Cry-wailing Memories

When I was about 8, my mother took us to her village. The village she was born in and avoided ever returning to. I don't remember what was the occasion, if there was one. But it so happened that during our stay, someone had died. Someone elderly and the body was to be at our house for a wake of sorts.

A wake here meant that the whole village would come. We would slaughter pigs, boil them and have the stew with rice. The rice would be served on the same rice baskets they used for sifting stones and husked grains from the rice you could cook. And you would, with as many other people as a basket could feed, gather handfuls of hot rice into your mouth, alternating or mixing the handfuls with pork stew.

You would sit around and talk to your relatives (the whole village was related in some way or another) and those who knew her would sit by her and cry-wail.

They were beautiful in their red woven cloths. These were usually one metre long and half a metre wide and wrapped just above the waist and secured with a woven belt with tassles at the ends. They were signatured cloths like you initial handkerchiefs. And my grandmother's name stopped being woven when her eyes began to fail.

They didn't use to wear tops either and the men used this same cloth as a g-string. It is for this reason that they consider us backward in the capital or "savage" if you must, considering our history of headhunting. One housemate on Pinoy Big Brother said, "he should go (be evicted), because he is an igorot."

So she is covered in this red woven cloth, lying now in a wooden box cum stretcher as two more elderly ladies cry-wail for her.

And when a few hours have passed, the attendees will go home and she will be carried to the next house the next day for another slaughtering until they have passed every house that can accommodate her. It could take weeks to go round and if another death occurs, they might combine wakes.

I remember this because it was the first time I smelt death. Or rather decay. And I remember this now because the last time I went, nobody but close friends or family stayed to eat together. Children were sent with plastic bags they asked you to serve the rice and stew into and went away again. You would see them from the window, climbing rice terrace after rice terrace away with those black plastic bags.

And there was no more cry-wailing. No more ritual form of lament.

There was a show on RFI's programme, Crossroads last night about dying languages and studying them in order to preserve them. And when the women cry-wailed on the show, I remembered this event. And I remembered that I should go back.

"It is a chant," the correspondent described, "that follows a formula and has a recognisable melody. In Bom, the word "crying" means both the tears come out of your eyes and the song you use to grieve with. Cry-wailing first announces the death and then is used for mourning. You learn to cry as a child, you learn the melody, what to say and then how to improvise, weaving your own feelings into the song." The song aired and translated went as follows, (and though it isn't my grandmother's song, it took me the closest back);

Eeooyah
I'm alone yah
My people have gone oh
My people have been buried oh
Who will come for me
Who will take care of me oh

... I'm all alone oo-eh!
(and the women in support respond with:) Manu eh!

Vigan Dust (April 2006)

I think I must have been in between work when I thought of Vigan. It came to me like some exotic place in the North, "a place where time stood still," the brochures say! lol. A UNESCO World Heritage Site they mean to say.

So I recruited my cousin for a companion and we set off for Ilocos Sur. I didn't book any hotels nor call any travel agent. But I did do my research as to what we could do there. There would be a street parade they said. And we could tour the old town. We bought the bus tickets at the bus station itself an hour before departure time. We fought our way to the bus door, waving our money at the conductor, yelling "manong! dua!" (mister, just the two of us).

When he had arbitrarily selected who could go on, we made ourselves comfortable - it would be an 8 hour ride.

We slept most of the way as it was a night bus. But I did delve deep into my cousin's life which was the reason I found out later was her reason for distancing herself from me. "It hurt too much," it was reported she had said.

But for the meantime, I am naive. And lonely. I had only moved to the Philippines four months back on a whim. Should I stay? I ask my best friend. (I had come originally for Christmas). Yes! she replies. And that was that. It was April. And I was still here. [There would be 3 more Aprils! But that's another story...]

There is an information desk on arrival. And we ask about hotels. We take a mid-range one with a/c and unpack.

We then go back into the centre of town and take a calesa ride. The carriages are much bigger than the ones in Manila and the horses seem better cared for. The World Heritage Site however, turns out to be only two streets long. Everything after that is like every other small town in the Philippines.

And so we visit the shops and museums. And as they are all on the two World Heritage Site streets, it feels like being in the old world. I always loved museums, the opportunity to touch, bear witness to and read about things of old.

That night we watch the centre of town (the grounds near the church) fill with crowds. Several boys make a pass at my cousin. And the black nazarene parades from afar on a float. The crowds flock to follow it.

We devour the famous Vigan empanada and longganisa. And retire to our mid-range hotel with an a/c room.

I wake up the next morning and think first of him. And I find it strange to be so far away from him and to still have him as the first thing on my mind. I almost laugh at the irony. Laugh - cry - it would be the same to me.

They say that before names and details, we remember how someone made us feel. I remember Vigan because it was perhaps the last of those anguished mornings. A stark realisation that henceforth I would only be tasting the dust of what once was.

And unbeknownst to me at the time, the beginning of the end of some family ties.