Thursday, January 31, 2008 So: Terra cotta kids By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
IN a way it was an offering to the Santo Niño, whose feast the Ilonggos hold every fourth weekend of January, right after the weekend Cebuanos celebrate the pista sa Niño. Sinulog is to Cebu as Dinagyang is to Iloilo.
In the margins of Barangay Sooc in the Arevalo district of Iloilo city lies a community of young terra cotta makers. They live in colorful houses with mini gardens. In one of these houses, a blue one, the products of their creativity and energy are put on display and wait to be converted to money.
Mermaids, pineapple faces, funny face bowls, totem figures and animals show crevices and indentions done by small hands. Gray-colored for now, the ceramic clay sculptures tell of hopes and dreams of a community of poor folks. Their aspirations are slowly being realized with the help of PLDT-Smart and Gawad Kalinga, which have provided them with the colorful houses and the training for terracotta making.
On the Friday that the terra cotta house was blessed, almost everyone was in the playful mood that the Holy Child is said to possess during his feast. Mothers and fathers danced to compete and children danced to have fun. The choreography didn’t matter because the dances looked the same, except for the execution. It was tender to see children, acting as choreographers, discreetly prompting their stiff parents their moves.
The next day, the children danced again but this time in the streets downtown and to the Dinagyang drumbeats. The streets were once their playground. Some mothers danced too and the First Lady of Iloilo City, Rosalie Trenas was with them to shuffle her feet as well. They were a non-competing contingent but they danced from the heart and with pride.
It was an occasion of offerings and intentions. The dance was an offering, just like the Sinulog. The children, painted on the faces and wearing yellow shirts and shoes, tried to put up some showmanship by timing their moves in whispers. Somewhere between the feet shuffling and arm raising came the cries of supplication to the Santo Niño. It was a longer cry than the Sinulog’s Pit Senyor!
The terra cotta children of Sooc are proud of their work and of their colorful houses. Some of them have been sent to Dumaguete and Baguio cities for training. The novelty of airplanes, long bus rides, showers and strange quarters stayed in their senses long after their return to Sooc. They are being tutored by the 1998 Philip Morris Art awardee PG Zoluaga, a painter and sculptor who speaks their language and knows their culture.
Bringing out the creativity in children of deprived communities such as the ones in Sooc in Iloilo and in Banglos in General Nakar in Luzon is a laudable Smart and GK endeavor. The focus is not so much on how their output can earn them money but on how they can express themselves and be productively different from other children.
The young and budding sculptors of ceramic clay (Iloilo) and driftwood (Banglos) possess dignity and pride. They may not be going to good schools, they may hardly speak and understand English, they may be dark-skinned from being exposed to the sun more than usual, but they know what they can do.
