the altar is also adorned by three cartwheels with colorful glass.
The altar, the lectern and the priest’s and acolytes’ seats are made of concrete slabs with moss clinging unto them.The holy water vessel or stoup is an actual rice mortar. The seats are ordinary wooden benches which are also characteristic of hacienda life.The candle holders on opposite side of the altar are actual pestles. In the wall near the altar is the tabernacle designed with glistening dark cut glass.

The Chapel of the Cartwheels was made of ordinary materials. This fact has moved me to instant liking. Seeing the ordinary and familiar things inside this chapel made me feel at home. And I believe that that is the ultimate purpose of every place of worship: to make one feel at home with his Maker.

In leaving Hacienda Rosalia, I decided to pass through the palm-lined dirt road that connects it to the national highway. The national highway is quite far from the hacienda, so it was a good idea to set-off from the heart of the town.

Gate Crashing into an Officially Closed Church
From the Hacienda Rosalia entrance marker, I took another bus ride to the sugar capital of Negros Occidental: Victorias City. This is just a short ride which cost PhP7.00. I disembarked near the city’s public plaza and hailed a motorcycle to take me inside the Victorias Milling Company (VMC) compound to see the Church of the Angry Christ.
It took about 10 minutes for the tricycle to reach the church. Entrance to the VMC Compound is controlled by security guards on duty round the clock. As exchange for an entry pass, the guards require the drivers to temporarily surrender their licenses while they are inside the compound.

The official name of the church is St. Joseph the Worker Parish Church. It was said that a Life Magazine article dubbed it as the Church of the Angry Christ. When I reach the place, the church is “officially closed” in preparation for the Easter vigil to start that evening. I saw a door ajar in the left wing of the church and I entered. And then right before me I felt the gaze of the glaring and angry image of the Resurrected Christ wrapped in uneven streaks of light coming from the windows. There were some teenage boys arranging some chairs and spotlights inside. I asked their permission if I could take pictures. With their approval, I opened another door in the right wing to make the lights seem evenly distributed. I was able to take several shots when the parish priest came in and gave additional instructions. Afraid of being reprimanded for what might be misconstrued as sacrilegious act inside the church, I slowly exited through the left wing where I came in. I wanted to take pictures in the baptismal font room but it was padlocked and my camera won’t even fit through the grills. Like the murals inside the church, the art and design of the baptistery were progressive in its time.

Jesus Stirs the Bureaucrats by Getting Angry
Part of the popularity of the church is the stir that the images within it had created after its construction in 1949. The image of the angry Christ was received as inappropriate by the conservatives of that time. Add to it the effort of “Filipinizing” the saints depicted in the murals and other icons in the church by coloring their skins brown.

Local historical literature tells that a Belgian liturgical artist Ade de Bethuene designed the decorations in the baptistery and Arcadio Anore executed the designs for the baptistery and for the other parts of the church. Alfonso Ossorio, the Spanish-American Creole artist and son of the founder of Victorias Milling Company then painted the chapel along with Benjamin Valenciano, a local artist.

Ossorio’s mural depicted the resurrected Christ with hands outstretched being received into heaven by two giant, red-orange hands. The irony in the painting is that the day of ascension is a day for joy but Christ is shown as angrily ascending into heaven. A descending dove is also shown. Christ, the hands (God the Father) and the dove (Holy Spirit) aptly represent the Trinity. Shown as witnesses to the ascension are Joseph, Mary, John the Baptist and an identified woman.
Most persons view the mural as the resurrection. However, when I stared long at it, it seemed to me that the artist depicted the ascension rather than the resurrection.

The murals also contain several symbols which are often associated with the occult. One glaring symbol is the All-Seeing Eye in the church’s main beam.
Currently, the Salesian priests of St. John Bosco oversee the parish.

After the long trip, I decided to pose beside the sundial outside the church. The sundial itself is unconventional. It depicts a man on top of a carabao’s head with a rod. The hour markers are in the carabao’s horns. The shadow that determines the hour comes from the man’s rod.
Happy with the accomplishment I have had for the day, I treated myself to a steaming bowl of batchoy in a branch of the most popular outlet in the province for this Ilonggo delicacy before finally taking the bus for Bacolod City. I myself, like the artists of the Church of the Angry Christ, always take on a progressive view for most theological discussions. Fasting is not among the exceptions.

09 April 2008 (Penang, Malaysia)