“It’s a bit disingenuous of Filipino tourism companies to advertise the Cordillera with pictures of half-naked, tattooed tribespeople, but if you’re going to see that cliché in person, likely it will be in Kalinga… a place where weekends aren’t even a concept, let alone a reality,” describes the 2009-edition Lonely Planet on the secluded province tucked in the savage mountainous area of Cordillera in North Luzon. The primitive traditions of the Kalinga tribe include the recently ceased head-hunting practice, the elaborate tattoo patterns engraved on bodies with the most basic tools by the last remaining tattoo shaman lady in Buscalan Village and all sorts of superstitions that govern their daily life in the rugged valleys of green rice terraces rivaling the much advertised Banaue in Ifugao Province. These faraway places hold enough mystery and adventure to attract trekkers; yet, remain so little known and visited. Intrigued by the Kalinga’s unspoiled ways of life, curious to meet the shaman, and fueled to explore the area’s pristine nature and stunning landscapes, I and a friend headed to Tinglayen, the gateway village to Buscalan.
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The village of Tinglayen is a few hundred meter strips of houses on the road snaking along mountain base, linking Bontoc Town with Tabuk, the capital of Kalinga Province. Very little is said about it on Google searches and in the Lonely Planet which only names 3 -4 possible trekking routes. Filipino travelers themselves don’t even stop here, so there are no tourist facilities or information center. Luckily, we got a copy of a hand-written map, likely from a village municipality, showing villages around Tinglayen and which included Buscalan. While trying to figure out the directions, an old granny, arms heavily tattooed, jogged past us, hurrying to somewhere. Seeing that, we folded the map. We had found our perfect compass.
A roofless pickup truck was waiting for her and it took off as soon as the last passengers arrived. We found out the truck was going to Proper But But Village, an hour away, as we were seated amidst other passengers, household items, and live chickens. We had no idea where Proper But But was, we let the truck carry us on a dirt road going up the mountain which rose straight up right next to Tinglayen.
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| A toilet stop |
The poor bumpy road wound through the sparse forest. Soon we arrived on the mountain top and continued along the road that linked one mountain ridge to another. We were thrilled to see the panoramic view of the surrounding rugged mountains, some green, and others brown with knee-high grasslands. Reaching Proper But But, which would have taken about 3 hours if we had walked, we started studying the map seriously, spotted Proper But But. We then saw a dashed line linking the village to Buscalan, via another village called Loccong. We were told the only way to reach Buscalan from here was by a walking trail.
We gave the village a tour. Low-rise wooden houses, with roofs rubbing one another’s, sitting on poles and with the underneath space serving as pig stables. Sacrificed animals’ skulls hung from walls. Blacksmiths were making knives, women were making brooms, while the elders were just hanging out at the houses’ doorways or balconies. Most of them, mainly the women, had one typical tattoo pattern on their arms, but our inability to communicate kept us from getting further information about their tattoos.
The villagers’ reactions when they saw us varied, some just stared at us with puzzled eyes, some, likely to be younger ones, smiled and said hi. A few greeted us and carried out basic conversations, the result of half a century American colonization which made English an official language as well as the visiting the missionaries who spoke English to them. Those who spoke English would repeat questions in a familiar pattern, “Where are you from? You don’t have a guide?” but never left out “Are you husband and wife? Or Are you a couple?” And the answer that we were just friends would always launch giggling among our audience. Gossiping seemed like a passionate activity here and we knew the presence of ‘the Italian husband and Thai wife travelers’ would fill the talk of the village at least for the next 3 days.
We came to a house where 2 girls drying clothes in the sun started conversing with us, asking “where are you from?” Our set answers “Thailand and Italy, no guide, not husband and wife, just friends,” sent the girls into a burst of laughing. Whether that was what they wanted to hear or not, we got invited for lunch.
The meal was simple, steamed rice and a soup of boiled green beans, the type of food plentiful in the mountain. As soon as they heard we were heading to Loccong, they suggested we stay at her brother’s who married a woman in Loccong and moved there. We got his name, Baco, feeling relieved we got a roof for the night, prepared to leave, and offered them pesos enough for lunch which they returned and insisted we put back in our pockets.
The trail towards Loccong went through mountain slopes covered with green savanna fields alternating with rice terraces. The rugged hills, both bald and dotted with solo pine trees, were endless. The same cool breeze that blew through the rice fields, sending their soft stems swaying, caressed our faces. We stopped a million times, clicking the shutter, and simply took it all in.
We arrived at Baco’s, following a lady we met at the village’s entrance and who happened to be his neighbor. A woman with a baby hesitantly climbed down the stilt house’s stairway to greet us. Looking puzzled, she introduced herself as Irene and said that she was Baco’s wife. We understood from her broken English that Baco had been gone for a few days to run errands. Nevertheless, we were urged to go up the house.
