Those times when we used to go to the rice field to catch some fish with my brother and friends

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The Camachile pod fruit. Birds and Bats also love it.

I miss the days that I am able to roam our neighborhood, it is not so rural of an area even though we do not have tall buildings but you will feel the nature around. My village is sandwiched between a river, the dike which is also a dirt road with some parts of it already paved and there are houses on its sides unlike in my younger years where the houses are not that well built but in times of a river swelling event due to heavy rainfall. The river itself is a good source of food like fish and clams and in our part of the river it is known for the Tiger prawns that naturally found it it as well as fresh water crabs at the bottom of the river. If you have to will and means to catch those free food from the river then you can have a good source of food or income if you sell them because Tiger prawns are expensive while the River crabs are more expensive with a price of almost two dollars per 1/4 kilogram which you can have for two to three eating sessions if you will have them in a fermented or salted way but if cooked it is just good for one person or two if you are both a small eater.

Those houses in the side of the river gets submerged, you really have to elevate your house with the level of the dike otherwise when the river swells again it will not fare well with you but farewell to your house. Some households from there knows it already but some will just mitigate when that flooding event comes. When calamity like that happens the whole village would get assistance from the local government, we would receive some emergency good like instant noodles, rice, canned goods, bottled water or maybe some sugar and coffee if the village official would not steal it because they always do that.

Then in the dike area there are these "free" trees that we get those special Camachile pods, you really have to use a long stick to be able to get them. The trees themselves are thorny but you can be able to scrape them with a little workaround because the wider the tree trunk the wider the space in-between the thorns so you have to be careful in touching the small branches of the "Camachile" tree if you happen to climb yourself up into the tree and harvest the pods with your makeshift long rod with a small basket to catch the fruits especially those that are too ripe because their sweet flesh would fall out from the pea pod because the more ripe the flesh the bigger it grows and the more the pod gets to open-up. There isn't much to do above the dike except to harvest random trees with fruits like guava, the Camachile fruits, a star apple or even sweet potato greens or whatever that is edible that is growing at the side of the dike's road.

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Back in those times when not much people are living beside the river or at near the dike, you can take some property yo make as your own.

There was this story of my grandmother telling me that she was one that planted those Camachile trees, maybe from the existing trees at that time because she was also telling me that she would bring my Father along to get some ripe pods. In those times too there no houses yet, it is just now that the sons and daughters of two generations back had claimed those properties that are actually owned by the government. I am not sure now if they can make a title out from those free plot of lands from the side of the dike and down towards the river but I think based on law if you live in a place long enough without anyone disputing you can claim it and possible get it titled in your name.

So everyone now knows the value of those precious lands so they established themselves in and fenced them in so no one can enter them to claim it privately as their own. But again those part of land coming from the river is not ideal to put your house in because you have to make sure that your house will be safe from river swellings bad enough that it could breach the dike and thus making the rest of the town and the adjacent city to get a record high flooding as well and the fact that the river itself widens too as time passes by is also to consider as it may eat your property's foundations leaving you being located inside the river, so it is a wise thing to really plan ahead if you would permanently settle basically beside the river and it will require a big pocket since that house would be designed specially in order to avoid inconveniences in the future.

Now we come to the other part of the river where the majority of the houses are there where my house also is located, it is the fun part of the village because we have a minor road that stretches way out to the major hi-ways and the next town. Only the villages most of the time uses it because it gets quiet at night time especially in the wee hours of the morning as if it sleeps along with people but with occasional vehicle passing through from somewhere. New York is said to be a city that never sleeps but this villages sleeps at night, not a creature is moving, not even a mouse.

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When I was just a Kid we play on the road with out traditional local games if not from the backyard of our neighbors and those are fond memories of my childhood. The lack of gadgets make us do that will entertain us like even fishing, picking rice stalks at harvest season, catching edible frogs, exploring the elementary school in some weekends or vacation time, and of course watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons in Saturday and Sunday and even at weekdays.

