Siruma Fieldwork Aug.2007

THE BOND OF BROTHERS:
Twin Worlds, Twined Lives
In Siruma

HERMEL O. PAMA, OP
PhD Anthropology

In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the course
PS 213 (Acculturation in the Philippines)

Felipe Landa-Jocano, Ph.D.
Professor

Asian Center
University of the Philippines, Diliman
8 October 2007




I. Introduction

Foremost, I went to the town Siruma to find ancestors long gone, in an almost forgotten, undisturbed graveyard cave tucked away by the ebbs and tides of the sea. But there I found instead a living people, also almost forgotten, but often disturbed from their yards, their sea, from their very lives. There, I witnessed what George Eliot has described:


…the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. (Eliot, in Sennett: 2004)


Siruma is a hundred kilometers from Naga City, in the province of Camarines Sur, in the Bicol region. It is a peninsula along the Bicol peninsula itself, lush in marine and agricultural resources, but is also troubled by poverty, insurgency, and a white clay mining project which exploits the land without much consideration for the inhabitants, much less for the environment. It has also imbibed what may be called a “politics of rancor”, as in the case of development projects being stalled as a manifestation of a local leader’s resentment for his failure to get people’s votes.

Siruma’s distance from Naga is aggravated by rough roads and the paucity of vehicles that ply the route. Travel time from Naga to Tinambac (the halfway town, with many copra trading stores) is an hour. From there it takes two hours to Siruma by jeepney. One can take a motorboat from Tinambac, for about an hour, but only when the sea is calm and when weather is fine.

In the case of my travel, it took me thirteen hours to reach Siruma from Naga, since that I did not know the transport schedule. Arriving at four in the morning in Naga, I took a bus to Tinambac. There was no boat trip as the habagat was full blown in mid-August. I waited in a carinderia at Number 042 La Purisima Street. The Siruma-bound jeepney was due to arrive at noontime. The carinderia owners were so gracious as to allow people who were waiting to use their lavatories for personal needs, including bathing!



Tinambac house and carinderia

The jeepney arrived at half past one in the afternoon, and by that time I have come to know that it was fiesta in Báhao, a sitio of Siruma, thus, people took time to go to the market. One of the locals who was waiting at the carinderia was a grandmother, who carried a small plastic bag with four fluorescent bulbs (costing about a few hundred pesos). She was happy to announce it to her acquaintances: “Mala ngani iyan ta fiesta baga. Magkapirang bumbilya lamang marahay-rahay na.” (Translations and notes are appended.)

Smiles of approbation came from the crowd, and after that, they exchanged news among themselves, such as who married whom recently in Báhao; the prevailing buying price for copra; and which local band will play in the next night’s baylehan. They talked about someone who has had a stroke, detailing her condition as “mayong pagmangno”. Eavesdropping on these exchanges allowed me learn the richer nuances of the term “pagmangno”, such that it was not only a term for individual experience, but an experience of the world.

From Siruma, one can also cross the sea to Mercedes, Camarines Norte, a fishing village, known for bountiful catches. If it is amihan or habagat, locals say that the waves are as big as churches. I checked the Catholic church in Tinambac- its dome structure towers over the whole place: it is the biggest structure there is in town. In Siruma, the churches of Catholics and other religious groups are smaller in built and are relatively recent.

This ethnography shall explore the story of fraternal twins, and how their brotherly relation enacts the web of relations within which they are socially ensconced, and which they continually navigate. Both twenty-one years old, one has become a fisherman, staying with his fisherman-father in the next town- Cabugao- another fishing village, two hours’ brisk walk from Báhao. There abound casag in Cabugao- crabs that thrive on sea reefs. The twin-brother has moved to Manila, working as an electronic technician, receiving ten thousand pesos salary monthly. He stays with his mother, who has “re-married” to someone working overseas, in Saudi Arabia.

