Manok – Manokan Festival

For the 7^th year, the municipality of Sugbongcogon is filled with well designed and bright colored costumes on kids who are depicting our favourite flightless birds. They chant, dance and perform steps that are patterned to a chicken’s mannerisms. Yes, you read that right: Chickens. Mayor Mildred Lagbas – Mondigo has given the locals and tourists who visited her municipality a feast for both the eyes and the ears. The Manok – Manokan festival of Sugbongcogon is an entertainment extravaganza for the travellers who would want a splash of culture, history and modern day touch of festivities. With festival queens and a pair which represents a rooster and a chicken, the grace, action, ingenuity and creativity of this festival is beyond me. It is something else.

The municipality in itself, to my own humble opinion, becomes a little province when the festivities start. The multitude of senior citizens performing to a jam packed audience in front of the municipal office just is a welcome sight to anyone. A parade of colourful floats which are pulled by Carabaos, booths that display their freshest produce from all the barangays and the people that are united for the betterment of the locality, these are just some of the things that makes Sugbongcogon what it is today. From the first day to the last, you can see the urgency in all of the locals to prepare food for guests, visitors and anyone else who’d come up to their doorsteps. They’ll oblige you to home-cooked meals and a friendly conversation. The 3 day festive spirit of the municipality was finished off by foam party and a fireworks display, other events during that happened were the basketball exhibitions between Kinoguitan, Jasaan, Cagayan de Oro and Balingasag, a cultural presentation by the teachers, Hip – Hop dance contest and the mass feeding of the constituents.

I have been quite around the region in the past 3 years or so, but this was a first for me to be witnessing a celebration that is well on its way to being one of the grandest in the province, or in the region for that matter. The leadership of the elected officials and sir Mamong Lagbas has paved way for sustainable tourism in the area. With seven years under its belt already, and with each year a greater improvement than before, the municipality of Subgongcogon is now becoming a well rounded destination with its white sand beach, waterfalls, Mantianak botanical garden and zoological park, the Manok – Manokan festival and its kind people. This is surely a place, figuratively speaking, dancing chickens built.