Most of the actions takes place in our road beside my house so it gets noisy particularly if a mad person in MoPed passes by with his annoying noise trying to rev the fuck out of his cheap motorcycle. The road now is teeming with vendors of meat and vegetables in the morning with PA system and trying to sell bananas, silken tofu, sweet potatoes tuber, cassava tubers, apples, Mandarin citrus fruits, and bland watermelons, the ones that didn't sell from their store, they vend it out on the road with annoying PA system which now becoming a trend.

Then there are also houses on the other side that borders the irrigation system. It is one place in our village that I had some fun catching fish back in the day when I can still walk even though my body is relatively weak , we electrocuted some to get them using a power source from one of our neighbors, we trapped them too and it is an easy way to catch fish that way, you put them in a deeper place of the water and take them back with fishes inside.

I was also able to fish using my air rifle and a sphere attached to a thin fishing line that is reeled in to any cylindrical plastic container, quite a work to fish like that but you can pick fishes that are trying to get some oxygen during the times that the irrigation stopped and the water is left stagnant and a bit shallow and getting low in oxygen, at that point it is the perfect time to do a sphere-fishing or even trapping them using a screen and with special doors so that fishes would not be able to get out easily one you take out the fish traps, plus you can do it over and over again or using multiple traps at a time, you just have to keep in mind that some kid might mess with your traps and steal your potential harvest.

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The rice filed Savannah, without these guys right here, in our place three and a half or so decades ago was a fun place to explore, not play, but to make use of the free treasures you can find within and make good memories with your friends.

There are also some houses at the other side of the irrigation system where some of them once owned the rice fields where we catch fish at the farthest part of the rice fields which the farmers doesn't use and left there as a savannah. There are times that it will get flooded, maybe the reason why the farmers doesn't bother to plant in it but once the water dwindles away it creates these pools of water where you can with some elbow grease, because you will have to make a dam to throw out water from those pools, harvest a few catfish or "Hito" in the local term, snake head fish, we call them mudfish in English or "Dalag" or "Bulig" in our local language, then there are these fishes we call "Berdiston" or Bird Stone/verdistone. They are fun to eat, I really like the taste of their liver, earthy and yummy especially if they have eggs which are equally yummy.

But back in the day we do not seem to see Eels anywhere there but now these Eels are everywhere, not much people like them because they resemble snakes and are very slippery but I would myself mind that because they are delicious kind of field food that you can cook in many ways possible. My friend who is a rice farmer sometimes brings me big snakehead fish and Eels because he told me there are so much of them in the rice fields and the bodies of water around it. And of course there are many kinds of other fish we can get from those Savannah pools like Tilapia and small varieties of fish.

Now I guess that there are no waterway or bodies of fresh water here without Janitor fishes but those too can be eaten, you just wash them, throw them in an open fire, take out the cooked flesh and cook them in coconut cream, ginger, spicy chili pepper, some pepper leaves and it will leave you with a very delicious dish! Those are the times when those rice fields existed, not they are replaced by exclusive subdivision houses because the farmers go tired and sold all their valuable lands that are now just a thing of a special memory when I was younger.

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Almost everyone gets excited when Mudfish is served, it has different kind of taste and texture, I like it broiled under coals with guts except gills still inside because I also eat those.

Bigger mudfish must be contained very well, they are known to escape out from a pail and free themselves hopefully to freedom or in the hands of another humans to eat them later.

I wished that I could have enjoyed more of my younger years so most of the time I am just a spectator of my eldest brother, I always am with him with his journeys around our village from rod fishing, harvesting clams from the river side beach, to the rice paddies, the irrigation canal, and playing in the streets with our local games that kids today doesn't play anymore. But my illness got the best of me until my activities lessen and lessen as I grow older until symptoms of my illness had gotten worse and now it had lead me almost totally bed-ridden all the time telling stories of my valuable memories that only I can treasure. It has been interesting to live in this interesting world even though I haven't had much joy in my life which went to another path of fate that only God can change if time would not catch me first.