community! Talay is now back again to writing her real-life experiences on this platform. All over the world, our calendars are built differently, for we have unique holidays and celebrations we commemorate every month to honor something relevant. What holiday or celebration do you like the most? Is it Christmas, New Year, Independence Day, or Halloween? Despite having different choices, one thing stays the same — we honor beautifully what we should honor and enjoy the celebration genuinely. Such is how our Buwan ng Wika celebration went during the event in our school, and today I will be sharing my experience of it.
Our Buwan ng Wika experience was one for the books, and I am genuine in defining it as that. It was filled with laughter, camaraderie, and pride for the Filipino language. Events like this are very relevant to me as a youth since they keep all generations grounded in the national language we have, and they teach all Filipinos how to preserve the beauty of our language as well as how to use and safeguard it. I really love celebrations like this that honor our nationality, and this is the only celebration dedicated to our national language — hence, the time we use pure Filipino dialect in all competitions and throughout the month, despite learning foreign languages.
During the event, we witnessed important competitions such as poetry making using the Filipino medium, impersonation of relevant Filipino personalities, and academic contests with the Filipino language as the main topic.
I enjoyed the program for Buwan ng Wika, but what made me enjoy it more was our budol fight as a celebration of the program’s success. Each section was tasked to have their own united eating according to their plans. Budol fight is a type of feast in the Philippines that uses a large banana leaf as the main plate for all foods. We put all foods on the banana leaf, making sure each side has enough food for everyone to eat. This was one of the highlights of our Buwan ng Wika celebration since it not only showed our food feast but also practiced one of the Filipino-coded ways of eating during an important event.
These are my classmates from our section who were already doing their individual jobs of cooking our viands. I was one of those assigned to cook the grilled foods, so what we did first was burn the charcoal in the grill. Heating the charcoal is easy, but burning it completely is another job since it requires patience and physical effort to make it hot enough for grilling.
When we successfully prepared the charcoal, we cooked first the pork we bought in the market of Medellin. It was three kilos of meat since the price was too expensive, and three kilos were enough for our section since we also had a lot of side dishes. Cooking grilled meat is very Filipino-coded, and this recipe always makes its presence in almost every celebration — whether it is a birthday or a family bonding at the beach. The taste of grilled pork makes it reasonable to appear in every occasion because honestly, this food is so delicious and worthy to prepare for the table.
After cooking the grilled pork, we then proceeded to cook the barbecues we made ourselves. We just bought hotdogs and pig intestines in the market and manually put them on sticks since buying them already on sticks would cost a higher price. We had only hotdogs and pork intestines because these two were the most voted during our meeting, and they are delicious too, especially when paired with poso rice.
I was beside the grill checking the barbecues so they wouldn’t burn. Some of my classmates were slicing the meat already so that we could put it on the banana leaf, while others were putting sauce on the barbecue. One of my classmates was carrying the barbecues in her hands since we ran out of containers, and she said carrying them felt promising because she would get to eat them soon. LOL.
While cooking the last batch of barbecues, the others were busy under the tent preparing our budol display. They had already laid the rice on the big banana leaf, and when I approached, I noticed the rice was formed into words. When I read it, it was “BEED4A,” the name of our section referring to our program of Elementary Education. They were quite creative with our budol fight, and it made us enjoy the food even more.
Then they put the other viands on top of the rice. It included the iconic lumpia (my favorite), lechon manok, pancit, the grilled pork, and the barbecues. Just writing this blog makes me hungry again because watching the photos of the food made me recall how full I was after eating. The foods were so delicious that I forgot my diet.
For the final touch, they placed the guavas, bananas, and watermelon beside the main food. Fruits, just like grilled pork, always make their way into every budol fight because they best complement the dishes and the feast. There were also sauces for the steamed banana and ginamos (a salted and fermented fish paste) to enjoy after eating rice.
Everyone then ate since it was already past lunchtime, and we had another program set for the afternoon, so we could not afford to waste time. We were so full after the feast — the foods were great and delicious. What was left on the table were just some chicken bones and vegetables, and the rest was gone to our stomachs. It only meant everyone enjoyed the food so much that we left nothing on the banana leaf.