Through participant observation, and living with the Zilva clan, I shall write in part about how they story-forth kith and kin, and attempting to understand their kind. The following binary concepts will be explored in the ethnography: father-mother, rural-urban, land-sea, traditional-modern, here-there, well-unwell, fiesta-everydayness. These binaries accentuate how acculturation happens in the community.

Wellness- pag-uli- is used as the mediating concept in these relations, as will be demonstrated in the linguistic contexts of their healing ritual and the performance of “coming home”: how, in the words of a contemporary Bicol poet, they become “master of the ritual of appeasement, of making better, and ultimately of balance…of knowing how to keep warm.” (Bobis 2005:252)




II. “Gee-Kee”, “Wyklee” “Amuri”: Invented Ironic Icons


The jam-packed jeepney (inset) was a picture of joy: many have come home for the fiesta. To ride it, I climbed through the jeepney’s front. The three-hour journey atop the load at the top-load was grueling because one has to be in constant watch for branches of trees or for electric wires which might sweep us along the way. This was made more difficult by the rough terrain, which time and again would climb uphill or roll downhill or bend through the side of cliffs.




I was at the middle part of the roof, seated on a spare tire, whose middle ring was occupied by a large iron cauldron, a borrowed cookware for the fiesta. My back would bump into this hard metal but I’d rather be wounded than lose balance, and life. My left hand dug through and held at bottles of softdrinks, which were as insecure, and my arm would scratch from their tin covers. My right hand held protruding leather, a torn part of the spare tire, my fingers caught in that leathery-secure attachment.

The last uphill climb revealed the town-at-first-sight: mountains of cogon grass, and down below, the sea envelops the mountains, meeting in innumerable coves, some islets, isthmuses, and stretches of white sand. Siruma is a paradise, the sight arrested only by two cellular phone network towers, and a cluster of uniform, small houses curiously perched on a leveled mountaintop. It was the Gawad Kalinga (GK, pronounced by the locals as “gee-kee”) housing project. The older residential houses were situated on the slopes and farther down the mountains, in fact, enclosed by the mountains. Only cogon grows in the mountains because these have granite in large quantities.

In the GK housing site, they mined the mountain to level it, making rocks as raw material for housing and for the road. The mountain digging traps rainwater and retains it, enough for the carabaos to have a wallowing site, right at the mountain top! Below these mountains are clusters of coconut trees and other crops and a secondary forest.

The forested area was taboo, I have been told when I walked to the beach. It is a shorter route, but there are dry, fallen coconut fronds which/who run after human beings. However, they get drinking water from that location, and along the way, they pick ripe guavas and climb coconut trees for buko. My initial interest, the ancient burial ground which is a cave that is accessible only through the sea at low tide, was also taboo. It is apparently accessible only during Good Friday, and it was only for some- for the albularyo and those seeking supernatural power. There are many other caves, but not that one for a newcomer and relatively, a stranger. What was more important for me in both of these occasions is to see the way local actors “model socio-environmental practice in situational, strategic discourse about material activity.” (Scott, in Nader, ed.1996:71)

There is a mining site, referred to by the locals as “Wyklee”: upon first hearing, I thought it was the name of the mining company. On a close inspection of the site, it was fine, white clay they were referring to. It was being commissioned by a Manila-based company, and its products were plates, cups and toilet bowls. At the mining site, there is no effort to cover the diggings, in fact, some areas have collapsed. The site where they transport white clay into boats, the soil is powdery-white and some have re-hardened, and the place is resistant to vegetation. It is nearby a river which flows into the sea, where the mangroves are and where there are abundant aniit- “king” crabs that thrive on brackish water.




Uncovered digging at the white clay mining site in Siruma







This might have effects on marine life similar to that of the classic Piparwar coal mine in India (Cf. Vicziany, in Grove, et al., eds. 1998:484 ff.) My informants, though, were also well aware that the local community also contributes its share in polluting the river, that is, by raising pigs and letting the wastes into the brooks that lead to the river. They said that it is also the cause of the proliferation of mosquitoes in the area, whereas there was hardly any mosquito infestation before.

