When I was a kid, my grandma used to threaten me that she would send me to haunted house if I continued to misbehave. A haunted house then would refer to a very old spanish influenced house located near our school. The house was totally abandoned and there are strange and large trees that gives it a definite eerie look. It had become a landmark of its own, the "haunted house"as everyone would actually refer to it.
Then, when I was in fourth grade, our class adviser surprised us by announcing that we would be going on a trip, a visit to our city's new museum, the old "haunted house". I clearly remembered freaking out and thinking she must be out of her mind. But curiosity struck in and I decided to go, if only to prove that there isn't any ghosts in that place.
Years later and the notorious haunted house is now a museum and one of the city's tourist attraction. Named as Balay Negrense, it is being managed and developed by the Negros Cultural Foundation. Part of the house has been restored but the eerie ambiance was well kept. It houses a wide collection of antiques including a Noli Me Tangere still written in the original Spanish Language. It also displayed clothings, beds, silverwares and other household items which were basically donated by the local residents to make the place even more attractive to tourists. Now I may not be an expert into judging the actual age of each of the items but one does not need Einstein's IQ to realize that they are indeed antique and a collector's well valued treasures. The entrance fee is at AED. 40.00 per person. I believe there were supposed to be discount for students but I hadn't really noted that since all of us who went there were either too old for school or too young to study. After the trip was finished though, I'd say it was well worth it.
It was assumed that the house was built around 1897, the home of Victor Gaston and his wife. It was the place where he raised his family, all of his 12 kids. It was once a home, a place of happy gatherings, a venue to celebrate memorable occasions. Years later, it became an abandoned home as all kids decided to spread each of their own wings, follow their individual passions which led each of them to a different path, all leading away from the place they once called home. It was literally abandoned, the very reason why it was once refered to as the "haunted hoüse". The only reason it is now a museum is because a group of concerned individuals decided to take advantage of the house that once boast of fortune and power, decided to rebuild the house to remind people of the history that fills its every corner.
Looking at it now, I am amazed at the capacity of some individuals to recreate what was once a ruin into an income generating tourism business. Looking at the house, it somehow gives me a feeling of pride and an unexplained twinge of pain. Pride in having the chance to experience seeing Balay Negrense at its lowest point when it was still nothing but a ruined structure and now witnessing it in its revived grandeur. Sadness because it is an epitome of how one's family can be separated by time, pressures, priorities and heaven knows what else until they eventually give up the place where they grew up. It was, I believe the case for the daughters and grand daughters of Victor Gaston. The house was a home to Victor and Prudencia's life as a couple, a place where they had their children, raise them into adulthood, shared laughters, celebrated occassions. But in the end, like everything else in life, the house now becomes nothing but a memory, forgotten by its original owners.
I am looking at my two daughters as I write this, and I know deep inside me that such event is most likely to happen to us as well. Will I be angry or resentful? I don't think so. As long as my children and their grandchildren will be able to spread their wings and reach further, then I don't really care where their dreams will take them. I just want them to be happy and successful regardless whether they are under the roof where Mark and me raised them or whether they are in the other parts of the world. In the end, it does not matter where they are. What matters is how they live each of their lives.
0 comments:
Post a Comment