When You Get Too Involved--Part 1

The fight started because of us—Adam and me—when we decided to get involved.

Adam got me hooked on a cheesy Warner Brother’s T.V. series I would never watch at home (since I don’t have a T.V.) but somehow it’s been something we watch almost nightly on DVD. Usually Mart and his friend Raul join us, and the four of us huddle in the dark around Adam’s laptop. Adam and I tell the two boys to cover their eyes when a scene gets a little risqué—and I always laugh as they pull the blankets over their faces.

May-ug (Mai-ohg)—the teenage girl who lives next door and helps the family—isn’t usually allowed to join us. Lola doesn’t want her to come to Adam’s house, but I can’t figure out why. Is it because May-ug is second class in her eyes even though she’s a relative (since she helps at the house), or is it because she’s a female and it wouldn’t be appropriate? Adam and I think it’s more likely the first reason, which angers both of us. May-ug is just a teenager. She’s a third year (junior), she paints her toe nails pink and reads Cosmopolitan when someone else buys them—they’re around 4USD here, which is expensive. She and I talk about her guy friends, the girls who gossip about her at school, and the guy who was her boyfriend once—I’m not supposed to tell.

It bothers me that Lola won’t let May-ug come over, and that she sometimes treats her poorly. Like when her birthday hardly earned a nod, and the way May-ug can’t come over and hang out with me because she has to do chores all the time. It’s not healthy for May-ug either. A few weeks ago, Lola yelled at her for not feeding the ducks (though she had) and May-ug had heart palpitations, her extremities numbed, and she almost passed out. The doctor had to come over and do a check-up. She’s not used to being yelled at or treated like second class. She’s just a kid, and when she’s finished with her chores it should be okay for her to relax and hang out. I realize that’s my opinion (and Adam’s) as an outsider, but it affected what unfolded a few nights ago.

We’d had a great dinner—good food and a lot of chatting and laughter at the table. Adam, Mart, his friend Raul, and May-ug had sat around with us for awhile after meal talking. We decided to watch the season finale of our W.B. show—Smallville. Mart and Raul were going to come over, but Lola wouldn’t let May-ug. I went into the kitchen to say goodnight to May-ug who was washing the dishes as she does every night. I saw that she was crying.

“Hey,” I said to her, “You want to talk? You need a hug?” She didn’t respond to me, which was unusual since we’ve actually gotten pretty close. She just kept washing. I put a hand on her back and stayed there for a little while, and then I left to find Adam.

“What’s going on? Why is May-ug crying?”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t know, but Lola won’t let her join us to watch Smallville.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there’s been some tension going on all night. I don’t know if you heard this, but Lola went into the kitchen after dinner and started washing dishes. May-ug saw her and said that she would do them. Then Lola said, ‘Why don’t you just sit there and keep telling your stories!’”

Basically, Lola had gotten angry at May-ug for sitting around with us after dinner.

“That’s ridiculous! What’s going on with Lola? Why is she acting like that?”

Adam looked around and then leaned forward. “I don’t know, but there’s something else too. Mart doesn’t want me to tell you—or anyone.” He started to whisper. “I guess the other night they had been joking that May-ug wants to marry a white man. Lola yelled at May-ug and said, ‘Fine—why don’t you marry a white man! Then he can get you pregnant and leave you like Adam’s father did!’”

I knew Adam’s history, and it was much like many other Americans. His parents had married, it hadn’t worked out, and his mother remarried. They don’t understand that concept here: step-families. Divorce is not acceptable in this culture, and many Filipinos judge Americans by their many divorces, even though infidelity is happenstance here in the Philippines.

“Yeah, I don’t even want to address what that says about her opinion of American men, and what she might think of me,” Adam said, shaking his head, “The point is: there’s some tension going on with her and May-ug.”

“What should we do? Just forget about it?”

“I think we should go talk to Lola,” he said, “Why don’t we go ask her if she’ll let May-ug join us? She can’t treat her like this.”

“I don’t know—I think we should talk to Auntie Lourdes, you know, go through a third party.” That’s how they address issues around here. Instead of going to someone directly, which might lead to a loss of “face;” you go to a third party who will then tell that person for you.

