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.