Becoming a Ninong and Ninang to our Pumpboat Driver

Hello my dear Hivers of the @familyandfriends community. Hope you're all doing good and safe.

Im back with another memorable story to tell you.

It was back in 2023 during the town fiesta of the municipality of La Paz. Their festival is called Kaliga Festival.

It was just a regular day for me and my husband for almost 2 years staying their as it was my first assignment in the DepEd.
My school is actually a bit far from the town proper.

I have to travel almost an hour to my station. Before I get there, I have to ride a motorcycle or a tricycle to their "pantalan" or their port for pumpboats. The barangays down the Adgawan river where numbers of residents live, use the pumpboats as their main transportation to and from the town proper. They usually come to town to sell their fishes because fishing is their primary source of living. After selling it, they go on for groceries for personal consumption and some for their small stores we call "sari-sari store" here in the Philippines.

So going back to the festival, one of it's events is the kasalan ng bayan where couples who already have children or even those who still haven't got children and have stayed for so long together already and have not been married are given free civil wedding by the mayor.

One of the couples who joined were our pumpboat driver and his wife. And we were shocked because he asked me and my husband to be their ninong and ninang or their godparents. I was hesitant at first because we were younger than them and they got children already older than our daughter.

But in the end we accepted it. We thought may be they saw us as good people to consider us to be their ninong and ninang. And take note, we were the only ninong and ninang they invited. How's that for a first time? Hahaha

Anyway we were happy about it. We went their happily and so happy also for the newly wed. We even gave them a small gift not expensive but surely from our hearts.

Despite this unexpected role we got, we felt honored to be part of their union. Now that I was transferred to our municipality, we still kept in touched with our "godchildren".

It was a one of a kind experience and we did not regret accepting that invitation.

That's all for today! Thanks for reading this far.

Note: lead photo is edited in Canva.