Adam thought that was a good idea, but thought we should see if May-ug could come and hang out with us tonight anyway. He thought if we both went in there and asked nicely that she might agree as a favor to us. I didn’t feel comfortable with it—I thought it might intimidate her and I knew she had a better relationship with Adam. I thought he should ask by himself. But, I agreed to it anyway, and we walked into Lola’s room together. Adam did all the talking, while I stood by and watched.

When we both walked in, Lola looked at the two of us, and then back at her sneakers as she sat on her bed and put in new white laces. Adam explained the situation in Ifugao, and she smiled as she responded, but she wouldn’t look directly at either of us as she shrugged her shoulders and tried to appear like she didn’t care. We walked out of the room and back down stairs again and Adam shook his head. He didn’t totally understand what she was saying, so Mart came down and explained that Lola had said it was okay if she joined us. But I knew something else was going on.

May-ug, still sniffling, walked past us and up the stairs. I could hear Lola’s voice for a minute, and then May-ug’s, and then suddenly the two started yelling at each other. I heard Adam’s name mentioned a few times, but other than that I didn’t understand. We left the house and went over to his house, just next door. He hadn’t understood what either of the women had said, and we just paced around, wondering what we should have done differently.

“Lola’s just an old woman stuck in her ways,” Adam said.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t give her any right to treat May-ug like a slave,” I said.
“I know, but what can we do about it? We have to talk to Auntie Lourdes tomorrow, I guess, and tell her to have Lola stop treating her like this.”

We talked for a bit, and then opened Adam’s back door. Because Adam’s backyard is linked to the neighbor’s (same as mine) I could see May-ug standing out in the back, on the concrete porch. She was sobbing and staring off into the dark night, the town lights below her. I wanted to comfort her, but wasn’t sure if I should. I wished we hadn’t gotten involved—hadn’t made things worse—but it was too late to turn back now.

“You should go be with her,” Adam said. “Don’t say anything, just stand next to her.”

I nodded my head and walked out into the night.

When you get too involved, Part 2.

Some of the dogs are kept out back, tied up so they don’t get impounded and eaten by the police. May-ug feeds them our leftovers every night after dinner. She walks out in a red-checked apron, a large kettle balanced in her right arm. She kicks and shoos the dogs away as they lunge and strain against their leashes towards her, towards the food. She pours a cold stew of rice and fat and bones and water into their bowls and they push each other aside to get to it. They have been fed tonight, but still they lunge at me anyway as I walk past them towards May-ug. They seem excited for the company.

I stand next to her, against an unfinished concrete wall with long re-bar poles sticking out. May-ug looks away from me, still crying, her head leaning against one of the poles. There are many houses like this, with unfinished walls, with rebar sticking out everywhere. Many projects never finished; the money run dry.

I don’t say anything; I just rub her back as she cries. I tell her to try and take a deep breath like my mom and dad used to tell me. I’m worried that she will go numb or pass out like last time. She doesn’t look at me, but I sense her effort to breathe, to calm herself. She holds out her hand to me.

“Stretch my fingers,” she says—it’s the first thing she’s said since I came out here. I don’t know what she means exactly, but I take her hand in mine and try to lay her tense, curled fingers flat against my palm.

We stand like this for quite awhile; I don’t know how long. She pulls her hand back and keeps looking out into the night. There is some kind of party going on across town—a wedding or a wake, perhaps—and because we are up on the hill we can see and hear the people below us. They are playing country music down there, and someone has a megaphone or a really loud mike system. It’s a strange soundtrack for the night, and I feel as if I’m living Smallville even if I’m not watching it.

After awhile I ask her if she wants me to leave. She doesn’t say anything. “Do you want me to stay?” I ask. She nods her head. Part of me doesn’t want to anymore—I’m exhausted and I hadn’t wanted this tonight. But I stay. We turn around and sit with our backs to the concrete wall. The dogs—some of them free, some of them on leashes mill around us. Raul and Mart play in the yard between Adam’s house and their own, a yard full of rocks, dirt and bits of concrete. They toss rocks at cans and every once in awhile Raul comes by and stands next to us, or sits nearby, not saying anything. It’s his way of showing he cares.

