It’s more fun in Binaliw Festival

The bizarre and the religious mixed  it up during high tide in  Olango Island off Mactan, Cebu yesterday.

Organizers said at least 5,000 people participated in this year’s Binaliw Festival which  honors the island’s patron saint, Vicente Ferrer.

Baliw in Cebuano means  crazy.

The celebration started with a fluvial procession of about a hundred motorized and paddle boats carrying the image of Saint Vicente Ferrer from barangay Sta. Rosa.

Many of the passengers were  cross-dressing men who wore cotton dusters and makeup. They shared the boat ride with little girls in white angel costumes and wings as part of the traditional Flores de Mayo homage to the Virgin Mary.

Some merrymakers  were content to frolic in the shore.

Erwin Eyas,  event coordinator, said the festival has been celebrated since the 18th century, evolving over time from pagan rites  to  a local fluvial procession to honor a Catholic saint.

Eyas said festival  parti- cipants act out their collective and personal tragedies in strang ways.

But as outlandish as their acts may be, the  point is to offer sacrifice and seek the intercession of San Vicente, he said.

Ferlisa Aying, an 87-year-old resident of barangay San Vicente, said she’s witnessed the festival ever since she was a  child, every third  week  of May, depending on the  day with the highest tide.

According to Aying’s parents,  it was a celebration passed down by their forefathers.

It began as a ritual offering to the gods to prevent plagues and diseases as well as  to seek blessings for good weather for a  bountiful fish catch.

Bad things are believed to happen if the gods are not appeased by the celebration, according to  island elders.

One tradition involves the staging of cat fights where cats are pitted against other kinds of animals like frogs or fighting cocks.

Some men held aloft  wooden phallic symbols, an echo of the fertility rites once celebrated on the island.

Other residents said this was a ritual of thanksgiving for the successfully healing of an island dweller’s prostate cancer.

Eyas said that throughout the years there have been attempts to change the festival in accordance with Catholic teaching while maintain island traditions.

“But it’s  hard to stop people who have made it their devotion to do these weird things,” Eyas said.

He said Catholic Church authorities tried to discourage the festival but San Vicente residents persisted even if the clergy refused to give their blessing.

Residents  Redjel Saton and Dionesia Lanoy said they enjoyed the Binaliw  Festival but didn’t forget their religious obligation.

They attended Mass in church in the afternoon and prayed to their patron saint.