OLIT NI NANGENOP

Bangon, bangon ka ina

Ka pan-okan ni ava

Sikdupen ko’d anufan

Isirak ni kovidan

Inaspul ko’s kapitan

Os piyan yos, Os piyan yos

Sedag, sedag ka’n bulan

Mo silvi’y nak pan-akshan

Bato-bato’y katinan

Bolo-bolo’y pashenan

Inteneng nen Kabunyan

Os piyan yos, Os piyan yos

Mahevas’sa mateba

Inenufan ko’d uma

Esemsem si kapitan

Imbetbet to’y kampilan

Avadak i etam-an

Os piyan yos, Os piyan yos

Manbejokbok e shala

Bintik ko’y shenget nen ina

Inufop ko’d ejam-an

Palado’y nangis nen ina

In-avigan to’s kapitan

Os piyan yos, Os piyan yos

In-ayag sha sun Kabunyan

Makavas sha imbungan

Sininop sha’y kaidian

Eshadsak sha impangan

Engkikan pay si kapitan

Os piyan yos, os piyan yos

The song speaks of a hunter who asked his mother to wake up and cook ava (gabi) so he would have a sikdop (packed food) to eat with a meat of a kombilan (female deer) as he goes hunting.  Along his way, he met a kapitan. 

It was early dawn so he had to ask Kabunyan to make the moon light his stony and weedy path and Kabunyan heard his prayer.

He was able to catch a healthy deer and the same kapitan he met earlier got mad (esemsem) (I don’t know why) and hit him with his kampilan.

The hunter was hit in his shoulder.  He then ran for the shenget (headdress) of his mother and used it to stop the bleeding.  His mother cried hard and cursed (in-avigan) the kapitan.  

The people were then gathered and offered a makavas (deer?) to Kabunyan. The people ate well, so did the kapitan.

The Igorots referred to a Spaniard as kapitan. The use of the kampilan by the kapitan in the song proves that the kapitan was not a fellow Ibaloi.   A kampilan is a saber/sword used by 19^th century Spanish soldiers (Ibaloy book, 2011).   If the kapitan was a fellow Ibaloy or a busol (enemy from other Igorot tribes), he would have used an Ibaloi’s sholos or etak (bolo) or other hunting weapon by other Igorots.  

Apart from Dr. Pungayan's article, this is how I understood the song. In this day, the case would have been attempted or frustrated murder(?) and so back then, the leaders of the community had to settle the case. They needed to butcher an animal for the settling of the case that was why the kapitan was also there and ate with the community.  The people were invited to witness the hearing of the case.  The fact that the kapitan ate with the people and with the victim meant that the case was settled and all was well.  That was how the Ibaloys settled cases in the past and to this day in some Ibaloy communities.  This song might have also been written in the latter part of the  Spaniards’ stay in the Philippines where some Spaniards were able to get through some parts of Benguet and settle  with the Ibaloys.  Otherwise, had it happened in the earlier times when the Ibaloys were more aggressive and resistant to the Spaniards, the kapitan (and his men) would have gone to the lowlands without their heads.  Yes, the early Ibaloys were also headtakers, but that's another story.

DOKTO

dokto she dangaja

In the distant past, the staple food of the Igorots was the dokto (sweet potato). Whenever there is a ritual feast, dokto is served as a pintang, followed by a grilled and chopped pork as the demshang.   The rituals usually take time to finish so lunch is, almost always, served late thus the need to serve pintang and demshang.

In households, when there was no available rice, they made do with dokto for a meal(dokto e mayshenon), probably, together with its otdo (tops).  When dokto was not available, aba (taro), ube (purple yam),or katimoro (cassava) may also be used.

Those who were born earlier than the 1970s would claim that they grew up with dokto on their table.  They must have had pitied themselves then for having grown up poor and having eaten less, but now that only a few plant dokto, the Ibaloys crave for it.  So, those who came before us must be luckier because dokto is now rarely served in Ibaloy ritual feasts, weddings, reunions, and other gatherings. Nowadays, some Ibaloy kids eat French fries in fast food restaurants and dokto might be unknown to some of them. 