Back at the house of my host, we hardly had plates, cups and saucers as decent as those made from white clay. We had plastic ware, and drinking glasses are from used coffee containers. The toilet was an even more difficult challenge: it was a makeshift “extension” of the kitchen, on whose side was a mother hen incubating eggs, and it would cackle defensively each time someone uses the toilet. It was there because eggs and chicken were being stolen. The toilet bowl was made of rough cement. Although they clean it with water, it hardly appears clean, unlike bowls made of white clay.

It is this irony of abundance and scarcity, this “feast and famine”, borrowing Cruz-Lucero’s titling, where I have been entrenched; that have kept us exchanging views well into the night, “interrogat(ing) the ways in which this world has been represented by dominant others who are ‘not quite like us’” (Rosaldo, in Lucero 2003:vii). These microhistorical processes in the environing world (Toren, in Cannell, ed., 2006:186) reveal how these local subjects would say what they say and do what they do, and in this case, would rather not say/complain about, and/or would rather not say they do, i.e., that it is what they complain about. This may reveal too how they have cases of stealing, banditry or a more organized insurgency, while still maintaining the rural norm, built on trust, of having no permanent fences that separate houses or lots from each other.

Siruma’s long stretch of white sand beach has a resort, “Amuri”, which might be “Amore”, although there is no signage to indicate that. There is also no “love”: no water in the showers whose pipes were cut; no doors on the toilets, left open and unused; no lighting facilities, whose wires were cut and bulbs removed; no maintenance or other services, despite its appearing to be a newly-built edifice. Allegedly, the former town mayor, who lost during the elections held in May this year, had the project dismantled. A case, perhaps, of “unrequited love”, but unlike the way it is with “cargo cults”, which use magical phantasy to bridge the gap between desire and fulfillment (Lindstrom 1993:67), this one destroys fulfillment, and uses such phantasmagorical gap to eliminate desire. Whether the intended result is attained, i.e., a cultic worship of cargo, in this case, electing the former mayor again so that the project may be revived, remains to be seen. “Marhay ngani ta su sementadong dalan dai pinabakbak”, said the folks about the unfinished road in the barangay, which was also another project.


Siruma beach


From a more considered plane, the dismantling of the resort may be beneficial. It seems best to consider turning the whole area including several hundred meters of the sea into a marine sanctuary, following the lead of Silliman University in Dumaguete and its project in Apo Island. (This was not mentioned in the conversations, though). This area in the Siruma sea has lush coral reefs, in fact, farmers do not use nets for fishing as nets will get entangled in the reef. They use the bait fishing method, and in some cases, they use harpoons for the big catches.

Fish, 5.7 kilos caught at the sea just near Siruma beach


Species like yellow fin tuna, blue marlin and lapu lapu (grouper) are among the many prize fish species that abound. Adjacent to the resort is a station where fishermen haul and sell their catch, a gathering place for small entrepreneurs in the fishing industry.


III. Rifts and Reunions

They moved to the fringes of the barrio a few years back, salvaging whatever was in the old house to build on this new site. The barangay has contested their old place, despite the history of their being among the first settlers, and that Tio Temyong (Itay to the twins) worked hard for Siruma to be declared an independent town. As old man in the village, he is consulted regarding cases in the barangay. Tia Viring (Inay to the twins) is not the person who would make a big fuss out if it, so they simply moved to a new place, away from the other settlements by about a hundred meters, and closer to the forested area where the “human-chasing coconut fronds” are. They opened a sari-sari store at the part of their house closest to the road, but they closed it down after sometime, burdened by the debts of their own children who also live with their families in the same barangay. Tia Viring tends to the chickens and the yard, and they produce copra at the backyard. Tio Temyong, the albularyo, (a registered albularyo, Tia Viring always adds), tends to their land planted with coconut and some vegetables. This year, he has gone to Legazpi City twice to follow-up his application for pension as a scout during the Second World War, but there is no progress.




