Cleaning Up the Mess of Home
As I stand in the doorway of my grandmother’s modest home in the Kankana-ey vegetable gardening village of Amgaleyguey, I’m struck by the layers of history etched into every crevice. The soot-stained ceiling beams, the sun-bleached woven mats, the weathered images of saints on the wall – each item a silent witness to the rituals that have unfolded here over generations.
My grandmother, Delina, was the last keeper of these ancestral traditions in our family. I remember as a child, the deafening squeals of pigs being sacrificed, the murmured prayers of the village elders, the rhythmic beating of gongs that would summon the whole community to our doorstep. These were the sights and sounds of the cañao, a ritual feast held to honor the spirits of our departed loved ones and secure the blessings of the land.
As the scholar Jose Kervin Cesar B. Calabias writes, these ritual feasts were “central to the recollections of village elders, chanters, and healers whose practices and roles have slowly been slipping away as they age and the gardens they tend continue to grow.” And indeed, as my grandmother grew older and the demands of the commercial vegetable industry mounted, the cañaos became fewer and farther between.
The Precarious Gamble of Highland Gardening
My father’s family has tended these high-altitude vegetable gardens for as long as they can remember. From Amgaleyguey to the neighboring village of Bayoyo, they’ve coaxed carrots, cabbages and potatoes from the steep, terraced slopes, creating a patchwork of lush green across the rugged Cordillera landscape.
As Calabias explains, this commercial highland vegetable farming has become a “lucrative venture” for many Kankana-ey families, with the region supplying over 80% of the country’s cabbage, carrots and potatoes. But the risks are high – landslides, low visibility, slippery roads, especially during the frequent typhoon season. Gardeners are forced to literally race down the treacherous Halsema Highway, chasing the best prices for their produce.
My own grandfather met his end this way, his truck tumbling over the edge of the winding mountain road in 1972. My father, just nine years old at the time, still vividly recalls the sound of the crash and the sight of his cousin running to break the news. “Grandfather might have gotten out before the fall if not for the faulty makeshift lock he installed to the jeep’s door,” he recounts, shaking his head.
But for all the risks, the promise of a “jackpot” sale – a windfall computed by middlemen based on weather conditions and supply and demand – keeps the gardeners plying these perilous roads. It’s a high-stakes gamble, where even a single typhoon can wipe out an entire season’s worth of labor and investment.
The Fading Rituals of Home
As the commercial realities of highland vegetable farming have taken hold, the ancestral rituals that once anchored our community have begun to fray. My grandmother was one of the last remaining practitioners of these traditions, hosting cañaos to honor our departed ancestors and appease the spirits of the land.
Calabias recounts how, during one such feast, he watched as a mambunong – a ritual specialist – murmured prayers while sacrificing a native black hog. The bloody tip of the stake used to dispatch the animal was then smeared on the cheeks of the host family, including my grandmother and father, as a mark of the ceremony.
But as the younger generation has flocked to the cities in search of greener pastures, leaving the gardens to the aging keepers of tradition, these rituals have begun to disappear. The mambunong of Amgaleyguey, Calixto Walsie, passed away just a few years after Calabias’ research. And my own aunt Lensa, the last manggengey or chanter of the village, took her songs and prayers to the grave.
Calabias observes that while some gardeners are willing to continue these traditions, they are often “preoccupied by their livelihood or are sometimes dissuaded by their religion.” The expense of ritual feasting, too, is a burden that many struggling families can ill afford.
Departures and Returns
As I stand in my grandmother’s home, surrounded by the vestiges of a disappearing way of life, I can’t help but feel a deep well of sadness. This was the place where I played as a child, where I learned the rhythms of the land and the rituals of my ancestors. And now, it seems, I am among a generation of Igorots who have drifted away, pulled by the lure of opportunity beyond the village.
Calabias reflects on his own journey, how his research on Indigenous rituals has become a “homecoming of sorts” that allowed him to “get reacquainted with a community I have grown far away from.” I too feel that pull, that desire to honor the traditions that have nourished my family for generations.
And yet, I know that the path forward is not an easy one. The commercial pressures that have eroded our ritual practices are intertwined with the broader forces of globalization and modernization that have reshaped the Cordillera landscape. As more and more Igorots leave the precarious life of highland gardening for the promise of stability elsewhere, the rituals that once bound us to this land are slipping away.
But in the face of this loss, I find myself drawn back to the words of Seamus Heaney, whose poem “Digging” so eloquently captured the connection between a family of potato farmers and the land they tended. “The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap / Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge / Through living roots awaken in my head.” These words echo the ties that have bound my family to Amgaleyguey for generations, a connection that, despite the distance, I know I can never truly sever.
So, as I stand in the doorway of my grandmother’s home, I make a silent vow to honor her memory and the rituals she so lovingly preserved. Perhaps one day, I can return to these gardens, not as a visitor, but as a caretaker of the land that has nourished my family for so long. Until then, I will carry the weight of that legacy, a reminder that even as the world changes, the roots of home remain, waiting to be tended once more.