Dokto is called the ‘sound fruit’ or 'musical fruit' because it makes one fart often.  But isn’t farting one sign of a healthy body?  Whenever somebody is hospitalized, the doctors and nurses would ask, “Have you farted yet?” several times to the annoyance of the patient. 

I remember in classrooms then, whenever a student wasn't paying attention, the teacher would say "Go home and plant camote!"  I say, well, let's plant and eat more dokto indeed! 

Pintang – meal composed only of staple food (inepoy/rice, aba, dokto with no vegetables nor meat (merienda for some)

Demshang – meat eaten alone without rice nor dokto (pulutan)

INENI tan KINAFAS

INENI.  Ineni rice varieties have long stalks and take longer to grow before harvest.  When it rains hard just before the harvest, the rice plants may lie closer to the ground (mayjepes) and it makes it harder to harvest them.  It is more backbreaking to harvest a nayjepes because one has to bend a little to reach for them.  Unlike when they are standing straight, then it is more comfortable harvesting just standing. 

DAKEM.  A small sickle used to harvest the ineni. The dakem cuts one or two rice stalks at a time.  One can just imagine how long it takes to harvest a sankavaneng (one rice field) especially when it is nayjepes.  It usually takes two to three days of aduyon to harvest about 20 kavaneng (20 rice fields).  This might had been one of the reasons that Ibaloy farmers then had big families so that they have had a number of children to help in farm work. 

TINAN-AY.  A bundle of harvested rice or pagey (with its stalk) is called sahey tan-ay tied with the use of a banban (bamboo strip).  The tinan-ay (bundles of rice) are then stored in a daktang (platform made of bamboo) built near the ricefields.  When the tinan-ay are already dry enough (which also means lighter to carry), they are brought to a rice storage near one's house.

AKSIW/SAKWIL/SAKSIL.  A neck yoke: a bamboo bar with its ends a little pointed but blunt, used to carry the tinan-ay from the field to the house (or watwat from the  feast to households).

SAFATAN or ALANG.  The tinan-ay are then brought to a safatan or an alang.  Safatan is a storage above the shahidan (cooking area) where the rice is further dried as it gets heated every time somebody cooks.  Alang or rice granary is a small hut or one-room house separate from the main house. 

TALTAG - When the family needs rice, they bring out some tinan-ay and pound it on a katat (dried cow or carabao hide) or on the ground (concrete for some in the 80’s) until the rice grains get separated from the stalks.  This task is called the taltag. 

TAAP OR TAAPAN.  To make sure that there is just the rice grains (now called irik), the others mixed with it are cast away using a kiyag/digao (winnower).  The waste also now called taep/taap and the rice stalk now called arutang.  The taap and arutang are actually not waste but are used for other purposes.

KU-DAS

KUH-DAS.  The irik is then put to a bajoan/desong (mortar) and pounded again using a bajo/da-do (wooden pestle) until all of the rice grains are peeled and we now have the rice (bekas) separated from the rice hull.  When the taltag is done by two or more persons together in one desong, it really is a sight to see because it creates a rhythm. To cast away the rice hull, one has to use the kiyag again. 

All of the above-mentioned tasks are done by the family members together.  They pound rice together so one household has three to four da-do, otherwise, they borrow from their neighbors.  

KUMPAY

Until the early 80’s I experienced harvesting an ineni rice variety, but with the advancement of Information Technology comes also the advancement in rice technology.  Today, farmers rarely plant an ineni variety but now use a kinafas variety.  Kinafas only takes about three months (or less) before harvest.   The kumpay now takes the place of a dakem.  A kumpay cuts one handful at one time.  Then there’s a machine called a tilyar (thresher) where the rice stalks are fed to it and it does the job of separating the rice stalks and doing the taap as well.  The irik that comes out is already just purely irik.  Then the dried irik is brought to a milling place to separate the rice from its hull.  The harvest of a kinafas rice only takes one day of aduyon, half a day of separating the rice grains from the stalk (TILYAR), one day drying the irik (BIDAG) (if the sun is out the whole day, that is, otherwise, the irik has to be dried the next day again), a few minutes to few hours of bringing the irik to a milling machine depending on the distance of the milling machine from the house, and a few minutes of milling (KISKIS). 

