It was a merry occasion last Saturday, May 12, as Oslob Mayor Ronald Guaren culminated the fourth annual celebration of Oslob Heritage Week with a VIP guest list that included not just Gov. Gwendolyn F. Garcia but also Sen. Loren Legarda, Rep. Pablo Garcia and Rep. Pablo John Garcia.
The event was highlighted by the opening of Museo de Oslob on a nearly run-down building behind the unfinished late Spanish-era Cuartel de Infanteria, right within the heritage park inaugurated by the governor about two years ago. This particular building used to house small resort guest rooms about a decade or so ago. Rehabilitated late last year for adaptive reuse as a museum with the help of acting provincial engineer Adolfo Quiroga based on designs by architect Tessie Javier, its moment finally came over the weekend, timed with the celebrations of National Heritage Month all over the country.
Now it can be told that, with the help of curators from Museo Sugbo, the Museo de Oslob was set up with barely a month of lead time. The secret as to why it took so little time to set up something that amazed visitors during the inaugural exhibition last week lies in the very recent history of Oslob.
Your see, of all the local chief executives in Cebu, it is only Mayor Guaren who has steadfastly carried out an annual heritage week featuring exhibits of heirloom pieces amid contests and presentations of the intangible side of heritage: music, poetry, and dance, to name a few. This consistency in promoting pride of place had become the inspiration to theme the museum design to showcase the colonial-era lifestyle of old Oslob. Thus was born the inaugural exhibition titled “Herencia: Heirlooms and Other Treasures of Old Oslob.”
Armed with three years of experience in which all 22 barangays of the town were clustered in a contest to showcase the oldest, the best and the rarest of objects in specific exhibition booths, it was less difficult to gather what would later be useful in reconstructing specific parts of a house: the sala (living room), the comedor (dining room), the cuarto (bedroom) and the cocina (kitchen). The fulcrum that made all this possible at the barangay level was the constant presence of Mrs. Nenita Filosopo, the president of the Association of Barangay Captains who hails from Nueva Caceres. It was she, together with Oslob tourism officer Elizabeth Tabasa, who made the rounds going from barangay to barangay, house to house, getting items for the museum.
From a bunch of 1930s art deco seats and a 1900s cast-iron four-poster bed to the much-older Spanish-era lounging chairs called butacas and even to the lowly stone grinders and cotton gins called dutdutan, objects for the museum began to trickle in, brought along by barangay captains following a meeting we had with them a week prior to the opening.
By Friday afternoon, everything had already been in place, except for parts of the kitchen. An abuhan, the native hearth, had to be constructed under the supervision of engineer Emelyn Frondoso, the municipal engineer, as it was impossible to get one without destroying it.
A few hours before the noontime inauguration, a few more residents who heard of the museum being set up came over and brought their heirloom pieces, mostly photo olios and colonial-era pictures in art deco frames as well as the now-rare lagang shadow box frames.
By the time the guests arrived, the museum had long been in place, waiting for its appointment with history, as it were, made more colorful by the colonial-era attire of the men and women of Oslob who waited in excitement for the moment the museum doors would be flung open.
Congratulations to the people of Oslob on this important addition to their many tourist attractions.