Friday, August 25, 2006

CDO bursting at the seams.

Cagayan de Oro City has grown by leaps and bounds. This might be a trite characterization of a phenomenon which has crept up on its residence unnoticed but, a casual visitor is sure to observe that Cagayan de Oro City is indeed a city that is bursting at its seams. For one thing, the streets of Cagayan de Oro (CDO) are narrow. These streets served their purpose excellently forty or fifty years ago when the debate was whether to allow motorcycle-diven cabs to take the place of horse-driven tartanillas that had served the riding public ever since before the Second World War.

As history has shown, the motorcabs won and the horse-drawn tartanillas have gone the way of ancient relics; but, these vehicles which were copied from designs that are popular in many parts of the Philippines soon gave way to an invention which has held its own even today: the Motorela. This is a word which combines the words: motorized caretela.This invention is unique to Cagayan de Oro City and as a design I would say it is superior to the other designs which are based on the German motorcycle with a sidecar which we often see in WWII movies.

Going back to the topic of tremendous growth, one only has to take a ride on a jeepney from the downtown area going to Carmen or Patag or SM in order to get the feeling that indeed something is amiss. What I am talking about is bumper-to-bumper traffic almost at all hours of the day, not just during rush hour. The Marcos Bridge which had helped to alleviate the traffic situation several years back is also hard -pressed to ease the traffic congestion. I visited Cagayan de Oro a month ago and I noticed that work was being done to improve or widen or replace the Cagayan de Oro Bridge which for a long time was the only link between the two sections of the city being separated by the Cagayan de Oro River. This is welcome news although I doubt very much that it would do the trick.

What is the cause of this troublesome situation? Fifteen years ago, I was watching three Mayoral candidates, Manny Quisumbing who was running on the platform of opening Lotto outlets in the city, Erasmo Damasing who is a professional politician and Dongkoy Emano, another professional politician who had reached the limit of his term as Governor of Misamis Oriental and was poised to bring his executive skills to serve the citizens of Cagayan de Oro City. In the television debate, all three candidates were asked the question, "In your mind, what is the biggest problem being faced by the City of Cagayan de Oro?" Manny Quisumbing was first to answer and he said that the traffic problem was the biggest of all the other problems facing the city. The two other candidates affirmed that indeed, the traffic problem was the worst of all problems currently beseting the city. This little episode led me to believe that Manny Quisumbing the more intelligent of the three of them. I did not hear however, any words of wisdom regarding the solution of the problem. Just the problem being pointed out, nothing more.

This was almost ten years ago and the problem is still here. What gives?

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posted by webnight @ 8:29 PM   0 comments

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

They call her the "City of Golden Friendship", a name that I was never comfortable with. There is really nothing wrong with that name but somehow it sounds contrived, like something that came out of a contest for naming the city. The thing is Cagayan de Oro is named after something golden as "Oro" is gold in Spanish. There is an obvious reference to gold as evidenced by the name but to make the jump to Golden Friendship seems to me unnatural and well, contrived. At the time when someone had the brilliant idea to dub Cagayan de Oro as "The City of Golden Friendship", there was no gold being mined anywhere near the city. There was an old GI named Barker who lived in a big house along Tomas Saco St. who did some mining but people simply dismissed him as being eccentric or somehow deluded with the fiction of Cagayan de Oro having gold. Little did they know that he really was mining the yellow stuff using techniques known only to American miners.

It may have been a bit embarassing for the leading men of Cagayan de Oro to try to explain away to visitors the reference of gold when no gold could be found in the city except for the gold in rings and watches and the occasional gold tooth of a wealthy Muslim trader. It appears to me that the name was eventually adopted after a radio campaign where the bright idea of locating gold in the hearts of Cagayanos and associating that with being friendly succeeded in cementing the name in the minds of Cagayanos and visitors alike. When the City finally adopted that name, a loyal Chinese businessman promptly adopted the name for his grocery store. I believe the name Golden Friendship is a name which is more fitting for a grocery than a city.

Cebu City and Iloilo City vie for the honor of being The Queen City of the South. Dumaguete has styled herself as The City of Gentle People which aptly describes the demeanor of Dumaguetnons as well as their style of speaking..The need to link the word gold to a name to describe Cagayan de Oro sounds sophomoric and well, contrived. It's a pity gold was not rediscovered until about thirty years later when the gold rush of Gango and environs brought out the adventurers from all over the country. What more can I say? The name "City of Golden Friendship" does not really say anything definitive about the people of Cagayan de Oro.
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posted by webnight @ 9:36 AM   0 comments