IRIGA CITY – The yearly harvest festival in this city celebrated traditionally with a parade of harvest laden bull carts and street “mardigras” starts this year with a humanitarian and medical mission.
An 80-member contingent, composed of Fil-American physicians headed by Dr. Rosemarie Aquiler, all belonging to the Philippine Medical Association of Michigan (PMAM), accompanied by volunteer nurses, came over bringing their own medical supplies and equipment and conducted medical as well as surgical procedures on indigent patients.
Iriga City Mayor Ronald Felix Alfelor told Vox Bikol that the U.S based doctors and plastic surgeons treated 2,000 indigent patients from 36 villages of this city and performed 200 reconstructive surgeries on cleft-palate and hare-lip cases.
The medical and surgical activities were held at the Iriga City Coliseum and the Sta. Maria Josefa Hospital Foundation, Alfelor said.
The festival highlights that unfold on Feb. 11 are themed on the legends of local fruits and vegetables that are offered as a way to thank the gods for bountiful harvest. The offering is called “tagba” and the word “tinagba” originated from this, the Mayor added.
A festival sidelight, the “Banchetto sa Tinagba 2014” showcases traditional Irigueño cuisine and an exhibit of locally grown agricultural products opened this week. Giant replicas of fruits and vegetables were installed at the entrance of the city park.
On Feb 11, the festival day itself, hundreds of Irigueños wearing festival headgears shall participate in the first Tinagba Festival 3-kilometer “fun-run.”
Participants coming from all 36 barangays of the city are clustered in six participating contingents for the street dancing competition and the parade of floats and bull carts.
A total of 600 street dancers shall present a moving choreography in a parade that is expected to last for six hours.
Tribal representatives and chieftains of some 3,000 Aeta aborigines who reside in the uplands of Mount Iriga shall head the long line of street dancers and shall ride the bull carts carrying the harvest offerings to the Lady of Lourdes at the St. Anthony of Padua Church in downtown Iriga.
The week-long festival culminates in an evening parade of illuminated floats called “Fantillusion.”
Invited guests for this year’s festival include Department of Tourism (DOT) Bicol regional director Maria “Nini” Ravanilla. Acting as judges in the street dancing and float competitions are well-known dance-studio owners in Manila and two officials from the National Council for Culture and Arts.
ABS-CBN talents Jake Cuenca and Angeline Quinto shall grace the festival as hosts of the TV network’s coverage of the “Tinagba” Festival, which has been cited by the DOT as among the best tourism events in the Philippines” with historical roots dating back to the pre-Hispanic period.
Tinagba Festival 2013 generated nearly Php 50-Million in tourism revenues for the business sector of this city. The yearly tourist attendance is estimated at 300,000 dominated by “balikbayans” from U.S. and Europe. (SONNY SALES)