Foot and Fire

I was happy that I was able to spend time with the Panay Bukidnon in 2015. One of the good things I miss there is the Saturday school of children being taught chanting. Panay Bukidnon is known for their oral tradition and the Sugidanon or epic, among others. See of my blog posts on the Epic that was published by UP Press.  Funded by NCCA as I learned later, Teacher Romulo “Amang Baoy” Caballero taught the children chanting and it was fun listening to them. Aside from the chnating of the epic, I heard them sang a folk song on domestic life that's both funny and tragic. I wished I can go back and enjoyed more.

At the house. One day, Bulawanon engaged the help of Tikum Kadlum, a hunting dog with the gift of sensing the spirits, in cooking rice for his husband Paiburong and his brother Dumaraog who will be going hunting. When the rice was cooked, the brothers ate fast. Then, while Bulawanon packed the betel nut for her husband, Paiburong and Dumaraog dressed themselves, with Dumaraog suggesting they match their sashes and belts, since he is his brother's loyal protector. To complete their hunting preparations, the two brought out their long-bladed sharp knives, shields, spears, and lances from their gold chest and wall hanger. When everything is set, Paiburong bade goodbye to his wife, Bulawanon, who reminded her husband to be careful as he might meet in the forest one named Makabagting, who is accompanied by a man-eating woman called Muwa. Makabagting is a nobleman and a warrior who is widely known as having tasted human flesh. Paiburong went out of his house, and he heard a sound. It...

Tikum Kadlum is the first epic out of ten epics of Panay as told by the Panay Bukidnon of Calinog, Iloilo. This is my first read. There are ten (10) books all in all which are all interrelated. I believe each epic can be told independently of the others but the whole story can be appreciated if read according to the sequence of the series. Like when I finished Tikum Kadlum, another character Amburukay is introduced and thus, the book two is titled in her name. The book is presented as a transcription of the chants as told/sang by GAMABA Federico Caballero and his sister Teresita Caballero-Castor in archaic Kinaray-a. In a table form, the archaic kinaray-a is then translated to contemporary kinaray-a, then Filipino, then English. The single best accomplishment of this book is that it is a published documentation of the chant in archaic language. I am not sure if it can hold the interest of those who reads in Filipino or English because as for me, I appreciated the reading...

Submersion of Panay Bukidnons: A Call for Salvage Aside from the imminent fact that the Jalaur River Dam shall submerge portions of their ancestral domain, the Panay Bukidnon's cultural heritage also faces submersion Sunburn, scratches from blades of grasses, and scars from insect bites are among the souvenirs I and a friend got from our three-day immersion with the Panay Bukidnons of Brgy. Garangan, Calinog, Iloilo. We slept and lived with them in order to hear stories about stars and gather recipes of their traditional cooking but we ended up hearing more pressing matters, about the dam project and the struggle to keep the heritage vis-a-vis the daily needs for survival. On our second morning, we traversed the mountainside planted among others with coffee and cacao trees owned by our host family, with the end of reaching Jalaur River where a megadam project is to be implemented. Along the way, we traversed at least ten live streams including Karangayan and Bukay Ng...