Feature: Figurines made from Pinatubo ashes make good business

By Marcelo M. Pedalino

Sunday 17th of June 2012

MAASIN CITY, Southern Leyte, June 17 (PIA) -- The nation remembers exactly twenty-one years ago, the wild eruption of Mount Pinatubo after a 600-year slumber.

June 15, 1991 was invariably remembered as the date when “day turned into night,” when the gods clashed, sending deafening thunder in what seemed the end of the world (at least, in parts affected by the eruption).

Images of its wide-ranging devastation are still alive in our memories, as communities and people badly hit by nature’s “bomb” struggled to find meaning to what happened, while ashes literally dominated the desolate landscape.

Fast-forward to 2012. Romeo (not his real name), a Tagalog-speaking peddler, enters the office of Philippine Information Agency (PIA) here almost 21 years later selling attractive and intricately designed figurines made from Pinatubo's volcanic.

Figurine designs included animals like tigers and Philippine Eagles and religious work of arts featuring the Saints, the Cross, and other faith-based icons built with the bottom attached to a 3 1/2” X 1 ½” X ¼” wooden base, with a holder for a pen.

Romeo swore each carefully-built product, dirty-white in color having a height of at least three inches, depending on design, has the Pinatubo ash as the basic ingredient plus the hardener and other inputs.

The price per product also differed, the religious icons mostly sold at P 100 apiece, while the “animals” were P 200 apiece, and Romeo showed a Mayor’s office permit and a Priest’s permit to conduct his selling business, from June 4 to 15 only, suggesting a limited time-frame and a legitimate trade.

He said business was good for him and his other companions as people readily appreciated their products plus their “salestalk” of how hard life was when Pinatubo did blow ashes they are now selling as figurine products, a work they have been doing since 2004, travelling in almost all the nooks and corners of the country.

Luckily for me, with my interest in listening to Romeo’s story, the Eagle figurine that I liked, its wings spread high ready to fly, was offered at a bargain, from P 200 to P 150.

I readily bought it, content not with the reduced price, but with the thought that out of the difficulty wrought from a calamity, a thriving business evolved, and somehow my purchase may have helped the business survive, one way or another. (PIA8-Southern Leyte)