Basketball, Cockfighting and Kindness
What residents of a small Philippine town are good at
On the fourth day of our 2016 trip to the southern island of Coron in Palawan, we headed inland to search for relatives with the help of a tricycle driver.
Luckily, our driver, Junior, knew my second cousin Kuya (a respectful term for older brother/man) Joseph “Patit”’s family. Thirty minutes later, we arrived at a farm where Kuya Patit was hosting a cockfight for the feast of San Juan.
“Two things Coronians do,” Junior told us, “basketball and cockfights.”
The first person we met was Lolo Tantin (Kuya Patit’s father). Though white-haired, he was still fit at nearly 80 years old. He introduced us around, and then his daughter Sandy fed us some sandwiches and soda.
The cockfight drew a ton of people who had zipped past us on motorbikes carrying roosters in little containers with holes.
