By: Joe Sprite

As the celebration of the 375th anniversary of Jagna as a parish is nearing, the barangays are preparing their exhibits in the Agro/Industrial Fair booths. The affair is like the Garden Day of the old but with new variations. Other products may be displayed other than agricultural produce. However, even if there will be exhibits other than fruits and vegetables, they are few and far between. Agricultural products shows will be dominated by upland barangays, lowland barrios will have to display finished products. Canupao can display calamay, Canjulao may show their tableya and Pangdan her cookies. Aside from the calamay, tableya and cookies, lowland barangays do not produce, Most are involved in buy and sell and fishing.

Barangays with fisherfolk cannot display choice fishes. They must be immediately sold in the market. There are dried fishes but they come from out of town like most fishers in the market stalls. Few households sometimes engage in backyard gardening. poultry and hog raising but their product are not contest quality. Most of them have not yet advanced from he hunting and fishing stage of civilization. There are a few industries like iron works and boat building but they are hard to display in a small booth. There is practically no handicraft to exhibit.

The most valuable asset lowland barangays have is people. They furnish manpower skilled and unskilled. The skilled ones go abroad to earn dollars. As our Civil Registrar used to say, the big houses that we have downtown comes from green money. Thos who cannot go abroad has to break into the professions. A few of those go into white-collar jobs, the rest into blue-collar positions or journeymen. Unfortunately we cannot display them in booths. Of course we can cheat. With the money, we can buy the biggest banana bunch, the biggest eggplant or the biggest ubi even if we have to scour interior Bohol for them. But that would destroy the spirit of the fair. Besides who will believe us? We cannot catch even a miserable crab from our shore or pluck a withered kamunggay stalk from our backyard. Any fat crab we exhibit will be tagged as Ubay of Cogtong and any healthy kamunggay leaf will be suspected of coming from the sementeryo. Even if we win a prize, that would not be worth the stigma of being a cheat.

Perhaps, the lowland barangay like Canupao will go cultural. If given time model boats will be crafted and displayed as well as old artifacts found in the vicinity. We could display models of the pamilacan, tango and other sailboats. Boats like those would be made functional, that is: it could be sailed and a regatta could be arranged, a race from the waters, back of the municipal building to the wharf. That could be a revival of old fishing practices, which had been replaced by motorized boats. This is where the lowland barangays will excel. Since we could not compete in agricultural production with the upland barangays, we have to find ways where we can be competitive in our setting. The authorities will have to make another set of rules wherein the lowland barangays would be able to compete. Is they could not compete with those in the upper areas at least they could have contests among themselves like boat races. But what of those living in the foothills? Again we have to think of something.