I can’t stretch my legs out because of the small puddles of pee and little piles of dog shit lying around. We are also sitting next to the bathroom—which they have outside. I ask her if we can move, so we get up and move to some concrete steps nearby to be more comfortable. Still, we say little.

The dogs surround us—there are six of them, and four of them are unleashed tonight. The other two strain against their leashes and bark lightly—at us, at the dogs next door, at each other—so many barking dogs in this town. One of the unleashed dogs is pregnant and she waddles up next to us. She stands near me and I do something I don’t do often here—I pet her. I didn’t get a rabies vaccine and the disease is rampant up here, so I’m careful. But I know she won’t bite me. I scratch her head for awhile, and the other dogs come up and sniff May-ug and lick her ankles.

“In the U.S.,” I say, “Some people think that dogs can sense emotion. So when you’re sad, they can tell, and they try to comfort you.”

May-ug looks at me, trying to see if I’m joking. I shrug. “I believe it,” I say. I don’t smile. The pregnant dog walks over to May-ug and puts her chin next to her thigh. May-ug reaches out and scratches her head.

“Maybe because she’s a mother-dog she is even more sensitive,” I say. I want May-ug’s mother here—that’s what this girl needs, her mother. I want to take her home tonight—her parents live in Banaue—I want her to be with people who know her and love her, not some American woman who will leave in four months.

The pregnant dog reminds me of one I saw in Batad. She had just given birth to puppies that would later be sold around the town—to protect their owners, eat leftovers, and who knows what else. My friend and I were all excited that she’d given birth, but were also disturbed. The dog was shivering—hungry and exhausted. The owners of our lodging didn’t care. “We’ll feed her by and by,” Rita, the owner, said. I wanted to give her my food, any food. I didn’t care if she was a dog, she was a mother; she had just given birth.

“Can’t they take care of her just this once?” I said to my friend. “She just gave birth!” But to the owners it wasn’t any special thing. We never even found out if the puppies were born alive.

Part of me told May-ug about the dog sensitivity to redeem them somehow; to make them more than just meat, something to eat, something to protect you. I want to redeem everyone here—May-ug, the dogs, the rice terraces—but all I can do is sit here, looking out into the darkness. All I can do is encourage May-ug when she says she will go upstairs and pack her bags; that she will move back home tomorrow because she can’t live here any more. All I can do is try and forget as I watch Smallville later that night with Adam, Mart, and Raul. Someone else’s drama helps me forget about the one outside my door.

When you get too involved, Part 3:

I couldn’t stop thinking about May-ug and I wondered if she moved home or not. Adam and I saw her the day after her fight with Lola and asked her what had happened.

“I’m not going home,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked.

She shook her head and looked at Adam and smiled. She didn’t like to say things in front of him for some reason. He got the hint and left the two of us alone.

“Lola apologized,” May-ug said to me once she was sure Adam had gone.

“So you are going to stay?” I asked. She nodded her head. Personally, I was glad, I liked having her next door. But I also wanted her freedom too.

“Are you still going to try and leave over the summer?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I have to wait and see what Auntie Lourdes says,” she said.

“Have you asked her?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Why don’t you have your parents ask for you?”

“Because they are too busy.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Don’t talk to Auntie Lourdes about what happened, okay?” she asked.

“Why not?”

“Because she will not say anything anyway. She will just be quiet.”

I thought about this. Lola is Auntie Lourdes’ mother-in-law and she might not feel comfortable asking her to change her ways. At the same time, Auntie Lourdes would really want May-ug to stay—no one else could cook and clean like her; she was a huge benefit to the household. But at this point, there was nothing else Adam and I could do. We had to respect May-ug’s wishes.

Later that day Adam and I went to the market. We saw Lola on a staircase above us and waved. We all acted as if nothing had happened.

“Would you like anything at the market?” We asked.

She smiled—benign and sweet as usual. “Anything you get would be nice,” she said.