The twins were reunited for the fiesta: the one staying with his father in the next town has come over, and the one from Manila with his mother came home, bringing some gadgets from the city, and several liters of a local brandy. They have lived separately since their parents parted ways, but they reunited each time the urban dweller came home: they visit the old folks, and they go out together at sea.

When I dropped by (taong-galang) each of the houses of the other Zilva children, I learned that there are four of them in the clan “married to Americans,” and one has come home for the fiesta. At ten in the morning, they were already getting ready for the baylehan at ten in the evening. Chi-chi, first cousin of the twins, was exuberant telling us that Roy, a local swain, would be picking her up. At the same time, she was beaming with pride holding a picture of an Italian man, her “boyfriend”, whom she would meet in Manila soon. Her mother, Clara, showed me around the unfinished house. I complimented her that it was not a house, it was a mansion she was building.

It was a two-story house, carved by a hillside. The posts, and walls were set, and inside were bare furniture in makeshift arrangements, along with lumber. The ceiling was concrete. There were no electrical connections yet. The floor was unpaved ground and there were no doors yet; there was only one door in the bedroom which they occupied. A fierce dog stayed near the twenty-one inch, new model television set, behind which was an umbrella, shielding it from drafts and rain. We went upstairs to see where the rooms will be, and spot for the bay window, overlooking the road by the hill.

Later that day, Clara and her children were in the house of Tio Temyong and Tia Viring, whom they helped prepare and cook ibos and dinuguan, standard fiesta fares. Tia Viring constantly repeated that she was proud of Clara, because this daughter of hers never forgets. Roy was also there, who, like the twins became spectators of the ladies, unable to comment on the comforts of life in America, and on the “English-speaking” rehearsals and fun they were having while wrapping the ibos. They did comment when the topic was about the white clay mining site, about the big catch of crabs, and about the many ripe guavas ready for the picking at the forest, and about who will be at the baylehan that night.




Preparing traps by the mangroves
for the ‘aniit’. This entrapment
caught half a sack of these crabs




IV. Ritual and Remembrance


It was the day of the fiesta, but aside from last night’s sibot-sibot for the baylehan, the ibos and dinuguan, it was an ordinary morning. A couple riding a motorcycle, with a baby wrapped in a blanket, arrived. The baby was had fever and was vomiting for two days now.

We welcomed them inside the house. Tio Temyong began by taking the arm of the baby, sensing its pulse. After a while, he said that this case is difficult. He went to the cupboard to get a plate- the only white chinaware there- and he lighted a lamp. Meanwhile, Tia Viring asked a few questions to the mother, such as what medicine was administered, whether they boil water, and whether they still have supplies (of the medicine being distributed from the barangay health center). The mother answered affirmatively to all these questions, and added that someone was coming over from Manila by chance, and they knowing the baby was sick, they are bringing with them mineral water for the child.

Tio Temyong approached the baby being held by the mother, and he “scanned” the baby’s body with the plate facing it, without it touching the baby. Then he went to the burning lamp and “scanned” the plate over it for a few seconds, then lay the plate down on its face. After awhile, he got the plate and held it in front of him. Tia Viring approached him, and also started to look at the plate silently. Nodding, she pointed something to Tio Temyong, who remained almost motionless and silent. Tia Viring took a seat beside me and whispered to me that what ailed the baby was a kalag, because the image in the plate was that of a skull below a cross. After putting the plate down, Tio Temyong then faced the baby contemplatively, and began to address the kalag.

“We are here to talk (horon). The child is sick for days now, and his parents have been spending sleepless nights. Everyone is suffering. This is why we are pleading (nakikimaherak) for your pity. Please leave the baby so that it will get well. You, soul (Kamong mga kalag), you know that you have your proper place. This is not your place, this is for the living. You can go to your place now because you also have your own.”