The space of probably 45 square meters was divided into a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen, and sparsely furnished but clean. An old lady who was working in the kitchen was said to be her mother. Behind the house, there was a small wooden hut with a cross on top, no wonder where such a Christian name came from.
There was uncomfortable silence between us and Irene for a few minutes. She, not sure of our visiting purpose, was probably wondering when her husband had made friends with foreign travelers while we were searching for the simplest way to explain why and how we got here. We didn’t want to bother her since Baco wasn’t home but as soon as we asked her where in the village we could crash, she hurriedly said “no, please don’t go nowhere else.”
And before we could say anything, a girl popped up at the stairway. She greeted Irene and turned to us, speaking nearly perfect English. Sharon, Irene’s cousin, was a university student in Baguio and came home for a school holiday. After a few minutes of chatting and translation for Irene why we aimed for Buscalan, Sharon offered to show us around the village.
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| Sharon, Paolo, and Irene's baby |
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| With Irene's mother |
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| Irene's mother's friend (?) |
We followed her with our cameras, passing roofs after roofs where Sharon greeted other villagers in her dialect and probably talked about us, her guests. We spotted an old lady sitting at a house’s doorway in a position perfect for a portrait. Her arms were covered with tattoos. Sharon, translating for us, said a lady named Kwang Ud in Buscalan had done it for her. Asking who Kwang Ud was, we were sure this was the shaman lady we were looking for. We asked for the granny’s permission to take her portraits and as soon as we put the cameras down, she cupped her hands up and said something.
“Matches, she asked if you have matches,” Sharon said.
What a strange request, we thought, but not for too long before a chapter in Lonely Planet appeared in my head, “gifts go a long way in Kalinga, so stock up on matches, gin, and if you really want to be popular, live chickens.”
Apologizing to the granny we didn’t have matches and saying goodbye, I felt consoled it wasn’t money she asked for but couldn’t help wondering how long it would take for the villagers to begin to beg for money from foreigners, just like in some other corners of the world that are spoiled by tourism and where tourists are considered walking dollar bills.
By the time we walked back to Irene's house, the sun was only a little bit above the mountain lines. The orange rim of the sun was peaking out from behind the cloud sending its rays like spotlights into the valleys below. On the slopes, farmers marched with their cows and buffalos, heading home. Laughter of the children running around broke the twilight’s silence. We helped the family make dinner, washed off at what looked like the village’s public fountain of clean water, and tucked ourselves onto the mattress prepared by Irene as soon as the solar cells’ electricity cut off about 8pm.
By this time, I learned a lesson: returning the local’s generosity to help with bills wasn’t the way to do it here, and I would never do that again since it could easily offend them.
Leaving Loccong, we could see Buscalan nestled amidst rice terraces at the end of the trail zigzagging down the mountain slope. Taken in by the surrounding green, the cool breeze, and the sound of nature, we forgot the urge to see Kwang Ud for a moment.
Buscalan was a bit bigger than Proper But But and Loccong. Passing under roofs, I didn’t feel curious eyes on us as it happened in the last 2 villages. In fact, they all seemed to know our purpose since each of them said “Kwang Ud?” and pointed to the same direction even before we asked.
Kwang Ud’s house sat at one edge of the village. The 2-story wooden house had a sign colorfully painted with “Tattoo Artist’s House” hanging from the balcony. A girl seeing us from the second floor came merrily downstairs to meet us. She turned out to be Kwang Ud’s granddaughter, who spoke great English. She said Kwang Ud would be down in a minute.
A lady in her 90s appeared in the doorway. Her silver hair was tied up with colorful beads that matched with her necklace. With her very straight spine, she followed her granddaughter down the stairway to greet us. Kwang Ud didn’t speak a word of English but she had a beautiful smile. She certainly didn’t possess the typical shaman’s intimidating look, and was instead lovely and kind. However, she looked tired. I couldn’t help feeling guilty thinking our arrival may have woken her up from a nap.
“Would you like to get tattoos? It’s not expensive.”
The granddaughter asked us politely, yet, something in that sentence bothered me though I didn’t know what it was.
“No, thank you. We were just curious how it is done,” I replied.
The girl disappeared into the house and returned with the equipment Kwang Ud used to make tattoos. She expertly explained that Kwang Ud used a coconut bowl to mix a pigment of soot and water. An orange thorn attached to the end of a small bamboo stick was then used as a needle while another short stick would tap the thorn into the skin. Like modern tattooing, the patterns needed to be repeated so they remained sharp and permanently. She then placed a huge book in front of us and said “you can read more about it here.”
