Ifugao livelihoods have changed remarkably fast over the past few decades. Rita, a sixty year old woman who owns a Batad lodging house with her husband Romeo, shared one of her past livelihoods with me. The conversation started when she told us how they used to eat a local insect—quite possibly locusts.

“There were many, many insects on the trees,” Rita said in a mix of English and Ifugao. Just around four feet tall, Rita had pulled her gray hair back in a bun, and gestured to us with her long skinny arms. “They were big and they had shiny purple wings. We would be standing over here and we would look over to a tree. ‘Look,’ we’d say, ‘there are many insects on that tree, let’s go and eat them.’” Rita crouched down, smoothing her worn, tartan skirt over her knees. “We’d get near the tree like this, and we’d shake the branches. Many, many insects would fall down. Then we’d collect them in our clothes like this,” she pretended to shove the insects up her shirt. “They would crawl all over us!” She giggled, exposing her two remaining upper teeth. “Then we would get home and we would throw them in a fire and cook and eat them. They were very delicious!” She smiled again and then looked off into the distance. “But I do not see them here anymore.”

“You put them in your clothes?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine having insects crawling over my body under my clothes—willfully anyway.

“Yes, and they were scratchy too because our clothes were made from tree bark.”

“Tree bark?” I said.

“Yes, yes! I used to weave these clothes. Hold on.” She stood up and walked quickly into the house. She came back with two spindles of what looked like hemp twine.

Rita's handmade got-goto bush twine

“This is the bark from the bush. It is very difficult to prepare. Easy to weave, but many hours to prepare. You must first cook the bark for an hour, and then you let it dry for one day. Then after that you pound it, pound it.” Many Ifugao repeat a word to emphasize it.

“With the same mortar you use for the rice?”

“Yes, but you use a different one. Then you separate it into pieces and make the thread. It is very difficult.” She paused for a minute, then said, “Hold on. I have a book.”

She walked back into her house again and I saw her lift a pile of things under a table and work something out. She came back out and held a black book in her flat, wide fingers. The book was the size of printer paper, and about 80 pages or so. The embossed words were printed in gold paint, but fading quickly. The book was titled: Trails to Banaue, Ifugao: A search for Traditional Weaving, by Analyn Iking Salvador, a Japanese man who visited Batad around 1996. Rita opened the book and put her finger on a picture of herself.

“See, that is me. Ugly picture,” she said with a grimace. I flipped through several of the pages and read some of the story there. It talked about Rita’s weaving.

“Rita says she does not bring her products to Banaue [specifically the market, since Batad is part of Banaue] for fear she will be misjudged by the weavers as “old-fashioned.” She only shows it to people who are genuinely interested in her products and directly approach her about the process.”

The story continued, ending with a comment that spoke volumes. “Indeed Rita is the last link to the traditional process of the traditional weaving of the past.”

I closed the book and handed it to her. “So you are the only one who knows this weaving?” I asked her.

“Yes—they do it in the other barangays, but they are not traditional. My weaving is the only traditional one.”

Though I couldn’t imagine wearing a bush bark shirt, I felt a loss for this ancient weaving practice. It reminded me of a story I read in the Washington Post about Japanese kimonos. Apparently there are only three kimono masters left in Nishijin—the kimono district—who can create a kimono from scratch. Because of globalization, most kimonos are made from cheap silk, or made in China where the supplies and labor are cheap. The three remaining masters are all over 70—one of them is 102—and none of them have an apprentice. The Post article states: “The prosperity [of Japan] has come with an altered set of cultural values. This is a country of manga comics and glittering animation. The rising moguls driving the new economy are more likely to buy the muscled chrome from one of Tokyo’s expanding list of Ferrari dealerships than drop their spoils on Kyoto silk.”

Though Japanese silk kimonos are a far cry from tree bark shirts, they are both emblematic of cultural arts being replaced by factory sewing machines.

“When did you stop?” I asked her.

Her answer echoed so many weavers like her around the world. “When I make money,” she said, “I stop.”