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Updated: May 7, 2025
"Just think of practically growing chocolate bonbons on a tree, beneath the window of your nipa huts, in these wonderful Philippine Islands," I added, and every one smiled. "It is really true, when one adds the sugar," remarked the Padre. "Now tell me please about coffee, also," I begged. Fil's father continued: "The coffee comes from another low bush.
RIZAL'S first home in Manila was in a nipa house with Manuel Hidalgo, later to be his brother-in-law, in Calle Espeleta, a street named for a former Filipino priest who had risen to be bishop and governor-general. This spot is now marked with a tablet which gives the date of his coming as the latter part of February, 1872.
Picturesque natives saluted us from the roadway, or from the windows of their nipa shacks; naked brown children fled at our approach, and wakened their elders from afternoon siestas that they might see two white women and a yellow-haired child drive by; carabao, wallowing in the muddy water of a near-by stream, stared at us stolidly; fighting-cocks crowed lustily as we passed; and hens barely escaped with their cackling lives from under our very wheels.
After a short consultation the lieutenant sighed, cast a glance at the mud and his clean leather puttees, then went overboard, taking a man with him. They disappeared in the nipa swamps, but came back in half an hour with three carabaos, their owners, and an army of volunteers.
The better class of houses in Iloilo are built on strong wooden posts, 2 or 3 feet in diameter, that reach to the roof; stone walls to the first floor, with wooden windows above, and an iron roof. The poorer class of dwellings are flimsy erections of nipa, built on four strong posts. The roads and bridges are in a deplorable condition and almost impassable in the rainy season.
It was nipa within as well as without, the floor and ceiling being of braided bamboo and the walls of the nipa-palm. Its high altar was innocent of any attempt at decoration save for some faded paper flowers stuck into empty beer bottles, while the niche above was unfilled by patron saint of any description.
Every now and then, the paddles of the steamer tossed up the large fruits of Nipa fruticans, a low stemless palm that grows in the tidal waters of the Indian ocean, and bears a large head of nuts. Higher up, the river Hoogly is entered, and large trees, with villages and cultivation, replace the sandy spits and marshy jungles of the great Gangetic delta.
Then there was nata, which is like boiled custard unboiled, and there were all sorts of crystallized fruits pineapple, lemon, orange, and citron, together with that peculiar one they call santol. There were also the transparent, jelly-like seeds of the nipa palm, boiled in syrup till they looked like magnified balls of sago or tapioca.
When the night is cold, windy, or rainy, he usually covers his body with a heap of 'Pandanus', 'Nipa', or Fern leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially careful to wrap up his head in them. It is this habit of covering himself up which has probably led to the fable that the Orang builds huts in the trees.
When the sky was serene and the atmosphere clear, the boys used to climb to the very peak of the old moss and vine covered church tower. And what exclamations they would utter when, from that high pinnacle, they looked out at the beautiful panorama that surrounded them. There before them lay a great mass of roofs, some nipa, some thatch, some zinc and some made out of the native grasses.
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