Nobody needed an alarm on fiesta morning.
My lola was already in the kitchen before the sun was fully up. That was your alarm. The smell of something boiling, puto steaming, muron being wrapped, big pans of pancit getting tossed around. My tatay and lolo outside setting up tables, arguing about where to put stuff, then moving it again. Classic.
Even before the actual day, the barangay was already alive. Every zone competing to out-decorate each other. Colorful bandiritas strung across every street, layered and criss-crossed overhead. Old plastic bottles painted into flowers, tin cans turned into lanterns, scrap materials transformed into something beautiful. You walked through each zone just to see what they came up with and everyone had an opinion. Bragging rights lasted the whole year.
Then the parade came and everything stopped. Trumpets and drums getting louder down the road, the whole street suddenly outside. Well-known people in the barrio throwing fruits, candies and coins into the crowd and everyone scrambling and laughing. The band not always perfectly on tune but nobody cared. That was the point.
Every door in every house was open. You walked in and food was already on the table. Puto, muron, pancit, kare-kare, lechon, leche flan. You finished at one house and the next house was already calling you over. Tourists from other towns wandered through taking photos of the decorations, wide-eyed at everything. Proud na proud kami.
The plaza at night was its own world. Lolo and lola doing the chacha like they owned the floor. Videoke going nonstop. Kids chasing flying toys, pulling strings at the palabunutan hoping for a rabbit or a fish, running toward the ice cream vendor the second they heard that bell. Families on the sides just sitting together, paper plates on laps, little ones falling asleep on shoulders.
Nobody was in a hurry to go home. Nobody wanted to be anywhere else.
Walking back through those decorated streets at night, bandiritas swaying above you, every zone still lit up, you just felt it. Something hard to explain but easy to feel. Like the whole barangay loved itself that day and wanted everyone to know.
I live in Laguna now. But every fiesta season I think about those streets in Samar. The kitchen before sunrise. The coins in the air. The colors everywhere that somebody made with their own hands from whatever they had.
Some things you do not realize are special until you are far from them.
Fiesta in Samar was everything. No exaggeration.
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