KAFAS

As one might notice, the ineni takes much more number of days to complete all tasks than the kinafas does.  HOWEVER, longer hours and days of work also mean longer hours and days of conversations or adivay.  A lot of conversations go on especially the ani or harvest.  For children, they must have been learning a lot from the exchange of ideas, jokes, and banters from the old folks and farmers.  The kinafas means that work is done faster and everybody works fast to get the job done fast but it also means a limited time for conversation.  Kinafas means that there is time for other tasks in the farm like planting and tending to other crops, having leisure time, a second crop for rice, etc but it also means that there is no longer a need for a dakem, da-do/bajo, katat, desong/bajoan, arutang, taap, aksiw, daktang, koh-das, taltag.  A few more years and all these words will disappear from the Ibaloy language, unfathomable by Ibaloy children.  Worse than this, I think, is that, just like the effect of staying long on facebook and texting the person next to you instead of saying it to his face, Ibaloy families and neighbors have less and less time for each other and no longer find time to REALLY talk to each other.

May the Ibaloys continue to share such stories to their children and grandchildren, not only to preserve the terms but more and hopefully so to make the children appreciate the hard labor their parents and ancestors had gone through, to make them appreciate the blessings they are receiving today as most of them no longer experience such labor in the farm, to have more reasons to talk about and to each other, and to make them be prouder of their Ibaloy heritage.

ADUYON

Aduyon is the system of mutual and reciprocal work (Ibaloy Dictionary, 2011) as when a farmer schedules a day for planting rice (toned), he informs his neighboring farmers about it so they go to his farm to help get the job done in one day, if possible.  He compensates the neighbors’ help by going to their farms on their scheduled day of planting as well.  When there are two heads from a certain household who went to help, he replaces it either with a two-days’ work or sends two persons at one day.  The host of aduyon has to feed those who came, of course,-- morning and afternoon snacks, lunch, and sometimes even dinner.  Other Ibaloi dialects may call it obowan or inatang (from the root word, atang, meaning “help”).

Also synonymous to aduyon is kamal which is defined in the Ibaloy dictionary as a “kind of cooperative work – a gathering of neighbors to help someone who has a heavy-labor project,” as in demolishing a house to build a new one.  The host has to feed the people, of course.  It may also be a community project like road-clearing as weeding or clearing of a landslide after a storm, repair of broken pipeline,  or cleaning the community’s water reservoir.  All these with no pay nor compensation at all.  The food may come from anybody’s contribution.  Aduyon and kamal may be used interchangeably in some Ibaloy dialects.  In the Tagalog language, it is called bayanihan.  In elementary textbooks, this is shown through a picture where the community helps carry a nipa hut that needs to be transferred to another location.

Today, whenever there’s a need for road repair or clearing out the weeds, there’s a cash-for-work project by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) or by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), if the community is lucky, that is.  The government either pays the workers a minimum amount or gives out free food, usually rice from the National Food Authority (NFA) and canned goods and/or noodles (I wonder if the Ibaloys consider the food lucky though, unless the brand of the noodles is Lucky. :D).

In case of farm work, when there are farmers who are done with their toned ahead of the others, they can help out in other farms but then they ask for cash payment since they don’t need help in their farm any longer.  This is called pordiya, maybe from the English term “(paid) per day” or Latin “per diem.”

This is another practice that is slowly disappearing not only in the Ibaloy communities but in other Filipino communities as well.  We observe it though during calamities when there are casualties and Filipinos come out of their way to donate goods and services to those in need.

I hope that the Ibalois and other Filipino communities still practice the bayanihan, aduyon or kamal, even without calamities and tragedies, where we continue to prove and sustain our community spirit.