Then he asked the mother whether the baby has already been baptized. The mother said yes, and Tio Temyong asked the name of the baby, which was “Kim”. He then addressed the baby directly, and in a loud and sure voice: “Kim, Kim, mag-uli ka na! Dai na magparahaloy Kim, uli na!”

After this, Tio Temyong took the plate, rubbed his hands on the soot, and marked Kim’s forehead with it. He also massaged the baby gently, who began to cry loudly. The mother hushed the baby by singing a lullaby and swaying gently. Then Tio Temyong instructed her that upon getting back home, she should get some tuba-tuba leaves, crush them and apply them to the belly of the baby.

Still swaying as she held her baby, the mother started to recall and mentioned that she promised a novena to the “Salvacion”, but she was not able to accomplish it. Both Tio Temyong and Tia Viring took turns admonishing her to always remember what she promises, and to keep them. After this, the couple bade to leave, and the father discreetly handed a gift of money to Tio Temyong, who accepted it. It is always important to have, and to remember these promises (panuga), Tio Temyong added. In their case, seconded Tia Viring, their panuga is to host a pabasa during the Holy Week, and they always make sure that they prepare for it.



V. Conclusion

The foregoing narrative, while as yet incomplete in terms of uncovering the multi-layered aspects of social life in Siruma- and as such will be bound to be incomplete- does reveal several dynamics worth anthropological reflection and continuing fieldwork. The story of twin lives is cast in two



Elementary school in Siruma


different worlds, mediating and meditating between them They are cast in a cultural continuum where new understanding is continually being derived out of the dynamics and exigencies of everyday life and relations. Geertz says:


The reshaping of categories (ours and other people’s- think of taboo) so that they can reach beyond the contexts in which they originally arose and took their meaning so as to locate affinities and mark differences is a great part of what ‘translation’ comes to in anthropology. (Geertz 1983:12)


Narrativity here indexes the flow not just of goods, but of the rest of the signs in their construction of shared humanity: the interchangeability of the metaphors of pag-uli, in the realms of the journey from the city back home, in the realm of the renewal of rifts, as much as of rites that bind a family, and in the realm of the dynamics of healing and the world of religious remembrance, are pictures and disclosures of the lived world of the subjects. They exemplify the acculturative process, lived through as predicaments of everyday life: to leave or to stay; to marry a foreigner or a local swain; to get rich or to stay poor; to cling to traditions or to embrace modernity. It is as much a journey of negotiating through these interstices, through these gaps, such that on the whole, neither is discarded but both are accepted in various, mitigated senses.

The anthropologist Fenella Cannell who has done her dissertation in another Camarines Sur town in Bicol, suggests that the frame which needs to be used in understanding Bicol culture is not through the exploration of power-relations, but through “idioms of experience and feeling, especially pity, reluctance, oppression, affection and desire….an ‘emotional economy.’” (Cannell 1999:106)

It is indeed a marked standpoint, from the context of Bicol linguistics. There is, however, a looming question that needs to be answered in the near future: what are the limits of this emotional economy? How is the threshold of this capacity to feel transgressed, such as it may lead to violence? This story about Siruma ends at the crossroads- there, between Bahao and the town proper, and between them and Naga, Manila, and the rest of the world. That crux is marked by violence: it is the dumping ground for salvaged victims. There I waited at midnight for the jeepney home, with half a sack of live aniit. There, the unfinished road negotiates through the ire of the mayor. The sea is seen from that vantage point: source of life, but the same sea that is the route of boats loaded with white clay, the sea which is also an escape route from the landlocked peninsula.

That Siruma is silent bespeaks other unsaid questions. The harmony of coming home and healing is performed in rituals of fiestas and santiguar, is certainly not the only cultural interpretation. There are the poor, who, when this emotional threshold is transgressed, might speak back and draw new lines of performance, in new hermeneutical moves.


