A hymn to San Vicente Ferrer crackled inside the chapel in his namesake barangay on Olango Island last Monday (May 22). It was high noon and the morning's fiesta masses had long ended. Several parishioners sat silently on pews facing the altar with their backs to the small clearing in front of the chapel that would soon erupt in wild celebration.
On the chapel entrance was a statuette of San Vicente atop a small table, with two recycled plastic jars that used to contain wafer sticks placed on either side. For donation? I asked a parishioner who nodded and glanced at the still empty containers. The image was facing the small parking lot where people were waiting for the arrival of the bigger version of the saint’s statue, which was then being brought around the island via a procession of small boats called sakayans.
At close to 1 p.m., the crowd began to stir with shouts of “duol na, naa na” (it’s near, it’s here). People took positions on the short alley from the shore to the chapel. Two women who just came out of a house by the roadside argued over where they would stay. They just had fiesta lunch and, in these parts, anyone can just go inside a house and eat. I did, and at the barangay captain’s house no less. The two women kept saying how full they were. The one cradling a baby wanted to get away from the crowd and watch further up the road. Her companion wanted to stay where they were because she wanted to take videos.
“Mag blogger ka?” the woman with the child mocked her companion.
TINDERA SINULOG. Candle vendors Miguela Montanez, 59, and Nenita Regado, 54, sell candles at the Virgen de Regla Parish. They perform what is called the tindera Sinulog - they sell you the candles, ask for your name, and then dance in prayer asking for your good health and the granting of your wishes. The two were in San Vicente in Olango Island for the Baliw Baliw Festival. The sale of candles wasn't good, they said
A line of volunteers, members of the local chapter of the Guardians Brotherhood, started to herd the crowd, holding them back to make a path from the shore to the chapel. They barred tricycles from passing through, which would cause a line of close to half-a-kilometer of tricycles and habal-habal or motorcycles for hire to form on the narrow barangay road leading to the chapel.
When the boat carrying the image of San Vicente Ferrer came ashore, people started to wave their hands and cheer. After a few minutes, a stream of people headed to the chapel. First to pass were those who were swimming in the shallows to wait for the fluvial procession. Then came a line of children dressed as angels. And then, pandemonium.
The image of San Vicente Ferrer was on a wooden carriage held up high by young men dressed as women, their faces smeared with makeup and lipstick. Some were already drunk. “Viva Senyor San Vicente!” they screamed as they carried the image to the chapel. Among them was Mark Anthony Jumao-as, a 27-year-old worker at the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (DRRMO) of Lapu-Lapu City. The compactly built Jumaos, who was sober, was wearing a bikini.
Mark Anthony Jumao-as is a 27-year-old worker at the Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (DRRMO) of Lapu-Lapu City. He has been crossdressing for the Baliw Baliw Festival since he was 16. With him is Lapu-Lapu City Councilor Annabeth Cuizon
The crowd started shouting at first “Viva!” and then monosyllabic chants, guttural screams, and pagan ululations. It was like the babaylans of old, as demonstrated during the launch early this year of a monograph on the roots of the Sinulog dance, only more primal and chaotic. They converged in front of the chapel, a mosh pit of chanting men dressed in drag cheering and screaming at trays of cow manure and fake penises—a wooden phallus about two feet long with two coconuts as balls worn by a festivalgoer with a horror movie mask and a large silicone dildo, which was carried by another man wearing women’s clothes who had two heads of cabbage for breasts.
The cow manure they were carrying on trays and offering to people had signs such as “Pizza Hut for sale” and were drizzled with ketchup. They looked to have dried up a little under the scorching sun while people waited for the fluvial procession to finish.
People greet and cheer the image of San Vicente Ferrer after the fluvial procession as it was carried to the chapel
Then they hurled the manure into the air, splattering the crowd that continued to scream and chant. The festival participant who strapped on the wooden phallus kept flashing it to the crowd, with two men helping him hold up the giant penis. I took a video of their group and shouted to ask him what it was for. He approached me and leaned over to my ear—he reeked of liquor—to explain over the chants and loud music that it was for those who were childless that they would be blessed with children by San Vicente Ferrer.
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Baliw-Baliw Festival
The celebration is called the Baliw-Baliw Festival, a curious tradition in Barangay San Vicente on Olango Island, which is a 20-minute boat ride away from Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. Local residents and the many who visit the barangay for the yearly event don’t know when, why, and how the tradition started. All they could say during interviews is that their grandparents told them it was already happening even while they were still young and to stop it is to invite divine punishment.
It used to be called “sakay-sakay,” local resident Felisa Aying told historian Laila Labajo during a cultural heritage mapping interview in 2021. Aying was already 96 when she was interviewed and she said that it was already happening during the time of her grandfather. Labajo teaches at the University of San Carlos and conducts research on Church history and Cebuano heritage and culture.
Friends help carry a gigantic wooden penis worn by a festival-goer dressed in drag at the Baliw Baliw Festival
