Break time

It’s the summer of post-COVID recovery. Like it or not for the Catholic Church, Holy Week is mostly vacation / leisure time for the faithful, with religious observance woven in.

At least churches are themselves travel destinations in this country, and not just for the Holy Week Visita Iglesia. Four Philippine baroque churches are inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage list and are all-season tourism destinations: San Agustin in Manila; San Agustin in Paoay, Ilocos Norte; Nuestra Señora de la Asuncion in Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur, and Miag-ao or Santo Tomas de Villanueva in Iloilo.

This Holy Thursday, the popular annual “Alay Lakad” pilgrimage on foot to the Antipolo Cathedral from the Tikling junction in Taytay will resume for the first time after being suspended since the COVID lockdowns in 2020.

The crowd of pilgrims is expected to be large after the Vatican last month declared Antipolo Cathedral’s Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage an “international shrine” effective March 25. The designation – the first in the country and the 11th worldwide – is accorded to sites that are historical for the Church, closely associated with saints, or are the sites of miracles and Marian apparitions.

To beat the Holy Week crowd, I went to the church last month. Antipolo has become much more accessible from southern Metro Manila via the C-5 road around Laguna de Bay.

The most pleasant change at the cathedral compound since the pandemic lockdowns is the new, clean, comfortable restroom facility. It’s so nice some visitors were even taking selfies inside.

Filipino hospitality is a source of national pride. Yet in many areas, one of the most basic human needs has been overlooked or neglected. Across the country, many public toilets are “discomfort rooms” – lacking toilet paper and running water, filthy and reeking like the walls where men and dogs pee whenever the need hits them.

We don’t have to aspire for the uber-clean, cutting-edge toilets in Japan, with seat heaters and disposable paper liners plus sound that comes on automatically to mask noises while the toilet is in use.

But running water, cleanliness and an antiseptic smell are basic requirements of toilet comfort. So it was a delight to see such a facility at the Antipolo Cathedral complex.

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It was also a pleasant surprise to see similar toilet facilities at Fort Santiago in Intramuros. After over a decade, I visited the fort last month, accompanying some folks who had never been there. I was glad to see the place clean and looking well maintained, including the dungeons. I missed the lotus flowers in the moat though; maybe the lotus garden can be restored?

There was a flea market near the exit featuring local products from all over the country. I bought home-made packaged snacks that all turned out to be excellent. The merienda at Tesoro’s also didn’t disappoint.

Holy Week is meant for fasting, but instead people over-eat or indulge in “fast eating” during vacations. Since 2018, the government has also been celebrating April as Filipino Food Month, so you can take time to sample local fare during your trips.

Antipolo still offers top-rate suman, no scrimping on the coconut cream, with scrumptious coconut jam as dip. Or pair the suman with mangoes; summer is still the best season for a fruit that has become available all year round. Antipolo has many other food items; the roasted cashew (with or without skin) is a bit pricey but worth it.

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Recovery for the travel and tourism industry would have been more robust if the bivalent vaccines had arrived as originally expected in March, before the long Holy Week break.

Holy Week vacations in this country are mostly family affairs. And for many, family includes lolo, lola and those with comorbidities who remain vulnerable to breakthrough infections from the Omicron subvariant.

I know a number of people who were waiting for the bivalent boosters for the elderly and other vulnerable members of the family before embarking on all-out revenge travel involving air transport and ship cruises.

But because the bivalents have been much delayed, such Holy Week travel plans, with nearly the entire household in tow, were dialed down to road trips with no overnight stays, and still avoiding resorts featuring swimming pools.

The Department of Health had pushed for an extension of the state of COVID calamity following the lapse at the end of 2022. Lifting the calamity state would affect emergency hiring and allowance for health frontliners, the DOH explained. The extension can be done without restoring mobility restrictions or the mask mandate.

Health frontliners – as always the most vulnerable to breakthrough infections from the Omicron subvariants – are also waiting for the bivalents.

The calamity state is needed for the donation of bivalent vaccines through the COVAX facility, under emergency use authorization. Vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna want the EUA to guarantee their immunity from liability for any adverse reaction to the jabs.

But BBM has refused to extend the state of COVID calamity, even for a brief period. Is this sheer yabang, to show that the country is completely free of COVID, even if health experts say otherwise?

As usual, the only ones who can get the bivalent jabs are the Formula One crowd – those who can afford to go to countries such as the US where the bivalents are widely available for free even to foreign visitors.

The hoi polloi can just wait to catch Omicron.

If vulnerable persons are infected, pray that they will develop natural immunity, instead of lolo and or the immunocompromised ending up in the crematorium.

It’s Holy Week, a time for prayerful contemplation. While enjoying the long holiday break, maybe prayers can take the place of the bivalents.