The scorching heat of Tacurong City flushed my family out of our backyard and into the hills of Mlang, North Cotabato. What was suppose to be a trek of atonement during good Friday turned out to be a merrymaking, chicken butchering and goat snatching clan rendezvous Saturday. Okay, that was a bit exaggerated but yeah an unplanned clan reunion was a “mournful day” for my cousins farm chickens and goats.

We did trek some 2kms of scorching open trail just to reach that “farm” though, no thanks to the smoldering heat! Tinolang manok and papaitan were just some of the more delicious food for thought that day. Then we went into some wild chicken chasing (we use to do this when we were kids here) down the hill, and you forget it is black Saturday. Forget about whos with the Romans who butchered those chicken and goats. Their sins were forgiven long before they crucified those poor farm animals.

And I thought, Uh, ’tis Black Saturday.