I certainly didn’t expect that someone would discover what would be a totally savage village years ago, where he couldn’t even tell it was safe to visit, but who was so enthralled by the local’s ways of life that he decided to stay, did research, and composed a thick completely detailed book on the place. Lars Krutak, an American, has documented Kalinga’s vanishing traditions and beliefs and revealed the mystery of their sacred traditions. I had never really thought of the source from where I heard about the Kalinga’s intriguing information. It became obvious to me now this book, distributed all over the world, was what has brought us to the small remote village of Buscalan.
According to Lars, head hunting which was believed to capture and control the soul of the enemy, thought to be in the head, lasted until WWII when the Kalinga warriors captured Japanese’s soldiers’ heads. Nevertheless, it still happens and is seen as right as a revenge if a tribe's member was killed by the victim's tribe in the past.
Kalinga’s traditional tattoo patterns are done both on men and women to serve different purposes. A head hunting male warrior receives tattoos to protect him from injuries in battles and as a token of victory if he killed an enemy and cut off his head. For women, tattoos are believed to bring fertility and prosperity, support men’s power and are also seen as beauty marks. Most of their designs come from nature, like rice bundles, ferns, snake scales, and centipedes which are powerful spiritual guides and friends of the warrior. Some of the women also have tattooed necklaces.
I looked up from the book and, to my surprise, I saw a Caucasian man walking past Kwang Ud’s house. From his very brief self-introduction, Brian was an American photographer who had lived in Buscalan for nearly a year working on a documentary project. And before I could even acknowledge the presence of another visitor after not seeing any in the area for the last 2 days, he was too far down the trail to pick up his car.
Kwang Ud’s granddaughter invited us to eat. We did as requested while Kwang Ud, who was unable to communicate and not eating, sat with us. We asked the old lady to go back to what she was doing before we had arrived but it seemed like she didn’t want to leave her guests alone. I felt another wave of guilt.
Kwang Ud then had another group of guests. Another Caucasian couple showed up with a Filipino man, saying they aimed for Buscalan to meet the famous tattoo maker, got lucky enough to be approached by this local who offered to guide them here for some compensation. They didn’t have much time and would have to leave soon. The couple sat Kwang Ud on her house’s stairway and shot her with their cameras. Her face was expressionless. I couldn’t tell if she was just shy to smile or she wasn’t happy having a camera pointing at her face without asking for her consent first. At one moment, I wanted to shoot her as well since she was the main reason we were here. But at the second thought, I decided not to. All I did was steal one click of her and it’s the only photo I have of her now.
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| Kwang Ud |
The couple was invited for lunch and we ourselves hanging out with the family and her neighbors for a while longer. Kwang Ud, again unable to join this English language conversation, sat quietly and soon started dozing. When we saw that, we knew it was time to go.
We thanked Kwang Ud, her grand-daughter, and the neighbors for hosting us and expressed our appreciation though it was only for a few hours. When we got up to leave, there came an unexpected request: we were asked if we wanted to contribute some money for the lunch. So we did.
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The trail we were on now would lead us to a truck stop that would bring us down to the main road connecting to Tinglayen. The landscape was beautiful but I was too detached from it, too bothered by some of the scenes we encountered in Buscalan...
The obvious rising number of visitors, as the family confirmed they had seen more and more guests in the last few years, and the money talk we had just had somewhat foretold the future of the village as tourism had eventually arrived. No one can ever stop curious visitors from exploring the area and the rule of globalization will happen here just like what many other far-flung corners of the world which are experiencing it now. I could only hope for the best for Buscalan, and other villages in the area, as they struggle to find the right way to embrace development brought by tourism with ability to preserve their hospitable mentality, unique and precious cultural identity in the same time. And meanwhile, I hoped Kwang Ud find more peace and privacy in the last period of her life. But that was just me thinking as if I were her. Who knows exactly what she wanted?
The trail was connected to a small dirt road prepared to be paved with concrete. A few hundred meters away where the new concrete road eventually began, a truck was waiting for passengers. We knew our next ride would be very smooth, unlike the way we took to Proper But But. As we hopped on the truck, a Caucasian man in a brand new white car drove past us. It was Brian who waved to us and we waved back. He continued on the dirt road towards Buscalan, probably to the point the car couldn’t pass, and soon disappeared into the dust.
See more images of the story: http://www.flickr.com/photos/92886568@N08/sets/72157634425483678/
Great writing, photos and destination! You got some fantastic shots of the tattoos. I love the hospitality in this area. We had a similar adventure at Batad rice terraces in 2009, including gatecrashing a local New Years Eve party.
ReplyDeleteThank you Andy :) A fan of the green, aren't you? Do you have a story on Batad?
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