TRANSLATIONS and NOTES



“Mala ngani iyan ta fiesta baga...”- Literally:
(i.e., the locutionary): There it is (indicating a condescending passivity), that it is fiesta. Or, “What can I do, it’s fiesta” to belie one’s excitement and to feign meekness (i.e., the illocutionary). Without this expression, one might be caught bragging. This is pronounced with as much passivity as possible, along with a smile (i.e, the perlocutionary), without which, the speech and behavior become unsociable. (The best discursive form is by way of making a ridiculous statement out of the situation... and “mala iyan” is the tag-phrase. Just by using the phrase at the start already calls for, and licenses this mode of linguistic genre, such that, if the speaker is answered in a ridiculous manner (i.e., the interlocutionary), he or she has already given the license for it.
(Cf.Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory. 1976:14 ff.)


“Magkapirang bumbilya lamang marahay-rahay na.”- Literally, “Just a few of these bulbs is already very well”, that is, the fiesta is already fine or well (indicating the subjective feeling about a public celebration) with these bulbs to lighten the house. The adverb “lamang” is noted to call attention to one’s “making little” what one possesses- the bulbs, and mitigating the feeling of wellness brought about by having capacity to buy the bulbs. This line is consistent with the tone of the initial statement.


“Marhay ngani ta su sementadong dalan dai pinabakbak.”- “It is good/well that the cemented road (he) did not dismantle.” Dismantling the road (which is incomplete anyway) is another ridiculous possibility. The adjective “marhay” lends poignancy to the expression of irony.

Mayong pagmangno- one has become numb; lost control of/function of vital senses. “Pagmangno” also means “to watch over”, or “to care/tend”, that is, to make/apply one’s senses attentive to one’s environment.

Mag-uli ka na!- “Come home!”

Dai na magparahaloy!- “Don’t you keep tarrying”!



Albularyo- medicine man
Amihan- northeast monsoon
Copra- Sun-dried coconut meat, sold according to weight in jut sacks; raw material for coconut oil and other products.
Dinuguan- pig’s innards cooked in pig’s blood, with the core of the stem of the banana plant.
Habagat- southwest monsoon
Herak- pity, compassion, mercy
Horon- to talk, to arrive at an understanding
Kamong mga...- “Kamo” is “you” (plural). In the usage above, only one “kalag” is addressed, and the use of the plural is for respect.
Baylehan- Village dance, from the Spanish“bailar”, to dance. Village dances are held for at least two consecutive nights during the fiesta.
Buko- the sweet juice and pulp of young coconut
Ibos- glutinous rice delicacy, wrapped in young coconut leaves, slightly salted and steamed.
Kalag- the soul of a (dead)human being/of an ancestor
Pabasa- a recitation/singing of the “Pasyon” (The Passion of Jesus Christ) during Holy Week. This usually lasts for more than a day, starting in the morning, and ending the next day. The host prepares food for the singers.
Panuga- promises made to a saint (Catholic tradition), such as praying novenas, attending masses on specific days, and other observances
“Sari-sari” store: a store which sells common household needs, odds and ends, usually in smaller, more affordable quantities
“Salvacion”- “Nuestra Señora de Salvacion”, a title of the Virgin Mary, patroness of Albay.
Sibot-sibot- a state of being pre-occupied because of an imminent fiesta or any occasion, shared by family and kins.
Santiguar- the popular healing method using a white plate and a lamp to divine disease etiology.
Taong-galang- a cultural normative gesture of respect for the elders, usually, kissing the hand; putting it on one’s forehead. This is also the term for visiting houses, done by someone who has arrived from elsewhere; done by newcomers/strangers to the locals where one is in.
Tuba-tuba- a poison plant, scientific name: “Jatropha curcas” (over a hundred species). Local scientists claim that this plant’s seed contains biofuel oil.
Zilva clan: I stayed in the house of this family (The real family name is hereby withheld for ethical reasons. In the interest of verification, the author can provide the mobile telephone number of the key informant who is in Manila.), and I also met their relatives in the course of my stay.


BIBLIOGRAPHY



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