REPRESA

" Fish for knowledge...Take joy and pride in your learnings....once acquired, no one can take them from you.  Hold true to the memories, and you will realize how far you made it..."

Laguna – or Dam?

“The Hands of little Architechs”

When you are used to fetching things for yourself, you will do anything to improvise and use all your given resources to make sure that your ideas function to the fullest.  Failing is not an option, and therefore, you must struggle to the end of such task at hand.

This is a brieft story of our creativity, our fishing adventures. 

                As kids, there was a lot of time in our hands and we did just about anything to keep ourselves occupied.  From harvesting with our Papa Chico, to going swimming in the represas (dams), to climbing the Castano trees by the river.  Yes, time seemed to pass ever so slowly.  Not having much of an adult figure to be on our watch and constantly remind us of the dangers we faced, we took every risk to be sure that we satisfied the thirst we had for adventures.

                One day, it was decided we would go fishing on Rio Peche (thin river), as thus was the name of our river for its narrow paths.  Together, the Fuentes little gang along with the Pereira little gang, we would build represas (dams) at the river and fish.  Yes, we would interrupt the environment and pick rock by rock, leaves, sand, and make the dam.  Yes, somehow we managed to block the entire river from continuing its course (don’t be so amazed, it was a small river).  The following steps were merely to let the water run down until there was no more and the fishes would have no other way to go.  We did this to catch what we called “Chimbolitos,” (baby fish).  Once caught, they made the best meal when deep fried and scrambed with eggs accompanied by tortillas that we had learned to make. 

                I do remember that when mom and Victor used to go fishing for the bigger stuff, they would bring home lots of things and a way to preserve them were to sun dry the fish with a lot of salt.  They tasted so good when the sun dried them and on rainy days we would eat roasted fish on a COMAL(here it is like a flat pan) with home made tortillas and Mom used to make the best rice ever as it was a staple with every meal.  And there we were, making our own dam for our own fishing.  Slowly, yet very patiently we waited and moved about catching the only fishes we could catch.  As there was no where else we could possibly go because of our age, we could not travel long distances to go fish…with good reasons as well, as none of us really knew how to swim well enough to be able to keep our selves afloat should there be any emergency.  We caught the fish we needed and we were on our way.  We destroyed the dam as to let the river continue flowing and giving its life to the rest of the fish that may have hid under heavy rocks.  Our mission had been completed and dinner was caught.

                Thus this being another reminder of the freedom we experienced.  We didn’t mind fishing for troubles, fishing for food.  It was all in the good spirit of humbleness and being a kid learning to managa life’s little obstacles.

written: Saturday, September 11, 2010  @ 9:24pm