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!