The Good People of Agno

This shows the scene in the main street of Agno poblacion in the early morning of Good Friday, 14 April 2006, with some townspeople going about their business. The welcome arch announces the Hon. Hernani A. Braganza as the guest of honor and crowning guest during the Agno Town Fiesta celebrated on 28 April-1 May 2006 with the theme "One Dream, One Hope, One Faith, One Action, One Agno." The fiesta is one of the most endearing aspects of Filipino culture dating back to the Spanish colonial period.
Pictures courtesy of Dr. Leslie E. Bauzon, Professor, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken,Japan 305-8572 and Dr. Aurora F. Bauzon, Professor of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Santo Tomas, Manila.

The Agno public market which is the focal point for the town's commercial life. Here the good people of Agno buy and sell their local produce, goods from other places, as well as services. Agnoans earning their keep as jeepney drivers park their vehicles in the ample parking area while waiting for their passengers

Inside the public market, one can find Agnoan women vendors selling traditional home-made glutinous rice cake delicacies like suman, bibingka and biko with latik. Suman wrapped in palm buri leaves is called suman sa ibos, while suman wrapped in wilted banana leaves is called suman sa lihia. Bibingka is a rice cake made out of rice flour, coconut milk and eggs; and biko is a sweetened glutinous rice cake topped with latik or thickened coconut milk with brown sugar.

In this picture we see an Agno male vendor selling homegrown sweet and naturally ripened carabao mangoes, with which the suman glutinous rice cake is best served and eaten. Other vendors are marketing beans, potatoes, carrots, squash, papaya, ginger, etcetera while buyers come and go.

Agno is fortunate to have dedicated as well as competent public school teachers who have committed themselves to rendering lifetime service to the children of the town, molding their minds and preparing them to become useful, morally upright, and law-abiding members of society.

Aside from the Roman Catholic Church, the Aglipayan Church and Protestant denominations like the United Methodist Church, the Iglesia Ni Cristo has a highly-visible locale in Agno for the spiritual nourishment of its members. Here we see followers of the Iglesia Ni Cristo in Agno standing in front of the architecturally distinctive chapel inaugurated in October 2005.

Bishop Felix Y. Manalo founded the Iglesia Ni Cristo in Punta, Santa Ana, Manila on 27 July 1914. This Filipino religion is estimated to have five to 10 million believers worldwide, and continues to experience phenomenal growth even as it wields influence in Philippine politics. According to the official Agno website the Iglesia Ni Cristo ranks behind the Roman Catholic Church and the Aglipayan Church in membership size.

The children of Agno at play in the late afternoon, with some of them sitting on top of a Boboy village building and a fence watching the world go by. Boboy hosts the famous Umbrella Rocks in Sabangan Norte, even as its hilly terrain is where one can find some of Agno's forested areas.

 
With Boboy's forest lands in the background, these youngsters and some adults while their time away in the paddy fields that are planted to rainfed rice only during the period of the Southwest Monsoon or "Habagat" from June to October annually.

Using the bamboo bridge behind them is convenient for these men from Sitio Telec on the other side of the Mabini River to cross over to the waiting shed along the national highway in Bangan Oda village until a ride comes along going to the Agno poblacion.








 

A Sitio Telec fisherman in Bangan Oda village is fishing for "alimango" or mud crabs in the Mabini River. The richly delicious natural taste of "alimango" is best savored without "sawsawan" when it is simply boiled or steamed. "Alimango" may also be cooked and eaten "adobo" style, or even prepared with "buko" strips and coconut "kakang gata".