We exchanged a few more words and walked off. Pretend nothing happened. That’s what you do around here.

“Lola can be so sweet,” I said.

“Yeah, too bad she’s also a slave master,” Adam said under his breath.

We laughed. Sometimes that’s the only way to deal with these kinds of things.

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.”

Mumbakis

For many Ifugao, practicing the native traditions conflicts with their Christian beliefs. Auntie Lourdes told me a story the other day after dinner. We started to talk about the traditional Ifugao practices, and she mentioned that her father was a mumbaki (Ifugao priest).

“I never thought it was any problem,” she said. “When we left for university, he would sacrifice a chicken and pray for our safety, and when we returned he would sacrifice another chicken. He was just thanking God, and we always ate the chicken. The problem was when we looked inside the chicken to know answers about the future [a common ritual—to look for omens in chicken bile or liver placement]. That’s where there was a conflict.”

Now her family is Catholic, except for Lola, her mother-in-law, who is Evangelical. In many ways, the Catholic Church has offered the most support to Ifugao locals who wish to remain Christian as well as hold onto some elements of their native heritage. But Auntie Lourdes doesn’t have any interest in practicing the traditions now. She did, however, describe an event she witnessed as a child that she never forgot.

“There was a time when we had a smaller harvest than usual. The people in our village gathered all the rice bundles together and stored them under the [native] house.” (The space between the ground and the bottom of a native house is usually around five feet high.) “When we stacked all the bundles they only came to about halfway up—this meant we had a very bad harvest and we wouldn’t have enough rice for the year.

“Well,” she continued, “The mumbaki in our village got very angry. He shouted at the sky and shook his fist. He yelled out, ‘Why? Why did you give us such a bad harvest? We have done our rituals, we have sacrificed our chickens to you—why did you give us this bad harvest?’” Auntie Lourdes paused and smiled at me. “So then he did some small rituals; he went away for awhile and prayed. We did not know what he was thinking. Then, he came back and gathered us together. He told us we had to unstack the bundles and spread them all around again. So the people did that. Then he told us we had to restack the bundles again. Se we did.” She paused and her eyes widened. “And when we did, you know what happened? The bundles went all the way to the bottom of the house!” She was quiet for a moment as she watched my eyes widen. She added, “It really happened. It was like a miracle.”

I know Auntie Lourdes, and she’s an accountant—a very practical woman. Yet I hear stories like this all the time. I don’t really know what to make of them, but they help me understand the depth of faith the locals have, as well as their very personal relationship with God. Though their religion may have changed form, they still view God as a force interacting very deeply and personally in their lives. They still worship a God that blesses them with miracles.

Over the last fifty years, the Ifugao region has developed quickly. A few weeks ago, Auntie Lourdes’ husband, Raul, came to visit for his birthday. Unlike most Ifugao, Raul really likes to talk and make jokes. I told him that I was studying how Ifugao culture has changed over the last fifty to one hundred years.

Adam, Lola, Raul, and Auntie Lourdes--Raul's wife

He laughed, crossed his legs, and leaned back. “You know, there really have been so many changes, it’s hard to even believe. When I was a boy, we still lived in the native house. We had this concrete house too, but we rented it out to missionaries. There wasn’t a concrete road, there was only a dirt road that American jeeps sometimes went down, and sometimes buses. But mostly we had to walk to get anywhere.”

At that point, Mart [his son and my host brother] walked by us and out the front door.

“Goodness, that boy is so frail. Do you see his skinny arms? I never had arms like that—our chores made us strong. We were always active. For example, my brother and I used to walk to [a local village] to get firewood. We’d chop the wood down in the forest, and then we had a wheelbarrow. We’d put the wood in the wheelbarrow and push it all the way home.” Adam and I talked for a moment about where the village was located, and realized that they’d hiked the wood home about 10 miles.

Raul continued. “We pounded rice, which is very hard work for the arms. We winnowed the rice too. There also weren’t any tricycles, so we walked to school—up and down those steps every day. That’s good exercise. But what do kids do for exercise now? Their physical education doesn’t do anything. They don’t have any chores. That is why so many kids are skinny like Marty, or they’re getting fat. How can anyone stay healthy around here anymore?”

