PARAW RACE
Bacolod, Philippines
November 2005

As part of its Asian clean energy campaign, the Greenpeace flagship boat 'Rainbow Warrior' visited Philippine shores in 2005 to pitch for clean energy solutions such as wind, solar and biomass energy sources. It was a fantastic campaign and I was lucky to have been invited to document the groups activities.

One of the events was a paraw race held in Bacolod to get the communities involved in keeping the environment clean. The participants from the different baranggays were very enthusiastic. With "clean energy" as the theme, they painted the sails of their respective paraws creatively. As soon as all the paraws were at the starting line, everyone waited in anticipation for the gunstart.

Then a funny thing happened. No one could find the police officer who was invited to fire the starting gun. After frantic searching, we found out the man got impatient, ate some chicken noodles and left. It's a good thing some people were playing with an improvised hand cannon. Borrowing the device, the race soon got on its way.

For more information on Greenpeace, visit their site at http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/en/