Pastoral Cycle for Immersion

Located along the coast of Manila Bay is the fishing community of Barangay Depensa, Orion Bataan. At the moment, there are about three thousand families living in this community. These families are basically composed of migrants from the island of Masbate in southern Luzon and the island of Cebu in the Central Visayas. Due to the fact that most of the population comes from a province which speaks the Visayan dialect, Bisaya has become the primary mode of communication within the community along with Tagalog. Through our interaction with its residents, we found out that their decision for migrating to the province of Bataan is based on the age old reason of wanting to find more opportunities and greener pastures than from where they had come from.

In order to describe the living conditions of the people in Barangay Depensa, we must first study the geographic qualities of the land which they live in. A very distinct fact on the location of the community is that during high tide, the land basically gets submerged in sea water. Setting their houses in this location proves to be advantageous to the population of the barangay. By doing this, they place themselves in close proximity to their fishing boats which reduces their transportation expenses and/or physical energy used from traveling from their homes to their jobs. In order to answer the question of the high tide washing away their houses, the fisher folk of the barangay perch their houses on stilts in order for the tide to flow under their houses and keep the general structure of their homes high and dry. Materials for the stilts and the general structure of the majority of the houses of the community come from bamboo which the community harvests from the nearby mountain ranges. However, several houses in the area have cemented foundation. All of these houses are connected by a network of bamboo bridges which span across the community.

There have been talks between the community and the local government...