I have asked myself that question many times. Faced with a similar question, I bought a jump rope and some weights and I started running as well. But none of those past times are common here—I’ve never seen anyone out for a jog. Most women still wash their own laundry, and many locals who live higher up in the terraces have to walk up and down the stairs every day. But there is no gym here. The only exercise kids get is a short P.E. session, a walk up and down a couple set of stairs, and maybe Taekwondo classes if they can afford them. And yet they eat copious amounts of sugar and fried foods for snacks. It reminds me of the United States.

“You know,” Raul said, “Education is really what changed everything. In the early 50’s, the government decided that everyone in the Ifugao region had to go to school.”

At the time, Raul was in second or third grade. He lived in a “dorm” with a group of other boys his age: essentially a native house that a few kids lived in. The Ifugao believed that once children reached a certain age, they shouldn’t live with their parents anymore in their small huts. So, the kids would live nearby in a native hut—boys in one hut, girls in another. Instead of going to school, kids stayed busy playing in the terraces, doing chores, and helping with the farming.

“When the government decided that we had to go to school, they drove around in their cars and herded us to a local classroom.” He started laughing. “And do you know how they used to determine if we were old enough?” He wrapped his arm over his head. “If we could touch our ear like this, they made us go to school. Otherwise, we didn’t have to go. I was old enough at the time, so I had to start attending classes. If you were old enough but you didn’t go, they quarantined you until your parents made you.”

The method used by government officials to determine if kids were old enough to attend school--could you touch your ear?

Most of the schools were run by Catholic or Christian institutions, which are where the Ifugao learned English, but also where they had forced exposure to Christian teachings. Part of the curriculum was religious education. Teachers taught that the Ifugao ways were pagan and that if they didn’t change their beliefs, they would go to hell. At such a young age, few children really knew how to refute this new information. That’s when a large rift between their indigenous culture and their new Christian traditions began. Almost every Ifugao I’ve meet has converted to Christianity—I have only met one so far that held onto his native beliefs.

Ain't no driers in this town.

This is how you dry your clothes around here. I hire a woman, Manang Christine, to wash my clothes by hand. She takes several large tubs and sits by a faucet and washes them by hand with Tide powder. It takes her about two to three hours and costs me about 150 Pesos, or 3USD. They smell incredible and they're pretty darn clean when she's done.

Then I hang them. The only problem is that all many of my cotton clothes are a size larger now because I'm used to shrinking them with the drier. My jeans sag off my hips, my shirts are loose and baggy. I really wish someone would come in here and open up a clothes drier business. They'd make a ton of money, they'd preserve clothes that normally break down in the sun, and when Banaue's cold and overcast (which it often is) it'd replace the line drying method and stop mildew from growing in the fabric.

Any entrepreneurs out there interested?

The neighbors dry their clothes anywhere they can--hope a sock doesn't fall...

Pronounced Ba-nah-way--emphasis on the na.

Click on the link below...

http://adobe.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=r4shijn.xe8c3in&Uy=3k0bo1&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&mode=fromshare&conn_speed=1

Ever wonder where those impressive, six foot tall Native American chief carvings come from? The ones you see in New Mexico and Arizona when you’re on a road trip through the Southwest?
I never thought about it, honestly, I suppose I assumed they were carved by Native Americans. Well, the other day I was bumping along in a tricycle on my way to a barangay called Kiangan. I was looking around, enjoying the scenery—the overhang of green, the small shops along the road, the mothers standing outside chatting with their children on their hips. We passed a carving shop, and under the cover of a tarp I saw a three foot tall Native American head, complete with an elaborate headdress. I was completely stunned. Did I see that right? What was a Native American chief carving, complete with an elaborate headdress, doing in Ifugao?

My language teacher, Manang Susan, is married to a carver. I went and spent some time with them one afternoon, and they showed me around their woodshop. Manong Johnny, Susan’s husband—a quiet man with a thick chest and arms—owns a carving shop in Banaue and in Kiangan. He and his employees make all sorts of designs—beautiful benches with animal heads and tails on either side, dressers, desks, chicken bookends, tables, and…Native American carvings.

