MARGAHA

This post was from several years ago.  But the experience was so perfect. I still remember it as if it happenad only yesterday.
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They told me that in Old Sagay, Negros, where a resort called Margaha is located, the Pacific wind is so brute, so harsh by nature. But it is easily tamed by the warmth of the sea and the liveliness of the people there.

I was there last week.  And I can easily tell you that what they said is true. I can tell you too, (and this I swear with my life), nothing in this world can compare to the sweetness of the Negrense dialect.

Last week, on a night deprived of cellphones and laptops, we sat down and listened as they told us many things. About Hiligaynon "balaks" and legends, about Margaha and how it came about.

The story goes that in one of the islands of Negros a long time ago, there lived a rich white girl who fell in love with a poor black native. It was the kind of love that was bound to fail, because it happened at a time when the world was divided into black and white. No one was supposed to defy it.

But, like in fairy tale stories, the lovers were defiant and swore never to leave each other no matter what.

So very angry were the gods when they learned of this that they turned the lovers into ashes and scattered them on opposite directions of the Visayan sea. Cursed never to meet each other again, the lovers fell silent. But not without passing the curse of color into the places where their ashes fell: white sands on islands where hers fell; dark, almost black, on islands where his fell.

You will feel the love story if you travel across the nearby islands, from Boracay where the sand is ethereal, soft, and white, to Sagay more than 6 hours by bus after, where the sand is blackest, as though the gods themselves wanted it that way for the contrast to be evident.

​When I came to Sagay, and into the resort whose name, Margaha, in honor of the man whose ashes fell there, I felt as though I opened my eyes for the first time.

The story I heard there was not just about love, but also about suffering and about the fate of people unlucky enough to have been born in another side of life. Like in the Philippines where all wealth is concentrated on the powerful few amid such ocean of poverty. Like in the haciendas of Negros where sugar is sweetest but most bitter to the poor laborers, who work with pay barely enough to keep them living for the next day-

But the gods were not entirely cruel. It is in the same Margaha where I met national artist nominee and social realist Nunelucio Alvarado, his artist family and his community of brilliant painters called Pintor Kulapol (lousy painters in Negros language, but they're not lousy, I tell you) who work to alleviate this suffering by changing the minds of people through art.

Nune and his wife

In Margaha they did a month-long exhibit where guests did not only get to see the art of the exhibitors. They also got to participate by exhibiting their own art. The materials, all the "basura" they could find along the coast. Ours must have been the most boring, but it was one that we did in 20 minutes, with only the handful stuff we could find. We painted a bamboo pole in black and listed there, in white paint, all the websites promoting Filipino prostitution. (This is all we could think of in 3 minutes, honestly. Forgive the simplicity.)
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There were so many that we ran out of space easily. But it should have been enough to send the message.

I have much to tell, but I'm running out of time. My thanks to Pintor Kulapol, to Visayan art, to Maharlika, to artists who use art for change.

And to the gods for Margaha and his love, for the blackest skin but purest heart, to the love story that was tragic but insightful.

PS. My friends Japs, Jonna, Jagat, Haresh, and Anthony were also there. The experience would not have been that fun without them.