Stories of Cebu

From a dumpsite to a village

Imagine having to live in a shanty with seven kids and mountains of garbage nearby. Rutshe Roble need not think about it. She has lived it for almost thirty years of her life.

An hour for a hundred years

Have some time alone — that’s what we all want at times when our deadlines are staring us straight into the eyes, our reading assignments are piling upon our desk, our 100-page exams coverage has only been read a night before the test. You don’t know what to do first, and you can…

Horseplay

I’m now in that stage of fatherhood where I need to decide if the first words my child speaks must be in English or Cebuano. My boy will soon turn 2 and he now has a decent collection of syllables that can be woven into complete words the moment he’s ready, like “ba,” “ga,” “ta,” “a” and the occasional “duh”…

What’s a true Cebuano?

In a live radio interview recently, the DJ asked me a question which I thought was the easiest in the world. He said, “What do you think is a true Cebuano?”

I was shocked. Is this the type of questions DJs ask these days? They don’t make you think anymore. Before…

Name Game Sugbo

Names of places fascinate me as I wander from town to town as a journalist.

That the Spaniards influenced how various places in our island are named goes without saying. Thousands of miles away from home, the homesick friars couldn’t be faulted for imagining miniature…