“You saw the big Indian?” Manang Susan laughed, holding her pregnant belly. “That is our shop in Kiangan!”

“You carve Native Americans?” I asked, “Why?” I just couldn’t imagine how it all happened.

Manang Susan spoke again—she often spoke while Manong Johnny sat next to her nodding with his shy smile. “Oh there was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 80’s,” she said, “And he set up a carving shop in Manila. He exports carvings to the U.S., especially those Indian carvings, we make thousands of them here.”

Thousands? I couldn’t believe it! I laughed aloud. “Manang,” I said, “That would be like if our Native Americans carved statues of the Ifugao in their ritual clothing and sold them to you in the Philippines! Isn’t that crazy?”

She just laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, but it is what they want, so it is what we carve for them.”

It’s weird to live in a world where it’s cheaper to have Ifugao locals carve Native American Chiefs and ship them to the U.S. rather than have Native Americans carve them and sell them down the road. But that’s what happens with globalization—the world gets so flat, you hardly know where you’re from anymore.

Manong Johnny with a Bulol carving

How Jealousy Arrived

During my short stay in Batad I ran into a familiar face—Mark, an Ifugao, who guided me and a group of tourists through the rice terraces last time I visited Batad. Mark’s an interesting character that I’ve written about in a previous blog. He’s young, about 20 I believe, and has been working in the tourist industry in Ifugao since he was 11. He’s very passionate and committed to his culture, but also embraces and upholds western traditions as well.

Mark (The Filipino) and a group of travelers playing Scrabble

We got to talking about my project. I told him that I’d be leaving on March 2nd with Adam and his crew to tour the local barangays and talk about the possibility of exporting the rice. He nodded and listened.

“I went to my home province and talked with some of my people there,” he said. “I don’t actually work on the terraces, but I look after them. Anyway, I told them about the project Adam is working on to hear what they had to say.”

“And?”

“They did not like the idea,” he said. “They feel like they work and work so hard for the tinawon; they pound it themselves, and it’s their native rice. It’s the rice their ancestors have grown for centuries. They would rather give it away then sell it because when you take money for something like that, it is like you are giving a piece of your soul.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded. “Yeah,” I said, “it may only be an option for poor farmers who need to save the money and can’t afford that emotional connection.”

He nodded. We looked around the lodge we were staying at. “You know,” he said, “They’ve only had electricity here for a few years. This place is developing so fast. You should go to my barangay to talk to people, it’s not developed like this place is. This place is already gone, really.”

I looked up at the fluorescent bulbs and over at the kitchen with all its appliances. But still, I could only see darkness just off the balcony, and I knew that people lived in native huts down below this section of town. But I knew what he meant.

“Yeah,” I said, “I wonder when they’ll build cement road here, or even one down into the town.” As of now there’s only a rocky dirt road to the saddle then you have to hike at least a half hour downhill to get to the village. That's part of Batad's charm. “I talked to a local—a young woman—on the way down who said she hopes that they build a road soon." I said. "But then another local—an old man—said that he’s glad there isn’t a road because it keeps them hiking everywhere.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, “but it won’t be long. And it’s sad because these new things like electricity haven’t been good for the people.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well before, the people looked out for each other. They all shared what they had—if someone was hungry, they fed them, if someone needed something, they gave it to them. But now people see their neighbor with a big house, or with electricity and they are jealous. They never used to be jealous before. You used to have everything you need. But now people see their friends’ t.v. and they want one. Or they see a fridge and they want one. It has not been good for the people.”

“Do you think it’ll become like Banaue soon?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head. I looked around at all the tourists, at their happy faces—we were all enjoying the place, the people. Yet our presence created an ever greater need for more: more electricity, more buildings, more food, more modern conveniences. I wondered how long it would be before a cement road got laid down to the saddle and before another replaced the trail to the village, filling the once silent hillside with the sound of motorbikes and the scent of exhaust.