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Karl Gaspar

Conclusion

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THE Moro abodes tend to use more permanent housing materials as wood. These are also bigger in size, with the Maguindanao Sultan’s house as the most intricate (in fact there are two houses adjacent to each other). There are still shared spaces, but there is more privacy. In fact, the Iranun house has a tower labeled gibbon/bilik/lamin (or princess room). All of the Moro houses – Iranun, Maranao, Maguindanao, Kagan, Sama and Tausog – have all kinds of embellishments and accessories and thus are markedly differentiated from the Lumad abodes.

The Maranaw turogan stands out in this exhibit as the must-see for the beauty of the okir’s (or okill) geometric and flowing designs of mainly leaf and vine pattern which are the folk motifs of most turogans, especially those along the lakeshore of Lanao. This one in Magsaysay is but a shadow of the great beauty of those found around Lake Lanao with their huge carvings (which hopefully have not been destroyed during the Marawi siege). Still this one in Bantawan is worth keeping in the park and maintained, as it shows the wonderful design of the traditional turogan, with the carved posts, and the decorations that protrude from the building’s corners. (For a thorough study on this see Maria Yap-Rosales seminal book which won the National Book Award in 2014 – the UKKIL.)

Next to the Maranaw turogan, it is the Kagan house that is worth seeing even only for the intricate manner that bamboo is used. Here is a house lovingly built, as the builders went out of their way to create a house that has such great beauty – despite the limitations of time and space. If a visit to the famed island of Bali should include a visit to the Bamboo school, a visit to Bantawan becomes a thrilling experience by gazing at this house and appreciating the extent that which bamboo can be a thing of beauty if transformed into a dwelling. Here is where bamboo can be made to show different patterns, shapes and designs through the art of burning parts of the bamboo to create a sort of brown-and-black effect. From the roof down to the staircase, this house is a piece of art. The creative use of this lowly material makes it such a fabulous place to live in. Alas, given that bamboo cannot be preserved for a very long time, it is such a shame that this house cannot last a long time.

Lastly, one can only be amazed at the wide variety of beautiful trinkets, accessories inside and outside these houses. For the Maranaws, one admires the mamanyang (the Tausog’s sitti) that long cloth usually in golden yellow that is embellished with okir design made of sequins which must take months to put together which is placed above and traverses around the sala. They also have all sizes of the baor, those wooden boxes with pearl in-laids, all kinds of drums (mainly the dabakan/sango/bandi). For the Samas, the multi-colored mats in intricate designs provide beauty to the spaces on the walls as well as floors. The Maguindanao Sultan house has perhaps the most beautiful collection. At the center of the main sala is the olol, referred to as some kind of a mosquito net, but really a canopy made up of hundreds of little pieces of multi-colored cloth. (When I asked the guide as to how long it took to make this and the cost involved, he answered it took so many months and for the labor alone, they paid P11,000 to the seamstress). Outside, the ladies serve local delicacies including dodol, kumukuns, panalan and tinag (those sweets made from sticky rice and coconut).

There is only one critique of this exhibit and it has to do with the ethnographic labeling of these communities. In one of these signs one reads this text: “They prefer high places, the slopes and sides of hills and mountains” – even referring to pre-Spanish times. This is a myth that is perpetuated that has reinforced the notion of indigenous peoples being “taga-bukid”; the nuance of which is that they are “primitive”. The fact of the matter is that before all kinds of conquest took place, the Lumads lived along coastal areas, rivers and lakes and were only pushed to go up the upland hinterlands because of the waves of colonization.

 (Redemptorist Brother Karl Gaspar is Academic Dean of the Redemptorists’ St. Alphonsus Theological and Mission Institute in Davao City and a professor of Anthropology at the Ateneo de Davao University. -Mindanews)

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