RIVER DIVE - RECYCLED FISH PEN BAMBOO for FENCE - PART 2 | PHILIPPINES
This blog covers two days in the river. The first day Mario and I finished tearing down the second fish pen which took approximately 6 hours of working in the river, and the second day consisted of towing the two loads back to our beach house.
Again, it was not an easy task to recover the bamboo as the river depth was sometimes over our heads and with zero visibility I decided to not even wear my mask this time as it was more of a hassle than helpful. The bamboo/kawyan poles were caked with many shells (Taba), and we saw lots of purple and leopard looking crabs. Some even were crawling all over me (and yes, a little creeped out about that) as their homes were being torn down. We started the job around 0700 HOURS and finished around 1400 HOURS. I'm pretty sure this was the hardest day of working since I retired.
The second day was to collect all the bamboo that we had put together from the two fish pens. We hired one of Mario's friends that had a pump boat (A pump boat is an outrigger canoe powered by a small gasoline or diesel engine.) to bring the two loads back to the beach house. The day started at 0430 HOURS before the sun was up. We put the boat in the water, and paddled out a bit away from the houses on shore as the engine is quite loud. The pump boat owner wrapped the cord around the starter again and again as we drifted in the ocean. Finally we got the boat started and made our way to the Masao River. After stopping for fuel and another hard time starting the engine, we finally made it to the two stacks of bamboo that Mario and I prepared the day before. Once we arrived, we waited for about an hour for the tide to go out a bit more. I sat in silence as Mario and the driver carried on a conversation in Bisya. I am learning and I can understand gamay (little), but it was nice listening to the waking birds and the silence around us.
Once the tide went down a bit, Mario and I hopped into the river and directed the first load out to the middle of the river, again not knowing what was below my feet, or how deep the water was. Luckily the deepest parts were only up to my neck. We lined up the stack, Mario climbed aboard the stack, and I climbed back into the boat. We slowly made our way back to the beach house (after two stalls of the engine). We turned around and did it again for the second stack.
After picking up the second stack, the river and people were coming alive. There was a lot more activity happening as the time was now around 0700 HOURS. We saw many locals starting to move around on shore, some putting their boats in the water, and we even saw three BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) boats come down the river headed for another day on the sea protecting the legal and illegal fishing. We finally made it back with our last load around 0800 HOURS.
The next step was to get both stacks out of the water to dry out (approx. three days to dry). This part was not fun as the pieces were super heavy compared to moving the pieces of bamboo in the water. We recruited extra help to make the offload easier, but my back could only take so much, so I had to quit after half of the second stack. The offload finished around 1230 HOURS, and all the bamboo was out of the water on the shore.
A lot of the pieces had sharp dangerous shells caked and attached to them. The locals call the shellfish Taba. We invited any and all to harvest what they could as it is a delicacy for most. Many people showed up with their knives and started chipping away to get the meat. The villagers were very happy, and a lot had an extra meal that day. I did not try it...
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